One goal I had for L Extreme was to capture the genre crossing styles Benji Hughes uses on A Love Extreme the album through the various song/chapters. Recently I remembered this old I Write Like text analysis website and wondered how well I did at mixing things up. Let’s see… In 15 chapters, I write like Agatha…
Category: Writing
Outtake: The Missing Narrator (Extended Version)
This is a fun deleted section that’s a little too meta and absurdist for its own good. I trimmed it waaaay down for the Jubalee chapter of L Extreme, but still dig it enough to share here. I’m a big fan of non-traditional, hyper referential storytelling and loved the setup of the overly loquacious intrusive narrator…
LX Origin Story, Part II
Like I said towards the end of Part I, after chipping away on a novelization of A Love Extreme on and off (mostly off) for a few years I had a song by song storyline that (amazingly) worked so much better than I imagined given the circumstances. I’d also come to appreciate the non-linear structure…
LX Origin Story, Part I
Before I dive into chapter by chapter, song by song commentary for L Extreme I wanted to provide a little background on how this came to be. Let’s start at the beginning… July 2009: I purchased the special music issue of The Believer magazine at Skylight Books in LA. It was a total impulse purchase…
New Novel: L Extreme
It’s been awhile but we’re back with style… Announcing the new novel by JL Civi: L Extreme! Readers of this blog know I’ve been a huge fan of Benji Hughes for years. Somewhere along the line I decided to write a novel based on his album A Love Extreme. For a reason I can’t fully recall…
2020 Hindsight Commentary: Prophet 15, Christine Sixteen
I’m revisiting Timely Persuasion 12 years after releasing it / 17 years after writing it / 6000+ days since I jokingly told Jon Mack “maybe I’ll write a book” with a new round of fresh eyed commentary. Today’s look at yesterday’s chapters is brought to you by Supergrass and Kiss. Prophet 15 “Revelations of her…
2020 Hindsight Commentary: Gimme Three Steps, Four Hours in Washington
I’m revisiting Timely Persuasion 12 years after releasing it / 17 years after writing it / 6000+ days since I jokingly told Jon Mack “maybe I’ll write a book…” with a new round of fresh eyed commentary. Today’s look at yesterday’s chapters is brought to you by Lynyrd Skynyrd & M. Ward. Gimme Three Steps…
2020 Hindsight Commentary: Prologue, One, Two of Us
As promised/threatened, I’m revisiting Timely Persuasion 12 years after releasing it / 17 years after writing it / 6000+ days since I jokingly told Jon Mack “maybe I’ll write a book…” with a new round of fresh eyed commentary. Here we go… Prologue For a few years now I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the…
Kurt Cobain + Time Travel = 3 Books
Fun fact: Searching for Cobain time travel on Amazon yields 3 results: Lost in the ’90s by Frank Anthony Polito: A teenaged rocker stage-dives during a ’90s themed dance and wakes up in 1994. Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman: An essay collection featuring unrelated sections on time travel and Kurt Cobain. Timely Persuasion by JL Civi:Â A…
Remember Remember the 5th of November
November 5th continues to be one of my favorite pseudo-holidays for obvious time travel geekery reasons. In honor of that great red-letter date, here are a few BTTF tidbits found in Timely Persuasion. Chapter 3: After a year of constantly playing the Back to the Future soundtrack, my uncle took me to see Huey Lewis…