BRYAN W. ALASPA

Memory is a weird thing. That is a topic explored at length in my new psychological suspense novel Storyland. In fact, its key to the entire plot. What do you think? Is your memory solid or does it play tricks with you? There was a school of thought for a long time that eye witnesses were the best source of evidence in a crime. These days, cops know that this is far from the truth. Rather than being a tablet written in stone, for most of us, our memories are really like clay.

I had an interesting experience that just got me thinking recently. I decided to reach out to my alma matter, Webster University, and offer the film students there access to my writing. In particular, my short stories. I have always wanted to see an adaptation of one of my stories and I think a few of my short stories would make excellent student films and be cheap to make. Anyway - to accomplish this I reached out to Webster's campus newspaper, The Journal. The editor liked

Of course, like everyone, I remember where I was that morning. I have even written about it before. It was one of those days just like today here in Chicago - beautiful. What was weird was that it was gorgeous all over the country. It was 15 years ago that the towers fell. Life changed for us all. Every year at this time we roll out the footage and roll those horrific scenes of the planes hitting the tower, the smoke, the people jumping or falling, the buildings collapsing. W