Thoughts on Writing & Memory

While digging into my current WIP I found myself harking back to some of the questions I asked in the course of writing this post from a few years ago regarding the human memory and the writer's attempts to play with memory over the course of a narrative. Worth diving into again, and I stand by the recommendations below. Happy Valentine's Day to all who observe it!

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Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

                 

                                      — Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Orator

My brother-in-law has a saying: "With family, it is best to have a short memory." 

I was thinking about this quote during a recent conversation I had with my wife. She showed me a photo of something and I asked her what it was. She said to me, "I showed you this thing just the other day."

I responded with an intelligent, "You did?"

And, in that patient tone she tends to employ with me when I'm being especially dense (it happens a lot), she said, "Yes, and you said at the time, 'Looks exactly like I pictured it.'”

I have no memory of this conversation. Or had no memory of it, until my wife reminded me of what I had said.  And I think this is an interesting illustration of how tricky human memory can be.

And what’s even trickier is trying to write human memory in all of its forms: straight remembering; having some thing tickle at the back of your skull, but you can’t quite put your finger on it; not remembering at all, etc.

Luckily we're not talking about THIS kind of "Memory."

One of the things that I have always prided myself on throughout my life, is my memory. Now deep in the midst of my late 50s, I find certain names dates, etc., elude me and I have to reach for them. 

I have also noticed, as illustrated in the instance related above, that my mind is pretty efficient about discarding memory that is trivial or completely unimportant to my long-term goals, to my long-term interests, or to anything other than being in the moment. 

And yet other such memories, the feeling of hiking the Virgin River in Zion National Park, for example, could be a cursory memory that some people wouldn’t remember. And yet I do, and I don’t just remember the hiking. I also remember the sun filtering off the canyon walls, the smell of the river, as I waded through it, the sound of people murmuring to each other as they hiked up the river, and so on and so forth.

Like I said, memory is a tricky thing. 

And it's even more dicey to effectively to write about it. 

Some examples that spring to mind (Warning: there are a few SPOILERS looming ahead)

In his novel Inferno Dan Brown has his protagonist Robert Langdon awaken in an Italian hospital with no memory of the past several days, and he spends the lion's share of of the rest of the book trying to put together some fragmented images and some sentence fragments, especially the repeated phrase “very sorry,” repeated over and over again. Turns out he was thinking of the Italian artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari.

For my money, Brown draws this out quite a bit longer than necessary, and this eventual "revelation" is expected to carry far too much of the load as a plot transition point. This is no criticism of Dan Brown. Far from it. I'll be the first to say that his experiment with the vagaries of a fragmented memory and their collective effect on the narrative, especially when the point-of-view character is the one struggling with their memory, is one worth taking. And it's definitely a larger risk than I have taken in my own fiction writing.

This trope has been around for a while. Memory loss has frequently been used as a crutch tossed into any number of formulaic novels/films/TV shows over the years, with mixed results. Thinking especially of some good examples (The Prisoner, starring the inimitable Patrick McGoohan, and the ambitious World War II psychological thriller 36 Hours–a film featuring superb performances by James Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Rod Taylor–both come to mind) and some hokey ones (Pretty much anything produced by 60s/70s Hollywood TV heavyweight Quinn Martin, with the exception of two stand-out series (The Fugitive and The Streets of San Francisco).

And there are, of course, many other relatively recent novels/films that have played around with sketchy memory: not least the Guy Pearce vehicle Memento, which turns on the point of view character having brain damage that has affected his ability to process short-term memory into long-term memory, and Dennis Lehane's terrific novel (and the Martin Scorsese-helmed film of the same name adapted from it) Shutter Island–a master class in the use of an unreliable narrator.

Other successful novels (and films adapted from them) in the unreliable narrator vein include such bestsellers as The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window, neither of which I have read–Or maybe I actually have, and just don't remember? (*rimshot*)–and both of which I am given to understand make use of questionable memory on the part of the main character (at least in part alcohol-induced). 

There have been so many films of this variety, that the whole subgenre even has its own excellent parody: the 2022 Netflix miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It's worth your time. Kristen Bell alone as the main character is worth the price of admission.

For me, though, no one has ever done the "shattered memory holding back the main character, who must race against time to put the pieces together" thing quite so well as thriller master Robert Ludlum.

I'm talking, of course, about Ludlum's masterwork, The Bourne Identity. And yes, I am well aware that Ludlum's novel has long since been adapted into a rightly well-regarded series of thriller films starring Matt Damon and Brian Cox. If you haven't seen these films, I urge you to do so. They are incredibly well-done.

And yet, if you haven't read the source material, Ludlum's original novel...even if you have seen the movies based on it, I strongly urge you to give the book a chance. There are so many differences between book and movies, and I don't want to spoil them, so I'll just close with a phrase that Ludlum used (to vastly greater effect) as his own earlier version of Brown's "very sorry":

"Cain is for Carlos, and Delta is for Cain."

How about you? Favorite works of fiction that play around with memory? Challenges you have faced trying to play around with memory in your own work? Let us hear from you in the comments section!

See you in two weeks!

Ptolemy VIII Eurgetes: What Your Subjects Call You Behind Your Back Is a Lot More Important Than What They Call You to Your Face (CA. 182–116 B.C.)

The Alexandrians owe me one thing; they have seen their king walk!

—Scipio Aemilianus, Roman politician and general 

That’s right, another Ptolemy. But where the first of our Ptolemaic bastards (Ptolemy I Soter [“Savior”]) was ruthless and shrewd, and the second (Ptolemy Keraunos [“Thunderbolt”]) was brave, intemperate, and violent, our third was a gluttonous monster who celebrated one of his marriages by having his new stepson assassinated in the middle of the wedding feast, and later murdered his own son by this same woman (his sister!) in a brutal and sadistic fashion. 

When he took the throne of Egypt in 145 B.C., our Ptolemy took the reign name “Eurgetes” (Greek for “Benefactor”). In truth he was anything but. Quickly tiring of his lying, his murderous rages, and his rampant gluttony, his subjects began to refer to him as “Physcon” (“Potbelly”) because he was so fat. The quote that leads off this chapter references that physical characteristic as well as his laziness. Beholden to the Roman Republic for its support, Ptolemy VIII was forced to actually walk through the city of Alexandria (as opposed to being carted about in a litter) while playing tour guide to a visiting collection of Roman V.I.P.s, including Scipio Aemilianus, the author of the quote.

Ptolemy "happily" giving Scipio Aemilianus the aforementioned guided tour

A younger son of Ptolemy V who didn’t do the Ptolemaic dynasty any favors, this Ptolemy bounced around from Egypt to Cyprus to Cyrenaica (Libya) until his older brother (also a Ptolemy) died in 145 B.C. The dead Ptolemy’s young son was crowned shortly after his father’s death (taking the regnal name of Ptolemy VII) with his mother, Cleopatra II—no, not that Cleopatra—as co-ruler. In short order, our Ptolemy manipulated the common people into supporting him as king in place of his nephew, and managed to work out a compromise with his sister-also-his-brother’s-widow wherein he married her and the three of them became co-rulers of Egypt. 

Alexandria in the first century B.C.

Not only did Ptolemy then promptly have his nephew (and now stepson) killed at the aforementioned wedding feast, he seduced and married as his second wife the boy’s sister, who also happened to be his own niece, and his wife’s daughter (confused yet?), also named Cleopatra. (No, still not that Cleopatra.) This after knocking up the sister/wife/widow of his dead predecessor herself, siring a son named Ptolemy (again) Memphitis. 

When the people of Alexandria eventually rebelled and sent Ptolemy VIII, the younger Cleopatra, and their children packing to Cyprus, Cleopatra II (the sister/widow/first wife) set up their son Ptolemy Memphitis as co-ruler and herself (once more) as regent. Within a year, our Ptolemy (Ptolemy VIII, if you’re trying to keep track) had the boy, his own son, murdered. Pretty awful, right? Unspeakable? 

No, that’s what came next. Once he’d had the child (no older than twelve) killed, Ptolemy VIII had him dismembered and (according to such ancient sources as Diodorus Siculus and Justin, but treated by modern historians with a healthy dose of skepticism) sent to his mother as a birthday present! As if this wasn’t enough, Ptolemy went on to retake his throne and share power with his first wife (yes, the sister/wife/widow whose sons he’d killed) until he died of natural causes after a long life in 116 B.C. 

At least, as she had done with their elder brother Ptolemy VI, Cleopatra II managed to outlive Physcon, place another of her sons (Ptolemy IX) on the throne as co-ruler, and serve as regent to yet another underage princeling.

Unspeakable bastard. 

Antiochus IV Epiphanes: Why We “Draw the Line” (CA. 215–164 B.C.)

After reading [the senate decree] through [Antiochus] said he would call his friends into council and consider what he ought to do. Popilius, stern and imperious as ever, drew a circle round the king with the stick he was carrying and said, ‘Before you step out of that circle give me a reply to lay before the senate.’ For a few moments [Antiochus] hesitated, astounded at such a peremptory order, and at last replied, ‘I will do what the senate thinks right.’ Not till then did Popilius extend his hand to the king as to a friend and ally.

—Titus Livius (Livy), Ab Urbe Condita (The History of Rome)

Gotta love this guy: a propagandist of the first order, his years in Rome had impressed upon him the futility of fighting that resourceful people and of the importance of staying on their good side. A usurper (no surprise, considering how many Hellenistic monarchs were), he stole the throne from a nephew he later murdered after first marrying the boy’s mother. Antiochus was remembered by the ancient Hebrews as the evil king whose coming was predicted by their prophet Daniel. 

Antiochus was the son of Antiochus III, who ruled the Seleucid Empire (which included parts of present-day Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan). Our Antiochus spent many years as a political hostage to the Roman Republic after a peace treaty between the two countries was established. After his father died, Antiochus’s older brother, Seleucus IV, succeeded to the throne. Antiochus was recalled from Rome, while Seleucus’s older son was sent there as a more appropriate political hostage from the new king. When Seleucus was murdered, his older son was still in Rome. Antiochus took the opportunity to seize the throne, at first calling himself co-ruler. 

It took Antiochus a few years to get around to murdering his nephew. After consolidating his power base, Antiochus next went to war with the much weaker neighboring kingdom of Egypt, all but conquering it before being confronted by the Roman ambassador, Popilius, who demanded that Antiochus withdraw from Egypt or face war with the Roman Republic. This is the source of the adage of “drawing a line in the sand” (as laid out in the quotation that opens this chapter). Antiochus did not step over the line, but retreated from Egypt.

A Renaissance look at the “line in the sand.”

By this time broke and really pissed off, Antiochus decided to loot the city of Jerusalem and its venerable temple on his way home to Syria. In his eyes, it was merely a way of catching the Hebrews up on their back taxes. The Hebrews didn’t see it that way, and when rioting ensued, Antiochus made the serious mistake of trying to suppress the Jewish religion. 

Sept Maccabées, by 
Audierne Saint-Germain

The reasonably foreseeable result was the famous Maccabean uprising. You may have heard of a traditional celebration called Hanukkah? Commemorates the rededication of the temple after Judah Maccabee kicked the Seleucid king’s butt? This is that. Later Seleucid kings agreed to allow the Hebrews their religious freedom and limited political autonomy. By that time, Antiochus had kicked off himself, dying suddenly while fighting rebels in Iran.

And on that note, Happy Hanukkah, and see you in two weeks!

Philip II OF Macedonia: Sometimes the Bastard Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree (382–336 B.C.)

Continuing to excerpt my book The Book of Ancient Bastards. This week, King Philip II of Macedonia, the father and role model of that most terrifying of ancient conquerors, Alexander the Great!

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O how small a portion of earth will hold us when we are dead, who ambitiously seek after the whole world while we are living.

—Philip II of Macedonia 

The hard-bitten, ambitious, and ruthless youngest son of an undistinguished royal house, Philip II of Macedonia was a usurper and military genius who reorganized the army of his backward mountain kingdom and in so doing changed the course of history. He also fathered and trained the most successful conqueror the ancient world ever knew. 

Born in 382 B.C., Philip had two older brothers and was deemed so expendable that he was used as a hostage (a political practice during ancient times in which two sides in any given conflict exchanged Very or Semi Important Persons after the signing of a peace treaty, as guarantee of their future good behavior towards each other). Thus, he spent years in the Greek city-state of Thebes while still a boy, and carefully studied the organization of the Theban army. 

After his return to Macedonia, a Greek-speaking kingdom situated in the mountains and plains north of Greece itself, Philip soon found himself regent for his nephew Amyntas IV, infant son of his older brother Perdiccas II. In 359 B.C., Philip took the throne for himself, setting aside the young king and declaring himself the rightful king. It was a naked exercise of power and nothing else. 

The Macedonian Phalanx

Moving quickly to modernize his army, Philip arranged to pay his soldiers, drilling them incessantly and converting what had previously been feudal levies into the first truly professional nonmercenary fighting force in the ancient world. For the next two decades, he campaigned every year, gradually expanding Macedonia’s territory in all four directions, but especially to the south, toward mainland Greece. 

In 349 B.C., Philip captured the city of Olynthus (in northwestern Greece), whose leaders had made the twin mistake of opposing him and housing two rival claimants to the Macedonian throne. In a preview of what his famous son would later do to those who defied him, Philip destroyed the city utterly and sold its surviving inhabitants into slavery. 

The ruins of ancient Olynthus–destroyed by Philip II in 349 B.C.

By 338 B.C., Philip had conquered all of Greece and the rest of the Balkan peninsula besides. Then he got himself “elected” leader of the so-called “Hellenic League”(a loose collection of Greek city-states that banded together against the Persians). He announced his intention to invade the Persian Empire as revenge for the Persian burning of Athens 150 years previous. 

Philip assassinated at his daughter's wedding

But problems at home distracted him. He quarreled with his son and heir Alexander, who fled along with his mother, Philip’s first wife, Olympias. Recently married (Macedonian kings habitually took more than a single wife) to a much younger woman who quickly bore him another son, Philip disinherited Alexander, making his newborn son his heir. Philip was assassinated in 336 B.C. (allegedly with the complicity of both Alexander and his wild, scheming mother), leaving his infant youngest son as “king” for all of about ten seconds before Alexander, echoing his own father's move against his own brother's son, set aside the baby king and took the throne. 

Critias: Leader of the Thirty Athenian Tyrants– Putting the Terror into Tyranny (436–403 B.C.)

Continuing to excerpt my book The Book of Ancient Bastards. This week: Critias the Athenian tyrant!

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Let it not be in the power of Critias to strike off either me, or any one of you whom he will. But in my case, in what may be your case, if we are tried, let our trial be in accordance with the law they have made concerning those on the list… [Y]ou must see that the name of every one of you is as easily erased as mine.

 —Athenian politician Theramenes, quoted in Xenophon’s Hellenica 

Playwright, poet, scholar, great-uncle of the famous Athenian philosopher Plato (and contemporary of Plato’s even more famous teacher Socrates), Critias was renowned for much of his life as a writer whose work was in demand. He was even featured as the titular character in one of Plato’s dialogues, The Critias. 

Too bad he ended his life as a blood-soaked traitor to everything his city had once stood for, a classic example of conservative overreaction resulting in the loss of much life and property. 

By 404 B.C., Athens had lost its decades-long war with Sparta. As a result of the humiliating peace treaty, the Athenian city walls were leveled, its navy dismantled, and a collection of thirty oligarchs who favored Sparta were placed in charge of the government. Critias, a follower of fellow Athenian bastard Alcibiades during the war, was named one of these oligarchs (known afterward as “The Thirty Tyrants”). 

Critias, a strong personality with lots of scores to settle and bitterness eating away at his very soul, soon embarked on a vendetta against anyone who had ever wronged him. What followed was a bloodbath, one of the first recorded political purges in history.  

“Day after day,” writes Xenophon, “the list of persons put to death for no just reason grew longer.” For every person he denounced and had put to death, Critias received his confiscated property as a reward. When the Athenian statesman Theramenes protested that The Thirty ought to be careful about killing people so indiscriminately, noting that today’s butcher is tomorrow’s butchered, Critias famously responded with a statement that would be echoed for years afterward by politicians conducting similar purges: “If any member of this council, here seated, imagines that an undue amount of blood has been shed, let me remind him that with changes of constitution such things cannot be avoided.” One of the first times a politician used some variation of the notion, “You can’t make any omelet without breaking a few eggs!” 

Critias went on to denounce his former friend Theramenes, calling him a traitor and enemy of both The Thirty and the Spartan troops who had placed them in power. After heated debate, Theramenes was dragged from the meeting and executed on the spot. 

Emboldened by this silencing of their most vocal critic, The Thirty went on to denounce and execute thousands of Athenian citizens, seizing their property as they went. Within a year, the oligarchs had become such an object of fear and hatred that the people rose against them. Critias was killed in the fighting that followed, and his memory was justly damned in the minds of his countrymen for decades afterwards.

See you in two weeks!

The Tyrant Who Sold the Philosopher Plato Into Slavery

A few years back I wrote a series of brief biographical sketches collected in a volume entitled The Book of Ancient Bastards: 101 of the Worst Miscreants and Misdeeds from Ancinet Sumer to the Enlightenment. Now out of print (it is, in fact, the only one of my books not still in print), It remains one of my favorites from among my own work. This week I've decided to share the story from this book, of how an early poet–admittedly an incredibly powerful one–dealt with harsh criticism of his work.

Plato: you expect this guy to be fun at parties?

So here he is, Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse!

When Philosophers and Tyrants Don’t Mix (ca. 432–367 B.C.) 

[Dionysius], taking offence at something [Plato] said to him . . . ordered him to be brought into the common market-place, and there sold as a slave for five minas: but the philosophers (who consulted together on the matter) afterwards redeemed him, and sent him back to Greece, with this friendly advice. . . . That a philosopher should very rarely converse with tyrants.

—Diodorus Siculus, ancient Sicilian Greek geographer and historian 

If ever there was a piece of work who could prove single-handedly that one man holding all the levers of power is usually a lousy idea, it was that real piece of work, Dionysius I, tyrant of the Greek city-state of Syracuse in Sicily. Originally a government clerk, Dionysius rose through the ranks to ultimate power based on his ability as a political, diplomatic, and military strategist. To balance this out, he was also arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and (perhaps worst of all) harbored literary pretensions. 

Bear in mind that Dionysius was a tyrant in the ancient sense of the word (Note: in the ancient Greek world the word 'tyrant' didn't necessarily carry the negative connotation it does today. It simply referred to someone who control of a city by military force and used his troops to enforce his rule.). As such he was a military man, and particularly fearsome in battle. He’d lost an eye early in life, and as a result presented a ferocious image that struck terror in the hearts of his enemies. That terror was justified, as even in victory he could be a particularly ruthless bastard: In 386 B.C., Dionysius led his mercenary army in an attack on the Greek city of Rhegium (now Reggio, in southern Italy). After a protracted and bloody siege, the tyrant, who fancied himself a cultured and enlightened man, sold the entire population of the city into slavery. 

So this was the fearsome antagonist, ruthless conqueror and all-around rough guy, who also fancied himself both a poet and a philosopher, boasting “far more of his poems than of his successes in war,” according to Diodorus. Poetry being a big deal in the ancient world, and Dionysius being the big man on campus in Syracuse, he surrounded himself with other literary and intellectual types, including Plato, who, as described in the quote opening this chapter, got sold as a slave in the public market for speaking his mind in the presence of the philosopher-tyrant. 

In another example of why it’s a bad idea for a creative type to be bluntly open and honest with a benefactor possessing no discernable sense of humor, Dionysius asked the poet Philoxenus what he thought of Dionysius’s poetry. When Philoxenus answered candidly, Dionysius had him dragged off to work in the quarries. 

Dionysius regretted the action once he’d sobered up, freed Philoxenus the next day, then invited him to dinner again. The wine flowed (again) and Dionysius asked (again) what Philoxenus thought of his poetry. In response, Philoxenus told Dionysius’s servants to drag him off to the quarries. This time the tyrant laughed. 

From then on, and for the remainder of his time at Dionysius’s court, Philoxenus promised that he would give truthful criticism of the tyrant’s work while also never again offending him. He accomplished this by basically inventing the double entendre. Dionysius’s poetry, according to Diodorus, was “wretched,” and he had a taste for tragedy, so when Dionysius would declaim a poem with a sad subject, then ask Philoxenus what he thought about it, the poet would reply, “Pitiful!” 

Dionysius is reputed to have either been murdered by his doctors to make way for his son to succeed him or to have died of alcohol poisoning from having drunk too much celebrating a win by some of his poetry at a festival in Greece. Either way, neither Dionysius, nor his poetry, proved "deathless."

And Philoxenus? He eventually left Syracuse and went on to write his most famous and successful poem, a comic piece called Cyclops, about the ridiculous passion of the mythical one-eyed monster for a beautiful goddess. Most people assumed that he was making fun of his one-eyed former benefactor. 

If Dionysius wrote a poem about his feelings on the matter, it hasn’t survived.

Thoughts on Writing & Memory

Dear Fellow Sleuthsayers- It’s the beginning of another school at the day gig, and due to some things going on with my family, I’ve been thinking a lot about both memory and how one writes about it. Reposting this piece from 2023, and will follow up next time in the rotation I’ll expand on these thoughts.

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Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.    

   – Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Orator

My brother-in-law has a saying. "With family, it is best to have a short memory."

I was thinking about this quote during a recent conversation I had with my wife. She showed a photo of something and I asked her what it was. She said to me, "I showed you this thing just the other day.

I responded with an intelligent, "You did?"

And she said, "Yes, and you said at the time, 'Looks exactly like I pictured it.'”

I have no memory of this conversation. Or had no memory of it, until my wife reminded me of what I said.  And I think this is an interesting illustration of how tricky human memory can be.

And what’s even trickier is trying to write human memory in all of its forms: straight remembering; having some thing tickle at the back of your skull, but you can’t quite put your finger on it; not remembering at all, etc.

Luckily we're not talking about THIS kind of "Memory."

One of the things that I have always prided myself on throughout my life, is my memory. Now deep in the midst of my late 50s, I find certain names dates, etc., elude me and I have to reach for them. 

I have also noticed, as illustrated in the instance related above, that my mind is pretty efficient about discarding memory that is trivial or completely unimportant to my long-term goals, to my long-term interests, or to anything other than being in the moment. 

And yet other such memories, the feeling of hiking the Virgin River in Zion National Park, for example, that could be a cursory memory that some people wouldn’t remember. And yet I do, and I don’t just remember the hiking. I also remember the sun filtering off the canyon walls, the smell of the river, as I waded through it, the sound of people murmuring to each other as they hiked up the river, and so on and so forth.

Like I said, memory is a tricky thing. 

And it's even more dicey to effectively to write about it. 

Some examples that spring to mind (Warning: there are a few SPOILERS looming ahead)

In his novel Inferno Dan Brown has his protagonist Robert Langdon awaken in an Italian hospital with no memory of the past several days, and he spends the lion's share of of the rest of the book trying to put together some fragmented images and some sentence fragments, especially the repeated phrase “very sorry,” repeated over and over again. Turns out he was thinking of the Italian artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari.

For my money, Brown draws this out quite a bit longer than necessary, and this eventual "revelation" is expected to carry far too much of the load as a plot transition point. This is no criticism of Dan Brown. Far from it. I'll be the first to say that his experiment with the vagaries of a fragmented memory and their collective effect on the narrative, especially when the point-of-view character is the one struggling with their memory, is one worth taking. And it's definitely a larger risk than I have taken in my own fiction writing.

This trope has been around for a while. Memory loss has frequently been used as a crutch tossed into any number of formulaic novels/films/TV shows over the years, with mixed results. Thinking especially of some good examples (The Prisoner, starring the inimitable Patrick McGoohan, comes to mind) and some hokey ones (Pretty much anything produced by 60s/70s Hollywood TV heavyweight Quinn Martin, with the exception of The Fugitive and The Streets of San Francisco).

And there are , of course, many other relatively recent novels/films that have played around with sketchy memory: not least the Guy Pearce vehicle Memento, which turns on the point of view character having brain damage that has affected his ability to process short-term memory into long-term memory, and Dennis Lehane's terrific novel (and the Martin Scorsese-helmed film of the same name adapted from it) Shutter Island–a master class in the use of an unreliable narrator.

Other successful novels (and films adapted from them) in the unreliable narrator vein include such bestsellers as The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window, neither of which I have read, and both of which I am given to understand make use of questionable memory on the part of the main character (at least in part alcohol-induced). 

There have been so many films of this variety, that the whole subgenre even has its own excellent parody: the 2022 Netflix miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It's worth your time. Kristen Bell alone as the main character is worth the price of admission.

For me, though, no one has ever done the "shattered memory holding back the main character, who must race against time to put the pieces together" thing quite so well as thriller master Robert Ludlum.

I'm talking, of course, about Ludlum's masterwork, The Bourne Identity. And yes, I am well aware that Ludlum's novel has long since been adapted into a rightly well-regarded series of thriller films starring Matt Damon and Brian Cox. If you haven't seen these films, I urge you to do so. They are incredibly well-done.

And yet, if you haven't read the source material, Ludlum's original novel...even if you have seen the movies based on it, I strongly urge you to give the book a chance. There are so many differences between book and movies, and I don't want to spoil them, so I'll just close with a phrase that Ludlum used (to vastly greater effect) as his own earlier version of Brown's "very sorry":

"Cain is for Carlos, and Delta is for Cain."

How about you? Favorite works of fiction that play around with memory? Challenges you have faced trying to play around with memory in your own work? Let us hear from you in the comments section!

See you in two weeks!

The Dog Days of Summer

(Locked in the middle of another July heatwave, so this repost from LAST July seems really timely. See you in two weeks!)

Happy Mid-July! Hot enough for ya?

Funny story- I grew up in a literal suburban cul-de-sac. But Instead of a couple of split-level ranch houses at the endpoint where our little slice of suburbia eventually expanded into the inevitable dead-end circle, there was a large corral that served as a home for several llamas.

The cloven-hooved, Inca-pack-animal-kind.

Not the robe-sporting, enlightenment-spewing kind.

This kind.

So of course the residents of our court (it wasn't a "street," or a "place," or a "drive," but a "court.") had to accustom themselves to a seemingly never-ending, slow rolling procession of people out for their daily walks, who liked to come down and look at the llamas. It could make our quiet side street pretty busy, especially in the summertime.

Now, this was the late-‘70s/early ‘80s. The time of the After School Special, Kool-Aid commercials, and Bert Convey hosting Match Game. To say, “It was a different time,” would be a massive understatement.

And not least because we never ever locked our front door.

Ever.

Well, okay. Maybe when we were going out of town.

Because it was the ‘70s?

Nah.

Because three of our neighbors on our cul-de-sac were cops.

Yep. The guy to our right, and the guy to our left, and the guy across the street.

One patrol officer. One detective. One long-time undercover operative.

Lived next to all three of them for a couple of decades. I guess that this experience has helped hone both my tastes as a reader and my writing style when it comes to crime fiction.

I’ve said it before elsewhere and it certainly bears repeating: Ubervillains BORE me. Unrealistic. Usually a crutch for laaaaaaaazzzzzzyyyyyy writing, and just not at all my thing.

Turns out the same holds true for me when it comes to cops. Or for all law enforcement types, for that matter. Superheroes BORE me!

Is this because the neighbor who worked undercover as a fake biker, sitting in biker bars and eavesdropping on biker gang members doing drug buys looked an awful lot like a young Wilford Brimley unless he had a week’s worth of beard going? Or that the beat cop on the other side was a lousy gardener who took inordinate pride in the hedges he mutilated? And that his son was a stiff-necked jock who barely tolerated his dad, his wife detested him and his elder daughter was kinda messed up? Or that the detective across the way never touched either coffee or cigarettes? Or that all three o them were certainly scofflaws when it came to the 4th of July, and the county-wide ban on fireworks such as M-80s?

Maybe. Or maybe, like my Vietnam War hero helicopter pilot father, I just have a hard time suspending disbelief when seeing something in a story, fiction or otherwise, that directly contradicts my own lived experiences? (For my dad it was stuff like seeing Jan-Michael Vincent turn on “whisper mode” in his stealth helicopter in the 80s TV action-adventure show Airwolf. Boy did that crack him up!).

I like to think that my lived experience has helped make me a more discerning reader and a better writer. For me, the character has to be believable. The guys who lived around me were hardly Dirty Harry. But they also weren’t cops from the “Files of Police Squad,” either.

And I guess that’s how I like my characters. Realistic.

Anyway, that’s it or me this go-round. Happy Dog Days to you!

Pet Peeves: 2025 Writing Edition

Interesting, title, right? Perhaps a little provocative?

Let’s be clear. I’m talking about writing pet peeves.

I mean, come on. This is a blog ostensibly about writing. And while many of my fellow SleuthSayers and yours truly frequently indulge our impulses to discuss other interests, There’s plenty going on in the writing world right now that merits commentary.

In light of this, I offer below a few of my own beefs about current trends in writing, As well as some pithy observations from other writers among my circle of friends. Where the comment is my own, I have left it unattributed. Other contributors are noted alongside their entries.

With that said, let us begin.

GROUND/FLOOR

I’ve noticed lately that a lot of writers (Many of them, Indie) have a tendency to conflate the words “ground” and “floor”.

For example:

“The glass candelabra dropped from her hand, crashing into a hundred pieces when it hit the ground.” 

This when the character is in a second story bedroom. Not outside, and not even in a basement with a dirt floor!

I have seen this literally dozens of times in books I’ve read over the past year. What’s more, said conflation seems to go only one way. And that is using the word “ground” when the word “floor” is appropriate.

I have yet to see something along the lines of: “Milton stood in the middle of the road, watching the wagon retreat into the distance. And when it had gone from sight, he fell to his knees on the dusty floor.”

Weird, huh?

An actual example of something actually being thrown on the actual ground.

NOT JUST THE TITLE OF A TERRIFIC PETER GABRIEL ALBUM

I’m referring, of course, to the word “so.”

Specifically, at the head of a sentence, and solely used in dialogue.

For example: “So I heard you got cancer.”

I suppose seeing something like this once or twice over the course of 80-90k words is one thing. But here’s the thing about “dialogue leading so”: once it crops up one place, pretty soon you’re seeing it as dialogue tag signaling a transition in every conversation in said book. I have seen this time and again. And that is just lazy writing. Why not just go with: “I heard you got cancer.”?

AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON (OVER)USING A.I.

No question A.I. can come in handy when a writer needs a quick answer to a research question in the middle of a scene. We’ve all been there. It’s like a Google search on steroids.

But (and again, I’m seeing this mostly with Indie writers) I have begun to see bloated passages where paragraphs tend to run together, often repeating the exposition of a certain set of facts over and over, as if to show the importance of said facts, and the intensity of the revelation of their existence by sheer repetition.

Mess around with any form of A.I. long enough and this pattern can seem awfully familiar. And then there’s stuff like this:

Readers Annoyed When Fantasy Novel Accidentally Leaves AI Prompt in Published Version, Showing Request to Copy Another Writer’s Style.

And apparently there are plenty of other examples of this sort of thing.

And when caught out, the authors in question seem to be leaning hard on the notion that what tripped them up and revealed their use of generative AI constituted an “editing mistake.”

Uh-huh.

Laurie Rockenbeck says:

If I see “long moment” I want to scream. (Mainly because a best selling author uses it ten times in every novel….)

David Schlosser (who writes as “dbschlosser”) says:

Hyphenation proliferation. The stupidest example I see everywhere now is 70-percent.

Or seven-out-of-ten.

It's like engineers using Random Capital Letters to tell you How Important This Is.

I (also) have an opinion about "as" from editing non-native English speakers' technical reports.

Because, since, as all *can* mean the same thing ... and so we should choose carefully which word to use in each instance.

Because is explicitly causal. In research on influence and persuasion, it is literally a magic word - people will do things they would not otherwise do when they hear a reason justified by "because."

"Since" and "as" both have temporal implications "because" does not have.

Use "since" to describe time elapsed SINCE something happened - not to describe why what happened since then happened.

Use "as" to describe events occurring simultaneously.

Use "because" to describe cause-and-effect relationships.

Jim Thomsen says:

I would say the growing reliance on histrionic reaction beats in thrillers. From a recently released novel: “Guilt had twisted in my entrails like a knife.”

Other examples:

“Anxiety churns along her skin.”

“Anger, pulsing anger, dripped down her body.”

“Grief hurtled toward me, crashing into me and beating inside my chest like a giant, furious animal.”

“Horror stole over me like a mist, uncurling deep within. And then a fiery knot began to burn in my stomach.”

“Agony was stamped indelibly on his body, weighted across the miserable hunch of his shoulders. He looked smaller somehow, shrunken, the way a grape shrivels into a raisin.”

I collect these.

My evergreen sarcastic retort: “That makes my heart pound like a hooker’s headboard in a highway hotel.”

******

And that is about as great a last word as we’re gonna find. So I’ll leave it there. How about you? Pet peeves? Got ‘em? Share ‘em in the Comments section below!

See you in two weeks!