A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 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 🎧 The Soundtrack of Stillness — Music as Memory in Comings and Goings What if a mixtape could hold a heartbeat? In Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen , music is neither garnish nor nostalgia-bait—it’s emotional brushwork. Each track, from the thundering bravado of Twisted Sister to the trembling quiet of Beethoven’s Adagio cantabile , is chosen with surgical tenderness. Not to dazzle, but to reveal . Eric Carmen’s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” , hiding Rachmaninoff like a bruise beneath silk, becomes a turning point—not for plot, but for perception. Kelly hears what others miss. And that’s how we know she sees Jim too. Billy Joel’s “This Night” doesn’t seduce the moment—it steadies it. It enters like a held breath and leaves like a trace of skin on cotton. There’s a stripped-down elegance to the aesthetic curation here: each piece of music echoes a kind of duality. Pop songs with classical skeletons. Ballads that hum with memory. The mus...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados It’s funny how inspiration works. With Reunion: Coda —the novel I published less than three months ago—the idea took years to bloom. In fact, it first sparked back in 2000, when April, someone I never actually met, read the early manuscript of what eventually became Reunion: A Story . Maybe because I subconsciously associated the idea of a sequel with her, I didn’t begin writing Coda until 2023. That’s a 23-year gestation period. The final product? A novel over 500 pages long. But my latest book? It arrived almost by accident. The first nudge came from my friend Juan Carlos Hernández, who asked me a deceptively simple question: “What are you writing next?” I didn’t have a good answer. I was still knee-deep in promoting Coda , still recovering from the two-year marathon of writing it and from the whiplash of two cross-country moves in under a year. The truth was: I wasn’t ready to know what the Next Story was. Because once you know, you have to write it. Sti...

 Image by Vika_Glitter via Pixabay  A Companion Reflection for Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen Some moments imprint not because they’re perfect, but because they were true. Not rehearsed, not adorned—simply lived, and remembered. For Jim Garraty, that moment comes beneath the hush of moonlight, in a quiet room striped with silver shadow, beside a woman whose presence steadies more than it startles. It isn’t a scene about conquest or climax. It’s about presence . About the shyness of a first-time lover, the cataloguing habits of a historian, and the aching relief of being held in truth rather than judged in silence. Kelly sees him. Not through the lens of expectation, but through care. When he whispers, “I wish I’d been better at this,” she doesn’t dismiss or deflect. She listens. She stays close. And her reply— “Then it was perfect. You were kind. You were here. That’s what matters.” —becomes the emotional thesis of their entire connection. This wasn’t a ...

📚 For the ones who still turn pages... Here’s a clever little verse to echo the heartbeat of Comings and Goings —made just for those who know that sometimes, the best connections happen offline: For When the Battery Fades Or the Wi-Fi just won’t play nice... Boston, '84. A boy on the run From chatter and chaos, from everyone. A girl with eyes that didn’t flinch— A mixtape moment, inch by inch. Not swipes, not screens—just breath and beer, And Rachmaninoff floating near. He wasn’t looking, she wasn’t loud, But somehow, silence drew a crowd. A paperback tale for your favorite chair, For train rides, porch lights, anywhere. A story that listens, instead of insists— Of glances held and what love resists. Not first love. Not neat or clean. Just the grace of being truly seen. 🗓️ Out July 1 in paperback—because not every chapter needs a charger. Perfect for hands that miss the rustle of a page… or hearts that carry the weight of memory like a well-loved spine. =

  Comings, Goings, and the Wait in Between Friday afternoon in Miami. The clouds are hanging low, the air is heavy with summer’s humidity, and for once, there’s no thunder cracking in the distance. Mom would say St. Peter must be off his bowling game today. I’ve always taken her warnings to heart—no charging electronics when lightning’s involved. So, small blessings: just cloud cover, not chaos. In theory, I should feel pretty good. Earlier this week, Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen went live on Amazon—another piece of the Garraty puzzle, written almost on impulse and finished before the ink had time to dry on Reunion: Coda . It's not sprawling. It doesn't try to do too much. And maybe that’s what makes it one of the most focused and emotionally honest things I’ve written. If you've followed Jim's arc across the Reunion stories, you’ll recognize this as something smaller and quieter—a moment in 1984 that sets the tone for everything that comes after. It's...

  Because You Were Kind. Because You Were Here. Sometimes it’s not the grand gestures or the well-timed speeches that leave the deepest impressions. Sometimes it’s just being there —quietly, imperfectly, but fully present. There’s an illustrated quote making the rounds from Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen that reads: “Because you were kind. Because you were here. That’s what matters.” It’s simple. Unadorned. But it echoes—for good reason. In stories and in life, we often believe impact comes from fixing something. That if we say the perfect thing or perform the perfect act, we’ll finally make a difference. But presence—genuine, patient presence—is its own kind of grace. It doesn’t demand a spotlight. It doesn’t require resolution. It just offers a kind of quiet hope: that showing up for someone, even in their silence, can still mean everything. That’s the kind of love and kindness I’ve tried to explore in my work—not as a climax, but as a current. Not shouted, but...

  © 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen wasn’t something I planned to write. It began, as many things do, with a memory—or the ghost of one. A fleeting moment tucked into Reunion: Coda , when Jim Garraty, now older and maybe wiser, walks across Columbia’s campus and thinks he sees her. Not a name, just a resemblance. Not certainty, just recognition. And for a second, 1984 floods back—along with a girl who poured him a Heineken and didn’t ask him to be anyone but who he was. “She has the same blonde hair and bright, inquisitive blue eyes as Kelly Moore, a girl I met at a freshman party at Harvard... The faint taste of the beer lingers in my memory, crisp and slightly bitter.” That was all it took. Kelly Moore—originally just a footnote in Jim’s emotional ledger—began to insist on more space. Her voice, her presence, the shape of that night refused to fade. Until finally, I stopped trying to treat it like a tangent. And wrote it as a story. ...

© 2025 Alex Diaz-Granados   Sometimes, our best-laid plans find themselves quietly rewritten by the world around us. I originally intended to hold onto Comings and Goings until the fall of 2025, letting anticipation build in step with the turning seasons. But with so much uncertainty close to home and across the globe, I decided the story’s quiet light might be needed now, not later. So, as of yesterday, Comings and Goings is available in Kindle format for $2.99, and the paperback ($9.99) will arrive on July 1.   Boston, 1984. A party Jim Garraty never wanted to attend. A girl who didn’t look away. A night stitched together by mixtapes, quiet courage, and the ache of choosing to stay. Jim isn’t chasing romance—he’s just trying to outrun the noise. But when Kelly Moore enters the room with her drink, her Rachmaninoff references, and her uncanny ability to see without pressing, everything shifts. Over cassette tapes and Heineken beer, conversations deepen, touch beco...

The author in 2020   “Some Loves Don’t Ask”: A Poem in Three Movements Some moments don’t belong to the past so much as they echo quietly in the present—fragments of kindness, memory, and presence that resist the erosion of time. As I prepare to share Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen , I’ve been thinking about the spaces between stories—the ones that never become chapters, but shape the emotional weight of everything that follows. The poem below isn’t part of the short story, but it shares its emotional DNA. It’s a reflection on encounters that didn’t last, but mattered. I hope it finds you in a quiet moment.   The Boy She Loved for One Night She’s older now— not by much, but enough that the past feels more like a country she left than one she was exiled from. At a shelf she wasn’t seeking, his name appears— spine out, serifed, tucked between authors she almost recognizes. Garraty. A flicker. A room. A song dressed in Beethoven’s longing. ...