Writing and Storytelling: This, Too, Is Part of the Story

This, Too, Is Part of the Story

Late Morning, Wednesday, June 25, 2025, Miami, Florida

Hi there. It’s a typical South Florida summer morning, the kind that the tourism industry doesn’t tell non-residents about. It’s hot, yes (82°F/28°C, but the heat index is 93°F/34°C), and sticky, but the skies are veiled by a sheet of nimbostratus clouds bearing the gift of light rain showers. As I write this, most of the wet stuff is out over the Atlantic and is heading away from the coast, but it’s probably not a good day for sunbathing or looking at hot bikini bods on the beach or by the poolside.

As for me, I’ve been up since 5:30 AM. I might have slept until 7 or 7:30, but I went to bed a little after midnight after fruitlessly waiting for an email from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) about the pre-publication status of the paperback edition of Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen: A Jim Garraty Story.

See, yesterday afternoon, I uploaded the last absolutely necessary correction to the text of the first standalone short story related to my Reunion Duology. It was a seemingly minor thing—a detail about one of Comings and Goings’ two characters that some readers probably wouldn’t notice or care much about—that many indie authors would have left in place and ignored just to get the book on Amazon for sale.

But the author and reader in me balked at that flaw far more than that missed hard return I noticed on another page, so I fixed it for both the existing Kindle edition and the upcoming paperback, which drops on July 1.

If you followed the saga of my efforts to publish Reunion: Coda, my first novel, back in April, you might recall that correcting anything on KDP once a book is published isn’t as easy as it is on, say, a WordPress blog or even Microsoft Word. I mean, sure, all you have to do is upload the new version of the manuscript file—preferably a .kpf document from the Kindle Create app, but a PDF or even a Word document will do in a pinch—to the proper place on KDP’s “Create a Book” page. That part is as easy as ordering an author’s copy of your finished (and hopefully edited) book.

The tough part—especially for those of us scribblers who want to offer our wares in multiple formats—is how long it takes KDP to process those uploaded corrections before they go live. For the Kindle, the wait time between the time you submit corrections and when you get that Hello, Alex. Congratulations, your book “Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen” is now live and available for purchase… is usually less than 10 hours, depending on when you sent your fixes to Amazon.

For print books, though, the wait time is glacially slow, presumably because the infrastructure for paperbacks and hardcovers is, shall we say, more elaborate. So even though I sent that absolutely necessary last correction (but perversely didn’t fix that missing hard return on another page) before 8 AM yesterday, I did not get the Hello Alex Diaz-Granados, Your book, Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen, is scheduled for release on 07/01/2025… missive till (checks notes) 3:52 AM…while I slept, mind you.

If I catch a dissonant note in the compositions I create that pulls me out of the story, chances are that it will have that nasty side effect on you, too.

Let me share the rest of the email so you can understand why I woke up with a sense of urgency at 5:30 instead of catching a few more Zs:

On this date, your book’s detail page will become visible to readers to purchase your book on Amazon everywhere you have territory rights at 12:00 a.m. UTC.
You can update your book until 06/26/2025. You will not be able to change your book details or content after this date while we prepare to make your book available to readers worldwide.
You can order author copies to get copies of your book before it’s visible to readers after your book is ready to print. Standard author order timeframes apply.
To learn more about scheduling your book for release, visit our Help page. Thanks again for choosing KDP to publish your work.
Best Regards,
Kindle Direct Publishing Team

I don’t want to go through the tedious, nerve-racking, and unpleasant process of publishing a book—even one as short as Comings and Goings—on Amazon, thinking it’s ready for its audience, only to find flaws, big, small, or in-between, that pull readers out of the story. I don’t pretend I’m the heir to the legacies of King, Welty, Harper, Raucher, or Hemingway, but I’m not chopped liver. At my best, I can tell you a good story well told. If I didn’t believe that, you wouldn’t even be reading this. So if I catch a dissonant note in the compositions I create that pulls me out of the story, chances are that it will have that nasty side effect on you, too. And since it’s my byline, it is my duty to fix things—whether they’re typos or inconsistent details or mismatched character traits.

So, that’s why I was up at that ungodly hour when the house was still and silent and the sky was still waiting for rosy-fingered Dawn to mark the start of another hot summer workday: to fix that one flaw that made me so anxious I kept on checking my email till midnight for that message from KDP. I knew a deadline loomed, and like the journalism student I once was, I had to meet it.

Happily, all I needed was the same .kpf file from the Kindle Create version of Comings and Goings, so even though KDP won’t notify me that the paperback edition is ready for its July 1 publication till late tonight, I can relax. The Kindle edition I own reflects the latest—and last—update, so I know its print counterpart will have the same content, including that one missing hard return I deliberately left uncorrected.

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A Quick Word to My Readers
I know my posts have lately centered around my books and creative process, and I understand if that feels repetitive. Please know this isn’t out of self-importance or indifference. I don’t have a big publishing house managing my promotion, and the cost of even “affordable” Amazon ads is out of reach when basic expenses like rent and food come first. My bandwidth—emotionally, financially, and creatively—is limited, especially with the world in such a precarious state. Writing reviews or shifting focus to other content is something I’d love to do when I can, but right now, I’m doing what I know best to stay grounded: telling stories. I’ll do my best to vary the rhythm in future posts when I feel ready.

Thanks for sticking with me—and for seeing the person behind the words.

—Alex Diaz-Granados