On Writing and Storytelling: Books, Breaks, and the Business of Being Bad at Marketing

Wednesday, August 5, 2026 – Orlando, Florida

Hi, everyone.

I hope your middle-of-the-week is treating you kindly, wherever you are and whenever you’re reading this. Here in Central Florida, it’s late-summer business as usual: hot, cloudy, sticky, and keeping one eye on the sky just in case the rain decides to make a dramatic entrance. The Orlando forecast calls for scattered light showers and a high of 89°F (32°C). We’ve reached that high already, but the humidity is doing its best impression of a wool blanket, making it feel closer to 96°F (36°C).

I’m still on my self-imposed break from new literary projects. I don’t necessarily enjoy taking sabbaticals. I know my body and mind need a rest after writing and publishing a novel, a novelette, a flash fiction piece, and an omnibus between spring 2023 and last month. Still, part of me feels as if I should be working on And the Horse You Rode in On, the next Jim Garraty story waiting patiently in the wings.

I’m not sure whether that feeling comes from the 25-year gap between Reunion: A Story and the novel, or whether, once I finally established a steady writing schedule, it became—as the song goes—a hard habit to break. I don’t feel guilty about not writing anything “substantial” beyond my daily musings here. But I do feel as though I ought to be doing some Professional Daydreaming™, even if my creative batteries need a major recharge after three years of almost uninterrupted writing, editing, reworking, fretting, publishing, marketing, and anxious post-publication revising.

Right now, that’s as much as I know about the New Story. It’s admittedly skimpy, and I don’t know much about the plot beyond what I’ve just told you. My Muse, too, appears to be on vacation and is not whispering sweet nothings in my ear—not about And the Horse You Rode in On, and not even about new reviews, although I just finished reading The Best of All Possible Planets.

Fortunately, my subconscious isn’t whispering many ideas for the new story yet, aside from the hazy notion that it will follow Jim sometime between fifth and sixth grade, several years before he meets Marty in Reunion: Coda. Fans of the Jim Garraty Chronicles can expect Jim’s best friend, Mark Prieto, to play a major role in And the Horse You Rode in On. If all goes well—and if I don’t wander too far off my own map—the new story will be, canonically speaking, my Episode I of the Chronicles. My hope is to show how Jim and Mark become friends at the tail end of elementary school, focusing on one moment that cements their friendship. I’m aiming for a novella, because I don’t think I’m ready to wrestle another full-length novel into submission just yet.

Rest assured, though, that I am working on my least favorite part of independent publishing: marketing and keeping track of sales. I’m a good writer—I don’t believe false modesty is all that useful—and I’m genuinely proud of my stories once I’ve worked the kinks out of them. For all my grumbling about how writing can sometimes feel like yanking teeth, especially when I’m previsualizing scenes or listening for dialogue that sounds natural rather than overly polished, I still love the creative side of this chosen career. I have my off days, and there are certainly times when I wonder why I didn’t pick something calmer, like lion taming or bomb disposal. But, deep down, I do enjoy the creative process.

It’s the business side of writing where I tend to falter. I’ve never had much of a knack for selling anything, and at least for now, I can’t afford to buy advertising on Amazon or elsewhere to promote my books. So I rely on a core group of constant readers who have read all four stories in my “Garratyverse,” believe in my skills as a storyteller, and—kindly, generously—believe in me as a person. They buy my books and, when time allows, leave reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, or their own blogs on WordPress or Blogger. That kind of support means more than I can properly say without turning into a puddle of writerly gratitude.

So far, I’ve sold between six and seven copies of The Jim Garraty Chronicles omnibus, all of them between July 11 and July 31. I had to buy about half of those myself; Amazon makes it easy for individuals to self-publish, but it does not hand authors free copies of their own work in any format. I bought the Kindle edition, which can be updated electronically if necessary, as well as two paperback copies. I had to order the second paperback after finding a few embarrassing errors in the first one, because apparently the typo gremlins were still lurking in the wiring. The other orders came from at least three friends who told me they bought The Jim Garraty Chronicles, mostly in paperback, plus one order from Great Britain. Thanks, Meg!

Considering that Reunion: A Story did relatively well for a relatively unknown writer’s fiction debut, I hoped I’d see at least a modest spike in sales, especially after writing a novel that some readers said they wanted to read. To be fair, some Reunion fans have bought, read, and reviewed two of the three books on Amazon, and one loyal reader even reviewed The Summer of Two Movies when I published it on my blog. It was too short to justify selling as a standalone book, so I folded the flash fiction piece into The Jim Garraty Chronicles. But some readers, regrettably and a bit mysteriously, have stayed away from the newer books.

So, yes: I love writing and sharing stories with the world. And, not-so-incidentally, selling a few books makes me feel like a productive member of society rather than merely a man having vivid conversations with imaginary people. Even though I lack the sales savvy of Phineas T. Barnum or Victor Kiam, I keep trying my hand at marketing—and every once in a while, I win a small, hard-earned victory.

For instance, my high school pal Juan Carlos Hernandez, a New York-based actor, director, and sometime stand-up comic, recently received his copy of The Jim Garraty Chronicles. He is, of course, busy chasing auditions in the Big Apple, but he’ll read and review the omnibus as soon as he can. Juan is not only a member of the Constant Readers Club; he was also one of the two people who read the original manuscript of Reunion: Coda while I was writing it. He has great faith in my ability to tell a story, which is one reason we’ve collaborated on several short films, including Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, A Simple Ad, and Clown 345. I’m deeply grateful that he has purchased copies of all my books, and I can’t wait to hear what he thinks about the omnibus.

And if you’ve read any of my Jim Garraty stories—or if you’ve been meaning to dip a toe into the Garratyverse—now would be a wonderful time to do so. Buying the books helps, of course, but so does leaving a review, recommending them to a friend, or simply spreading the word to someone who enjoys heartfelt, character-driven fiction with a touch of nostalgia. Independent authors don’t have billboard budgets or marketing departments; we have readers. Happily, readers are much better company.