Why I made Jerome
A short story about the tools I use all day, and the ones I did not have when I wrote.
I'm a programmer. All day I work in an editor that knows my whole project. Every file is a click away. It finishes the names I use as I start to type them. Every change I make is kept, and I can look back at it or take it back. I can search everything at once, do nearly anything from the keyboard, and nothing gets in my way.
When I sat down to write, I had none of that. I had a word processor, made for letters and reports, where a long book becomes one long scroll. Or I had apps that wanted my words in their cloud, behind an account and a monthly fee. Neither felt like a place to think.
So I built the place I wanted. Jerome keeps a book the way the tools programmers use keep a project: every chapter in reach, every character's name offered as you type it, every change kept until you decide on it, and a search that looks through everything. I left out the jargon. You should never need to know how it works inside to use it.
It began small. Ten years ago, in 2016, it was a small script, written for the books published by Liberty Bell Edizioni. The rest grew from there.
I also wanted it to be mine, and now yours. Your projects are ordinary folders on your computer. Jerome works without the internet, so you can write somewhere no one can reach you. You pay for it once, and it is yours.
Jerome is made by one person: me, in my own time. So when you write to me, I am the one who answers. Jerome will keep growing, with care, and every new version is yours too, at no extra cost.
I hope it gives you a quieter place to write.
Federico