A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Marty, as depicted in Reunion: Coda on her graduation day in 1983   Marty as the Anti‑Cece: How a Character Was Born Every character has an origin story, and Marty’s is no exception. She didn’t arrive fully formed; she emerged from a long process of refinement, replacing an earlier, racier dream subject with someone emotionally fluent and real. Marty was created in 1998, but her roots stretch back to a fleeting encounter in April 1983, when I first noticed a classmate named Cecilia. Cecilia was gorgeous—striking in her presence, unforgettable in her heterochromia—but I only became aware of her late in our senior year. That timing mattered. Had I carried a multi‑year crush, it would have been a heavy burden for a shy guy like me. Instead, Cecilia remained a spark: a motif of beauty glimpsed too late to shape my teenage life, but just in time to shape my creative one. Marty, in many ways, became the anti‑Cece. Where Cecilia was absence—someone I barely knew, discovered at the t...

Audible Milestone: Six Units Sold One week after the Garratyverse stepped into audio, we’ve reached our first milestone: six units sold across Audible and Apple Books.  Comings and Goings leads with four copies, while Reunion: A Story adds two more. Three were direct purchases, one came through Apple Books , and two were redeemed with Audible credits. It may sound modest, but in the world of independent publishing, every unit matters. Each listener is a pioneer, experiencing Garraty’s journey in a new medium. And with no returns, the response so far has been encouraging. This milestone reminds me that audiobooks are not just products—they’re invitations. Six listeners have accepted that invitation, and I couldn’t be more grateful. The Garratyverse is finding its voice, one listener at a time.    

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados/ADG Books 📣 Audiobook Release Announcement: Reunion: A Story I’m delighted to share that Reunion: A Story: A Novella (The Reunion Duology Book 1) is now officially available on Audible and Amazon , with Apple Books availability coming in just a few days. Produced by Brandon Padilla , this audiobook has successfully passed ACX’s rigorous quality assurance reviews—cover design, metadata, and audio files—ensuring that narration, production, and technical standards all meet professional benchmarks. 📖 About the Story Reunion: A Story takes us back to June 1983 , where Jim Garraty is a senior at South Miami Senior High. A staff writer for the school paper and a college‑bound scholar with dreams of becoming a historian, Jim is well‑liked by peers and teachers alike. His future looks bright—except for one lingering matter of the heart. The girl he loves from afar, Marty, is also graduating. Rumor has it she’s leaving for the summer before...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados    Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen A Jim Garraty Story | Now Available on Audible and Amazon Narrated by Bryan Haddock Written by Alex Diaz-Granados “A lovely tale of empathy.” – Denise Longrie, Amazon Reviewer In this quietly powerful companion to the Reunion Duology, Jim Garraty returns—not with fanfare, but with emotional fluency and the ache of being truly seen. Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen is a story about memory, connection, and the small gestures that shape a life. Now available as an audiobook, this intimate novelette is brought to life by Bryan Haddock’s warm, nuanced narration. Whether you’re revisiting Jim’s journey or discovering it for the first time, this is a story that invites you to pause, reflect, and feel. © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados What Readers Are Saying “A lovely tale of empathy.” Denise Longrie’s review captures the heart of the story—a quiet, emotionally resonant explorati...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados Waiting for My Own Words: The Emotional Lag of Print-on-Demand There’s a peculiar irony in being the author of a book and still having to wait—sometimes indefinitely—for a copy of your own work to arrive. Not a retail copy, mind you. Not something ordered by a stranger in Wisconsin who stumbled across your novel during a midnight scroll. No, I’m talking about an author’s copy. The kind Amazon prints on demand, ships at its leisure, and labels with the charmingly opaque tag: MOD Non-Retail. I ordered my updated hardcover edition of Reunion: Coda on September 20. As of this writing—October 14—it remains in the “Not Shipped” purgatory of my Amazon orders queue. Estimated arrival? Allegedly Sunday. But I’ve learned not to get emotionally attached to those dates. They’re more aspiration than promise. Now, I understand that author’s copies aren’t Amazon’s top priority. They don’t generate royalties. They don’t count toward sales metrics. They’re essentially the lit...

  October 10, 2025 – Orlando, Florida It’s Friday again. Another week winding down, and I wish I had more to show for it. Progress on the deluxe edition of The Jim Garraty Chronicles —the omnibus collecting Reunion: A Story , Reunion: Coda , and Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen —has slowed to a crawl. Not a single edit this week. Part of the blame falls on Kindle Create, which seems determined to mangle my subheadings. But if I’m honest, the deeper culprit is doubt. Why release the collection now, when sales of the individual books have been... let’s say, modest? Back when I was writing Reunion: Coda , especially through that frigid New Hampshire winter, I held onto hope. I imagined fans of Reunion: A Story rallying—leaving glowing reviews, spreading the word, giving my writing career a gentle nudge. Some did. A few loyal readers picked up Reunion: Coda in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle formats. But overall, sales have been underwhelming. And yes, it’s dimmed my spark...

  This morning brought a small but welcome surprise: a modest uptick in my Kindle Direct Publishing royalties. Someone picked up a paperback copy of Save Me the Aisle Seat , my first self-published book—a collection of movie reviews originally written for the now-closed site Epinions. I’ve always had mixed feelings about that book. Of the four titles I’ve published, it’s the one I’m least fond of—not just because I rushed it out in 2012 so my mom could see it while she was still with us, but also because I believe it doesn’t measure up to my fiction work: Reunion: A Story , Reunion: Coda , and Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen . Many of the reviews weren’t edited as carefully as they should have been, and I gave away more plot points than I intended. Still, the introduction—written specifically for the book—feels true and heartfelt. That part came from a place of love. Sometimes I consider retiring Save Me the Aisle Seat , but I probably won’t. Despite its flaws, readers s...

  ©2002 Del Rey Books The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Five Novels in One Outrageous Volume  By: Douglas Adams Publisher: Del Rey Publication Date (Reissue): April 30, 2002 Genre: Humor, Space Opera, Science Fiction   🪐 Do You Know Where Your Towel Is? If you do, congratulations—you’re already ahead of 99.9% of Earth’s population when it comes to surviving spontaneous planetary demolition. According to the gloriously illogical logic of Douglas Adams’ five-volume “trilogy,” knowing the whereabouts of your towel is the first step toward interstellar competence. It means you’re ready to hitch a ride off Earth one fateful Thursday afternoon, just before the Vogons arrive to pulverize the planet in favor of a hyperspace bypass. It helps—immensely—if your best mate turns out to be from Betelgeuse rather than an out-of-work actor from Guildford. It helps even more if his name is Ford Prefect and he moonlights as a field researcher for the most wildly unreliable ...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados  Introduction to "Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen" An Invitation to the Threshold In the hush before the noise, in the moments when solitude threads itself through the fabric of a crowded room, there is a peculiar clarity—a quiet awareness of one’s place among the swirling energies of others. Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen begins at just such a threshold; it is a story that drifts between the spaces of belonging and isolation, where the act of observation becomes its own form of participation. This excerpt introduces a narrator more attuned to the subtle rhythms of connection than the cacophony of spectacle, a character for whom the art of being seen is as much about gentle presence as it is about silent withdrawal. Here, memory unfurls in time with music and laughter, coloring the present with the pastel shades of a spring evening in 1984. The scene—alive with the vivid details of denim, perfume, and restless conversati...

  Not a Romance Novel: Why Emotional Truth Matters More Than Genre Readers often ask: Is Reunion: Coda a romance? The answer is more nuanced than a shelf label. Yes, there is love—aching, tentative, redemptive. But this isn’t a story built on tropes or tidy resolutions. It’s a novel with romance, not a romance novel. The difference is emotional gravity. Jim Garraty’s journey isn’t about finding “the one.” It’s about living with memory, navigating regret, and learning how to love without losing himself. Romance in the Garratyverse is never spectacle—it’s sanctuary. It’s the quiet miracle of being seen, of being accepted, of being allowed to feel without apology. In Reunion: Coda , love is complicated by life. By traffic. By missed calls. By the weight of history. And that’s what makes it real. This is a story for readers who crave emotional fluency over formula. Who find resonance in quiet moments, in letters never sent, in friendships that hold space when romance f...

  “The Ones Who Stay” They clap the loudest when the room is full, Their laughter timed to match the crowd. They speak in echoes, not in truth— A friendship built on being seen, not known. They tag your name in borrowed light, A gesture made for watching eyes. But when the silence stretches long, Their presence fades, rehearsed and thin. Then there are the ones who stay. No spotlight, no applause required. They know your rituals—how you stir your tea, The way you pause before you speak. They don’t perform your pain, they hold it. Not to fix, but to witness. They show up in the quiet hours, When grief is not poetic, just heavy. They remember the stories you forgot, The jacket tossed backstage, the missed cue. They lift you—not for spectacle, But because you asked, or didn’t have to. So let the crowd disperse. Let the stage go dark. The ones who stay will still be there— Unscripted, unshaken, real.  

A depiction of what Kelly Moore might look like. © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados  I didn’t set out to write Leigh E. into Comings and Goings . Truthfully, I didn’t realize I had—until yesterday. Kelly Moore, as she lives on the page, was always her own person: emotionally fluent, quietly confident, and possessed of that rare wit that doesn’t clamor for attention—it simply belongs. But as I revisited a particular scene, something shifted. A flicker of recognition. The cadence of her voice, the way she occupies space without needing to claim it… these weren’t conjured. They were remembered. Leigh and I have been friends for over two decades. Southern, adventurous, whip-smart, and beautiful in that unassuming way that makes you feel lucky just to know her—she’s been a quiet constant in my life. I sent her a message, a little sheepish, with an excerpt from the book. She read it and replied, “LOL, yep, that’s me!” And just like that, fiction folded back into life. A few minutes later, she se...

  🧭 How to Read the Garratyverse: A Guide for New and Returning Readers There’s no single way to enter the Garratyverse. Like memory itself, the stories unfold in layers—sometimes linear, sometimes recursive, always emotionally true. Whether you’re new to the universe or returning to trace its quiet echoes, here are three pathways to explore the work. 📚 1. Publication Order Reunion: A Story → Reunion: Coda → Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen This path honors the evolution of the Garratyverse as it came into the world. You’ll witness the deepening of themes—love, regret, emotional sanctuary—and the growing fluency of its characters as they navigate the long arc of connection. Start here if you want to experience the universe as it was written—layer by layer, revelation by revelation. 🕰️ 2. In-Universe Chronological Order Reunion: A Story → Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen → Reunion: Coda This order follows the emotional timeline of the ...

  Fabio, Interrupted: Genre, Grief, and the Emotional Architecture of Reunion: Coda Some readers see a title like Reunion: Coda and expect a romance novel. Maybe they picture a windswept beach, a tearful embrace, or a shirtless man with flowing hair and a tragic backstory. I get it. I even leaned into the joke with a parody cover—Fabio in full glory, dramatically crossed out by the international symbol for “Prohibited.” But beneath the humor lies a serious point: Reunion: Coda isn’t a romance novel. It’s a story about memory, grief, male friendship, and the emotional consequences of reunion. A recent summary generated by Copilot in Word captured the heart of the book better than any genre label ever could. It described the narrative as a “richly detailed fictional exploration” of Jim Garraty’s life—from his high school years in South Miami to his adult career as a history professor in New York. It highlighted themes of love, loss, personal growth, and the enduring impact of ...

© 2024 Horse Mesa Press   Review: Haiku for the Midnight Hour by Dawn Pisturino Dawn Pisturino’s Haiku for the Midnight Hour takes the delicate form of haiku and twists it into something eerie and evocative. These brief verses, though spare in language, pulse with dread—ghosts, shadows, and the chill of empty spaces fill the page. It’s poetry for when the lights go out and you start noticing things you wish you hadn't. She plays with juxtaposition: traditional nature imagery rubbing against spectral unease. The result is a collection that’s as unsettling as it is elegant—like overhearing a whisper in the dark, only to realize it came from nowhere. This isn’t horror that screams; it lingers. Perfect for lovers of Halloween ambience, gothic moods, or anyone who enjoys finding beauty in the quiet spaces between fear and fascination. Here’s a poignant excerpt from Haiku for the Midnight Hour that captures the haunting elegance of Pisturino’s style: whispers through the tre...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados. Cover designed for the Kindle edition by Juan Carlos Hernandez   “Cassette Tape Years” For Jim, for Marty, for Maddie—echoes in two keys In corridors of sunlit youth, where voices trembled into song, a boy with history in his eyes loved a note too fragile to belong. The Winter Concert, velvet sound— a Schubert prayer, Ave Maria— he watched the solo fall like snow while silence held what words could be. A letter passed with trembling hands, final bells and summer haze— what he could not speak aloud hid in tape reels and school hallways. Seventeen years and northern skies, chalk and paper, wounded grace— the past returns in piano chords, her eyes: familiar, Marty’s face. Columbia’s towers weigh him down with echoes of Miguel’s despair, but Maddie’s hands across the keys remind him love still lingers there. And in the fire of hurt and fight, the scholar bleeds, the teacher bends— yet healing comes in quiet tones when letters ri...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados   When a Reader Sees What You Meant to Say There are moments in a writer’s life that feel like exhaling after holding your breath for years. Reading Denise Longrie’s review of Comings and Goings was one of those moments. “The story is not a romance, but rather an enjoyable, insightful journey into empathy and the importance of human connection.” In that single sentence, Denise captured what I most hoped this story would communicate. Jim and Kelly’s conversation—quiet, non-performative, and deeply human—isn’t about flirtation or clever repartee. It’s about being seen. About recognition amid loneliness. And Denise saw that. She saw Jim’s discomfort, his tepid beer, his sense of invisibility. She noticed Kelly’s confidence—not as bravado, but as an invitation. She appreciated how music threads through their moment, not just as time-stamp nostalgia, but as emotional texture. Denise didn’t just read the story—she inhabited it. “Kelly listens and does...

 💫 Fragments of Time, Glimpses of the Heart 💫 Step into the world of Jim Garraty—a man whose quiet journey through memory, longing, and redemption has touched readers in ways both unexpected and familiar. Across three distinct stories, you'll find echoes of your own past, gently reshaped through fiction. 📖 Reunion: A Story takes you to a Florida high school in 1983, where Jim faces a silent moment of decision that will echo for decades. 📖 Reunion: Coda revisits him in 2000 as a professor confronting personal ghosts and revisiting old friendships. 📖 Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen explores fleeting connections in Boston during 1984, where simply being noticed can mean everything. These works aren’t just stories—they’re portraits of vulnerability, humanity, and the grace found in quiet reflection. Written with spare beauty and emotional depth, they speak to anyone who’s ever wondered about missed chances, forgiveness, and what remains after time has passed. Av...

  © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados Writers yearn for resonance—that magical moment when a reader not only follows the story but genuinely feels it. Since Reunion: A Story made its debut in 2018, Thomas Wikman has been a thoughtful and discerning voice among those who've embraced Jim Garraty’s journey. His recent review of Reunion: Coda , titled “The Mystery of Life and Love,” is both a celebration and a deep dive into the emotional fabric of the Garratyverse. Thomas doesn't just compliment the narrative—he illuminates it. His reflections speak to the story’s careful navigation of time and emotion, drawing out the philosophical heart that lies beneath the prose. From the lingering sorrow of Martina to the gentler warmth of Maddie, he recognizes how love, memory, and resilience intertwine to shape the world Jim inhabits. His words resonate with truths that often remain unspoken: “Life is complicated and difficult, people will disappoint you… Life can be good but never perfect. We reco...