Late Night Reflections: Writing After Dark

Night, Sunday, April 27, 2025, Miami, Florida

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

It’s almost 10 PM here as I write this, the second blog post on this last Sunday of April 2025. I rarely do this so late; I may have done it a few times when I lived in Tampa, and maybe once or twice during my 10 months in New Hampshire. I’m usually tired or trying to watch something on Amazon Prime Video to help me fall asleep, and I’m more of a daylight hours writer than a night owl.

Be that as it may, here I am, sitting in a dark bedroom that’s only illuminated by the glow of my computer screen. I’m wearing my headphones and listening to Kiri Sings Kern, an album I bought early last year in the dead of my first and only winter in New England. I bought it because Jerome Kern wrote some of my favorite standards – including “The Way You Look Tonight” and “All the Things You Are” – and also because its music cheered me up when the days were short, the nights were cold, and the mercury dipped below freezing. I might have purchased the album even if I’d stayed in Tampa, cos I got into Kern’s music more deeply as I was writing Reunion: Coda, but I bought it in Madison, so I associate Kiri Sings Kern with my stay there.

I’ve finally managed to update my Amazon Fire’s copy of Reunion: Coda after two weeks of frustrating attempts. It took some manual intervention to delete the flawed copy from my Kindle app and download the revised version, which was a bit tricky with the touchscreen. It felt rewarding to overcome the challenge, even though I’m still puzzled why automatic updates didn’t work this time.

It might seem insignificant, this little achievement of mine, especially to folks who don’t often read for pleasure. However, having an improved version of Reunion: Coda on my Fire tablet is important to me. I wrote the novel to share my story with the world, but I also want to read it as if someone else had penned it. I can’t do that with a copy full of errors, which is why I’ll buy the paperback edition soon.

Reading my hardcover copy helped me spot most of the bloopers, so I figure I’ll get a softcover edition first and then another hardcover later this year.

Now, it’s time for me to head to bed and read for a while until sleep takes me.