An Extreme Blog Done Gone

In the last commentary I mentioned an aversion to albums that share their title with a song on the record. I prefer album titles to come from lyrics or overarching concepts vs. having a title track. (See: Nevermind, Skittish, A Love Extreme). On the other hand, I’m a big fan of cheekily naming a record…

I almost called this chapter “Fourth Time Around” but I’ve never liked when an album has the same title as a song on it. (Yes, I already sort of did this earlier…) “New Age” is fine, but I considered it a placeholder of a scene title until I was agonizing over where to set the…

Reasons this ended up being a short chapter vs. combined with the preceding and/or following: a) The break points made dramatic sense. b) I really wanted to use the Double Trouble title, which actually references my favorite Breeders bootleg and not Stevie Ray’s band. b2) The live version of “Saints” here is especially good —>…

Making Local Boy Done Gone a standalone sequel meant telling a self-contained story, but also allowing it serve as either book one or book two depending on your reading order. (Or the other book two, but I’m getting ahead of myself much like Local Boy often does.) Part of that involved the Back to the…

Welcome to Part III: Four Weddings and a Fun Era. The part title is 77% to amuse my friend Nate Pepper who introduced me to the similarly named film when it was (relatively) new, 7% a nod to a line about a funeral being a fun era in L Extreme, and 16% a factually accurate…

The title of this chapter comes from the 2020 album by The Strokes, featuring cover art by 27 Club member Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here it represents Local Boy’s reluctant return to (ab)normal life after losing time after his adventures with the redhead. It’s also the term I used to describe COVID lockdown, apparently inspired by this…

Back when I wrote the original Timely Persuasion I had a habit of needing to account for every minute of plot time. Even the skipped over stuff got segued with a summary. Over the years I’ve made it a point to cure myself of those old “and then, and then, and then” tendencies. Here we…

After (or maybe technically before) the first draft, I had scenes set during Local Boy’s “normal” life in the 1970s as well as excursions with the Redhead in the tan van. I knew each time LB had a vantastic adventure it would shake up his present, and roughly figured I’d sprinkle them in to one…

Part 2 promised a van & a list. Here you get both. Musically a hit list is a ranking of top tunes—but there’s also a more nefarious, entertainment agnostic meaning. The list becomes Local Boy’s obsession for the rest of the novel. Tidbit List: Check out Local Boy Done Gone

Local Boy bailed on his previous big break to take the redhead’s ride in a tan van. This break-in is even bigger—directly revisiting a scene from the previous book. I keep calling Local Boy Done Gone a standalone sequel, but in these commentary posts I also keep pointing out places where the two stories intersect….