False Memory Syndrome
Now that the Egypt revisions are back in the publisher's hands and Book II of the Zach & Zoe series is on the editor's "To Be Read" pile, I must push on with the rewrite of Return to Bone Tree Hill. With all three books scheduled for Spring/2009 releases, it's a constant juggling act.
At the moment Return to Bone Tree Hill is the most pressing and the most challenging. My editor says the story could stand as is, but he has an idea for a twist that will kick it up a notch. The book is a YA murder mystery in which the 18-year-old protagonist, Jessica, believes she killed a childhood friend when whe was 12. The thing is she was very sick at the time and has no memory of the event -- just a recurring, damning nightmare. As the clues unfold, the evidence would seem to point away from her. This is where the editor's twist is supposed to come into play. Apparently there is a psychological condition known as False Memory Syndrome, which manifests itself in compelling untruths. A person develops this condition as a result of some traumatic incident that he/she wishes to forget, and in order to block the event, the person creates memories that never happened. No matter how much reality shows these memories to be false, the sufferer believes them to be utterly true.
So this is what I have to work into the story. It took me some time (as well as a lot of Internet searching and a long chat with my editor) to understand what False Memory Syndrome was, and then even more time to try to get my head around how I was going to weave it into the story. But I think I have a handle on it now. All that's left to do is do it. Easy, right? HA!!!
Wish me luck.