On Writing and Storytelling: The Second Try Was the Charm, I Guess

Friday, October 23, 2026 – Orlando, Florida

I just woke up and still have cobwebs up in Creative Central, but I’m pleased to announce that And the Horse You Rode in On is officially off to a great start.

After several hours of contemplation, re-reading parts of other Garratyverse stories (Reunion: Coda especially), and drinking half a carafe’s worth of Colombian coffee, I revised the beginning of the novella so it’s more consistent with the current canon.

That last part turned out to be more important than I expected.

When I originally started playing with the idea, I was mostly concerned with getting Jim and Mark onto the page and seeing whether their friendship felt right. It did. In fact, the more I wrote them, the more I realized that this story wasn’t simply filling in a blank from Jim Garraty’s past. It was becoming another piece of a much larger emotional arc that I certainly didn’t know I was creating when I wrote Reunion: A Story.

And that meant I had to pay attention to the breadcrumbs I’d already scattered.

Going back through Reunion: Coda reminded me that Jim’s memories of adolescence aren’t isolated anecdotes. They’re part of the person he becomes. Mark, Marty, Mrs. Quincy, chorus, school, first crushes, missed opportunities, unexpected kindnesses, and even the embarrassments Jim would probably prefer history to forget all contribute something to the adult looking back on those years.

So I went back to the beginning of And the Horse You Rode in On and made some adjustments.

Nothing that changes the heart of the story. If anything, the opposite happened. The revisions brought it closer to the story I now realize I’m trying to tell.

Apparently, this is what happens when you accidentally build a fictional universe over several stories and then discover that Past You has been leaving notes for Present You without bothering to mention it.

Fortunately, Present Me has coffee.

Lots of coffee.