“Just spoon feed it to me.”

These words from one of my email subscribers really struck home.

You see, for years I have created memory improvement training materials for a variety of people who want to remember many different things.

They’re fascinated by the ancient art of memory and dazzled by the feats of the memory competitors. Or maybe they’ve heard that some magicians use “memdecks,” memorized decks of playing cards they use while making rapid mental calculations that help them perform miracles.

But I always encountered a problem.

Many perfectly intelligent people struggle to understand how using the memory techniques I teach are going to help them memorize anything.

And because they can’t make the connection in advance, questions about “why” things are done the way we do them either plague them or they feel shut out.

This “Memory Detective” novel is my solution to this problem.

For one thing, I don’t know how to “spoon feed” memory techniques to anyone. The whole point is that the individual reads or listens to some instructions, follows them and gets results. The learner doesn’t get bogged down in “why” questions because the steps are relatively clear.

So one day it occurred to me that perhaps if I told stories about how a person struggling to focus and concentrate learned the ancient art of memory, more people might be able to make the connection.

After all, I once struggled to focus and concentrate. And I still managed to figure out how to make well-formed Memory Palaces to help me get my PhD. And I did it during the darkest days of my journey with depression.

That was at least part of my thinking when I wrote my first Memory Detective novel, Flyboy.

In it, Detective David Williams finds time in his day to practice the simple instructions given to him by his mentor. And he find ways to overcome the many things haunting his mind. Like anyone can when they have the help they need, he transforms from a zero to a hero.

In the world of the characters you’ll meet, David’s help comes for the mentorship of the world’s only blind memory champion. Jerome is kind of like a Merlin figure. Only in this case, the magic is real.

None of the mnemonic techniques that you’ll learn to use in any of the Memory Detective stories are fantastical. Unlike Sherlock Holmes where you only get references to techniques like the Memory Palace, David Williams takes you through how he makes them and uses them on the job.

His profession as a detective is meant to be a stand-in for whatever work it is you do, or feel called to do. But although all professions draw upon multiple aspects of memory, I chose the detective genre because investigators bump into people engaged in all kinds of careers. And the many details involved need to be known and understand by detectives in order to keep accurate records and deliver truthful testimony in court.

I hope you’ll find the story world I’ve created and the way Detective Williams applies the lessons he learns from Jerome helpful. Although I can’t spoon feed the techniques to you, all of us who use them learned them one step at a time. And usually it’s because we found ways to make them interesting and engaging, as if we were reading a story we loved.

That’s what I intend for you in these stories. An engaging learning experience that bypasses the “what if” questions and immerses you in exactly how the magic is learned and done.

Magnetic Fiction will also help you see how easy and fun it is to just dive in and start using the techniques. For as all of us discover along the hero’s journey, learning is in the doing. We experience much more learning while on the path, not at the end of a destination that for lifelong learners technically never comes.