Memories can add poignancy, reveal clues, and give insight into character behavior.  A character may have a flash of memory every now and again.The key is to keep them short and simple, a sentence or two, perhaps a paragraph, and make them relevant. It helps to trigger memories with something the character sees, smells, touches, or tastes. It can be a person, place, or thing. Songs stick with us and can bring up a feeling or a forgotten person. Smells can take you back to a place and time and the person it reminds you of. Every time Dick sees the ocean on television, he may smell saltwater. Every time Jane smells fresh baked cookies, it may remind her of the grandmother she adored. Every time Sally hears a train, it may remind her of her sad childhood. The neural connection is hard-wired. The response is involuntary. Use memories as a visceral beat. Dick frowned at the impossibly blue sky, perfect sand, and white-edged waves on the travel post...

I’ve heard on more than one occasion that being a senior is not for the fainthearted. If you’ve survived long enough to get an AARP card, or even past that and gone on to handle the Medicare maze as I have, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, you’ll learn soon enough. It may seem far away, but you’d be surprised how fast the years fly by. Being a senior author poses its own challenges. These days you not only need to operate writing equipment, such as a computer, printer, mouse, backup drive, and so forth, but also remember afterward how you did it so you can do it again.  That’s not all. Along with all the ins and outs of creating a great book, you're also expected to discover and implement ways to promote that book and others you've written. You host your own website and interact on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Blogger and Wordpress. While you're at it, you keep track of your unique passwords, since using only one password for eve...