Sunday, August 2, 2026 — Orlando, Florida
Hello, everyone.
It’s a gray, humid late-summer day in Central Florida. The temperature is currently 84°F (29°C) under mostly cloudy skies, but high humidity and a 12 MPH (16 km/h) breeze from the southwest make it feel like 88°F (31°C). We’ve already reached the forecast high, and scattered light showers may keep temperatures from climbing much further this afternoon.
I’m only a few days into my sabbatical from writing anything beyond my daily blog posts, and I already feel restless. Since mid-March 2023, my routine has revolved around “blogging in the morning, working on serious fiction in the afternoon.” During that time, I wrote a novel (Reunion: Coda), a novelette (Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen), and a short piece of flash fiction (The Summer of Two Movies). Just a few weeks ago, I also finished editing, revising, and publishing The Jim Garraty Chronicles, an omnibus that brings those three titles together with Reunion: A Story, my first Jim Garraty book.
I had hoped to keep my creative momentum going by diving straight into a new story (And the Horse You Rode In On), but after three years of steady work—interrupted by three unplanned, disruptive moves—I’m not currently up for Professional Daydreaming™. I’m tired physically, mentally, and emotionally, and it’s becoming harder to revisit my past and turn it into readable stories.
Still, it feels strange not to come to my writing desk—sometimes with breathless anticipation, sometimes with existential angst—and begin work on a “New Story.” I’m used to opening Word after my midday break, pulling up the manuscript, and asking myself, “Where did I leave my characters and situations at the end of yesterday’s work shift? And what happens next?” That routine has been my literary Polaris for so long that without it, I feel disoriented, even lost at times.
I may return to my roots as an entertainment writer and draft a few reviews; I haven’t written many lately. Part of that is because I’ve been busy with what I call “real writing”—along with editing, revising, publishing, and revising again—but mostly because, somewhere between Lithia and my move to the Orlando area, I lost much of my enthusiasm for reviewing. That, and I haven’t seen a movie in a theater since late 2019, so I had to watch West Side Story, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Fabelmans, and last year’s Superman at home instead.
Maybe I’ll use this break from literary fiction to write a few new reviews. We’ll see what develops before my sabbatical ends.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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