A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company) Q.: Now that the story has been on Amazon for 10 days or so and has gotten good reviews - one reader wrote, "I really enjoyed reading this story. The author's descriptive writing brought me back to high school.    Really made me think about the 'what ifs' in life." - what are your plans for Reunion ? Will you expand it into a novel? Will there be a sequel?  A.: Before I decided to go ahead and publish Reunion: A Story "as is," I considered expanding it into a longer book, perhaps a novella at the very least. After all, the story expanded outward from one short scene into a fully-fledged short story once, so why not try expanding it further. There are a lot of references in the backstory - Jim's breakup with his first girlfriend, for instance, or maybe the whole business with Jim asking Marty to sing a duet with him at the (sadly) canceled Spring Concert - that could have been expl

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company) 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 her. But when an opportunity arises on the last day of classes at South Miami High, Jim hesitates...and the window of opportunity closes. Now, 15 years later, James Garraty is an up-and-coming history professor whose literary career is on the rise. Respected by his fellow faculty professors and recipient of

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company) On June 28, 2018, Amazon Digital Services published Reunion: A Story, my first work of fiction, through its Kindle Direct Publishing division. As of today, it's ranked #70 in the Best-Sellers - Kindle Short Reads - Teen & Young Adult Categories.   Two days later, the print version of Reunion was released in a 40-page paperback by Amazon's CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Though the print edition is selling more modestly than the e-book, it's still doing better than my first book performed six years ago.  Like most writers, I'm often asked questions along the lines of "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "How did you write this story?"  So, to give you some idea of how Reunion came to be and what it's about, here are some questions and answers related to my new short story.  The Premise:   It is February 1998. 33-year-old Jim Garraty is a respected

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company) On June 28, 2018, Amazon Digital Services published Reunion: A Story, my first work of fiction, through its Kindle Direct Publishing division. Currently, it's ranked #20 in the Best-Sellers - Kindle Short Reads - Teen & Young Adult Categories. Two days later, the print version of Reunion was released in a 40-page paperback by Amazon's CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Though the print edition is selling more modestly than the e-book, it's still doing better than my first book performed six years ago.  (C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and Amazon Digital Services, LLC Like most writers, I'm often asked questions along the lines of "Where do you get your ideas from?" and "How did you write this story?"  So, to give you some idea of how Reunion came to be and what it's about, here are some questions and answers related to my new short story.  The Premise:   I

March 1982 1 I first met Lauren Hitchcock when I was a 17- year-old junior at South Miami High. It was a spring day in 1982, and I was making my way from my third period class (English Three, College Bound) to my fourth period one (Mixed Chorus). I walked quickly – or, rather, as quickly as possible in a corridor full of my fellow high school students trying to get to their classes before the bell rang. I had attended South Miami for nearly two years, so I had lots of practice in weaving through the crowds and clambering the stairs from the Language Arts department on the second floor down to the music department wing on the first. I had just pushed open the door that led to the stairs when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a svelte jeans-and-blouse clad girl sitting alone on the landing. Her algebra textbook lay on the floor to her left, and her leather purse sat on top of a green Mead Organizer to her right. She slumped forward on the top step, and her dainty hands covered

I know that many, if not most, of the problems that affect everyone's hit counts are purely technical or related to the site's business model. We reviewers can't solve  those  problems. Sure, tech-savvy Epinions members who know how to crunch data and have hands-on experience with website design and operation should chime in and suggest fixes to Damon and his colleagues. I'm a writer, so I can only sit on the sidelines when we discuss Google Panda, Alexa ratings, the SdC database, and things of that nature. As a writer, though, I think we need to consider the possibility that we need to change how we write our reviews. Many of us, including me, tend to write long and detailed reviews in an attempt to cover every feature of a product. We have a site-wide tendency to describe not only a product's important features, but to pad reviews with "facts" that a typical website reader might not care about. The average reader does not like having to wade through

Started working on my second book today even though the first one's paperback edition has only been "available" at Amazon for a week or so and has sold only a handful of copies. Either I am being (a) an eternal optimist, (b) a writer who learned a lesson on getting started early and doing things carefully, or (c) a Quixotic dreamer who has lost his grip on reality. By "started working on my second book" I mean copying a couple of  pre-existing review from my Word document files and porting them over to WriteWay Professional Edition. I will now revise the hell out of them until I am happy with the material, then move on to adding two more reviews and editing them. .  That way I don't have to do so much last-minute editing or struggling with formatting and pagination issues that will cause me the kind of headaches I suffered during the production of Save Me the Aisle Seat  in both print and e-book formats. © 2012 Alex Diaz-Granados.  All Rights Rese

Skin of Evil   Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 22   Written by Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer, based on the story by Joseph Stefano   Directed by Joseph L. Scanlan   Stardate 41601.3 (Earth Calendar Year 2364)   On stardate 41601.3, the  Galaxy- class Starship  Enterprise 's  Shuttlecraft 13 is returning Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) from a conference when it suddenly goes off course and crashes on the unexplored world known to Federation cartographers as Vagra II.  The pilot, Lt. Ben Prieto (Raymond Forchion) manages to send out a distress signal to the  Enterprise ,  and Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) orders a change of course to retrieve his two marooned crewmembers on Vagra II. But when the  Enterprise   attempts to follow Starfleet standard operating procedure and beam Troi and Prieto up via the transporter, the results are inexplicably futile.  A bizarre entity is generating a powerful energy shield which surrounds Shuttlecraft

After nearly nine years of being an online reviewer at both Amazon and Epinions (and, for a time, anyway, at the now-terrible Viewpoints), I have decided to compile some of my reviews and publish them in book form.  (We can't survive on IS income alone, right?)  I can't take the time or money to hire an agent or go through the process of sending out manuscripts to the big publishers in hope of getting published, so I decided to "self-publish" through Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace (both Amazon companies). The book, Save Me the Aisle Seat , is now available as an ebook for the Kindle, and within a week it should be available in print at Amazon and maybe a few other places. I'd like to thank my friend Leigh Egan for her valuable assistance in completing this challenging project. I hate to have to shill my book like a medicine salesman selling snake oil, but if anyone here has a Kindle (of any model), please, please consider buying it!  It's price

War, despite being one of humanity's worst innovations, nevertheless exerts a strange fascination for most people, hence its enduring appeal as a subject in both the printed page and movies. Great drama, or so we were told in high school English class, is based on some type of conflict (man vs. nature, man vs. fate, man vs. himself, and man vs. man), and war is, after all, the ultimate expression of conflict. No other human endeavor exhibits so many contrasting extremes; on the one hand, the bonding and comradeship born out of the shared dangers and miseries is unrivaled by anything in civilian life, and this is one of the themes many of the best war movies explore in varying degrees. Men and women often exhibit their finest traits under the strains of war: courage, loyalty, determination, inventiveness, and self-sacrifice. At the other extreme, war brings out the worst in people: cowardice, selfishness, cruelty, amorality, treachery, and avarice.  There is also no awe-inspiring

FADE IN: INT. SOUTH MIAMI HIGH - MUSIC DEPARTMENT WING CORRIDOR - AFTERNOON We see JIM standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall opposite the closed door of South Miami Senior High's choral practice room. He looks a bit on edge and is trying to catch his breath after his sprint down the stairs from the second floor. As he stands there, the door swings open with a loud metallic squeak and two girls (MARIA and TERESA) step out of the chorus room. ANGLE ON MARIA AND TERESA We SEE two girls in their late teens, dressed in casual attire (jeans, blouses, comfortable shoes, etc. which are appropriate for a high school's dress code of the early 1980s.) MARIA is the clear "alpha" of the two, not just because she's taller and a tad more attractive than TERESA, but she's also the more outgoing and has presence. She smiles at JIM. BACK TO SCENE JIM looks at the two girls and smiles back politely in recognition, though he clearly simply wants to