Author: Alex Diaz-Granados
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On Writing and Storytelling: The Girl Who Wasn’t Real (But Felt Like She Was)
Writing stories that draw, even partially, from an author’s lived experience can be a bit of a double-edged sword: wonderfully useful on one side, faintly perilous on the other. Memory is generous that way. It offers texture, specificity, and the small, telling details writers spend ages trying to invent—but it also comes with baggage, assumptions,…
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On Writing and Storytelling: Behold…the Power of Stories!
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in Alex Diaz-Granados, Amazon, Amazon Spain (Amazon.es), Amazon UK, Audible, Audiobooks, Books, Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen, Creative Writing, Family History, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Life in Bogota, Life in Florida, Life in Miami (1972-2016), Personal Thoughts, Reunion Duology, Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, Writing a First Novel, Writing and Editing, Writing as a CraftMonday, May 25, 2026, Orlando, Florida If you are a regular visitor to this space, you already know my favorite label: storyteller. Not influencer, not pundit, not a man with suspiciously strong opinions about semicolons—just a storyteller. I have been under the spell of stories for as long as I can remember: first as a…
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Sunday Spring Musicale…May 24, 2026 Edition
Hi, everyone. I started writing a post for this blog a few hours ago, but I couldn’t organize my thoughts well enough to get my ideas across on the page, so I gave up. I suppose I could have kept trying until I produced something worth reading, but I had already been writing for an…
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On Writing and Storytelling: 10 Quotes About Writing (and Writers)
10 Quotes About Writing (and Writers) Selected Reviews of the Jim Garraty Stories The Reunion Duology is a quiet, resonant exploration of connection, regret, and the complicated beauty of second chances. Told across two deeply personal works—Reunion: A Story, a novella, and Reunion: Coda, a novel—the series invites readers into the life of Jim Garraty,…
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Music Album Review: ‘Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age – Itzhak Perlman, John Williams & The Boston Pops Orchestra’ (1999)
Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age – Itzhak Perlman, John Williams & The Boston Pops Orchestra Label: Sony Classical Year Released: 1999 Genre(s): Film Music, Light Classical, Violin Transcriptions Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age — A New and Expanded Review Following the unexpected and well‑deserved success of Cinema Serenade, conductor John Williams and violinist…
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Excerpt from ‘Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen’: An Unexpected (and Fateful) Escape from a Bad Party
An Excerpt from Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen Boston, 1984. A party Jim Garraty never wanted to attend. A girl who didn’t look away. A night stitched together by mixtapes, quiet courage, and the ache of choosing to stay. Jim isn’t chasing romance—he’s just trying to outrun the noise. But when…
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Songs from All My Yesterdays (A Thursday Musicale)
Thursday, May 21, 2026, Orlando, Florida Hi there, Dear Reader. It is midafternoon on a hot, humid, and potentially rainy late spring afternoon in Central Florida. As I write this, it’s just past three, and the temperature outside is 88°F (31°C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at a sticky 59% and the wind blowing…
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Book Review: ‘Miss Harper Can Do It: A Novel’
Miss Harper Can Do It: A Novel By: Jane Berentson Publisher: Viking Year Published: 2009 Genre(s): Contemporary women’s fiction Miss Harper Can Do It — A Surprisingly Poignant Home‑Front Novel Every now and then, I like to wander outside my usual reading comfort zone. Most of the books on my shelves skew toward the traditionally…
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A Musicale for a Torrid Tuesday in May 2026
Tuesday, May 19, 2026, Orlando, Florida Hi, there, Dear Reader, and welcome to another edition of Alex’s Writer’s Block Musicales! I don’t have any interesting topics to write about on this extremely hot late spring day in Central Florida, and I’m sure that I’ll bore you if I share another post about editing subheadings in…
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On Steamy Days and Sluggish Muses
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in Alex Diaz-Granados, Amazon, Amazon Spain (Amazon.es), Amazon UK, Audible, Blogging, Book Reviews, Book Reviews, Books, Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen, Creative Writing, Florida Weather, Kindle, Kindle Create (Publishing App), Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Life in Central Florida, Life in Florida, Personal Thoughts, Pooja (P.J.) Gudka, Reunion Duology, Reunion: A Story, Spring 2026, Spring in Florida, The Jim Garraty Chronicles, The Summer of Two MoviesMonday, May 18, 2026 — Orlando, Florida It’s early afternoon in my corner of Central Florida, and it is, in a word, steamy. The temperature outside is 89°F (32°C) under mostly sunny skies. With humidity at 47% and an easterly breeze at 11 MPH (18 km/h), the feels-like temperature is 94°F (35°C). We’ve already hit…
A Certain Point of View, Too 