Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s almost noon here in Lithia, Florida, on Monday, April 17, 2023. I’m off to a late start on this cloudy, sometimes rainy, and balmy spring day because I went to bed far too late and woke up just a tad later than my usual 6:30 AM “rise and shine” time. I’m not as tired as I often am when insomnia pays me an unwelcome visit, but I had hoped to get started on my new story by 9:00; here I am, writing my daily blog post just a bit after 11 AM, with foggy brain and clumsy typing fingers fumbling to put some coherent thoughts down on paper – or on my computer screen.
I made a small change to Reunion. It’s nothing major, just something to satisfy my own sense of style. I tweaked the dream sequence in the chapter called Forgotten Dreams. In it, Jim Garraty and Martina Reynaud share a slow dance in a dreamlike world.
I wrote that scene 25 years ago while listening to the American Graffiti soundtrack. I remember the song that was playing when I changed Jim’s dream from an erotic fantasy about his English teacher to a more tender moment with his high school crush, Marty. It was The Platters’ version of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
I couldn’t use the lyrics of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes in the dream sequence without getting permission from the copyright owners. So I wrote my own lyrics for the dream dance. I was listening to an album of songs from the 50s and 60s, so I described the band as a 50s-style rock-n-roll group in white tuxes. The dance takes place in a high school classroom that transforms into a ballroom at a fancy hotel.
The dream sequence is the cornerstone of Reunion. It’s a revision of an old assignment from a college creative writing class I took 36 years ago. Describing the band as a Fifties rock group was a valid choice. But after reading some rewrites of Reunion by Bing Chatbot AI and considering Jim’s fascination with World War II and 1940s pop culture, I decided to change the band’s genre to swing. I made the change a little over two hours ago, and Amazon says the new version of the text will be visible on the Kindle e-book edition between later this afternoon and Wednesday morning.
The change will also be made to the paperback edition since both versions use the same source file. Kindle owners won’t have to buy a new copy, but if you want the updated dream sequence in the paperback version, you’ll have to either make the change by hand or buy a new copy. Or you could get the Kindle edition in case I decide to make more changes to Reunion in the future.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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