On Writing and Storytelling: Under Partly Sunny Skies, I Keep Going

Tuesday, April 28, 2026, Orlando, Florida

It’s a hot, muggy mid‑spring afternoon here in my corner of Orange County on this second day of my workweek. As I write, the temperature sits at 82°F (28°C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at a sticky 60% and an east‑southeast breeze of 4 MPH (6 Km/H), the heat index has climbed to a decidedly un-springlike 91°F (33°C). We’re just shy of today’s forecast high of 84°F (29°C), and the partly sunny conditions should hold until evening.

Today, I’m taking a brief break from learning Scrivener 3 so I can return to the ever‑thrilling task of fixing the subheadings in the Reunion: Coda section of The Jim Garraty Chronicles. I do want to get comfortable with Scrivener sooner rather than later—WriteItNow 5 isn’t coming back from the dead—but I also want to publish the omnibus this year. That means wrestling Kindle Create’s formatting quirks into submission, writing an introduction and author’s notes, recruiting someone to write a foreword, and crafting the back matter: an afterword, plus a “Praise for the Author” section with a few carefully chosen reviews.

Part of me wonders if I should take a short hiatus from posting in A Certain Point of View, Too so I can focus on both editing the Chronicles and training myself to use Scrivener 3. After all, once the omnibus is finished, I’ll need that new writing app to build whatever comes next.

Another part of me—usually the pessimistic one—whispers that maybe I should abandon the Chronicles altogether. New readers aren’t exactly stampeding to buy Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, or Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen in any format. I could just blog and learn Scrivener and call it a day.

But neither option sits right with me.

I can’t walk away from the Chronicles after everything I’ve poured into them: the time, the effort, the purchase of a new computer, the fresh downloads of Kindle Create, the restart‑from‑scratch after my old PC died. I know too well the awful, hollow feeling that comes from abandoning a literary project, and I have no desire to earn a reputation—internally or externally—as a quitter or a has‑been. So I’m committed to finishing The Jim Garraty Chronicles, even if I’m the only one who ever reads the completed omnibus.

As for the blog… writing here every day helps me follow Stephen King’s advice to “write a lot,” even when I’m not deep in a major project. It also helps me cope with the weird, bewildering, and often depressing times we’re living through in this Semiquincentennial year. I know my posts have leaned heavily toward writing updates lately, and I apologize if that feels repetitive. But I’d rather share the realities of my writing life—because that is who I am—than dive into politics or current events.

The journalist I once aspired to be would probably be horrified that I’m not covering the Iran War or the ideological chasm splitting the United States. But the truth is simpler and more personal: I live with depression and anxiety, and after three moves in less than three years following my departure from Miami a decade ago, trying to be my generation’s Jim Bishop or Walter Cronkite would do my mental health no favors.

Fiction, on the other hand, keeps me sane—or close enough. And sharing my small triumphs and occasional setbacks here makes the journey feel a little less solitary.