Reflections on Fourth of July 2024 and Writing Progress Update

Early Afternoon, Friday, July 5, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hello everyone! I hope all my American readers, whether in the country or overseas, had a great Fourth of July celebration yesterday. It’s amazing to think that the United States is 248 years old if we count from when the Declaration of Independence was signed. I’m also surprised that it’s been 48 years since the Bicentennial in 1976. I was 13 then, and I remember being part of a flag-raising ceremony as a member of Boy Scouts Troop 396 at Tropical Elementary. That year, I started collecting Bicentennial quarters, but unfortunately, I lost the bank holding them, probably in the mid-1980s.[1]

A Glorious Fourth?

I had a not-so-Glorious Fourth. I only skipped half of my usual writing time in the afternoon, and Independence Day 2024 was nothing special in rural New England. I’m not sure if there were fireworks in Madison or Conway, and I didn’t learn about any nearby events or cookouts.

Also, cable TV is a no-go in this house and PBS is nowhere to be found on my big TV, so I skipped the yearly Capitol Fourth concert. No biggie; that yearly ritual lost its charm for me nine summers ago – the 2015 one was the final one before Mom passed away on July 19, 2015, so even when I lived in Tampa I hardly watched it. The memories of my last Fourth of July with my family in Miami were, and still are, too hard to handle.

(On the other hand, at least there weren’t any miscreants around setting off firecrackers or shooting guns into the air to celebrate America’s birthday.)

The Brighter Side of Things

However, the Fourth was, in a generous way of saying it, an ordinary chill day for me (although with a dash of sorrow and worry that I didn’t need), but it wasn’t a completely hopeless one.

For example, Diana Soto was one of the kids I went to high school with. She got herself a Kindle copy of Reunion: A Story yesterday. Maybe she didn’t know the novella existed until I slashed the price by 75% ($0.99 instead of $3.99 on Amazon), but she wrote to me yesterday on Facebook where I posted about my promo and said she bought it because “helping someone achieve their dream and support their talents is also important.” (And hey, it probably helps that most of the novella happens in South Miami High School on the final day of the 1982-83 school year.)

Likewise, another blogger (and fellow writer), Kymber Hawke, mentioned she’s also enjoying Reunion: A Story. On Wednesday’s post where I announced the 99 cents deal, Kymber shared in the comments section:

I’m looking forward to reading this!

Yesterday, I shared a post about my breakthrough in writing a third scene for Reunion: Coda’s chapter eighteen, and I gave you a sneak peek of it. Kymber had this to say:

I love this, Alex! I’m about to start your first book in this duology, and seeing the excerpts here, makes me want to read it all the more. 🌺

Looking at the most recent sales report from Kindle Direct Publishing, I have a hunch that Kymber is a Kindle Unlimited reader. This morning, I noticed that someone purchased one Kindle edition of Reunion, while someone else read two pages through Kindle Unlimited, according to the Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read report.

I didn’t spend Independence Day enjoying fireworks, music, or grilling, but I still have something to celebrate.

Action This Day

It’s Friday, July 5th, 2024. A long weekend of Independence Day celebrations awaits many people, but not me. I’m still working on my usual schedule. I could take a break, but I don’t feel like it. There’s not much to do here for fun anyway, and I have to wrap up the novel as soon as possible. Not just because I’m eager to publish it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble Online, or make it available through Book Culture and other Amazon-affiliated bookstores, but because I’m curious to read the final result.

(Besides, any grand plans I might have depend on the completion of Reunion: Coda. It’s not a matter of “if” but “when.”)

As I said earlier, I spent two hours yesterday afternoon working on the manuscript. As you can see from yesterday’s blog post, I knocked out a solid first draft of the third scene in Chapter 18 on Wednesday. Some newbie and amateur authors might have been happy with that first draft (judging by the quality – or lack thereof – of some indie novels I’ve downloaded on Amazon Kindle), but I wasn’t fooled. I’m not the kind of writer who just dumps words on the page – even blog posts! – on Microsoft Word and calls it a day. My rough drafts are already polished, but even a polished first draft is still that, a “first draft.”

Even though I’m a harsh judge of my work, I was pleased with how Scene Three of The Gathering Storm turned out. But it wasn’t perfect, and I knew I had to polish and tweak it later. Some parts annoyed me because they were redundant and, if I’d left them as they were, would have ruined the illusion I try to create when I write fiction.

That’s how I spent my time yesterday, and by using a mix of Copilot (Microsoft’s AI helper), Microsoft Word’s Editor feature, Grammarly, and the copy editing chops I got at Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus in the 80s, I will keep polishing the current scene. It may not be a flawless scene when I finish it, but it’ll be better.

Or so I hope.  

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[1] I still remember that coin bank. It was round and made of pewter-colored plastic and featured a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence on its face, including a large John Hancock “signature” at the bottom. My mom gave it to me on my 13^th birthday, along with a handful of Bicentennial quarters – which I adopted as my good luck charms – and 10 Thomas Jefferson $2 bills. I remember last seeing it in my last Miami home – the townhouse where I lived from 1978 to 2016 – but it got lost sometime between 1980 and then, because it wasn’t in any of the moving boxes we packed in ’16 when I moved from Miami to the Tampa Bay area.