Inspired by People, Places & Things

Are You Alarmed?

Lynette M Burrows

No, this post is not about the alarming things happening in the world today. Rather it’s about are you alarmed? As in, do you have an alarm system? In my WIP, If I Should Die, I recently needed to know what year saw the invention of the first closed circuit security system. Guess what I learned? A woman co-invented the first home security system in 1966.  Marie Van Brittan Brown We know little about the private life of African-American Marie Van Brittan Brown. She was born October 30, 1922 in Jamaica, Queens, New York. She became a nurse and married Albert Brown, an electrician. They had a son and a daughter. They lived in the same neighborhood where she was born. As a nurse and an electrician, they worked irregular hours. The high crime rate in their neighborhood worried her. It worried her more since it took the police a long time to respond. The Alarmed Peep Hole Brown and her husband invented the first form of home security system. They used a radio-controlled wireless system. A camera slid up and down three peep-holes in the door. The three peep holes were at child height, average adult height, and tall. The […]

Progress Report One: Book 2 of My Soul to Keep

Lynette M Burrows

I’m really enjoying the writing right now. It’s fun to “play” in a world already populated with strong female characters on both sides of good and evil. What am I working on, you ask? The second book in the My Soul to Keep series. This is the first official progress report for that book. Book Two Currently titled, If I Should Die, continues the story of Miranda and Beryl about two years after the first novel, My Soul to Keep. The story sentence is A peace-loving woman caught in a civil war must resort to violence to save lives or stick to her principles and sacrifice many. My first draft is currently a little more than 38,000 words in length. Which is about 4/10ths of the estimated length of 100,000 words. Some characters from the first novel reappear and there are new characters to meet. Visit my Pinterest page for a sneak peek at inspirations for the characters and locations. Characters My recent Character Reveal posts featured characters I’ve developed for this novel.  Miranda Clarke Beryl Clarke Irene Earnshaw Wanda Terry Covers Not only am I writing the first draft, I’m researching cover design and cover designers. Now, don’t get […]

What Do You Remember and How?

Lynette M Burrows

What do you remember and how do you remember one thing and your sibling remembers something else? Human memory is complex. We try to replicate it with computers and A.I. Technology. But we barely understand how human memory works. Or where we store our memories. Or how and what corrupts our memory. Scientific examination and study of memory only began in recent history.  The Study of Memory The scientific study of memory didn’t begin until fairly late in human history. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), a German psychologist, pioneered the study of memory. The “father of experimental psychology of memory” began his first experiment in late 1878. He published his study, Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (Über das Gedächtnis in the original German), in 1885. They published the English version in 1913. His study had many limitations. The major one being that his only subject was himself. But he made many discoveries: the forgetting curve, spacing effect, and the learning curve. You can read more about his discoveries on Wikipedia or on Flash Card Learner. What is Memory? Even our everyday definition of memory is complex. Memory is— According to Boundless Psychology there is a simpler definition. Memory is “the ability of an organism to record […]