New Month, New Season, and New Workweek

Monday, June 1, 2026, Orlando, Florida

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”
— Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

Another month begins, and with it, another season.

June 1 marks the start of meteorological summer—the way professional weather scientists divide the year. Most folks still go by the astronomical calendar, which tells us summer won’t officially begin until June 21. Many of my blogger friends will surely stick to that tradition and write that Summer 2026 starts on the solstice, but I prefer the meteorological version: it’s easier to remember, and it doesn’t require an annual Google search for “When is this year’s summer solstice, anyhow?”

Here in my corner of Central Florida, summer arrived in its usual subtropical fashion—with heat, humidity, and the promise (or threat) of afternoon showers. None of this is new to me. I was born in Miami, and except for two notable moves that didn’t stick, I’ve lived in Florida all my life. This is the rhythm of the peninsula: dry season, wet season. The only real change since my childhood in the ’60s and ’70s is that—regardless of what climate‑change deniers insist—temperatures are rising, and the Mean Season is getting meaner.

Today also marks the start of another writing workweek for me, though “work” in Summer 2026 looks different from the previous three years. These days, I’m doing more literary maintenance and behind‑the‑scenes tasks than creating new stories.

Right now, work consists of:

• Editing and revising my novel Reunion: Coda, the second book of the Reunion Duology. I published it almost 14 months ago, and although it’s earned positive reviews from the small number of readers who’ve bought it, I still find small but irritating flaws whenever I try to read it for pleasure. Naturally, I can’t resist fixing them.

• Preparing The Jim Garraty Chronicles, an omnibus edition that gathers Reunion: A Story (2018/2023), Reunion: Coda, Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen (2025), and The Summer of Two Movies: A Jim Garraty Story (2026) into a single volume. I conceived this project last fall while working on the Garratyverse Audible edition. I’m not entirely sure why—maybe I thought a single tome would be more inviting to new readers than asking them to buy three separate stories (and this was before I wrote The Summer of Two Movies). Maybe it was ego. Maybe optimism. Maybe both. Whatever the reason, I’m committed to finishing it.

As a result, instead of working on a new story I’ve tentatively titled …And the Horse You Rode In On, I’m spending my days in Kindle Create—a program with which I have a decidedly stormy relationship. I try to alternate between the omnibus (a kind of surrogate passion project) and fixing the issues I keep spotting in Coda. I’d rather be writing something new—I’m 63, not 23, and I’d like to get a few more stories out before I cross over to the undiscovered country—but without a professional editor, the cleanup work falls to me. And ultimately, it’s my name on the byline; readers tend to blame the author for every typo, even when an editor was involved.

So that’s what my Monday afternoon looks like. It’s not glamorous. It’s not fun. And it’s certainly not what I’d prefer to be doing on this first day of Summer 2026. But it’s what needs doing.

Before I get back to it, a quick note: the free Kindle edition of Reunion: Coda is still available through Wednesday, June 3. If you’ve been meaning to grab it, now’s a good time.