On Writing and Storytelling: Now Comes the Hardest Part….

Wednesday, July 15, 2026 – Orlando, Florida

“The hardest part of publishing a (book) is attracting a reader, and especially one who would give a damn.” — Veronica Purcell

Well, folks, I did it. The Jim Garraty Chronicles — the fourth book in a series I never planned but somehow ended up writing — is officially out in the world. At 12 a.m. Pacific (3 a.m. here on the East Coast), Kindle Direct Publishing flipped the switch from Pre‑Order to Live, and the omnibus became a real book instead of a looming deadline.

This isn’t my first time on this roller coaster. The Jim Garraty Chronicles is my fifth book since I rushed out Save Me the Aisle Seat sixteen years ago, and I know the emotional physics of watching an Amazon product page go live. It’s a ride with more caffeine than safety restraints, and it comes with the usual sequence of thrills and doubts: the adrenaline, the giddy high of hitting “Order,” the creeping anxiety about sales and reviews, the inevitable stroll into the Closet of Authorial Worry, and the quiet, wavering hope that whispers, If you write a good book, they will read it.

Of the four Reunion projects, this omnibus was paradoxically the hardest to finish. On paper, it should have been simple: gather Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, and Comings and Goings, add the flash‑fiction prequel The Summer of Two Movies, write a new Foreword and Acknowledgments, polish the subheadings, and call it a day. But publishing is never a Hallmark montage. Kindle Create mangled my formatting; the fixes were maddening, and I almost came, closer than I’d like, to admitting defeat. Eventually I found a workaround — partly because I wanted the omnibus finished, mostly because I refused to let myself quit.

I know the emotional physics of watching an Amazon product page go live. It’s a ride with more caffeine than safety restraints, and it comes with the usual sequence of thrills and doubts: the adrenaline, the giddy high of hitting “Order,” the creeping anxiety about sales and reviews, the inevitable stroll into the Closet of Authorial Worry, and the quiet, wavering hope that whispers, If you write a good book, they will read it.

When Amazon delivered the book to my devices at 3 a.m., I was asleep. But the moment I woke up, I opened the Kindle for PC app and looked at The Jim Garraty Chronicles not as its author, but as a reader. After revising these stories more times than is probably healthy, I focused on the omnibus-only elements: the cover, the dedication, the Foreword, the back matter, the refined subheadings. And biased though I am, I was genuinely pleased. It felt like the book I meant to make.

And that brings me to the heart of this post.

I’ve done everything I could to make The Jim Garraty Chronicles an enjoyable and rewarding reading experience — not just for you, Dear Reader, but for me. I wrote it, shaped it, trimmed it, expanded it, and tried to honor the journey that began in a South Florida classroom in 1987 and arrived here, today, in Orlando.

Now it’s time to let the Chronicles go. Aside from the occasional correction of the literary bloopers that sneak into even the most carefully edited books, the series is out of my hands. My hope is simple: that it finds a home on readers’ shelves and, if I’m lucky, in their hearts.

If you read the omnibus, I’d be grateful for your support — whether through an Amazon or Goodreads review, a personal blog post, a social media mention, or good old-fashioned word of mouth. Those small acts matter more than most people realize, especially for independent authors trying to reach readers who “might give a damn.”

The Kindle edition is live now. The paperback arrives Friday. And the journey continues.