The cool payoff of my choice to post items about Vegas After Midnight here on the Monkey is that it gets conversations going, and conversations motivate me to think more about the setting and to keep sharing more. Daniel and J.J. have been especially helpful in this regard lately with their comments in previous VAM-related posts. Thanks guys. Feel free to keep it up.

The other day when I shared a draft text of what I plan to use as an opener for the book, a conversation got started about how that text reads very differently depending on whom the reader envisions to be speaking it – and that (as I interpreted the comments) if a person doesn’t have the right kind of image in her head when reading it, it can come off as obtuse and overly chewy. This is something I appreciated hearing, because it motivated me to think and clarify my plans for the character who is going to be “saying” those words, not to mention writing/saying most of the flavor text of the whole book. Picchiatello Jack is THE narrative voice through which I’ll be communicating. So I agree, it’s important to be sure I frame his voice and style right up front. And I plan to do just that as the text goes through its various editorial and playtest stages.

Meanwhile, the immediate thought-exercise that I was inspired to try (and share here) is to construct a recipe of the various archetypal ingredients and pop-culture inspirations for this newly-revealed narrative voice, Picchiatello Jack. The things I’ve shared about him so far have pretty overtly taken the character in the direction of a Tim Curry kind of guy, since he’s the only name I’ve specifically associated – and Curry IS a solid influence, to be sure. But I decided to sit down and work out where else I am drawing inspiration from with this guy, and to what degree.

So, here’s my recipe for Picchiatello Jack: Read the full post.