My First-Time Novelist's Journey Continues: A Quick Status Update on 'Reunion: Coda'

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A collage featuring Jim Garraty as a teen (right) and a 35-year-old college professor and author (lower left). On the upper left: Maddie, 2000-era Jim's love interest. (Image created by DALL-E 3 based on prompts by the author.  


Hi, everyone.

I’m writing this brief situation report (SITREP) on Reunion: Coda to give you some idea of where I am on my “first-time novelist’s” journey.

As you may or may not know, I’ve been working on my novel since early March 2023. When I began, I lived in the Tampa Bay area, where I had lived since April 2016. I didn’t plan on writing a novel then, either. Reunion: Coda was conceived when I revised and edited my novella Reunion: A Story at the behest of my journalism professor at Miami-Dade Community College – South Campus. As I added “front matter” and “back matter" and corrected errors and typos, I saw little details and plot points I could use in a sequel…if I chose to write one.

I had hoped to publish Reunion: Coda in time for the December 2023 holiday season. However, I was slowed by difficulties while writing some of the novel’s more creatively challenging chapters and an unexpected move from Florida to New Hampshire in mid-December. It wasn’t until mid-January that I regained some of the momentum I lost thanks to the move and the acclimation to a New England winter, so I also missed the alternative deadline for publication of Spring 2024.

A screenshot from WriteItNow showing the progress of Reunion: Coda as of April 20, 2024


So…how much progress have I made since I started this journey 13 months ago?

As of this writing, the manuscript of Reunion: Coda has 15 chapters: a prologue, plus 13 finished chapters and another one currently being written. According to Microsoft Word, the document contains 86,887 words and is 203 pages long. (Of course, the page count is higher on the Kindle Create app and WriteItNow creative writing program because on Word, the page size is 8.5 X 11.  The other apps assume that the novel will be formatted for 9 X 6 pages in the paperback, so the page count on them is already past 300.

Uncover the Story...Uncover the Romance.....


Right now – April 21, 2024 – I hope to publish Reunion: Coda sometime in late July or early August. I still have three or four more chapters to go before I type “The End,” and some of them will have scenes that deal with sex – a topic that I’ve never written for a wide audience before. I’m hopeful that I won’t have too much trouble crafting them and that I will publish the novel by midsummer.

If not, then Reunion: Coda will come out in the fall of 2024. That much I can guarantee. I am not that far from completing the manuscript; I’m just anticipating that the final chapters will be harder to do because they will deal with adult themes and situations.  

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