*Alternatively, On Writing & Storytelling: ‘Reunion: A Story’ Gets a Third Revised Edition, and the ‘The Reunion Duology’ is Officially Launched as a Two-Book Series
It’s now early evening on Saturday, July 1, 2023, here in lovely Lithia, Florida. The sun is still out; the forecast was accurate, and no rain or storms popped up; and, of course, it’s still hot outside. As I begin this post at 6:30 PM EDT, the temperature beyond the confines of the house is 93°F/34°C under mostly sunny conditions. It’s too torrid for me to even think about taking a quick stroll…. I’m too tired to even try putting on a pair of shoes, let alone go out into that oven-like heat.
As for this first day of the Fourth of July weekend: As I mentioned in Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, July 1, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the First, I needed to make my existing novella – Reunion: A Story – consistent with Reunion: Coda, the novel I’m working on now. First, even though I edited Reunion in March, some of the last fixes didn’t “take,” so mistakes that I thought I’d fixed were still in the “second revised edition.” More importantly, because Reunion: Coda reflects some of the real-life events I draw from for its story, I’m pickier about tiny details – such as what day of the week happened to be Jim’s last day as a high school student in 1983 – than I was in 1987, 1998, or even 2018.[1]
I don’t want to delve too deeply into the process of uploading manuscripts to Kindle Direct Publishing. Suffice it to say that the easiest step was using the Kindle Create app to edit and format the original .docx file from Word and get it ready for upload to Amazon and its Kindle Direct Publishing website. I couldn’t remember how I’d uploaded the draft for the second edition almost four months ago, so it took me over three hours to go from setting up the new version on the Kindle Create app to the point where KDP informed me “Your book has been uploaded and will go live within the next 24 hours.”
Of course, it didn’t help matters that I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t fall back asleep; like most people, I’m not at my best when I’m tired. As I said, I couldn’t recall exactly what I did in March when I began this protracted process of editing and revising a pre-existing book, so I kept making the same mistake (uploading the wrong file in the wrong format). It wasn’t until 4:45 PM that I figured out which file KDP needed (it wasn’t the .docx file, I can tell you that much) and I’d started the process shortly after 1 PM.
Anyhow…
I ordered some food from Pizza Hut – I can’t cook here, so I either order delivery food or eat what I can fix easily without using a gas stove – and I’m hungry, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and – don’t mess with fireworks!
[1] I wrote the dream sequence – or rather, a more erotic version of it – in 1987 for my creative writing course at Miami-Dade as an exercise in pushing the envelope. It was supposed to be a one-off kind of thing, and it didn’t get a grade higher than a B. It wasn’t till I decided to try writing a short story about love, loss, regrets, and friendship in 1998 that I dusted off the “sexy CRW-2001” piece, used the bits that worked, shitcanned the ones that didn’t, and made it the keystone for my first real attempt at writing fiction.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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