A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2026 Alex Diaz-Granados   A Hardcover, Finally After a fair amount of wrestling with KDP’s settings, templates, and mysterious page‑count limits, The Jim Garraty Chronicles will soon be available as a hardcover. I had to change the trim size because the book crossed the 550‑page threshold, and that change forced me to rebuild the cover from scratch. Not exactly the smoothest process, but the end result looks surprisingly good. The hardcover collects all four stories — Reunion , Reunion: Coda , Comings and Goings , and the bonus origin story, The Summer of Two Movies . Seeing them bound together on cream paper, with a proper spine and a clean layout, gives the whole project a sense of permanence I didn’t expect. It feels like the right way to present Jim Garraty’s early years. For the author photo, I went with a picture from my college days, taken when I received a journalism award. It seemed fitting to use an image from the time when writing first became part of my identit...

© 2026 Alex Diaz-Granados   Monday, July 27, 2026 – Orlando, Florida Hi, everyone. I just grabbed my Amazon package from the mailbox — the newly revised edition of The Jim Garraty Chronicles: A Life in Four Movements . I haven’t had time to pore over it yet (the Postal Service also delivered my MasterCard bill, which immediately reminded me of August 12), but I did check the trouble spots that bothered me in the first printing. This copy was printed yesterday in Orlando, so it’s clearly based on the updated file I uploaded to KDP last week. The duplicated paragraph in Reunion: Coda is gone, the back‑matter headers are still stubbornly capitalized thanks to Kindle Create, but the series name is finally correct: The Jim Garraty Chronicles . With four stories in the canon now, it fits. I’ve put the revised edition on my bookshelf, and I’m confident the major issues have been fixed. After three years living inside Jim Garraty’s world, I’m giving myself permission to read other...

  October 10, 2025 – Orlando, Florida It’s Friday again. Another week winding down, and I wish I had more to show for it. Progress on the deluxe edition of The Jim Garraty Chronicles —the omnibus collecting Reunion: A Story , Reunion: Coda , and Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen —has slowed to a crawl. Not a single edit this week. Part of the blame falls on Kindle Create, which seems determined to mangle my subheadings. But if I’m honest, the deeper culprit is doubt. Why release the collection now, when sales of the individual books have been... let’s say, modest? Back when I was writing Reunion: Coda , especially through that frigid New Hampshire winter, I held onto hope. I imagined fans of Reunion: A Story rallying—leaving glowing reviews, spreading the word, giving my writing career a gentle nudge. Some did. A few loyal readers picked up Reunion: Coda in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle formats. But overall, sales have been underwhelming. And yes, it’s dimmed my spark...