Blog – A.P. Miller

If We’re Being Honest

Posted on 26 May 202320 May 2023 by A.P. Miller in Blog

I looked at my blog today, with a degree of sadness. When I first started my writing career, my blog was super active, and I looked forward to my new posts hitting every week. Now, the page looks like a shell of the blog it used to be, and that makes me sad. If we’re being honest, I think there was a mental block, because I don’t know how to process the things I feel like I need to say.

There is a commercial aspect to my communication apprehension. If I type what’s on my mind, there is the very real fear that my platform may look unsavory. It’s not that the beliefs I have are unsavory, but my natural stress & anger responses to them may be. Since publishing “Broken Promise Records” in 2017, I’ve been very vocal that I wanted everyone—regardless of their size, shape, shade, beliefs, or orientation—to be able to see themselves in my work. If I were to type a manifesto about how I think people who wear green neckties should be taken out back, and shot, would that alienate people from my work. I don’t believe that, but what if I did? Blame it on ADHD, blame it on poor social skills, but I can’t just be a little angry. If I were to go on a diatribe, I would feel awful that someone saw the words I write as harmful to them.

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The ’59 Sound

Posted on 9 Dec 20223 Dec 2022 by A.P. Miller in Blog

“Did you hear the ‘59 sound coming through on Grandmama’s radio?

Did you hear the rattling chains in the hospital walls?

Did you hear the old gospel choir when they came to carry you over?

Did you hear your favorite song one last time?”

-The ‘59 Sound – the Gaslight Anthem

Music & Lyrics written by Brian Fallon, Alex Rosamilla, Alex Levine, & Benny Horowitz

As appears on the album “The ‘59 Sound,” released on SideOneDummy Records

July, 2019.

Matthew was sick. Sick sick. Matthew was the kind of sick you couldn’t sleep off, or go to work in spite of better judgment in regards to your own health, or even drown in cheap booze to kill the germs according to some wive’s tale passed down along the generations of Central Pennsylvania mountain people. Matthew was sick and he wasn’t getting better. A man that had once been built sturdy enough to earn him the nickname “Moose” had become frail and sickly. The curly locks his wife had loved had surrendered to a shorn scalp, with little whisps of prematurely gray hair remaining. Truly, he’d been sapped of the strength to be himself, and that’s what broke my heart the most about Matthew being sick.

Treatments were unsuccessful and Matthew decided he wanted to pass at home.

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The Dewey Decimal Deathmatch: Books vs. eReader

Posted on 30 Sep 202218 Sep 2022 by A.P. Miller in Uncategorized

I’ve said, on more than one or two occasions, that extremism is bad. To be so devoted to any one secular side of a spectrum or argument makes one blind to the opposing perspective makes one blind to the world around them. More often than not, I’ve applied this philosophy to terms of political leanings, or social issues, but there is an exception. Books.

In another life, I was a commentator for professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and part of my duties was assembling statistics on fights. My job was to analyze data, to create hype around the fights to occur, and provide analysis of the fights after they’ve gone down. I’ve seen grown men get hit so hard they don’t know what day of the week it is, or what town they’ve come from. All of that considered I’ve never been more internally conflicted by opposing choices than choosing between a physical copy of a book or an eReader such as an Amazon Kindle or a Nook.

For this week’s blog, I’m going to tap into a former life, and I’m going to break down the tale of the tape, and analyze the war of attrition between the Book and the eReader!

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A Diet of Dummy-Books: How Comic Books & Graphic Novels Ignited My Love for Reading

Posted on 26 Aug 202220 Aug 2022 by A.P. Miller in Blog

1995-1996

Moshannon Valley Elementary School – Madera, Pennsylvania

My fifth-grade teacher (who will not be named in this blog in fear of summoning the demon that occupied her flesh) gave us a writing assignment for our composition books: write a story. Obviously, this woman was packed to the brim with inspiration & vision, right? We could write a story about whatever we wanted, so I did. I never claimed to be a usual child, I had a wild imagination, and wanted everyone to be excited about it. In that tan-and-red composition book I penned a tale about a child that goes to the doctor to get something out of his eye, and the doctor turns out to be an alien cyborg whose head walked around on metal octopus ears. The doctor would shoot tendrils—long string like appendages, often found on plants—to grab things. Mrs. “I look too much like my brother for anyone to be comfortable about it” says to me: “I don’t even know what that word means.”

This woman was an educator. An educator was giving me shit about using a big word that exceeded her understanding.

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Hooray for Andy Partridge! Who’ll Pray for Andy Patridge?

Posted on 22 Jul 20229 Jul 2022 by A.P. Miller in Blog, Story Time

You may have heard me say once, or twice, “a storyteller can spot another storyteller from many miles away.” If not, now you know I’ve said it. This week’s blog is an ode to another storyteller, whose skills are admirable and deserve the recognition from another wordsmith.

Some backstory: I am, in the literary sense, a “pantser.” That means I don’t plot, I write from the seat of my pants. The blessing, and curse, of being a pantser is that I can see something innocuous and make a connections from it. That skill is how I bullshit my way through speech classes and wrote excellent book reports. Storytelling, after all, is the skill of weaving together semi-plausible events in fantastic ways, right? If I was blessed given a divine gift, that would be it.

A storyteller can spot another storyteller from many miles away.

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