Location: United States
Member Since: Oct. 03, 2009

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JL Civi

Biography

Music aficionado and author of the rock and roll time travel novel Timely Persuasion.

Smashwords Interview

Who are your favorite authors?
My favorite novel of all time is "Replay" by Ken Grimwood. I try to re-read it once a year and always find something new. I also enjoy Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace, Alex Garland, Jonathan Carroll, James Hawes, and Michael Kun.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
Easton, Massachusetts is a suburb pretty much exactly halfway between Boston & Providence. I had great access to both cities as a teenager to go see club shows, often times seeing the same band in both cities on back to back nights. Little vignettes based on those concert adventures often turn up in my stories and scripts, as do various locales in the greater Easton/Stoughton/Brockton area. (And without Town Spa Pizza in Stoughton, who knows where my life or my writing would be today.)
Read more of this interview.

Where to find JL Civi online

Website: http://www.jlcivi.com
Twitter: @LBDG
Blog: http://blog.timelypersuasion.com

Where to buy in print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0026ZOVHU/

Series

Duty Calls by
DUTY CALLS is a tale about jury duty. More accurately, it's a tale inspired by jury duty. Back in 2008 I was a juror on a two-month trial. One thing I learned is that even though a trial lasts two months, the jury isn't actually doing two months worth of work. There is a lot of waiting. Way more waiting than anything else. All that time spent waiting with my fellow jurors gave me an idea for a different kind of jury story. One where the case is the least important aspect -- maybe even a non-existent aspect. Create twelve characters. Give each one a featured flashback of their life outside of jury duty. Put them in the waiting rooms of justice to kill the boredom by shooting the breeze. And give them a mystery to solve that requires teamwork. These flashbacks form a series of loosely connected short stories set in the same universe. They can be read in any order and work on their own, but you'll find some common references and easter eggs that start to unify them. One day each character will receive a summons to serve on a jury, collecting all of their tales into a novel interspersed with a collaborative courthouse mission. Until then, duty calls...
Debaser
Price: $0.99 USD.
Fester
Price: $0.99 USD.
Copper on Parchment
Price: $0.99 USD.
Sent Packin'
Price: $0.99 USD.

Books

The Ballad of Heartman & Songstress by
Price: Free! Words: 25,330. Language: English. Published: April 17, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Literary, Fiction » Young adult or teen » Fairy Tales
A little woman lives in your brain. She wants to meet the man in your heart. Follow the adventures of the tiny people inside your body who help you think and laugh and fall in love in this weirdly wonderful piece of album-oriented fan fiction based on the songs of Benji Hughes.
L Extreme by
Price: $4.53 USD. Words: 88,840. Language: English. Published: July 3, 2021 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Literary, Nonfiction » Music » Biography
An album you’ve never heard. A story you’ll never forget. Benji is a musician with a bad case of writers block, an estranged girlfriend and a secret past he’s not allowed to discuss—but does anyways. Recounting the unbelievable (but true!) story of his fairytale romance with L to his roommate catches the attention of two otherworldly entities—and things get a little extreme. L EXTREME.
Sent Packin' by
Series: Duty Calls. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 6,010. Language: English. Published: December 31, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Business, Fiction » Humor & comedy » Satire
Workplace politics. Open floorplans. Employees and managers. Instant messages. Bulleted lists. Rumors and gossip. Inside jokes. Midday parties. Tight deadlines. ALL STAFF emails. Leaked information. Arts and crafts. Meetings with HR. Time off requests. It's just another day at the office until someone gets a one way ticket for the sent packin' train.
Copper on Parchment by
Series: Duty Calls. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 5,130. Language: English. Published: December 18, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Mystery & detective » Short Stories, Fiction » Mystery & detective » Amateur sleuth
HJ used to be the best handyman in town, but lately he can't seem to do anything right. He thinks he might be cursed—or maybe haunted by an old client. Ring the doorbell, follow the detective and help HJ unlock the mystery of Copper on Parchment—a short story in the Duty Calls series.
Debaser by
Series: Duty Calls. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 5,100. Language: English. Published: May 31, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Alternative history, Fiction » Literature » Literary
Imagine a world where call center agents can blacklist unruly customers. A world where any edit made to an online encyclopedia comes true. A world where search engine results contain the secrets to the universe. A world that is more than just the title of a Pixies song in need of disambiguation. DEBASER is part of the serialized novel DUTY CALLS.
Fester by
Series: Duty Calls. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 8,920. Language: English. Published: September 2, 2012 . Categories: Fiction » Humor & comedy » General, Fiction » Young adult or teen » Humor
Two friends. Twenty-two bands. Three numbers. And thirty-seven prank phone calls...
Timely Persuasion by
Price: $2.22 USD. Words: 87,570. Language: English. Published: October 3, 2009 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » General
(4.00 from 1 review)
A washed-up music critic goes back in time. What does he do? He tries to save Kurt Cobain. He tries to fix his own love life. He tries to prevent his sister’s death. And he tries to turn his father into the greatest songwriter of all time — even if he didn’t exactly write the songs. What could go wrong?

JL Civi's tag cloud

1990s    a love extreme    albumoriented fan fiction    based on an album    benji hughes    bizarro    bonnaroo    bowling    brain    bumbershoot    call center    coachella    detective    donut shop    donuts    doorbell    dreams meaning    driving    duty calls    festival    fired from job    glastonbury    heart    human anatomy    human resources    jack malik    jamaica    james bond    jlc    jury duty    kurt cobain    lollapalooza    lyrics    magical realism    magician    music    musician    pavement    quit your job    reading    roadtrip    screenwriter    shawn smith    short ebooks    short story    space people    startup    stealing songs    stephen malkmus    termination    time travel    weird fiction    wikipedia    workplace