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...

© 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...

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 ...

© 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...

 💫 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...

  © 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...

 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 ...

  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. ...

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. ...

Soft Light, Quiet Courage Kelly’s Perspective He stepped inside like he wasn’t quite sure he belonged. His eyes moved over everything—the piano, the books stacked sideways, the lavender sprig in the jelly jar next to the stereo. He didn’t make a single joke about the crooked lampshade or the milk crate bookshelf. Didn’t pretend not to notice the faint scent of lemon cleaner and reheated rice. He just looked around like it was a story he hadn’t heard yet. A man had never looked at my apartment that way. Not like he was casing it or judging it—more like he was absorbing it. And that’s when I saw it. Not in anything he said. Just... how still he stood. Hands at his sides. Shoulders slightly hunched. Like he’d crossed a threshold and didn’t want to track in something he wasn’t supposed to. He’d never been in a girl’s bedroom before. Not like this. Not as himself. Not without bravado or teasing or expectation. That realization settled gently in my chest—not as power, but as tenderness . “I...

  Ten Reasons This Quiet Universe Leaves a Lasting Impression There’s a certain kind of story that doesn’t shout—it hums. It lingers in memory like a melody you forgot you loved. In the Reunion Duology , author and blogger  Alex Diaz-Granados invites readers into a world shaped by memory, music, and the choices we carry long after the moment has passed. Across two deeply personal works— Reunion: A Story and Reunion: Coda —we follow the inner life of Jim Garraty, a man who’s never stopped wondering about what might have been. And coming soon: Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen —a poignant companion story that traces the roots of one quiet turning point and the emotional bravery it awakened. So, what makes the Garratyverse different? Here are ten reasons readers find themselves gently, unexpectedly moved. 1. It begins with a moment missed—and never lets go. Jim Garraty’s world changes in 1983 when he hesitates to speak his truth. What follows is a li...