It's Tricky to Remember to Forget

A Man with a Past
Brothers in Arms, book #2

The hero in my soon-to-release novel A Man with a Past, has amnesia. I mean he has it through the whole stinking book....well almost. He gets his memory back at the end...in the nick of time you might say! 

It was fun but I hope I did it alright. 

I've written one other character with amnesia and before long at all I just flat out gave her her memory back. It was just too HARD to remember to forget.

You don't really realize it until you start writing it, but a character spends a lot of time with internal thoughts. And in ways large and small those internal thoughts are concerned with who they are. How something is affecting them.

Sure sometimes they think things like, "When I was married to Betsy, I'd've never said such a thing." Or more mildly, "He'd decided to never marry again. Losing Betsy had hurt too much."

You can't do that with amnesia. No worrying because you were frightened by a barking dog as a child, nearly struck by lightning as a teenager, lost your parents in a flood as a young adult.

Nope, none of that, because YOU CAN'T REMEMBER ANY OF THAT HAPPENED.

It's tricky to remember to forget. 

You need to re-write, revised, regularly, specifically looking for oops moments when a character is acting as they normally do which includes, tiny moments of memory, the things that make a person who they are.

And that act of memory is so fundamental to writing...backstory...internal conflict...fears and joys and strengths and weaknesses. We are trained to write all of that into a character. Well forget it. My recommendation is frequent and very specific revisions looking for a character remembering or reacting based on a memory.

A bigger issue, how does having no memory affect your personality. ARE you afraid of dogs? ARE you afraid of lightning storms. Would you be? Seriously, how deep does a fear or phobia go? If you can't remember almost getting struck by lightning, then are you unafraid? I really couldn't quite decide. On this one, I just went with my own approach but I tried to be consistant about it.

Anyway, my hero Falcon Hunt isn't afraid of anything, so that doesn't apply. 

He was a fun character to write because he talks like a Tennessee hillbilly. I'd never done a book with that strange, unique accent before and I enjoyed it. 

An example of how Falcon talks from the opening of A Man with a Past:

When a man grows up in wild country, huntin’ food, eyes wide open for trouble, he knows when he’s being watched.

And that man there, back’a him weren’t out lookin’ for a place to have a Sunday picnic.

Falcon’d fought shy of a dozen towns and wanted no part of Independence, Missouri. Ceptin’ he didn’t know where in tarnation he was going and to his understanding this was his last chance to figure it out.

So he went ridin’ right smack into that beehive of a town on his old rawboned mule to find out how to get to Wyoming. And a man commenced to following.

To a lot of men, it might be right hard to spot a single man on these crowded streets full of shops and freight wagons. Everywhere he turned people swarmed.

But staying alive wasn’t easy in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee, where a man could find a way to die near every time he turned around. And yet here Falcon stood, as tall and rawboned as his mule, proving he was a tough, savvy man and he didn’t intent to trust to luck with that man on his tail.

He intended to trust to skill.

Falcon was fun to write. His main enduring skill is his utter trust in himself to take care of himself and anything else that cropped up. He had a skinning knife and his old single-shot rifle. And he has the wilderness. He can cloth and feed  himself and he isn't one speck worried about doing it.

And then a blow to the head, actually a gunshot to the head, and he can't remember a thing. And he's in the wilderness. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

Have you ever written an amnesiac? Have you ever wanted to? Have you ever tried and gotten so tired of the stumbling blocks you just give your character their memory back for your own sanity?

Today I'm giving away a signed copy of A Man with a Past. Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing.

A Man with a Past

Falcon Hunt awakens without a past, or at least not one he can recall. He's got brothers he can't remember, and he's interested in the prettiest woman in the area, Cheyenne. Only trouble is, a few flashes of memory make Falcon wonder if he's already married. He can't imagine abandoning a wife. But his pa did just that--twice. When Falcon claims his inheritance in the West, Cheyenne is cut out of the ranch she was raised on, leaving her bitter and angry. And then Falcon kisses her, adding confusion and attraction to the mix.

Soon it's clear someone is gunning for the Hunt brothers. When one of his brothers is shot, Falcon and Cheyenne set out to find who attacked him. They encounter rustled cattle, traitorous cowhands, a missing woman, and outlaws that take all their savvy to overcome. As love grows between these two independent people, Falcon must piece together his past if they're to have any chance at a future. 

AND A SALE!!

The Accidental Guardian is currently on sale in in Kindle for $1.99

Be careful when you click that the sale is still on. I noticed the NOOK book version has returned to full price so I suppose it's about over!

Hello from Insanity Central!

Mary Connealy checking in from the mad center of my universe

I've got a sweet 90-year-old mama who's ailing.

A new granddaughter who is just precious--but seems to think crying and eating are all there is to life! C'mon kid, Grandma's old and tired--you're six weeks old, time to start playing with us--and sleeping--and listening to sweet reason when Grandma begs you to settle down!

Add in Christmas, New Years, a book to write, a book to revise and a book to release...and...well...I am full of excuses for why I am scrambling madly through life these days.

The book to release is what I'm talking about today.

I wrote a gothic romance! Yikes.

This is the most fun I've ever had writing a book...and I've had many, many great times writing, so that's saying something.

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But I wrote this book YEARS AGO called The Devil's Nest.
I would sit in my computer room just off the living room and write and LAUGH OUT LOUD. I mean I was CACKLING!
And the children, would come and look in the computer room with such weird expressions, like they're thinking, "Just checking to see if you need us to get a net, Mom."

The title has been changed to Loving the Mysterious Texas (Garrison's Law book #5).
Think.........Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier meets And Then There Were None by Agatha Christy
Now how could that not be fun???
But the spooky old pirate's lair is called The Devil's' Nest.

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Enter the sweet, innocent maiden hired to gather and make order out of the old family papers that fill the attic....for historical reasons, she's told. But the truth is, an evil family KNOWS the pirate who built the monstrosity hid his treasure somewhere in this gothic mansion.
The search is over 200 years old ever since the wife he betrayed and battered, cast herself off the roof of the house, taking her secret to the grave.

As I wrote--back then--I would think, I have to make her go into the attic while she KNOWS a murder roams the spooky old house.
Add to that, I couldn't bear to have her be an idiot.
Why would she do that? Why would she go up there alone?
Only an idiot would go up there alone? If she goes up there alone she deserves to die just so she doesn't have children and weaken the herd!

Did I mention the hero was called away from the house?
Did I mention the hero might be the killer?
How about...the electricity is off? I don't think the idiot even had a candle!

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No reason to even deal, at this point, with her amnesia and waking up next to a dead guy. A dead guy who everyone thinks SHE KILLED. She can't remember but she doesn't think she killed him. Except the hero assures her most people want to kill Victor so she might have.
There might be a ghost.
Here's an interesting fact about amnesia in a character.
You don't realize it but, as someone who is a big believer in weaving in backstory a bit at a time, a person with amnesia...……...has no backstory in her own head.

Other people can tell her about herself.
But she can never have the constant small thoughts like, When the lightning struck it was terrifying, she'd been afraid of storms since the night her parents died.

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You can't do that.
Because she DOESN'T REMEMBER HER PARENTS.
She can't say, "I'm doing this because I've loved history all my life."
She can't think, "I took this job because I was desperate for the money because--"
Anyway, I found it so frustrating that I finally just had her get her memory back waaaay ahead of schedule just so I could STOP STUMBLING OVER THE STUPID AMNESIA!
If you want to write an amnesia story (and who doesn't) be warned. But also, if you do it, HAVE FUN!

Let's talk FUN.
What's the most fun you've ever had writing a book.
What made you laugh, what sent chills up and down your spine.
Do you make yourself cry? That can be fun!
Or heartbreaking...tricky.

Tell me about the most fun you've ever had writing a book and every comment gets your name in a drawing for an ebook copy of Loving the Mysterious Texan

Loving the Mysterious Texas

The ebook is up and will release in a week. The paperback will be there, too, but no pre-order available on ebooks. Weird!

Click here to pre-order

Garrison's Law goes gothic.

Amnesia, murder, treasure and ghosts.
A woman wakes up next to a dead man with no idea how she got there, who he is.....who SHE is.
Grey Devereau drags a terrified woman out of his cousin's bed...his very dead cousin. It looks for all the world like she killed him. But then everyone who knows Victor wants to kill him eventually. Grey included.
Lanny Cole, the young woman hired to research the history of the Devereau family, can't remember a thing.
Grey steps in with an alibi and Lanny realizes that if Grey is her alibi, then she's his. She decides to trust him, but then she's suffered a head injury. So she's probably making one stupid decision after another.
And then someone else dies. And a hurricane cuts them all off from help. And then someone else dies....
And the rumors of ghosts and treasure can't be true. Sure Grey saw the ghost, in fact, he's pretty sure the ghost saved his life as a child. But he was upset at the time and he doesn't believe in ghosts.
Chills and thrills abound in an old island home built by a loathsome pirate. He's not a Garrison, but when he gets in trouble, he turns to his old friend Case Garrison for help.
Garrison's Law just got spooky.

And just to be thorough, let me include a mention of my MARCH release, book #3 of the High Sierra Sweethearts series

The Unexpected Champion

The City Man and the Wild West Woman take turns saving each other's lives in the high stakes conclusion to the High Sierra Sweethearts Series.

Unexpected Champion-Available for pre-order now!

City dweller John McCall never expected to be out in the High Sierras of 1868 on a wild-goose chase to find the Chiltons' supposedly lost grandson. But now that he's out here, things have gotten complicated, mostly due to wildcat Penny Scott. She's not like any woman he's ever met--comfortable in the woods, with a horse, and with a gun.

When Penny and John are taken against their will by a shadowy figure looking for evidence they don't have, both realize they've stumbled into something dangerous and complicated. With their friends and family desperately searching for them, Penny and John must make a daring escape.

When they emerge back into the real world, they are confronted with a kidnapper who just won't stop. They must bring a powerful, ruthless man to justice, even as this city man and country woman fight a very inconvenient attraction to each other.

http://www.maryconnealy.com