A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Photo by the author  Hi, everyone. Well, I’ve been in Madison, New Hampshire for 12 days now, and even though that sounds like a long time, I’m still in the process of getting settled in at my new place of residence. I did hope that after my first week here I’d be ready to begin working on Reunion: Coda after more than a month of not working on it, but I require at least some peace of mind so I can tackle creative writing projects as complex as a novel, and right now, I don’t have that. As of December 27, 2023 I am still trying to adapt to a colder climate than the one I left behind in Florida, dealing with homesickness and the feelings of sadness and even resentment that lurk in my heart, and learning to be patient with the pace of the setting up process, which depends greatly on how much time others have available to assist me.  As a result, my brain is already challenged by “simple” writing projects such as blog posts; I don’t yet feel up to the task of getting in...

 

 I left the Tampa Bay area on Tuesday, December 12, 2023. Arrived in Madison, New Hampshire, on Friday, December 15, 2003. 

      Hi, all.   Just a quick update to say that last night I completed the fourth and final scene of Chapter 11 in Reunion: Coda. Sure, right now it's still in "first draft mode," but I'm just content with the knowledge that after more than a month of trying different approaches to the scene, I finally "cracked the code" - as it were - of how to present this deceptively simple-looking part of the chapter. (It never ceases to amaze me how this scene, which I thought would be easy because it's based on a plot point introduced in Reunion: A Story , took me nearly two months to write.) Here's an excerpt from the scene, which also puts me over both the 50,000-word mark and the 120-page mark in the novel’s manuscript. If Hollywood told my story like a movie, it would go something like this: I’m a smart and nerdy senior at South Miami High School, class of '83. I love history and music, and I have a crush on Marty, the most beautiful girl in the choru...

For the next four days, you can get the e-book edition of Reunion: A Story for the low, low price of...$0.00! That's right...for free! But hurry, this offer begins at midnight and ends on September 26!

 Hi, everyone!  Well, as the header for this post points out, I was fortunate this week because Reunion: A Story now has a book trailer on YouTube!  This two-minute-long video was created by my friend Juan Carlos Hernandez and Popcorn Sky Productions, with some input from me (I provided the excerpt in the narration, and I got to pick the musical cue), and an awesome voice performance by Juan's son, Anthony James Hernandez. Everyone who's watched it and given me feedback on it has said they like the video because the mix of images, music, and narration pulls them into the story.  Whether the video will help boost sales of Reunion, I haven't a clue. I hope it does...cos it's really a brilliantly done promo! Ah, but wait! There's more! This morning, my friend and fellow former Epinions reviewer, Patti Aliventi, posted a review of Reunion on her WordPress blog Thoughts from the Mountaintop. It wasn't her first go-round at reviewing my novella; when I published the s...

(C) 2023 Popcorn Sky Productions/ADG Books  Hi, everyone.  I am pleased to announce that my friends at Popcorn Sky Productions (Juan Carlos Hernandez, Adria K. Hernandez, and Anthony Hernandez) are wrapping up work on a trailer for my novella Reunion: A Story.  Featuring a mix of motion and still pictures, music, and a short voiceover based on a short section from the novella, this trailer is, as you might expect, a quick but visually powerful promo for the first book in the Reunion Duology.  I watched the "rough draft" a few times after Juan sent it to me via WeTransfer. I liked it, although there was one still photo that didn't look "right." It's an easy fix, Juan says, and he said that the finished video should be up tomorrow.  I'm so excited! I'll share the finished trailer here as soon as it's up on YouTube. 

  I don't know why, but apparently, there are some folks who need to be reminded that "opinions" stated as "facts" are not really facts.  I don't care if a person firmly believes something as ridiculous as "you're not a real writer because you don't have a publisher behind you" or any such nonsense.  This is my official position on the topic:  My New Resolution: I will no longer listen to anyone who says, “You’re not a real writer.” I write every day. That makes me a writer. I studied journalism at both South Miami High and Miami-Dade College. Even won an award for my work on the college student newspaper during my freshman year. That, too, makes me a writer. I’ve written for clients, and I have also been paid by websites for my writing. That makes me a professional writer. I have  two self-published books available for sale on Amazon  and Barnes & Noble (online store only, though!). A third book is in the works. That makes me a writer,...

© 2018, 2023 Alex Diaz-Granados via Kindle Create/ADG Books  I just wanted to let my readers know that the latest edition of Reunion: A Story is now available on Amazon and the online version of Barnes & Noble. I have been uploading corrections to Kindle Direct Publishing off and on since March, cos whenever I see a typo or misspelled word, I must correct it, even if no one else notices.  I last sent a batch of minor edits earlier this week, but even though I was told by KDP that the updated version had gone "live" on Monday morning (at least, for the Kindle edition), it takes up to three days (sometimes longer) for the changes to make their way through the KDP pipeline and be incorporated into existing books.  The view from the Kindle Create app. I don't (fingers crossed) expect to make any further corrections, so this edition of Reunion: A Story is the definitive version of the first part of the Reunion Duology.  A caveat: Of course, Kindle readers get free upd...

 One of my favorite songs of all time is "All the Things You Are" by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Written in 1939 for the musical "Very Warm for May," it quickly became a popular standard of the Big Band era. Many singers, instrumentalists, and orchestras of the period did covers; Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Artie Shaw, Helen Forrest, Charlie Parker, Judy Garland, and Glenn Miller surely did back in the days of World War II and shortly after. Like other classics from the 1930s and 1940s - think "Moonlight Serenade" or "The Nearness of You" - "All the Things You Are" continues to captivate both singers and listeners, as new generations discover the charms of Kern's romantic melody and Hammerstein's poetic lyrics. The array of singers who have covered "All the Things You Are" is dizzying; it includes Ella Fitzgerald, Rebecca Luker, Renee Fleming, Johnny Mathis, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanian...

This song, composed by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II in 1939 for the musical Very Warm for May , is a standard that has been covered by many artists over the past 84 years, including Artie Shaw, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Tony Bennett, and Carly Simon. It's usually not performed in its entirety; most of the covers I've heard begin with the line... "You are the promised kiss of springtime..."  This choral performance is one of the best I found on YouTube, and it includes both the intro verse and the better-known verse sung by most of the cover artists. 

(Photo by the author) If you're a regular reader of A Certain Point of View, you might recall that I'm currently writing my first novel, Reunion: Coda, the second book in the duology that started with my novella, Reunion: A Story (2018, Kindle Create/CreateSpace Independent Publishing).  Just in case you are new to this space, though, here's the back cover summary of Reunion, plus an excerpt from my favorite scene in the novella:  It is June 1983. Jim Garraty is a senior at South Miami Senior High. He's a staff writer for the school paper, a college-bound scholar who plans to become a historian and author of books on military history. He's well-liked by his peers and teachers, and his future looks bright.  But as commencement draws near for the Class of 1983, Jim must deal with unfinished business. The girl he loves from afar is also graduating, and rumor has it that she is going away for the summer before starting college in the fall.  Worse still, Marty doesn'...

Image Credit: Pixabay  It’s early afternoon here in Lithia, Florida, on Saturday, June 3, 2023, almost two PM, really. It’s a warm (but getting hotter) early summer day in the Tampa Bay area (83 ° F/29 ° C under partly sunny skies). According to the forecast, today will be mostly cloudy, with a fair chance for light showers this afternoon, and the high will be 86 ° F/30 ° C. Well, if you’ve been reading my (sadly) infrequent posts on A Certain Point of View, you are doubtlessly aware that I’ve been working since late March on what apparently will be my first novel. As of today, I’m on the first draft of what, for now, has the working title of Reunion: Coda, which is – obviously – a continuation of my novella Reunion: A Story. The view from WriteItNow Depending on which program I get my stats from (WriteItNow or Microsoft Word) I have written 150 pages on the former and 90 pages in the latter. (And since I am looking at the “master document file” on Word, the figure from there i...

  “There’s a Place for Us”: South Miami Senior High School/Music Department Wing, Chorus Practice Room   I entered Room 136 shortly after the last school bell of the day – the “dismissal bell,” as it was officially called – rang at 2:30 in the afternoon. As always, the hallways in all three floors of South Miami High School’s yellow bunker-like building were full of 10 th , 11 th , and 12 th graders skedaddling from their sixth-period classes and, with the exception of those of us who participated in after-school activities and clubs such as yearbook production, the then-new Cobra Media Production club, basketball, baseball, and other spring term sports teams’ practices, and music students who needed to practice their instrument or singing, were eager to either go home or go to their first part-time jobs outside of school. For five, maybe 10 minutes, the hallways and staircases echoed with the sounds of (mostly) sneakered feet pounding on the floor and loud, cheerful teen...

  2 A Parley at Lunchtime 12:20 PM, Near the End of First Lunch   “You did what now?” Mark Prieto’s expression was a mix of thunderstruck surprise and wry amusement as I finished telling him about my upcoming solo in the 1981 Winter Concert, which was less than one week away. We were seated at our usual table in the school cafeteria – a round table normally seated five or six people at a time – a short distance from the teachers’ lounge and the main corridor leading to the school’s first floor. As usual, the room was filled with a cacophony of sounds as several hundred adolescents sat in clusters at the other tables, gossiping, joking, bitching about how much homework Mr. or Mrs. X handed out daily, guessing about mid-year exams and grades, or even arguing about the Miami Dolphins’ waning season. There were even spats between teenage lovers, usually based on rumors that one half of the couple was cheating on the other. And, of course, the murmurs and laughs and occ...

  A Moment in the Park   Maddie and I walk in Central Park, feeling the sun on our faces and the snow crunching under our feet. It's a beautiful day for late February. The air is crisp and fresh, and even though the forecast calls for more snow later, perhaps as early as tonight, right now the sky is a bright blue. Just right. We've been here for a while, exploring the park and its wonders. We've seen so many things. So many people. So much diversity. We've seen children of all colors building snowmen and dogs of all breeds chasing squirrels. We've seen couples of all orientations cuddling on benches and seniors of all backgrounds feeding pigeons. We've seen athletes of all fitness levels jogging and biking and skating. We've seen artists and musicians and performers of all kinds. We've heard a symphony of sounds. A harmony of noises. A melody of music. We've heard birds singing and leaves whispering. We've heard cars honking and sire...