On Writing and Storytelling: Clouds, Corrections, and Canon

Monday, March 30, 2026, Orlando, Florida

It’s one of those soggy, gray Central Florida Mondays that feels like the sky hit the snooze button and never quite recovered. The temperature is sitting at 80°F (27°C) under a quilt of mostly cloudy skies. With humidity at 58% and an easterly breeze at 11 MPH (18 km/h), the “feels like” is a modest 83°F (29°C) — warm enough to remind you it’s Florida, but not warm enough to justify complaining. We’ve had scattered light showers drifting through all afternoon, but the radar suggests the clouds will finally call it quits around 7.

On the brighter side of this damp Monday, I’m happy to report that the weekend’s edits to Reunion: Coda have officially made their way into the Kindle ecosystem. The browser-based Kindle reader is always the first to show updates — usually within 72 hours of KDP approval — and sure enough, the changes are already live there. As for Kindle for PC and Kindle e-readers/Fire tablets, the trick is to delete the downloaded file (not the book itself) and let Amazon fetch the new version. In theory, this happens automatically. In practice… well, let’s just say Amazon moves at the speed of a leisurely manatee.

As for the Great Kinloch Park Mystery: I still don’t know why I ever thought that elementary school belonged anywhere near the South Miami Senior High feeder system. The two aren’t even in the same zip code of reality, much less the same administrative region. My best guess is that someone from my alma mater once mentioned attending Kinloch Park, and the name lodged itself in my brain like a wad of gum on the bottom of a sneaker. A catchy name can be dangerous like that.

But now that I’ve swapped all six references to the correct “South Miami Elementary,” the universe is back in alignment. I’ll have to order a fresh copy of the updated print edition, of course, but at least I can rest easy knowing that Jim Garraty’s fictional childhood now matches the actual geography of South Florida — which feels like the sort of cosmic housekeeping a responsible author should do.