On Writing & Storytelling: My Novella’s Second Revised Edition is Available on Amazon!*

* And on Barnes & Noble Online, too!

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison

As of 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time on Friday, March 17, 2023, the second revised edition of my novella Reunion: A Story has been live and ready for purchase online at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

I had been checking my copy on Kindle throughout the day, but I kept on seeing the text – especially the Table of Contents and pages where there were major formatting errors – as it had appeared on Monday, March 13. That is, with the revisions I’d made on Friday the Tenth visible, but none of the subsequent ones from the last upload sent to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) on the night of March 13/14.

Oh, well, I thought. The corrections will show up; I just need to chill and wait till the last revisions work their way into the servers and Amazon publishes them.

I tried to take my mind off the upgrades by playing a session of Regiments – I earned one of my best scores; didn’t lose any helicopters this time, either! – and trying out a style of poetry called a “septolet.”  

I should have watched a movie – I currently own hundreds of them on Blu-ray or DVD, after all – but I stubbornly stayed at my desk, trying to keep from looking at the Kindle edition of Reunion every five minutes to see if the definitive, no-more-corrections-needed edition was live in both the e-book and the paperback edition (they both use the same source file, after all).

“Anticipation breeds anxiety.” ― J.S. Wolfe, The Unfolding: A Journey of Involution

Finally, sometime between 7 and 7:30 PM, shortly after I finished eating a couple of slices of Papa John’s pizza for dinner, I checked the Kindle for PC app on my laptop out in the kitchenette. I hoped to see at least a few revisions – I had uploaded several batches of corrections to KDP between Monday morning and the night of March 13/14, so I figured that the changes I’d made to Reunion were appearing as soon as they were processed.

Since I had downloaded Kindle Create (KDP’s app to format, edit, and upload manuscripts for e-books and paperbacks) on my laptop, I decided to open the Reunion file there and compare it to what I was seeing on my Kindle for PC window.

To my surprise and relief, the two versions were a 100% match!

Reunion is a wonderful story that leaves you longing for just a little bit more. It’s a glimpse into the life of an extraordinary yet wholly relatable man; seeing his choices unravel, it leaves you to question everything you’ve done in your own life, and more importantly, what you’ve not done.

Excellent work by Mr. Diaz-Granados! – “WyLo and Me” (Amazon Reviewer)

Well, I’ve done my best to make sure that Reunion is now as good a reading experience as my skills and experience as a writer and copy editor will allow me to make it. It certainly looks like a book, complete with a copyright page, an epigraph, and a table of contents! And, things that bugged me when I saw them in print five years ago – glitches I was somehow blind to during the submission process – are now, thankfully, gone.

Credit is due, as well, to Peter C. Townsend, my now-retired journalism professor and faculty adviser when I was a member of the student newspaper staff at what was then Miami-Dade Community College – South Campus between 1985 and 1989. If he had not contacted me – via this blog, incidentally – to wish me a happy birthday and let me know he had enjoyed the book, I would not have gone through the protracted process of revising Reunion – at least not with any enthusiasm. So, thanks, T. I appreciate the advice you have given me.

A lovely lyrical book and excellently written. It makes use of flashbacks, yet these are expertly woven into the story so that you always know where you are and how they contribute to the tale. This is quite a short read…but it certainly packs a lot into the story and the idea is fresh and novel. I have not read a story like this before. It’s not my normal type of reading material, as most of my reading these days is factual or business related but I really enjoyed it and was sorry when it was finished.

[Reunion]…. makes the point that it is better to be sorry for sins of commission, rather than regret sins of omission, yet it also shows how the angst of high school and teen fears get in the way of true love. – Meg Learner, Amazon Customer Review

Reunion is available in paperback and Kindle editions in all Amazon marketplaces, including Amazon UK, Amazon Spain, Amazon France, Amazon Germany, and even Amazon Japan. (Prices vary from region to region). Barnes & Noble’s online store also lists Reunion.