Musings & Thoughts for Friday, April 19, 2024, or: A Quick Update from a First-Time Novelist

Late Morning, Friday, April 19, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Friday edition of A Certain Point of View, Too. It’s a gray but not wet early spring day here in my corner of New England. The current temperature is 50°F (10°C) under mostly cloudy conditions. With the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 7 MPH (11 Km/H) and humidity at 70%, it feels like 59°F (15°F). The forecast for this last day of the regular workweek calls for mostly cloudy skies and a high of 56°F (13°C). Tonight, we can expect scattered rain showers. The low will be 43°F (6°C).

Reunion: Coda: A Quick Status Update

After yesterday’s (late-starting, admittedly) revise-and-edit working session, I can say for sure (at least until my Beta Reader signs off on Scene Five) that Chapter 14 of Reunion: Coda is complete. It was – in my opinion, at least – a solid chapter to begin with, and I deliberately set out to make it a brief one as a counterpoint to the last of the high school-era chapters, Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios.

Since I don’t like making outlines, I can’t say exactly how many more chapters are left to write. Certainly (and hopefully) not many; I sense that the story is nearing its conclusion, and I’d like to say there are only three or four chapters left till I can type out the magic words “The End” and begin the more complicated phase of pre-publication and adding the “front matter” and “back matter” stuff. I hope that I can publish Reunion: Coda between late June and early August, and I’m working hard to achieve that goal. But…you know the old saying about “the best-laid plans of mice and men….”

So, here is where I stand, statistics-wise, with Reunion: Coda as of today:

• Number of Pages: 203
• Number of Words: 86,435
• Completed Chapters (Including the Prologue) 14

I’ve also been experimenting with Microsoft’s Copilot (aka Bing) AI and its Designer art generator to create artwork to help me promote the upcoming novel. If it weren’t for the limitations of the Open AI/Microsoft products (you can no longer, say, create images of couples even in non-sexual contexts, for example), I would consider illustrating Reunion: Coda myself using prompts from the manuscript and asking Designer to generate images based on characters (such as Maddie, high school-age Jim, and Professor Jim seen here) and situations from the novel. Alas, the restrictions are there, though, so the most I can do is create promotional images and character portraits to help me visualize certain scenes from the book.

Well, it’s almost time for my midday lunch and break period, so I’ll close for now. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.