A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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...

(C) 2018 Alex Diaz-Granados and CreateSpace (an Amazon company) It is February 1998. 33-year-old Jim Garraty is a respected history professor and bestselling author who lives in New York City. Popular with both students and readers, Jim seems to have it all. Fame, a nice apartment in Manhattan, and a reputation as one of the best World War II historians in the U.S. But when he gets a cryptic email from his best friend from high school, Jim is forced to relive his past - and a trip to his home town of Miami reopens old wounds he thought had healed long ago. Q.: How - or why - did you choose your characters' names? Did you go through a phone book and choose names at random or did you name Jim, Marty, and Mark after people you know? A.: Jim Garraty - or as Stephen King would put it, my I-guy - was, in every iteration of the story (from a CRW-2001 assignment to finished product), Jim Garraty. I'm not sure why I chose James/Jim/Jimmy as his first name; I just knew that...

(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...

Movies have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.   Some of my earliest childhood memories center on little snippets of black-and-white movies I glimpsed while my parents watched television in the Florida room of our second Miami home; they are vague because I was less than two years old and my dad was still alive, but sometimes I still see, in my mind’s eye, little fragments of old John Wayne Westerns and war movies which my father had enjoyed. It’s no exaggeration when I say that my childhood relationship with the movies was one of the key influences during my formative years.   Because I had very few father figures beyond my maternal grandfather and several uncles before I entered junior high, I tended to mimic certain traits of actors and movie characters I admired.  I wanted to be as brave as John Wayne’s many cowboys and military heroes, as idealistic as Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, as dashing-and-daring as Errol Flynn and Clark Gab...

1. Who were your best friends, or were you a friendless geek? What was the most interesting fun that you had together?   My best friends at that age were Richard de la Pena* and Betsy Matteis, with whom I had gone to school in elementary, junior high, high school, and on to community college. Richard and I still hang out every so often; he visits when he has a day off and we watch movies on the DVD player and talk about the "old days" of the early 1980s and women.  Betsy used to hang out with us until a few years ago, when she dropped out of sight. I am still very fond of her, not only because she's very smart and was instrumental in my early success in college, but because she has the distinction of being the first woman to French kiss me.  As for the "most interesting fun" part of the question, I don't recall anything particularly memorable, except maybe Betsy's 18th birthday party, which was when we played "Spin the Bottle" and I got t...