On Writing and Storytelling: In Which Florida Behaves and Kindle Create Does Not

Tuesday, February 10, 2026 — Orlando, Florida

Central Florida is in one of its show-off moods today. As I type this, it’s a breezy 72°F (22°C), bright, clear, and exactly the kind of February weather that makes tourism officials beam with pride. Sunshine is pouring in, the high is headed toward 78°F (25°C), and it’s the rare winter day where you can enjoy the outdoors without melting into your shoes or lunging for the AC remote.

Inside, I’m making steady—if leisurely—progress on The Jim Garraty Chronicles. Kindle Create continues to be both a blessing and a mild test of patience. On the bright side, it makes turning a Word or Google Docs manuscript into a Kindle e-book almost effortless. A few clicks, a handful of preset styles, and suddenly your book looks polished and professional.

But every hero has a flaw, and Kindle Create’s Achilles’ heel is its handling of subheadings. No spellcheck, no flexibility, and a baffling insistence on capitalizing every single word in Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles. For a former copy editor, this is the kind of thing that can raise blood pressure.

That quirk is the main culprit slowing down the omnibus. The Jim Garraty Chronicles gathers Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, and Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen into one volume, along with some bonus material—a foreword, an author’s note, maybe even an introduction from someone who’s lived with Jim Garraty’s world as a reader. In theory, it’s a straightforward project: import the manuscripts, tidy up the formatting, add the extras, and call it a day.

In theory.

In practice, Kindle Create insists on giving every subheading the royal Every Word Is Capitalized treatment. Yes, you can fix it manually. Yes, I know how to fix it manually. But with no “apply to all” option, it becomes a scavenger hunt through the entire manuscript, adjusting each subheading one at a time. Think whack‑a‑mole, but with grammar instead of rubber mallets.

For Reunion: A Story and Comings and Goings, this is manageable—they’re short, with few subheadings. But Reunion: Coda is a different creature entirely. Two timelines, multiple locations, and a structure that absolutely depends on clear, properly formatted subheadings. When I write in Word, everything is already styled correctly. Kindle Create just… has other ideas.

I first started this omnibus back in late September, still settling into Orlando and imagining a Winter 2025 release. Then October arrived, and I shifted gears to bring the Jim Garraty stories to Audible. Finding the right producers on ACX and prepping the shorter books for audio took center stage, and between that and Kindle Create’s quirks—and a lingering uncertainty about how well an omnibus might perform—I let the project drift to the back burner.

But it’s still moving forward. Slowly, yes, but forward all the same.

And on the bright side, Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen picked up a new Amazon review this week—a small but very welcome boost. If you’ve enjoyed Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, or Comings and Goings, I’d be grateful if you’d consider leaving a review of your own. And if you haven’t picked them up yet, they’re available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble Online, or through any bookstore that can order from KDP’s Extended Distribution. Every purchase and every review genuinely helps keep Jim Garraty’s world alive and growing.