From the mobile desk of E. R. Harris: Elephants and Alzheimer’s

Memory is an odd thing . . . indelible in some cases. Elephants come to mind, when they risk dying from thirst in order to journey miles into the savannah to visit the skulls of their ancestors, trumpeting sad songs with their trunks. Then there are those human beings who are afflicted (blessed) with an eidetic memory, and can replay any moment of their life like watching a video of themself. The actress from the popular 80’s TV show Taxi, Marilu Henner, is one of those. Watching a documentary discussing photographic memory, we meet Henner’s husband, and I cringed to think of a scenario where my wife could replay in her mind every single time I did her wrong or said something idiotic over the past ten years we’ve been married. Yikes! He’s a trooper that man!

Oppositely, it can be tragically absent—or fleeting—in other people’s cases. Anyone who has had a relative go through Alzheimer’s-related symptoms understands how desperately we can pine for even the simplest of remembrances . . . that we were once loved. That they know who we are.

Of course, like all things, there is a gray spectrum between the polar opposites of Elephants and Alzheimer’s, and I can get lost wading in the minutiae of how much is just the right amount of memory.

For me, an example of an extraordinary memory, but one with “good” connotations, came when I looked at this photograph for the first time in many years. I know exactly what scene I am writing when that picture was taken. The main protagonist from Book One—Chronicles of the Mermaid, The Twelve Moons of the Dolphin Princess, has been shipwrecked on Horse Island. I remember the excitement and enthusiasm of tearing through these next scenes knowing that the love affair between Naias and Stephen, building the entire book, is finally about to happen . . .

As an artist, if your own artwork doesn’t move you—I mean really move you—it seems a logical conclusion the story or poem or song or painting will also fail to excite an intended audience.

One thing I love about being a writer, especially now that I have begun to focus on fictional prose, is the feeling I get when I am immersed for hours in a particularly intense scene. It’s like I’m standing right there watching from a few steps away—I actually feel the emotions of my characters, and when one is betrayed—or something worse happens to them—it can be a punch in the gut. Conversely, I savor in their victories and feel butterflies when the protagonists are nervous.

One of my heroes in the fantasy/sci-fi genre is Brandon Sanderson. The fact he was chosen to ghost-write Robert Jordan’s incredible epic saga Wheel of Time, posthumously, is all the credentials any writer would ever need, but he has gone on to be a prolific world-builder of his own, with details that would make J.R.R. Tolkein’s eyebrows raise. But Cosmere and Middle Earth only keep a reader’s interest if they area invested in the characters.

Last Summer I was crushing the second book of The Stormlight Archive, my favorite of Sanderson’s multiple series and stand-alones, and at one point I threw the book down yelling. “No! That’s bullshit! No way, he can’t just leave them out there like that!” My wife was out on the deck doing some work on her laptop and gave me the eye. “What’s your deal?” How could I tell her that back-stabbing snake of a bastard Prince Sadeas left Dalinar and Adolin out on the Scattered Plains, outnumbered by Parshendi warriors, surrounded, their deaths imminent.

Good writing, good storytelling should do that. It should provoke emotion in the audience. I am proud to say that Chronicles moved me to tears, increased my heart rate and made me sigh with delight—even after the fifth edit! I’m hoping you go through the same ups and downs that I did, and that you get a sense of the drama that is only just building in Book One, will reach incredible heights in Book Two, The Eight Clans of the Merfolk, and continue to thrill and entertain in Book Three, The Two Twins.

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