On Writing & Storytelling: Reunion: Coda‘s Epistolary Chapter – ‘the One with the Emails’ – is DONE!  

Mid- to Late Morning, Thursday, January 25, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi there, dear readers. It’s a cold but sunny winter morning here in east central New Hampshire. Currently, the temperature is 31°F (0°C) under partly sunny conditions. With humidity at 89% and the wind blowing from the east-northeast at 1 MPH/1 KMH, the feels-like temperature is 36°F (2°C). Today, we can expect partly sunny skies and a high of 44°F (7°C). Tonight, the forecast calls for light snow showers to pass through the area. The low will be 31°F (0°C).

As usual, I woke up early in the morning when the sky was still dark, and the sun had not yet risen over the eastern horizon. I wanted to get at least another half hour’s rest, but at the same time I was antsy and hungry, so I muttered, “What the fuck…might as well start making some coffee and get this day going.”

So, here I am, one hour and 16 minutes after sunrise, writing my 1,408^th post for A Certain Point of View, Too, and already thinking about my novel, Reunion: Coda, and what I need to do now that, at long last, the epistolary chapter is finished – at least in its first draft iteration.

On Writing & Storytelling: Finishing Chapter 12, AKA ‘The One with the Emails’

Yep. You heard me correctly, folks. More than three months after I began working on the “Epistolary Chapter” – a process that I thought would take me only a few weeks to complete but was, unfortunately, interrupted by The Big Move North from Florida to…here and delayed by the long, slow “settling in” aftermath – and a lot of mental gymnastics, swearing, and tons of rewrites and revisions, the first draft of  “The One with the Emails” is done.

Although I don’t ever do outlines – when I write fiction, I do so without a detailed plan; I just have a general idea of how I want the story to end, but otherwise I make up stuff as I go along…by the seat of my pants, as it were – I had a feeling in my gut that the last two emails between Jim Garraty, the protagonist/narrator of the Reunion Duology, and Maddie, the brilliant and beautiful concert pianist he is falling in love with, were going to be the last in their transatlantic correspondence and that I’d be putting Maddie on a British Airways flight back to New York after a work-related trip to her hometown of London.

Not only did I want to wrap up this chapter – which is presented as a series of (simplified) emails between the two “leads” of Reunion: Coda’s set-in-2000 storyline[1]– so I can move on to what, I think, will be the last two or three chapters, but the conversation between Jim and Maddie had reached its apex – stretching it out further wouldn’t do me (or you, the potential reader) any good.

As I expected, I devoted my afternoon work schedule to writing Maddie’s final email in which she gives Jim her flight information so he can grab a cab to John F. Kennedy International Airport and pick her up when she arrives in New York.

As usual, writing that single email ate up all of my scheduled work time – I started it shortly before 2 PM, crafted two or three drafts and finished it at 4:15 PM.

If it were up to me, darling, I’d have chosen to fly home on the Concorde, but (a) that would be too expensive an option, even for a world-renowned orchestra such as the New York Philharmonic, and (b) the logistical realities won’t allow it. Too many passengers, too much baggage for that type of plane. Pity. We could leap over the Pond so much faster, and I could be in your arms that much quicker.

Maddie to Jim, in Reunion: Coda

Now, I have tried to not post the entire content of many of the Jim/Maddie emails to avoid spoiling any surprises, but here’s Maddie’s final email from London in its current, unrevised version:

Subject: re: Eagerly Awaiting Your Return

My dearest Jim,

Hi, love!  I hope you slept well – no doubt with visions of me traipsing around in my black satin slip and not much else flitting through your head! – and that you’re having as good a day as possible at work. I’m glad that you had a wonderful repast last night; that Margarita Pizza from Patzeria does sound scrumptious. We should go there sometime after I get back to NYC.

Apropos of that, we just got our flight information for Friday’s return trip. We’ll be jetting back to the States on British Airways flight BA175, which is scheduled to depart from Heathrow at 10:10 AM London time and should arrive at Kennedy International at 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time. Alternately, if – and I strongly emphasize the word if  – there’s an issue with the plane or weather, or even a schedule change, we might fly out on the second scheduled flight: BA177, which departs at 1:05 PM GMT and arrives at JFK at 4:35 PM.

If it were up to me, darling, I’d have chosen to fly home on the Concorde, but (a) that would be too expensive an option, even for a world-renowned orchestra such as the New York Philharmonic, and (b) the logistical realities won’t allow it. Too many passengers, too much baggage for that type of plane. Pity. We could leap over the Pond so much faster, and I could be in your arms that much quicker.

On the other hand, a transatlantic flight lasting eight hours and 35 minutes is still faster than the same voyage on a seaborne passenger liner. So, there’s that.    

Oh, my sweet, adorable Professor Jim! I don’t expect you to turn your teaching schedule topsy-turvy just for moi. Normally, I’d just take a cab home from the airport: that’s always been my SOP when I’ve traveled either for work – as in this instance – or to visit my relatives in the UK.

That having been said, though…I’d be delighted, absolutely delighted, if you could get a TA to cover for you so I can see, hug, and kiss you as soon as I clear Customs at JFK!  Maybe I’ll wear that Victoria’s Secret negligee – and nothing else! – under my London Fog gabardine overcoat – just for you!

(Um, maybe that would not be either practical or proper…but it would be fun…wink!)

Okay, okay. I’ll wear something less…revealing on the plane. I know that one of the guys in the string section fancies me, and though he’s usually professional and hasn’t “made a move” on me, I wouldn’t want him to see what I’m reserving for your eyes only. Especially since the flight is long, and he does tend to bend the elbow a bit overmuch when the flight attendants trot out the drink carts. So…if you see a gal wearing a beige overcoat over jeans, a plaid blouse, and with her hair in a ponytail waving at you at the ARRIVALS section of the terminal…that’ll be me.

I have a confession to make: As artistically and professionally rewarding the taping of Mozart, Gershwin, and Anderson: Three Centuries of Music has been – I mean, what musician worth his or her weight in salt wouldn’t want to record at Abbey Road? – I have felt…incomplete without you, sweets. We’ve not known each other all that long, I know, and this gig has kept us apart at a time when we should have been out on a few dates. But, having heard of how you used to be in high school from my sister – how I miss her so! – and, of course, having spent some time with you, I know, truly know to the very core of my heart, that I’ve fallen head over heels in love.

So…as much as I love my musical career, my fellow musicians, and my current employers at Lincoln Center/Avery Fisher Hall…and as good as it has been to see some of my relatives and childhood mates and “birds”…I am eager to get on that British Airways flight and return to New York – and you.

Dearest, I promised my Aunt Violet that I’d stop by her place for a “farewell” afternoon tea, and I am not quite dressed yet (Feel free to use your imagination!), so I must close for now. Rest assured, though, that you won’t be far from my thoughts – and be comforted knowing that we’ll be together tomorrow afternoon!  

I love you, Jim. Never, ever doubt that.

Ciao…for now.

With all of my love,

Your Maddie

MaddieMusica*97@hotmail.com

Sent: Thursday, March 9, 2000, 1:46 PM GMT

Note: This is an early draft version, so what you’re reading here may or may not reflect what will be in the published novel.

Maddie’s email was intended to be the penultimate one in the long chain of messages she trades with Jim in Chapter 12, and, ultimately, that’s how it turns out. And since I was tired and hungry when I closed it with the simplified timestamp, I thought, Well, that’s it for today. I’ll wrap the chapter up tomorrow with Jim’s reply, and then I’ll reserve Friday to do the inevitable re-reads, rewrites, and other fixes so I can start working on the next chapter on Monday afternoon.

Happily, after I ate an earlier-than-usual dinner at 5 PM and had rested my mind (and typing fingers) for a spell, I got my “second wind” and wrote the last email in The Big Smoke and the Big Apple: An Epistolary Chapter of Love and Music – March 2000. That, of course, is Jim’s reply to the email you’ve just read, but I’m not sharing it here. You’ll just have to wait till Reunion; Coda is published and you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble Online, or special-order it from your favorite bookseller – most bookstores with online storefronts, such as New York City-based Book Culture can get it from Kindle Direct Publishing.

I don’t need to tell you what I’ll be doing after my midday rest and lunch break. You know my workweek schedule well enough by now! 🙂 I also don’t have any “breaking news” to share with you today, so I’ll wrap this one up and say, as Maddie does in her last message in “The One with the Emails,” Ciao, for now.

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[1] The novel follows Jim Garraty’s experiences in two periods of his life – in one, he is a bright but awkward high school student in early 1980s South Florida, while in the other he is a thirtysomething history professor at Columbia University and a respected author of non-fiction military history books.