On Writing and Storytelling: The Chronicles vs. Kindle Create: Round… I’ve Lost Count

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 — Orlando, Florida

It’s one of those classic Central Florida afternoons—so hot the air practically sizzles. My weather app insists it’s 86°F (30°C) under a sky that can’t quite decide if it’s sunny or not. With 38% humidity and a gentle east-southeast breeze at 3 MPH (4 Km/H), you’d think it might feel pleasant, but no—step outside and it’s more like 94°F (34°C). We’ve already hit today’s high, and the rest of the afternoon looks uneventful on the meteorological front. No thunderstorms, no surprises, just the relentless Florida sun doing what it does best.

And what am I doing in this steamy paradise?

Still wrestling with The Jim Garraty Chronicles in Kindle Create. Longtime readers—yes, all three of you—already know my ongoing gripe with this otherwise helpful app: its stubborn refusal to respect my subheadings. I draft everything in Microsoft Word (not Scrivener 3 for Windows, thank you very much), leaning on decades of writing and editing experience to make sure chapter titles, epigrams, headlines, and subheads are formatted exactly the way they should be.

I’m also on friendly terms with Word’s spellchecker and the free version of Grammarly. By the time a manuscript makes the jump from Word to Kindle Create, every headline and subhead is already in perfect stylistic harmony. Or so I’d like to believe.

But here’s the rub: the talented folks behind Kindle Create clearly love code and the idea of “stress-free self‑publishing.” Formatting finesse? Not their strongest suit. The app insists on capitalizing every single word in a subheading—no nuance, no mercy, no regard for established style. Somewhere deep in its programming, there must be a switch that treats every subhead like a blockbuster movie title: Big, Bold, and Every Word Important.

The talented folks behind Kindle Create clearly love code and the idea of “stress-free self‑publishing.” Formatting finesse? Not their strongest suit.

So here I am, spending my afternoons manually undoing Kindle Create’s enthusiastic “fixes.” And because Reunion: Coda is the kind of novel that needs plenty of guideposts to orient readers in time and place, my Word file is full of subheads. Correcting them all in Kindle Create is about as fun as editing a phone book. But if you ever need someone to wrangle a herd of rogue subheadings, I’m your guy.

I’m hoping to finish this necessary-but-mind-numbing task by mid‑June. That’s more of an aspirational estimate than a firm deadline, mostly because Kindle Create and I are locked in a battle of wills. But I want this omnibus done so I can move on to the next story. I can’t start And the Horse You Rode in On until The Jim Garraty Chronicles is complete and live on Amazon.

---

A gentle note for readers who enjoy Jim Garraty’s world

If you’ve been following these updates—or if you’ve read Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, or Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen—you already know how much heart, memory, and lived experience went into building the Garratyverse. These books weren’t written to chase trends or algorithms; they were written to honor the emotional physics of real moments and real people.

So if any of these stories have stayed with you, or if you’ve been meaning to explore Jim’s world but haven’t taken the leap yet, this is a good moment to do so. Not because of sales or rankings, but because your engagement—your reading, your reflections, your presence—helps keep this universe alive while I finish shaping the omnibus and the stories still to come.