G. Wayne Miller's Blog, page 5

Review of "Little Voices"

With her debut novel “Little Voices,” Vanessa Lillie has arrived on the American literary scene with a flash of brilliance. Aficionados of mystery, thriller and horror will savor this intricately plotted page-turner that builds to a stunning denouement.

No word of a lie: I literally jumped when I reached the reveal. This was no cheesy deus ex machina, but rather a breathtaking and logical, if unanticipated, close to this treasure of a book.

Lovers of good fiction in general also will appreciate “Little Voices” — Rhode Islanders especially. Lillie, who grew up in Oklahoma and spent several years in Washington, D.C., before moving to Providence in 2011, sets her debut in the Ocean State, with locations including Newport, Jamestown and the capital city. Her characters’ Rhode Island accents, the insider politics and corrupt politicians, the lingering stench of the Mob, the cops, the bars and restaurants, the East Side neighborhoods, the local media — Lillie has it all down, brilliantly.

“Little Voices” opens with protagonist Devon Burges, a lawyer and investigator with a checkered past (like most of Lillie’s characters), going into bloody, premature labor as she is rushed by ambulance to Women & Infants Hospital. As The Journal’s health writer and author of several medical books, I can attest to the gripping accuracy of the scene. It is an accuracy Lillie brings to every chapter, whether the passage involves medicine, forensics, psychology or crime.

At Women & Infants, Burges delivers her baby via C-section and survives, but leaves the hospital in an amnesic postpartum psychosis. In this house-of-mirrors state, she learns of the savage and unsolved murder of her friend Belina Cabrala in Swan Point Cemetery, where Burges met her the morning she went into labor. A seemingly mystical young woman who really is nothing like she seems (except, perhaps, a spectre), Cabrala also was the nanny and illicit lover of another, older friend of Burges whose marriage is rocky and whose business dealings are shady and rockier still — and whom law enforcement with good reason believes is the prime suspect.

The plot builds from there, with Burges’ husband, Jack, who works for the mayor of Providence, seeking to soothe his wife and temper (and also encourage) her quest to find Cabrala’s murderer as one "House of Cards"-like character after another takes the stage.

Lillie’s dialogue is script-tight (think: the best of "NCIS"), her prose suitably spare. But it is the recurring voice in Burges’ head that haunted me. Presented in italics, never more than a few words at a time, it is a voice of self-doubt, self-loathing, betrayal, shame and guilt. Does it result from postpartum psychosis? Is it a real-life voice from a little girl’s horrific childhood?

Sorry, no spoilers. Lillie, who is at work on another novel, indeed has arrived with a flash of brilliance. If “Little Voices” is any indication, she will be no flash in the pan.

Staff Writer G. Wayne Miller’s 17th book, “Kid Number One: A Story of Heart, Soul and Business, Featuring Alan Hassenfeld and Hasbro,” was published on Sept. 24.

Originally published on September 26, 2019, in The Providence Journal.

Virginia students win with their National History Day project about open heart surgery!

Some while ago, two students in Forest, Virginia, reached out to me regarding a National History Day project they were producing about the birth of open-heart surgery, the focus of my book “King of Hearts: The True Story of theMaverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery.”

I am always happy to help, however modestly, with enterprising young people, so along with their teacher, Regan Alber and Audrey Stinnett got on a Zoom call with me. I followed up by providing some photos of the Father of open Heart Surgery, the late Dr. C. Walton Lillehei.

So imagine how excited I was for Regan and Audrey and their teacher when I received this email recently:

“We presented our project today and it went very well. We received a perfect score, and won the ‘Best in Show’ award which means that we won first place out of all 5 categories! We are going to continue our NHD journey by attending CVCC National History Day. Again, thank you so much for everything!”

I wish them the best of luck as they continue with NHD and in their career aspirations.

Here is the video:

National History Day project about open heart surgery

 stay tuned... more to come!!!

Regan Alber and Audrey Stinnett

National History Day Project

Forest, Virginia

Four months later, Ocean State Stories is making news

 

Four months ago today, on Nov. 4, 2022, I left The Providence Journal, where I had been a staff writer for 41 years, to become director of Ocean State Stories, based at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center. Much planning during much of 2022 preceded my departure, and with funding from generous organizations and individuals and everything else finally in place, it was time to get going.

During the weeks that followed, a lot of additional planning preoccupied me and Jim Ludes, Pell Center director; Pell staffers Teresa Haas and Erin Barry; and Lindsey Turowski, Salve’s director of Integrated Marketing Strategy and Brand Deployment, Strategic Communications and Public Affairs, among others.

The first edition of OceanStateStories.org – which is always free and free of click-bait -- was published on Feb. 8. It included the first of a two-part series onfood insecurity, written by me, and the inaugural Q&A in what is a weekly feature with Paige Clausius-Parks, executive director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT.

We formed an Advisory Board representing Rhode Island's diverse communities and retained a member of Rhode Island’s Hispanic community to translate our content into Spanish and established a partnership with John Howell’s Warwick Beacon, Cranston Herald and Johnston SunRise newspapers to further extend our reach. John’s papers have carried our content from the start and we thank him!

We also are building a stellar freelancer corps (first story from the first of our contributors coming on March 15) and we pay for their stories. And we were accepted into membership with LION Publishers: Local Independent Online News, a great organization supporting news outlets across America like ours.

While we are a startup that’s been around for only a month, our analytics show impressive numbers of visitors, time on page, and total impressions. The numbers continue to climb, week by week.

So thanks to everyone who has made Ocean State Stories possible – and to our readers, who share our vision, summarized in our mission statement:

 “Our focus is journalism about issues that often are neglected or under-reported — stories that explore healthcare, education, public policy, socioeconomic and racial disparities and injustices, domestic violence, food and housing insecurities, the environment, ageism, suicide prevention, mental health, veterans affairs, and developmental and intellectual disabilities, among others. They will be told with data, expert input, and, most importantly, the personal experiences of Rhode Islanders.”

Look for more stories that matter in the weeks and months ahead as we continue to grow.

 

Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire. Now published!

My 21st book was published in print and e-Book editions on Sept. 22, 2023, and the audio version will be published by Oct. 10. Order now!

From the Introduction:

In this era of so-called “fake news” and “alternative facts” and QAnon – when some media outlets, left- and right-leaning and in between, will do just about anything for clicks -- when Russia uses social media and other platforms to undermine our democracy with disinformation -- when extremists and politicians inspired by Donald Trump erode it further with lies and conspiracy theories – when social media platforms purport to be ethical but care mostly about profit -- truth still matters.

But why did I write a novel and not a memoir or exposé?

In part, because fiction allowed me to wring dark humor from a sickening reality. As the old saw has it: If you don’t laugh, you cry.

But mostly because as Ralph Waldo Emerson is purported to have said, “fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

So, yes, truth still matters – and so do morality, social justice, quality local journalism, and doing the right thing.

Those are among the lessons that Nick Nolan, the protagonist of “Unfit To Print,” embraces as he eventually rejects the click mentality and hollow sensationalism driving much of newspapering today.

Nolan comes to believe we are better than that.

I hope he is right.

Follow "Unfit to Print" on Twitter.

Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire. Coming on October 10, 2023.

With publication of my 21st book on track for publication on Oct. 10, 2023, I am working with the good folks at my longtime publisher, Crossroad Press, on some of the critical aspects of a book post-writing: editing, layout, cover design, audio, e, etc. And the book is now available for preorder on Amazon!

From the Introduction:

In this era of so-called “fake news” and “alternative facts” and QAnon – when some media outlets, left- and right-leaning and in between, will do just about anything for clicks -- when Russia uses social media and other platforms to undermine our democracy with disinformation -- when extremists and politicians inspired by Donald Trump erode it further with lies and conspiracy theories – when social media platforms purport to be ethical but care mostly about profit -- truth still matters.

But why did I write a novel and not a memoir or exposé?

In part, because fiction allowed me to wring dark humor from a sickening reality. As the old saw has it: If you don’t laugh, you cry.

But mostly because as Ralph Waldo Emerson is purported to have said, “fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

So, yes, truth still matters – and so do morality, social justice, quality local journalism, and doing the right thing.

Those are among the lessons that Nick Nolan, the protagonist of “Unfit To Print,” embraces as he eventually rejects the click mentality and hollow sensationalism driving much of newspapering today.

Nolan comes to believe we are better than that.

I hope he is right.

Follow "Unfit to Print" on Twitter.

Unfit to Print: A Modern Media Satire. Coming in 2023.

From the Introduction:

In this era of so-called “fake news” and “alternative facts” and QAnon – when some media outlets, left- and right-leaning and in between, will do just about anything for clicks -- when Russia uses social media and other platforms to undermine our democracy with disinformation -- when extremists and politicians inspired by Donald Trump erode it further with lies and conspiracy theories – when social media platforms purport to be ethical but care mostly about profit -- truth still matters.

But why did I write a novel and not a memoir or exposé?

In part, because fiction allowed me to wring dark humor from a sickening reality. As the old saw has it: If you don’t laugh, you cry.

But mostly because as Ralph Waldo Emerson is purported to have said, “fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

So, yes, truth still matters – and so do morality, social justice, quality local journalism, and doing the right thing.

Those are among the lessons that Nick Nolan, the protagonist of “Unfit To Print,” embraces as he eventually rejects the click mentality and hollow sensationalism driving much of newspapering today.

Nolan comes to believe we are better than that.

I hope he is right.

Follow "Unfit to Print" on Twitter.

Twenty years ago today. RIP, Dad.

 Author's Note: I wrote this ten years ago, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of my father's death. Like his memory, it has withstood the test of time. I have slightly updated it for today, December 11, 2022, the 20th anniversary of his death. Read the original here.

Roger L. Miller as a boy, early 1920s.

My Dad and Airplanes

by G. Wayne Miller

I live near an airport. Depending on wind direction and other variables, planes sometimes pass directly over my house as they climb into the sky. If I’m outside, I always look up, marveling at the wonder of flight. I’ve witnessed many amazing developments -- the end of the Cold War, the advent of the digital world, for example -- but except perhaps for space travel, which of course is rooted at Kitty Hawk, none can compare.
I also always think of my father, Roger L. Miller, who died 20 years ago today.
Dad was a boy on May 20, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh took off in a single-engine plane from a field near New York City. Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, he landed in Paris. That boy from a small Massachusetts town who became my father was astounded, like people all over the world. Lindbergh’s pioneering Atlantic crossing inspired him to get into aviation, and he wanted to do big things, maybe captain a plane or even head an airline. But the Great Depression, which forced him from college, diminished that dream. He drove a school bus to pay for trade school, where he became an airplane mechanic, which was his job as a wartime Navy enlisted man and during his entire civilian career. On this modest salary, he and my mother raised a family, sacrificing material things they surely desired.
My father was a smart and gentle man, not prone to harsh judgment, fond of a joke, a lover of newspapers and gardening and birds, chickadees especially. He was robust until a stroke in his 80s sent him to a nursing home, but I never heard him complain during those final, decrepit years. The last time I saw him conscious, he was reading his beloved Boston Globe, his old reading glasses uneven on his nose, from a hospital bed. The morning sun was shining through the window and for a moment, I held the unrealistic hope that he would make it through this latest distress. He died four days later, quietly, I am told. I was not there.
Like others who have lost loved ones, there are conversations I never had with my Dad that I probably should have. But near the end, we did say we loved each other, which was rare (he was, after all, a Yankee). I smoothed his brow and kissed him goodbye.
So on this 20th anniversary, I have no deep regrets. But I do have two impossible wishes.
My first is that Dad could have heard my eulogy, which I began writing that morning by his hospital bed. It spoke of quiet wisdom he imparted to his children, and of the respect and affection family and others held for him. In his modest way, he would have liked to hear it, I bet, for such praise was scarce when he was alive. But that is not how the story goes. We die and leave only memories, a strictly one-way experience. 
My second wish would be to tell Dad how his only son has fared in the last 20 years. I know he would have empathy for some bad times I went through and be proud that I made it. He would be happy that I found a woman I love, Yolanda, my wife now for four years and my best friend for more than a decade: someone, like him, who loves gardening and birds. He would be pleased that my three wonderful children, Rachel, Katy and Cal, are making their way in the world; and that he now has three great-granddaughters, Bella, Livvie and Viv, wonderful girls all. In his humble way, he would be honored to know how frequently I, my sister Mary Lynne and my children remember and miss him. He would be saddened to learn that my other sister, his younger daughter, Lynda, died in 2015. But that is not how the story goes, either. We send thoughts to the dead, but the experience is one-way. We treasure photographs, but they do not speak.
Lately, I have been poring through boxes of black-and-white prints handed down from Dad’s side of my family. I am lucky to have them, more so that they were taken in the pre-digital age -- for I can touch them, as the people captured in them surely themselves did so long ago. I can imagine what they might say, if in fact they could speak.
Some of the scenes are unfamiliar to me: sailboats on a bay, a stream in winter, a couple posing on a hill, the woman dressed in fur-trimmed coat. But I recognize the house, which my grandfather, after whom I am named (George), built with his farmer’s hands; the coal stove that still heated the kitchen when I visited as a child; the birdhouses and flower gardens, which my sweet grandmother lovingly tended. I recognize my father, my uncle and my aunts, just children then in the 1920s. I peer at Dad in these portraits (he seems always to be smiling!), and the resemblance to photos of me at that age is startling, though I suppose it should not be.
A plane will fly over my house today, I am certain. When it does, I will go outside and think of young Dad, amazed that someone had taken the controls of an airplane in America and stepped out in France. A boy with a smile, his life all ahead of him.
My dad, second from top, with two of his sisters and his brother.

Dad, near the end of his life.

Please welcome Ocean State Stories!

I closed my November 4, 2022, farewell to The Providence Journal promising word soon of “adventures that await.”

Ten days later, I am thrilled to announce I have become director of Ocean State Stories, a new media outlet serving Rhode Island residents that will be devoted to long-form journalism about issues of importance to the many diverse communities that together comprise our state.

Based at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center in Newport – a place I know well, having been a visiting fellow since 2012 -- Ocean State Stories will be free (and clickbait-free), answering only to the highest standards of my profession.

The icing on this cake?

That I will be working full-time with the great Pell Center staff, all of whom share the mission of bettering the common good. As the university declares, “Salve Regina welcomes people of all beliefs, seeking wisdom and promoting universal justice.”

And thus, to paraphrase Mark Twain, I am happy to confirm that reports of my retirement were an exaggeration!

Read more at this link and stay tuned for further details as we move toward our launch early in 2023. 

One chapter ends, another begins

 

After 41 years and nine days at The Providence Journal, I completed my final shift on Friday, November 4, 2022. I left voluntarily, after deep reflection.

Last day at my newsroom desk. Photo by Michael Delaney.

During my long tenure, I was privileged to work with (and mentor) some of America's finest journalists, a few still at The Projo and others deceased, retired, or moved on to other opportunities. I owe all of them a huge debt of gratitude. I count many as friends. 

Writing for the paper brought me to places and people I never could have known otherwise -- publicly prominent people such as sociologist and author Tricia Rose, Civil Rights leader and Martin Luther King. Jr. associate Bernard LaFayette Jr., researcher and emergency room physician Dr. Megan L. Ranney, and White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha, and the far more numerous and diverse folk from all walks of life who did not have such prominence but whose circumstances, challenges, and triumphs reflected the rainbow of humanity.

So thanks to all of these people in the thousands of stories I wrote starting in October 1981. Stories that included breaking news, profiles, health and medical pieces (including primary Journal coverage of the coronavirus pandemic from January 2020 to October 2022), and my journalistic passion since 1983: mental health and developmental and intellectual disabilities. 

Over the decades, I won many awards and honors, including being a member of the Journal team that was a Pultizer Public Service finalist for our coverage of the devastating 2003 Station nightclub fire.

The Journal was the launchpad for my non-fiction book career and even helped further my fiction writing, with several stories that were published in the long-gone Sunday magazine.

And it was also the launchpad for my visiting fellowship at the Pell Center at Salve Regina University, my founding and directorship of the Story in the Public Square program, and my position as co-host and co-executive producer of the multiple national Telly Award-winning PBS/SiriusXM show "Story in the Public Square," and much more. 

And so, departing is bittersweet. 

Bitter remembering all that was so good and now is behind. 

Sweet contemplating the adventures that await. 

Stay tuned for details about them as they are announced, and they will be soon!

75 Fountain St., Providence R.I., on my last day.