On Writing and Storytelling: Pushing Forward, Even When My Heart Wants to Work on Something Else….

Wednesday, May 13, 2026, Orlando, Florida

Hi, there.

It’s another torrid and sticky late spring day in Central Florida. As I write this, it’s already early afternoon, and the temperature is summer-like 85°F (29°C) under partly sunny conditions. With humidity at 70% and the wind blowing from the west-northwest at 8 MPH (13 Km/H), the heat index is at 93°F (33°C). Today’s afternoon forecast calls for a high of 87°F (30°C), and there is a good chance that we’ll see some scattered light rain showers later today.

I’m still working on The Jim Garraty Chronicles. As I’ve said in previous posts, reformatting the subheadings in the Reunion: Coda section of the omnibus isn’t exactly difficult—it’s just the literary equivalent of sorting socks: fussy, repetitive, and not the sort of thing one does for thrills. Still, it matters. Correctly formatted subheadings with proper capitalization quietly do a great deal of heavy lifting. They give the page a clean, polished look, help guide readers smoothly from one section to the next, and spare them the little stumbles that happen when headings look inconsistent or careless. In other words, they make the reading experience more enjoyable, even if no one sends flowers to celebrate a properly styled heading. So yes, the work is slow and about as glamorous as taking out the garbage on a steamy Florida evening—but once it’s done, the book will be much friendlier to the eye and far easier to read. I only wish Kindle Create were a bit more helpful about it, instead of requiring authors to spend so much time manually repairing the messes it creates.

Oh, well. At least I’m pushing on with my project and not abandoning it. That’s something, no?