D.M. Miller's Blog

As a bona fide Zane Grey fan, I didn’t think it could get much better than Riders of the Purple Sage. That is the author’s most popular work, and with the religious conflict and love story to boot, I couldn’t imagine another Grey novel edging out such a thrilling plot. I was wrong. Wildfire has emerged victorious as my new Zane Grey favorite.

And appropriately so, being that the title character is an incredibly fast stallion, and without spoilers, let’s ju...

Procrastination is the downfall of many a writer. We’ve all been sucked into the vortex that is the social media scroll. The lure of the blue light. The funny memes. The back and forth commentary. Perhaps it was meant to be a quick check, an in-and-out, but quickly turned into an hour-long ordeal. And one thing we should all know by now, the clock keeps tick, tick, ticking away. We’ll never get those minutes, or hours, back. What we can do is manage our time better.

Oh sure, easier said than ...

Upon reading the lists of other Medium writers who’d fallen victim to this tempting prompt, I couldn’t resist. I had to take the plunge and create my own list of desert island books, although that doesn’t sound quite right. Would it really be a desert island, surrounded by water? I happen to live in the desert, and there isn’t much water around. Deserted island seems more appropriate.

Just to be sure, I looked up both, and as it turns out, this meaning of desert is “an archaic form of deserte...

If you’ve never read Zane Grey, you should. Let me rephrase that. If you are capable of reading something that isn’t contemporary and put things in historical perspective without getting huffy about today’s standards, this author’s writing is of extraordinary caliber. You just might be amazed.

When it comes to the genre, Louis L’Amour is that one author name synonymous with the Old West. A prolific writer, his novels were popular and many were made into movies. Zane Grey wrote just as many bo...

Every time an iconic star passes away, we’re reminded of the impact that person’s art had on our lives. We hop on a time machine and zip through personal memories, blissfully listening to the icon’s songs or watching movies, smiles overcoming our faces. Sadly, the world has lost Olivia Newton-John, and here we go again.

While most of us did not know her on a personal level, we were well-acquainted with her warm and caring public persona, and her unique voice, one you could identify immediatel...

Not long ago, I was reading an article on Medium advising readers on how to gain more respect from others. Much of it sounded like dating advice given to a sensitive guy who wanted to become an emotionally unavailable player, macho nonsense. One piece of advice in particular really rubbed me the wrong way: smile less. Less? I beg to differ.

In my teaching career, we told our students to smile more. The problem is not that everyone is so super duper nice and sickeningly sweet. It’s the opposit...

For most of us, life is a series of challenges. Frankly, if nothing ever happened, I think things would get pretty boring! We tend to need these ups and downs in order to grow and keep us in line.

Personally, I have the capacity for both negativity and positivity inside me, and I bet most of us do. Attitude is everything, how we choose to respond to adversity. While it’s only natural for our initial reaction to be negative, as long as we can overcome that outlook and see the bigger picture, w...

When you mention the word “half-Jew” to certain people, you’d better prepare yourself for one of two typical responses. The first is a scornful dismissal, possibly accompanied with a contemptuous laugh. The second is an eruption of anger, followed by a heated argument over why there’s no such thing. Though it would be simple to say that those reacting in such ways are religious hardliners, life is not so black and white. Sometimes people will regurgitate what they’ve heard, or they will have the...

The United States is all about freedom. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Revolutionary War, we know the story, (at least I hope so.) But today, people from both sides of the political spectrum worry their freedoms are being taken away; the left, with the recent Roe vs. Wade decision, and the right, with gun control and Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught in public schools.

Watching the news these days is a stressful ordeal, with every issue becoming a media feeding frenzy....

Misery loves company, that’s what they say. But sometimes, it’s not so much misery we seek as validation. Such was the case with me.

I’ve always known I was a sensitive person, a deep thinker, often misunderstood, a weirdo creative type who cries at the drop of a hat. My father was sensitive too. He wasn’t a crier, but he was quick to anger, and we all knew it was due to his sensitivity. What we didn’t know was that being highly sensitive is a personality trait, which exists in about 20 perce...