Phyllis Zimbler Miller's Blog: Phyllis Zimbler Miller Author, page 20

Is European History Once Again Repeating?

The news of armed forces massing on the borders of a European country is nothing new in that part of the world.

Yet I cannot help feeling the irony of working on my Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY while reading on the front page of the March 28, 2014, Wall Street Journal the beginning of the article by Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes entitled “Russian Buildup Stokes Worries: Pentagon Alarmed as Troops Mass Near Ukraine Border”:

WASHINGTON—Russian troops massing near Ukraine are actively concealing their positions and establishing supply lines that could be used in a prolonged deployment, ratcheting up concerns that Moscow is preparing for another major incursion and not conducting exercises as it claims, U.S. officials said.




Such an incursion could take place without warning because Russia has already deployed the array of military forces needed for such an operation, say officials briefed on the latest U.S. intelligence.

And here is the last paragraph of my memoir’s Chapter 18, which I just posted on Wattpad:

How many wars were supposedly fought over religious — or political — differences?




But when it came down to it, hadn’t these wars actually been fought for the same reason as all wars were fought — a power grab for the control of other people’s lands?

It remains to be seen whether the history of conquest in Europe is once again being repeated.

Click here to read the first 18 (short) chapters on Wattpad of my Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY.



P.S. Click here to read an interview with me on the blog of author Stacy Juba.

© 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.

Amazon’s Fan Fiction Kindle Worlds Offers Access to Writers

At an event of the meetup group Hollywood 2.0: The Future of Storytelling, Philip Patrick, publisher of Kindle Worlds and Amazon Publishing’s Director of Business Development, spoke about his vision of this innovative program on Amazon, which launched in June of 2013 with the goal of engaging with fans of popular fiction worlds — both readers and writers.

As Amazon says on its website about Kindle Worlds:

New stories inspired by books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games people love.


Welcome to Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties.


Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries; Valiant Entertainment for Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot, Harbinger, Shadowman, and X-O Manowar; Hugh Howey’s Silo Saga; Barry Eisler’s John Rain novels; Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines series; and The Foreworld Saga by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Eric Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, and Cooper Moo. Licenses for more Worlds are on the way.

Patrick explained that Kindle Worlds gives writers access to a public platform and the ability to add to existing worlds. The primary goal is encouraging writers, giving them options.

Patrick explained that, when Amazon licenses rights to a world, Amazon must agree to the rules of that world. For example, only a specific time period (high school and college) for Veronica Mars’ adventures can be written about on Kindle Worlds.

Many writers of fan fiction in Kindle Worlds have gone on to find success with their published fan fiction, while fans of a particular world are provided with additional stories of favorite characters.

Click here to see the current Kindle Worlds — with more expected soon — as well as a video of the January 2014 Kindle Worlds Authors Webinar. Also follow Kindle Worlds on Twitter at https://twitter.com/kindleworlds

And Patrick especially recommended checking out Kindle Worlds stories from KDP superstars such as Hugh Howey’s Peace in Amber or JR Rain’s Bound by Blood.

© 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.

Congrats: Amazon Finally “Gets the Picture” About Shorter Book URLs

I was very excited to read the blog post “Amazon introduces a new short cut to your Amazon book URL” on the site Publishing Unleashed.

I’ve been using bit.ly to shorten my book Amazon links because bit.ly automatically changes an Amazon link into a shortened URL that has an abbreviation for Amazon in it — such as this bit.ly link for my cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE — http://amzn.to/SLYBJY

Apparently Amazon has noticed this problem of very long book URLs and created shortcuts. The newest shortcut is using your ebook’s ASIN number or your print book’s 10-digit ISBN number with www.amzn.com like this:

www.amzn.com/B00A29SS6C — ebook of CAST THE FIRST STONE

www.amzn.com/1490535489 — paperback of CAST THE FIRST STONE

This is still not as short as the bit.ly Amazon link, but definitely a huge improvement over the unshortened Amazon book links, especially for use on social media sites. And it does save the extra step of going to bit.ly to create a shortened Amazon URL.

Click here to read the entire post explaining this new option.

© 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.

Changing Genetic Destiny and THE MOTHER SIEGE

The February 18, 2014, Wall Street Journal story “Family With a Risk of Cancer Tries to Change Its Destiny” by Bonnie Rochman described a woman who chose to prevent future children from getting breast cancer by undergoing a “controversial procedure to select embryos of hers that were free of a genetic mutation linked to the disease.”

The article explained:

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis has long been available during IVF, or in vitro fertilization, to eliminate the risk of passing on severe disorders such as spinal muscular atrophy and cystic fibrosis. Now, fertility clinics say they are seeing a small but increasing number of women choosing PGD to avoid giving birth to children who carry mutations in the BRCA genes, which increase the risk for breast and other cancers.

While I had heard of doing this procedure to prevent having a child with Fragile X (rather than having an abortion following testing), I had not heard of having the procedure to prevent passing down breast cancer mutation genes.

The opening premise of my work-in-progress dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE deals with selective births. While testing would have been automatically done during early-stage pregnancy, there would be some diseases that could only be tested for after a birth:

“When Jonah was born, he passed all the newborn screening tests with high marks. As a pediatrician I was allowed to be the doctor of record for his test scores even though I was also the birth mother.


“When [fraternal twins] Jessica and Julie were born, Jessica passed the screening test but Julie showed a tendency to develop asthma. The Provisional Government policy was to stamp out asthma as a medically expensive condition by eliminating all newborns with that potential. There was no way to falsify the screening tests.”


Natalie saw the horror in the children’s eyes.


“Instead I falsified the birth records. I put Jessica down as a live birth and Julie down as the opposite.”

In the very near future (THE MOTHER SIEGE takes place only 35 years from now in 2049) procedures such as these will probably become even more controversial. The Wall Street Journal article mentioned the fear of creating “so-called designer babies,” which could include gender selection.

This is indeed one of only many, many concerns that advances in technology will bring to our world. And this is the place where sci fi novels can help — encouraging us to consider possible future scenarios before they happen (or are allowed to happen).



Click here now to read the work-in-progress THE MOTHER SIEGE on Wattpad. (And a special thanks to author George Polley for being the most enthusiastic supporter of this story.)

P.S. Click here to check out 10 ebooks from sweet to sexy including my spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.

© 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.

New Cover for Rebecca Stone Cozy Mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE

Announcing a new cover for cozy mystery CAST THE FIRST STONE, the first Rebecca Stone story.

I read Martin Crosbie’s book “How I Sold 30,000 eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle” in which he talks about the importance of a cover.

Now I know about the importance of a cover, and I have previously changed covers of some of my other books. Yet it was Crosbie’s brief mention of people on the cover of a book that got me thinking.

While some of my fiction books do not have people on the cover, I decided that CAST THE FIRST STONE should have the figure of a woman. After all, the series is about newspaper reporter Rebecca Stone.

I searched for copyright-free photos I could buy on istock and bought the photo I had selected. Then I worked with the photo in Gimp — the free software similar to Photoshop. (Full disclosure: I did have some help resizing the photo to the scale needed.)

Of course, now I have to change the cover photo in various places on the web where the original cover appears, and some of these changes will be easier than others.

Still, a book cover is very important. Having the opportunity to change my book covers when I want to do so is a significant advantage to being an indie author.

© 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.

Have You Checked Your Twitter Profile?

Thanks to the ease of changing a Twitter profile — the bio, the headshot, the header image and the background image — authors and other digital marketers should frequently revisit their Twitter profiles to keep these vibrant.

Award-winning author Bonnie Bartel Latino is one Twitter participant who does a great job of this. She frequently changes the attractive header image that appears behind her bio (see http://twitter.com/BonnieBLatino) and often changes her bio. Note that she uses the hashtag #sot (support our troops) that I also use — see http://twitter.com/ZimblerMiller

And, yes, the hashtags used in your Twitter bio are hot links. If you click on #sot you will go to a stream of tweets that also have #sot in them.

For my February 2014 monthly book marketing column for the blog of author Joylene Butler I wrote about tips for creating an effective Twitter profile. Click here to get to that post — and then scroll down until you get to the Twitter cartoon.

21 Authors Combine to Promote Via CBS Radio

Check out this outstanding promotion for 21 authors (myself included for my women’s friendship novel MRS. LIEUTENANT) via CBS Radio — http://ow.ly/tbqhO

P.S. And a big shoutout to author Elaine Raco Chase (http://twitter.com/ElaineRaco) for all her efforts to organize this terrific promotion.

© 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.

Movie LIFTED Is Uplifting Tribute to Our Military and Their Families

As the film LIFTED says at the end, “This film is dedicated to all our fallen heroes.” And it is a very powerful film.

I highly recommend seeing this film, and while you can see the complete film on YouTube here, there is another option if you want to see it in a movie theater with your friends and family.



An innovative company, Gathr Films, enables crowd-sourcing of screenings. This film LIFTED is so compelling that it should be added to the Gathr Films catalog. And then military personnel could crowd-source a screening on military installations or nearby theaters.

If the producer or distributor for LIFTED wants to contact Gathr Films about this, click here for the link.

Meanwhile, here is the uplifting trailer for the film:

For other recommended films and documentaries that are supportive of our military and their families, go to www.InSupportOfOurTroops.com

© 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.

TV Drama BLUE BLOODS Deals With Combat-Induced PTSD

Fans of the CBS drama “Blue Bloods” know that New York police detective Danny Reagan (actor Donnie Wahlberg) has previously served two tours as a Marine in Iraq. Now these fans know that Danny has not escaped being mentally scarred by his two tours.

The episode “Unfinished Business” — written by Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green — that first aired January 17, 2014, deals with an Army corporal who has served three tours in Afghanistan. The corporal has beaten up his wife and kidnapped his eight-year-old son because of PTSD problems four months after returning from the corporal’s most recent tour.

(There is a very brief mention that the corporal is seeing a private therapist. The implication for those who know about the military is that the corporal is afraid to see a military therapist because this would go on his service record.)

While the episode has many compelling scenes, one such scene is when Danny talks to the major about how soldiers sign off that they are fine after a tour. Danny says he signed off on such a form also, but he implies that this does not mean it is the truth.

While I will not give away the ending of the episode, I will share here the public service message narrated by actor Tom Selleck that followed the episode:

The characters and incidents in tonight’s episode are fictional and do not represent the vast majority of [v]eterans.




However, PTSD and other challenges faced by some of our returning [v]eterans are all too real.




If you’re a [v]eteran experiencing PTSD, please visit the National Center for PTSD.




ptsd.va.gov




And if you’d like to support our veterans, please visit the Wounded Warrior Project or the Bob Woodruff Foundation.




woundedwarriorproject.org




bobwoodrufffoundation.org




CBS Cares

This is not the first time “Blue Bloods” has dealt with PTSD symptoms although it is the most extensive episode.

One episode dealt with younger brother and police officer Jamie Reagan seeing a therapist to hopefully head off PTSD symptoms after Jamie shot and killed someone. Click here to read my blog post about this episode.

And another “Blue Bloods” episode dealt with non-combat-induced PTSD. Click here to read my blog post about that episode.



P.S. Although there are innovative strategies being developed and used to treat PTSD, there is a long way to go. For more information, see www.SolomonsJustice.com

© 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.

On the Nature of Fictional Character Development

I’m reading the first published novel by a now-famous author all of whose later novels I have read. Clearly he improved as he went along.

What is most interesting to me is how much time he spends describing background scenes of the minor characters. And this brings up an interesting issue for fiction writers:

While minor characters should not be one-dimensional if at all possible, how much information do you really need to write about them?

Meanwhile, I just read the January 13th New Yorker piece by Rebecca Mead about the novelist Jennifer Weiner. The article mentions that she sometimes gets notes from her agent or editor about adding more flashbacks.

I am assuming that these recommended flashbacks are for the main characters and not the minor characters. While minor characters can add to the richness of a story, too much about them can impede the progress of the story.

And this is the problem I have with the novel I’m currently reading: Too many scenes of minor characters, too little forward motion of the story.

Finding a balance between major and minor characters is not an easy task. Of course, this is one reason why, as writers, we are always working on improving our craft.

Any helpful tips on creating this balance?

P.S. The New Yorker article on Jennifer Weiner talks about her defending the female main characters of her novel. This is something I have occasionally had to do for Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders, the protagonist of the thriller of the same name I wrote with my husband. Click here to read about Mollie on Amazon now.

© 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.

Real World Catches Up With Military Thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS

The January 13th Wall Street Journal article by Julian E. Barnes is headlined “Arctic Passage Opens Challenges for U.S. Military: Thinning Polar Ice Expected to Give Way to New Commercial Waterways and Resource-Rich Frontier”

The information in this article pleased me because my husband Mitchell R. Miller and I had already written in our military thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS about the U.S. Navy dealing with a scenario at a Russian ice station near the edge of the Arctic icecap.

The Journal article stated:

A new Navy strategy, set for release in coming weeks, says increased commercial traffic, oil and gas exploration and tourism will create new demands in the Arctic. The paper, a draft of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, notes the Navy lacks “operational experience” and ships properly outfitted for the extreme weather. It must also address poor satellite coverage.

(And, yes, a submarine’s problems with being out of communication with its home base also figures in our thriller.)

The article also stated:

The long coast of Alaska gives the U.S. claim to a large economic zone in the Arctic … For the Navy, that means protecting new shipping lanes and making waters safe for energy and mineral companies. For the Coast Guard, it means responsibility for rescues aboard foundering ships or endangered oil platforms.

(Our thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS also deals with the Coast Guard keeping safe from terrorists the coastline along the Pacific Ocean.)

Click here now to get the ebook or paperback of LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS on Amazon.

© 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.