Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 19
May 22, 2014
New Work-in-Progress on Wattpad: Novel THE NATURE OF LOVE
In the spring of 1995 a female history professor in her 51st year — a student of the history of women in the United States her entire adult life — begins a video record of her own history paralleling the ups and downs of women’s rights in the second half of the 20th century.
She starts her recording: “My story could be of interest to future historians, if there is a future here on earth.
“And even if our civilization is completely destroyed, aliens will someday come to this planet. There will be historians with those aliens, searching for the truth of our life on earth.”
This novel goes back and forth during the 20th century in the U.S., reflecting on some of the changes in women’s lives during that time.
While today women continue to struggle to achieve equal pay in the workplace and equal places in the boardroom, it is important to remember what has gone before to get us even this far — and even though we still have a long way to go.
I hope you will read this story and share with your friends. The first chapter is at http://budurl.com/Chap1NL
P.S. My Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY is now completed on Wattpad, starting with the intro at http://budurl.com/TAintro
And the beginning chapters of my dystopian novel THE MOTHER SIEGE can be found on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSintro
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
May 18, 2014
Portrayal of Professional Women in Fiction: Female Buddy Movie THE HEAT
Yet this portrayal of two professional women still treats women somewhat as a joke. For example, why must Sandra Bullock’s character have to be a klutz? (Must she knock her head against the car window for a cheap laugh?)
While I understand that comedic movies need sight gags, having Bullock’s character be a klutz is not necessary. The movie has enough funny moments that the two women can be portrayed as competent in their jobs without the put-downs.
This portrayal of women in fiction, as I have written before, is important for how it impacts the perception of women in real life. (Note the firing this past week of New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson and the numerous press accounts of her as a woman at the high echelons of the Times.)
I would love to see more female buddy movies — but let them skip the put-downs and focus on the true comedy in the storyline.
Click here to check out the streaming video of THE HEAT on the movie and TV site M-GO (NOT an affiliate link).
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
May 13, 2014
Cold War Memoir Completed on Wattpad
Of course, I may be adding and deleting information from this version of when my husband and I were stationed with the U.S. army in Munich, Germany. Yet I’m thrilled to have gotten to the end for now of these tales from September 1970 to May 1972.
And how appropriate that I finished writing this memoir the same week in May that 42 years ago my husband was honorably discharged from active duty with the U.S. Army.
If you have not already read TALES chapter by chapter as I posted on Wattpad, I hope you’ll read the memoir now.
As it turned out, I did not always include material I had originally planned to include. Below is one such adventure that did not make it into the edited version:
We had been bemoaning the lack of snow in southern Germany for weeks.
Thus it was with some trepidation that on February 19, 1972, we headed south for a week of skiing at Monte Bondone, Italy, in the Dolomites on an economically priced trip we had arranged through the Munich International Ski Club.
We went through Garmisch and on to Innsbruck, Austria, and the traffic jams were terrible.
In Italy it began raining, then pouring.
When we got to Trento, we started climbing the mountain. No snow, just pouring rain.
Partway up we were stopped by police who said we needed chains to get up the mountain. We called the hotel and the woman said that, if the snow plows came down, we could come up.
When the snow plows came down, we started going up.
Suddenly we turned a corner and it was snowing. Pretty soon the snow was rather deep. Every time a car in front of us was stalled, we got stalled. With help from others we kept pushing the car up the mountain.
Finally we had to give up. We left the car in a parking lot of some place and walked to the nearest hotel, where the proprietors only spoke Italian, no English, French or German. We called the Sport Hotel where we had reservations, but they wouldn’t come get us. (We found out later the Sport Hotel was only four kilometers further.)
We stayed at that hotel to which we had walked for the night and were saved at dinner time by a couple from Rome on their honeymoon who translated the menu for us.
The next morning the man at this hotel drove us to our hotel. But it was snowing so hard and the visibility was so low that, after going out for one run, we gave up for the day.
Now on Monday, the first day of our ski lessons for two hours a day, we had skied down to the place where we left our car. An American army couple stationed in Nuremburg skied down with us.
With Mitch driving and the other three of us in the back seat to weigh down our car, we were able to drive it up to the Sport Hotel.
And at the end of our ski week, when we drove down the mountain in clear weather and could see the hairpin turns that our car had been pushed around, we were very thankful that we did eventually get safely to our destination.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
May 4, 2014
A “Novel” Idea: Writing Novels the Same as Blog Posts
Imagine how interested I was to read a post from the blog of Anne R. Allen entitled “How To Write For the 21st Century Reader: 6 Tips to Modernize Your Prose.” The post puts forward the theory that people also skim novels — and that we authors have to take this into account.
To begin with, this sentence from the blog post is ditto for me: “Personally, I’m a slow reader who savors every word.” In fact, I’ll even immediately re-read a sentence that I particularly like.
Thus it never occurred to me that people reading novels — not blog posts — might actually skim through the book.
Having now realized this may be true, I am beginning to understand why sometimes my books get reviews on Amazon commenting that the readers could not easily follow the characters. I mean, if a reader is SKIMMING, there is little wonder that not everything might be clear!
This post so resonated with me that I have decided to stop worrying if the chapters in my dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE on Wattpad and my Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY on Wattpad are too short.
According to this blog post, writing very short chapters is the modus operandi of the wildly popular author James Patterson.
And, hey, if it is good enough for him, it is good enough for me, especially if it increases ease of reading of what I write.
On the other hand, one of the six tips — to break up paragraphs — I do in my novel writing as well as my blog post writing. The effectiveness of this is vividly described in an example for another tip from the post — “unbury your dialogue.”
I highly recommend you click here to read the entire post now — it is well worth reading carefully rather than skimming!
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
May 1, 2014
Veterans Groups File Suit to Help Sexual-Assault Victims
Veterans groups filed suit in a federal court Wednesday to help sexual-assault victims more easily receive benefits for trauma suffered during military service.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. Circuit Court in Washington, alleges the Department of Veterans Affairs hasn’t acted on a petition to reduce victims’ burden of proof of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by military sexual trauma in claims for benefits.
As many of you know, I often write about PTSD. And on my site www.insupportofourtroops.com I have included the documentary “The Invisible War” about rape in the U.S. military.
Kesling goes on to write:
“Post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic stress, it shouldn’t matter the cause,” said Anu Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network, one of the groups bringing the suit. The Vietnam Veterans of America also is a plaintiff in the legal action.
Veterans generally must prove that a disability was the result of a particular service-related injury, such as being wounded in combat. Some diseases, however, are presumed to be service-connected and don’t require such specific proof.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit. And meanwhile, you might want to read my recent blog post “Reality and Fictional Topic of Sexual Assault in the Military.”
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
April 28, 2014
Innovative Author Blog Tour: The Writing Process and Introducing Other Authors
Now it is my turn to answer the following four questions:
1. What am I working on?
I just finished publishing my screwball romantic comedy novella HOT POTATO on the free site Wattpad (see http://budurl.com/HPintro).
Meanwhile, at the moment front and center is my work-in-progress Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY that I’m publishing chapter by chapter on Wattpad. (Check it out at http://budurl.com/TAintro)
I have all my original documents from September 1970 to May 1972 when my husband and I were stationed in Munich, Germany. Mitch was an officer with the 18th Military Intelligence Battalion and I eventually got a position as a civilian for the 66th Military Intelligence Group.
Americans not connected to the military may not realize that the U.S. has been occupying Germany since the end of World War II. The years 1970-72, while the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam, were a significant time period in the West’s determination not to allow the Soviet Union to advance even further into Europe.
My other work-in-progress on Wattpad is the sci fi novel THE MOTHER SIEGE, which takes place only 36 years from now and deals with many of the current issues in our world, including government eavesdropping and genetic manipulation. You can check this story out on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/MSintro
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I’m not sure my work differs greatly from other work in similar genres. Although I write in different genres, I tend to stick within the parameters of whichever genre I’m writing at the moment.
I will say that many of my stories are inspired by my own experiences or because of agendas that I wish to promote. For example, I wrote the short story SOLOMON’S JUSTICE to help share information about people getting help for PTSD (http://budurl.com/SJWattpad on Wattpad) and the short story PINKY SWEAR to talk about overcoming prejudice in 1964 (http://budurl.com/PSWattpad on Wattpad).
3. Why do I write what I do?
I love to share stories about interesting characters in various situations. Yet, although I love the mystery genre and the thriller genre, I do not write graphic gore. I’m more attracted to the intellectual challenge of figuring out who did it and why. (Yes, I love Agatha Christie mysteries.)
And I write because I have always written. (One summer during high school I wrote an entire book on a manual typewriter about children living in The White House.)
4. How does my writing process work?
I write, and then I rewrite. I actually enjoy rewriting because it provides an opportunity to check the logic of a story, character consistency, and timeline consistency.
I don’t really use outlines. I decide the story I want to tell, where I want to get to in the ending, and then I put myself mentally in the story and write.
(And I thank my parents for making me take two summer high school typing classes — being able to type very quickly really helps get my thoughts down.)
Now it is my turn to introduce three other book authors:
Ashley Fontainne
Award-winning author Ashley Fontainne delves into just what lengths a person is willing to go when they seek personal justice in her trilogy: ACCOUNTABLE TO NONE, ZERO BALANCE and ADJUSTING JOURNAL ENTRIES. Her short thriller NUMBER SEVENTY-FIVE touches upon the dangerous world of online dating. It is currently in production for a feature film. Her latest work, the thriller THE LIE, won the GOLD medal in the 2013 Illumination Book Awards. http://ramblingsofamadsouthernwoman.blogspot.com/
Kingsley Iweka
Kingsley Iweka is a creative writer and has vast experience in Content Development, Content Marketing and Media Consultancy. He is the author of the fiction novella titled DAPPLED THINGS published by Partridge Publishing, a Penguin Company in India. He manages a platform (Africa-ontherise) that delivers ONLY positive and progressive news about Africa. He is passionate about positive change for Nigeria and Africa, and this reflects very much in his writing and works. http://iamscopeman.wordpress.com/
Nicholas Rossis
Nicholas Rossis was born in 1970 in Athens. Greece. In 1995 he moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received his PhD in Digital Architecture from the University of Edinburgh and taught various publishing courses at Napier University. In 2000 he moved back to Greece, where he has written a score of children’s books, numerous award-winning short stories and PEARSEUS, an epic fantasy series. www.nicholasrossis.meApril 17, 2014
Reality and Fictional Topic of Sexual Assault in the Military
I asked two questions that my husband Mitch Miller, who follows military affairs very closely, has pondered for some time. Unfortunately, I did not get what I consider satisfactory answers to my two questions.
In addition, Mitch and I deal with sexual assault on a female Navy officer in our thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, which is on Amazon at www.amzn.com/B005CD5OH4
Thus it was with deep interest that Mitch and I watched the April 15, 2014, episode of TV show NCIS titled “Alleged.”
The episode dealt with sexual assault in the Navy — the psychological trauma to the female junior officer who had been drugged and date-raped, the reaction of her male junior officer friends, and her reasons for not reporting the incident.
While, as we suspected, excessive drinking was involved, the episode went deeper to point out that higher-ranking officers might turn a blind eye or worse — spoiler alert — even commit these heinous acts.
Thus the question of how to stop sexual assault — which the female Navy investigator in the episode said the Navy is intent on “eradicating” — is a very complex societal issue.
(In a compelling scene in the NCIS episode, the director of NCIS reveals that his teenage daughter has expressed an interest in joining the Navy when she is an adult. The director says that he doesn’t want these problems to exist when his daughter joins.)
The young women (and young men are also the target of sexual assault in the military) who serve our nation to protect us from harm deserve to be themselves protected from harm. Not to mention how many quality and qualified women leave the service each year because of sexual assault.
What do we as a society going forward need to do to prevent these sexual assaults in the military?
In a mil-fi novel that Mitch read, an officer committed a different but equally heinous offense. The narrator said, “In any army but ours, he’d be given a pistol and told to do the right thing.” Maybe we need to adopt that custom.
Or maybe fiction gets information across stronger than lectures about appropriate sexual behavior in the military.
Could General Dempsey require that every current and incoming military member regardless of rank or branch of service watch the entire NCIS episode “Alleged”? This poignant episode might actually help change the current environment that is tacitly allowing these attacks to happen and to go under-reported and under-investigated.
Click here to read the entire transcript of General Dempsey’s statements to members of the DoD’s Bloggers Roundtable, including my two questions.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
April 9, 2014
Harvard B-School Dean Apologizes for Lack of Inclusion of Women in Case Studies
I admit,though, that I was shocked to just have read the Fortune Magazine article of January 29, 2014, by John A. Bryne entitled “Harvard B-school dean offers unusual apology” with the article subhead: “Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria publicly apologized for the school’s treatment of female students and professors, and vowed to make changes at the institution.”
As both someone with an M.BA. from Wharton and as a fiction writer of strong female characters, this is the part of the article that most shocked me:
Among other things, Nohria pledged to more than double the percentage of women who are protagonists in Harvard case studies over the next five years, to 20%. Currently, about 9% of Harvard case studies — which account for 80% of the cases studied at business schools around the world — have women as protagonists
This nonfiction “in print” depiction of women is just as damaging as fiction “in print” depiction of women can be.
As I learned at Wharton, perception is very important to the way people are treated in the real world. And reading case study after case study with only male leaders has to reinforce the fallacy that women are not business leaders.
Here in Los Angeles I face this skewed perception almost on a weekly basis.
I have been attending several tech meetups, and meetup after meetup only has male panelists. (Full disclosure: I did attend a meetup last week that had four male speakers followed by one female speaker.)
What does this makeup of panelists say to women who are considering or are already in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) careers?
And how magnanimous of the Harvard business school dean to state that the future case studies would have 20% of women “protagonists” (interesting that this word from fiction was used). Why not 50%?
At the time I attended Wharton I did not expect there to be 50% female students. But today this should be so in all the top business schools in the U.S.
Perhaps the dean of Harvard’s business school should rethink his pledge of 20%. Otherwise Harvard is continuing the less-than-equal perception of female leaders in the business world today.
P.S. If you want to read my story of a less-than-equal experience while at Wharton, click here now.
Click here to read the entire Fortune article.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
April 2, 2014
Author Libby Fischer Hellmann on Espionage, Thrillers and Women
Hellmann talked about her experiences when she first started reading thrillers.
She said:
I worked my way through most of the good old household name standards like John Le Carre, Robert Ludlum and Len Deighton … whom I call the “L’s.” Unsurprisingly, all the authors I read were men except for the marvelous Helen MacInnes (who is definitely not an “L”).
I have my own story about reading Helen MacInnes’ books.
I was getting my M.B.A. at Wharton and I had a job interview with a small consulting firm. The interviewer and I had nothing in common until we discovered that we both read thrillers.
The man asked me who I read. I said Helen MacInnes.
He said, “She writes just like a woman.”
I asked what that meant, and he replied that it meant she described the hats that her characters wore.
I then asked who he read. His reply, “Len Deighton.”
Of course I immediately read a Len Deighton novel — and I saw the difference. Deighton doesn’t describe people’s hats. In fact, he barely describes anything.
Later in Hellmann’s article she talked about three female thriller writers who “have all worked in the field, living the life before writing about it.” She even mentioned that author Gale Lynds “had Top Secret security clearance.”
And this is true of me. I wrote the spy thriller CIA FALL GUY partly because I had worked as a civilian (with Top Secret security clearance) for the U.S. Army’s 66th Military Intelligence Group in Munich from 1971-72.
(The bombing of the U.S. Army’s Officers Club in Frankfurt that is part of CIA FALL GUY is an actual event that took place in May of 1972.)
Click here to read Hellmann’s entire guest post now.
P.S. In my previous post “Inspiration: Eavesdropping in Beverly Hills” I talked about Beth Barany’s “Clear Message” in her book TWITTER FOR AUTHORS. Hellmann’s CM: “Compulsively readable thrillers.”
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to read Hellmann’s entire guest post on ebooksoda.
March 31, 2014
Inspiration: Eavesdropping in Beverly Hills
Yet here in Beverly Hills my eavesdropping habit has a natural barrier. Many of the people at my various neighborhood Starbucks are Iranians speaking Farsi, and I don’t understand a single word!
Then there are the people whose languages I can’t place. Portuguese maybe? Hungarian? By their speaking in their native tongues they are denying me more material for my fiction writing!
Due to living in the Los Angeles area, if I had high school to do all over again, I would learn Spanish. My limited French is only good for understanding the occasional French sentence in an English-language novel. With Spanish my daily life in LA would be easier — with so many more opportunities for eavesdropping.
Of course, part of the fun of social media participation is the ability to “eavesdrop” on conversations that are made public just for that purpose.
Related to this, I’ve just finished reading Beth Barany’s book TWITTER FOR AUTHORS, and I’m reminded once again how intimidating starting on social media may be for some people.
My best tip for those people is: Pretend you’re eavesdropping at your local Starbucks only you’re doing it online.
And just as some days at Starbucks you may get up the courage to talk to the person sitting alone next to you, the same thing works on social media — just start “talking” by sharing interesting content.
Remember, if you catch me eavesdropping on your conversation, I’m only doing this to improve my fiction writing. Why make up conversations when I can “steal” them from the air or the cyber air?
P.S. In Beth Barany’s valuable book TWITTER FOR AUTHORS she encourages authors to create what she calls a “Clear Message” that establishes an emotional connection with an author’s target audiences.
Although I’ve been working on mine, I’m not there yet. Below is what I have so far — feel free to comment below:
I write to share espionage, military and women’s fiction with strong female characters and I also share step-by-step information in my nonfiction books.
© 2014 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.
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