‘Morning, folks.
I’ve received a lot of feedback about a POD (print on demand) version of Demimonde, and it’s on its way. I hope to get the files sent up to the printer tonight, so I’ll keep you apprised.
Thanks so much for the feedback and support.
Eddy and I were talking the other day about writing habits and we decided that we were at opposites as to environments. He likes quiet.
I like racket. The more, the better. I wrote much of Demimonde at a bar, with a piano player banging away and the bar’s patrons staggering around all over the place. Their activity made me comfortable and energized, even though I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were doing. With the writing to focus on, I didn’t mind any of their shenanigans, I just let their ambient noise provide the fuel for the fire. The opposite applies when it comes to music, however. I love to listen to music while I write, but it can’t have any lyrics. (So, yeah, I spent a lot of time singing along with that damn piano player instead of writing like I should have.) When I’m listening to songs as opposed to music, I either sing along or I work with the music in the background, but then when I think about it, I get distracted by the parts of the song I’m not hearing. That is, I occasionally remind myself that there’s an actual song going on, with somebody singing about something, and I get frustrated because I’m missing part of the song. So I’ll listen really hard to the song, which sends productivity to about zero. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, sure, but that’s how it is. I work well with ambient noise. It’s not exactly reassuring like, say, the sound of the ocean when I’m trying to fall asleep. It’s more light having a fight go on nearby, but it’s okay because it’s not me having my ass kicked. I wonder if it’s the opposite — if the sound of activity surrounding me makes me comfortable knowing that the very sorts of things I’m writing about are happening around me on all sides.Eddy and I were talking the other day about writing habits and we decided that we were at opposites as to environments. He likes quiet.
I like racket. The more, the better. I wrote much of Demimonde at a bar, with a piano player banging away and the bar’s patrons staggering around all over the place. Their activity made me comfortable and energized, even though I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were doing. With the writing to focus on, I didn’t mind any of their shenanigans, I just let their ambient noise provide the fuel for the fire.
The opposite applies when it comes to music, however. I love to listen to music while I write, but it can’t have any lyrics. (So, yeah, I spent a lot of time singing along with that damn piano player instead of writing like I should have.) When I’m listening to songs as opposed to music, I either sing along or I work with the music in the background, but then when I think about it, I get distracted by the parts of the song I’m not hearing. That is, I occasionally remind myself that there’s an actual song going on, with somebody singing about something, and I get frustrated because I’m missing part of the song. So I’ll listen really hard to the song, which sends productivity to about zero.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, sure, but that’s how it is. I work well with ambient noise. It’s not exactly reassuring like, say, the sound of the ocean when I’m trying to fall asleep. It’s more light having a fight go on nearby, but it’s okay because it’s not me having my ass kicked. I wonder if it’s the opposite — if the sound of activity surrounding me makes me comfortable knowing that the very sorts of things I’m writing about are happening around me on all sides.
Hey, gang:
Just a quick note here to keep you apprised of what’s going on.
As of yesterday, I made my third novel, Demimonde, available online over at DriveThruFantasy.com. If you’ve been interested in the things I’ve written before, I invite you to check it out. It’s got everything you expect from a Justin Achilli gig — cuss words, drug abuse, weird secret societies, and a sliver of a chance for personal redemption. I’ve made three sample chapters available for free at the site, so take a peek if it tickles your fancy.
To promote the book, I’ve opened justinachilli.com, as well. This LiveJournal has been idle for a while now, since I got married last year and we had our daughter Madeleine earlier this year, but with the new title available for download, it’s my plan to make the site a sort of digital notebook, where I can take down ideas, explore writing projects, and even just run off on tangents like I did here back in this journal’s heyday (if such a thing can be said). I spent yesterday morning talking to a friend on Facebook about how things have changed over the years, which sort of justified the whole site as sort of a "what am I doing now?" kind of endeavor.
So there you have it. The book I left White Wolf to write is now done and ready for your perusal. It’s kind of funny, given that I’m back at White Wolf/ CCP since finishing the book, and it’s being distributed by a White Wolf-affiliated online shop, but these sorts of things do seem to come full-circle, don’t they?
If you’d be so kind, pass the word on to anyone who might care, and hopefully they and you will get a kick out of the new book. And by all means, let me know what you think!
I write longhand. Call me archaic, but there’s something simply wonderful about the feeling when the tip of the pen meets the paper. The comfortable skritch-skritch as the words make their way onto the physical artifact in front of me, the smell of a new notebook as its cover opens for the first time, the orderly lines ready to accept whatever’s written on them — these are all the joys of doing it the old-fashioned way.
My preferred pen is the Uni-Ball Vision Elite. It has a fine enough line to be legible, and a nice, heavy feel that leaves me with the satisfaction of something real committed to paper.
Of course, my favorite notebooks are Moleskines. If you’ve ever written in one, you know why. The large, ruled notebook is my workhorse, and the cahiers serve light duty, never further than a pocket away.
All the digital work, from word processing to e-mail correspondence to online research and layout, occurs on a Mac. Scrivener handles all the drafting duties (and outlining, and storyboarding, and research organization, and so on).
