A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Reunion: Coda Receives its First Review on Amazon UK Hi everyone! I’m thrilled to share some exciting news with you all. Just 23 days after its release on Amazon, my debut novel, Reunion: Coda , has received its very first review on Amazon UK. The review was thoughtfully written by British blogger and writer, Meg Learner. In her review of Reunion: A Story (2018), Meg expressed a heartfelt desire for a sequel told from the perspective of the novella’s female lead, Marty Reynaud. While I couldn't provide Meg with that specific continuation, I poured my heart into creating a novel that delves deeply into the high school experiences of Jim and Marty, offering readers a richer understanding of their characters and their journey. Another lyrical book from Mr [Diaz-] Granados. A very satisfying sequel to his first novella about high school love and the problems with that. Without giving away too much of the plot, our hero, Jim Garraty, is now a history professor and seems about to find l...

The cover of the hardcover edition. © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados  For many authors, Kindle Direct Publishing is a godsend—offering an accessible way to bring stories to life for readers around the world. However, as convenient as it may be, the road to publication often feels like a rollercoaster ride of triumphs and challenges. As I prepared Reunion: Coda for its print and e-book editions, I discovered that even the most user-friendly publishing platforms come with their quirks. One of the biggest hurdles? Kindle Create. While it’s a fantastic tool in theory, the reality is often enervating. Subheading formatting seems to have a mind of its own—refusing to preserve capitalization and undoing corrections even after files have been saved. For instance, when I typed "Fayerweather Hall 301M," Kindle Create repeatedly rendered it as "Fayerweather Hall 301m." Fixing these glitches took multiple attempts, testing my patience and resilience in equal measure. Then there’s...

Cover designed by Juan Carlos Hernandez  Hi, everyone!  Although I'm not yet ready to publish Reunion: Coda (I must finish the novel first, right?), past experiences with Kindle Direct Publishing have taught me that preparation is important in any endeavor. So, instead of waiting till I'm ready to upload the manuscript to Amazon's KDP servers, I've decided to write the blurb for Reunion: Coda now.  Here is the revised version:  In the sequel to the heartfelt "Reunion: A Story," Jim Garraty's journey continues as he navigates the intricate dance between past regrets and present hopes. Now a successful history professor at Columbia University and a renowned author of WWII books, Jim's life is a tapestry of unspoken love, haunting memories, and the pursuit of emotional closure. Still smarting from a divorce and the sting of betrayal, Jim reflects on his high school years and the profound impact of his relationships. Amidst the lessons of missed opportunit...

©2018, 2023 Alex Diaz-Granados  “On the Good News Front” Post It gives me immense pleasure to present the recent Amazon appraisal of my novella "Reunion: A Story", penned by the eloquent and cultured critic Pooja Gudka, whose talents span blogging, poetry, and history. She has graciously lavished admiration on my literary creation, for which I am deeply appreciative. Her discerning and perceptive commentary was as follows: The plot was what drew me to the story. I’m not usually drawn to romance novels or anything particular romantic. But the summary for this book really drew me in because it’s something most of us can relate to- lost love. We all have “the one that got away.” Well, most of us anyway. Also, as a historian myself I loved that Garraty’s character was a historian and was intrigued by that. The author also explores multiple philosophical aspects of life such as true love, happiness, friendships, loss and regret. Things most adults are familiar with. We also learn ...

© 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...

  Earlier today I asked Bing's AI Chatbot to reimagine the plot of my novella Reunion: A Story as a poem in the style of 19th Century writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Bing obliged me; this is what it produced:  In June of '83, young Jim Garraty A senior at South Miami High A staff writer for the school paper, he A scholar bound for college nigh But as commencement draws near Jim must deal with unfinished business The girl he loves from afar will disappear And rumor has it she'll be gone for the summer, no less Worse still, Marty doesn't know How deeply Jim's feelings for her are Unless he tells her so But when opportunity arises, Jim hesitates afar Now 15 years later, James Garraty An up-and-coming history professor Respected by his peers and literary But true love eludes him no lesser Reunion is a tale of regret and loss Of friendship and choices made A glimpse into a life that leaves us at a loss And leaves us questioning our own crusade. © 2018, 2023 Alex Diaz-Gr...

Well, here it is... Reunion: A Story (2nd Rev. Ed.) Photos by the author.  Nearly 40 years after my high school graduation... 37 years after I first wrote the dream sequence which became the foundation for Reunion.... And 25 years after I first cobbled Reunion together in my Miami bedroom while listening to the soundtracks from Titanic and Saving Private Ryan... The saga of Reunion: A Story is now complete.  Today, the paperback edition of the revised version of my novella arrived from Amazon, thus ending the nine-day-long process of fixing some issues that were present in the original 2018 edition. Both the Kindle and print editions are now in sync, plus Reunion now has a better, more story-centered cover., a Table of Contents, a copyright page, a new dedication, and an epigraph!  For a longer post on this topic, please go here!

The paperback edition's new cover. © 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados  After seven days of proofreading, revising, uploading fixes, and then waiting for the edits to “take,” the second edition of Reunion: A Story is live and available on Amazon as both a Kindle e-book or traditional paperback. It took longer than I expected, but that’s because I had to repeat the process several times; every time I thought, “Oh, good. Everything looks fine. I’m done,” I would wait till Amazon emailed me to let me know my book was “live” in Kindle Direct Publishing’s (KDP) servers and ready to order. I would then read Reunion, find more mistakes I’d missed on the previous copy-editing pass, unpublish the book from Amazon, and start over. Well, with all those uploads, one on top of the other, the updating slowed to a crawl, and the edits only appeared on the Kindle version in small increments and over a period of four days. The view from the Kindle Create app. Notice that it shows a preview of how Reunion...

The new cover art for the Kindle edition of my novella. ©2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and KDP.              Reunion v. 1.0 As I mentioned in my most recent blog post, I spent all last weekend and Monday (and up to early Tuesday morning) revising my novella Reunion: A Story.  I wrote the original version sometime in 1998, using much of an old writing exercise from a creative writing course I took back in 1987 as a foundation for the story. For many years, I transferred the Microsoft Word file with the original draft of Reunion from one computer to another but never did anything useful with it. Oh, I showed it to potential girlfriends and other friends who I thought might enjoy it. I even asked one of my business writing clients to print one copy for me; she owned a printing shop, and since I wasn’t asking for a hardcover edition, she gladly granted me that small boon. (I later loaned that copy to a neighbor, but I never got it back.) As the ...

Image by  Sabrina  from  Pixabay    After working on the revisions and edits in the second edition of my novella Reunion: A Story, I will get to see the results of my weekend's labor later today. Sometime this afternoon, an Amazon Prime delivery van will drop off my copy of Reunion at the front door of the house where I live in Lithia. And shortly afterward, I will see for myself if the edits I made between last Friday afternoon and Monday night are present in the paperback edition.  Currently, the only place where I can see my revisions as I intend them to be read is the Kindle Create app I used to make them.  The view from the Kindle Create app. I had just finished reformatting the "song lyrics" (copy marked in boldface ) when I took this screengrab.  Amazon says that it takes up to 72 hours for revisions and other changes to make their way into the system. I made the last adjustments to Reunion  late on Monday night and early Tuesday morni...

© 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and Kindle Create  Well, looks like as of tonight (March 13, 2023), the revisions I made this weekend to Reunion are "in the system and visible on Kindle, or at least on the online Kindle that is available on browsers via Amazon.  The revisions might have gone live as early as last night had I not kept noticing more small, hard-to-spot mistakes in my first published work of fiction. The goofs were so tiny and scattered throughout the 41-page novella (or long short story) that they didn't jump out at me right away when I first re-read Reunion on Kindle back in 2018. I was spurred into action after I received an email from my former journalism prof at Miami-Dade Community College, letting me know that he liked the book — he obviously bought it a little while ago — but that he had spotted a few things that needed fixing.  Of course, I went into copy editor mode and spooled up my Kindle Create app to make the corrections and revisions. First, my form...

Image by Pexels via Pixabay    I’m writing a quick post to let my Blogger readers know that I spent much of the weekend doing some revisions to Reunion: A Story, which is my first (self) published work of fiction and is available now on Amazon as either a Kindle e-book or a Print-on-Demand paperback. Synopsis   I even changed the cover art for the Kindle edition.  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't know how deeply Jim's feelings for her are - unless he tells he...

  Hello, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon here in New Hometown, Florida on Tuesday, June 29, 2021. The current temperature is 88 ˚ F (31 ˚ C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 56% and the wind blowing from the east-southeast at 7 MPH (11 KM/H), the heat index is 96 ˚ F (36 ˚ C). This afternoon we can expect thunderstorms to pass through the area; the high will be 91 ˚ F (33 ˚C) . Tonight, scattered showers will occur, and the low will be 74 ˚ F (23 ˚ C). The Air Quality Index (AQI) is 38 or Good . Well, where to begin? For starters, I have what seems to be a garden variety summer cold, so I am not exactly at my tip-top best right now. I’ve had a low-grade but persistent headache, intermittent sneezing fits, a nose that alternates between an uncomfortable stuffiness and an icky, disgusting runniness, and occasional (but mild) fits of coughing. I’ve had worse respiratory ailments, to be sure, but this is the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out early last y...

© 2021 Paramount Home Media Distribution and Lucasfilm Ltd.  Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s mid-afternoon here in my corner of Florida on Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Currently, the temperature is 83˚F (28˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 73% and the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 9 MPH (15 KM/H), the heat index is 92˚F (33˚C). The forecast for the rest of the day calls for occasional thunderstorms throughout the afternoon and evening hours; the high will be 85˚F (30˚C). Tonight, storms will continue to pass through our area, and the low will be 74˚F (24˚C). The Air Quality Index (AQI) is 34 or  Good . If you recall, I ordered the Indiana Jones: 4-Movie Collection 4K UHD Blu-ray box set on Amazon as a pre-order on March 16. Paramount Home Media Distribution scheduled a release date of Tuesday, June 8 – just a few days before the 40 th Anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s theatrical release (June 12, 1981). Initially, Amazon – basing its estimates on Paramou...

Slipcover art from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's Multi-Screen Edition Blu-ray. © 2019, 2020 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Well, it's Sunday, March 29, 2020, and it's the last weekend of a tumultuous month unlike any other since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against America. Once again, the entire country is facing a danger that's posed not just to human lives, but to the values that many of us hold dear - civility, decency, moral courage, and a belief that we as a nation can unite despite partisan divisions and persevere in the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, unlike those dark and scary times after the Twin Towers fell and part of the Pentagon was scarred by the impact of an American Airlines Boeing 757 hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists, when a mediocre Republican President named George W. Bush managed to rally the nation and prepared to strike back at our enemies, the ship of state is rudderless,. Most of...

The number of confirmed cases and fatalities as of March 15, 2019. Credit: Johns Hopkins University.  Life in America in the time of Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19): An ex-beauty queen from Nevada, Katie Williams , has become the poster child for entitled, coddled, and contrarian conservatives who laugh in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak. On Saturday, Ms.Williams, who became notorious last year as the Trump-supporting Miss Nevada who was uncrowned by the Miss Nevada organization for violating its ban on political commentary on social media by contestants, bragged about going to a local Red Robin burger joint in defiance of the federal government's recommendation of social distancing to prevent COVID-19's spread. In response to a tweet by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14 District) that called for young adults (in the 20-30 age bracket) to avoid gathering at restaurants and bars to help contain the coronavirus, Ms. Williams had this to say: Screenshot of the infamous ...

Today is Sunday, September 1, 2019. As I write this, it's hot, muggy, and cloudy in my corner of the world. And as Hurricane Dorian churns toward the northern Bahamas as a monster Category Five storm, we Floridians are keeping a wary watch. Most of the forecast tracks are predicting that Dorian will head west for a bit, then turn north and stay just off Florida's East Coast as it makes its destructive way toward Georgia and the Carolinas. I wish I could say for sure that my area is totally out of the woods; I know that my former hometown of Miami is probably not going to be affected because Dorian's eye is already almost parallel to northern Broward/southern Palm Beach Counties. But if the storm doesn't turn to the north within the next 24-36 hours, its outer bands will affect Central Florida and maybe even the Tampa Bay area in some way. Per the National Hurricane Center's 11 AM advisory: SUMMARY OF 1100 AM EDT...1500 UTC...INFORMATION ------------------...