✉♫ Balancing Life and Writing - Brian Paone

Today we welcome back author Brian Paone who takes over our blog to tell us about "Balancing Life and Writing". His latest release is Moonlight City Drive (6 November 2017, Scout Media, 260 pages), a Supernatural Crime-Noir Novel.

"Told with an almost Coen Brothers-style cynicism, this book will take you down a dark and twisted path, where the characters' sick and twisted fantasies of a perfect society will have them unintentionally destroying their own lives and those of the ones closest to them." ~ Christopher Ruland (Amazon "Verified Purchase)

"A film noir with fedoras, trench coats, whisky and cigars, but demons and witches are waiting on the corners and in the alleys." ~ Erky-Nagy Katalin (Amazon Verified Purchase) 

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Balancing Life and Writing

by Brian Paone

I’ve published four novels, and my typical day during the writing of each book was totally different from each other.

When I was writing my first book, Dreams Are Unfinished Thoughts [2007; a memoir about being friends with a drug-addicted rock star], I was in the middle of moving from Massachusetts to Georgia, changing police departments, and recording an album with my band, Transpose [A Delicate Impact, 2007].

So, a typical day would be: get everything done first for the move, switching jobs, the recording studio, and whatever time was left at night: work on the book. We also didn’t have any kids yet.

With my second novel, Welcome to Parkview [2010; a macabre cerebral-horror novel] (which I had started in 1991) my wife had been deployed to Djibouti [located in the Horn of Africa] and I was working full time at the police department in Georgia, and we had two kids now. So, I was alone without my wife, with two toddlers, and working full time.

My day would be: get the kids to daycare, go work fighting crime for 8 hours, pick the kids up and do whatever household chores I had to do (laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping etc.), feed the kids dinner and put them to bed around 6:30, then I would work out for an hour, and then I would work on Welcome to Parkview after I showered until whenever I passed out at my laptop.

How about this gem from Dec 1993 -- I was 17 years old. 

I'm writing the first draft of my novel, "Welcome to Parkview" in this picture, taken by my Mom in my bedroom. Yes, that is a real Brother Word Processor I had just got for Christmas from my parents, so I could finish the book on something more practical that a typewriter.

With my third novel, Yours Truly. 2095 [2015; a time-travel romance novel], the Navy had sent us to Japan for the next 4 years. I had to take a leave of absence at the police department, and we moved the family there. I did not get a job right away, as my wife wanted me to be the stay at home parent during our time in Japan (I did eventually become a Criminal Justice professor for the college on base, but that’s irrelevant to the book.)

We moved in November 2011 and by January 2012 I was itching to write. For the first time, I had the TIME to write, and not having to worry about a new job, moving, or wiping poopy diapers. So, in February 2012, I started my outline, and writing the book was my full-time job for a while.

We sent out two kids to Japanese Kindergarten (called a Yochien in Japan) and they were gone Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 4:00. I would bring them to the bus stop, wave goodbye, go back up into our apartment, and write until the bus brought them back. It was the first time I could write without distractions, and the first time I was writing not being dead-tired at night after putting in a full day.

Moonlight City Drive [2017; a supernatural, crime-noir detective novel], was the first book where I had a legit writing office. When we moved from Japan to North Carolina, one of the stipulations my wife had on finding a new house was that it would have a writing office for me. One with doors. And a writing desk. And I could decorate it any way I wanted.

So this new novel was written, for the first time, in a closed-off environment from the distractions of the outside world (and that includes the kids, TV, and normal household noise.) So, it’s not surprising that out of my 4 novels, this one was completely the quickest from inception to publication.

When I was in my office writing, my wife treated it like a job, so she made sure the kids stayed away from me and other household chores were taken care of so I wouldn’t be bothered. I did go back to work as a police office in North Carolina, so my days off from the streets were my days on writing the book.

Moonlight City Drive
Available NOW!

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