When mentioning the most influential people on my writing career, I usually mention two names: R. L. Stine and Steven Pressfield. If you’ve read my work on Substack, you may have noticed this. I’ve mentioned the influence Stine had on me as a child and young aspiring writer a few times. Steven Pressfield has been brought up ad nauseum due to his impact on me both as a man and as a writer. Those two men cover two distinct timelines in my life. Stine’s impact reigned from the age of nine to twelve. I first read Pressfield at twenty-three and his influence has lasted up to today. However, these two eras in my life exclude the most prolific period of writing I had ever undertaken prior to the age of twenty-four. This period marked the ages of twelve/thirteen to almost seventeen. A portion of my life that I’ve kept concealed from my own memory—until recently, when it came soaring back into my life in a shockingly vivid understanding.
One of my most prized possessions is my complete collection of any and all Goosebumps books. The collection includes the original series by R. L. Stine and everything he’s put out under the Goosebumps name ever since. I still shamelessly make a pilgrimage to Barnes and Noble every few months to check and see if there’s anything new to add to the collection (although it is getting slightly more awkward to venture into the children’s section with a full beard on the hunt for children’s books). Two years ago (yikes, time flies) I met Stine at an autograph signing in Sag Harbor and left stupefied to have finally met one of my all-time heroes, a man that had left an indelible imprint on my life.
I’ve shared photos of our library before. Initially my collection was small—until my parents bought me my first bookshelf when I was eleven. The first “collected works” of an author I was able to add to my collection was R. L. Stine’s. Then it was Michael Crichton.
Then everything stopped. Something happened when I was around sixteen/seventeen. I gave it all up, dismissing my past love for reading and writing as a distant memory that had completely eradicated from my conscious mind by the time I met Melissa at twenty-two. Our meeting was a miracle, a stroke of luck, happening just by the slightest chance—even when we practically grew up six houses down from one another.
Slowly but surely, Melissa helped me find that passion for reading and writing again, and with that, happiness began to finally feel like a real possibility. Naturally my collected works grew. First it was Huxley, then it was Moore, then Dick, then McCarthy, and then finally Eco (may have jumped the gun on him). Our collection grew massively.
When we finally moved in together, I packed up all of my books, three big storage bins’ worth (yes they were extremely heavy), and brought them to the apartment we now share. It took us four days to sort out all the books. The second largest author collection I shelved was the works of Michael Crichton—nine books, one book short of the amount I had once owned. Suddenly a split-second memory flashed in my mind. I was tossing Timeline in a black garbage bag when I cleaned my room in my early twenties.
As I put the Crichton books in a lesser corner of our new library, I wondered what spurred me to throw out the book. If memory served me correctly, I didn’t care much for Crichton or his books outside of Jurassic Park, but I had the books, so they needed to be shelved somewhere—minus Timeline, the discarded book.
I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching lately. Since May, a lot has changed. Mainly the decision to publish my own novel, Picking Stones, here on Substack. Again, I looked toward my heroes; what would they do? “Hm, funny,” I thought, then a strange thought hit me. “Was RL Stine as big of an impact on my writing as I remember?” I feel like something was missing.
Another split second memory jolted into mind. I was lying on my bed. Couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Timeline was in my hands, open somewhere in the first few pages. I slammed the book shut, the black cover with the knight sitting atop a horse stared at me. I flung the book out of my hands and onto the floor into the far corner of the room, where it stayed until I picked it up and placed it in the garbage as expressed in the previous memory.
I shook my head clear. Weird. I remember hating that book (I never read past page five). Why was my mind sending me back to two separate memories of discarding that book? I couldn’t find an answer.
A few weeks later, the day before Father’s Day (a month ago to the day as of this writing) Melissa and I were in Barnes and Noble looking for a gift for my dad. Browsing the fiction section, my eyes caught Michael Crichton’s name. There was Timeline, both the mass-market paperback and standard copy. I grabbed both and was shocked.
“The copy I had thrown out was much better than either of these!” I exclaimed to Melissa. A quick google search later and I was showing her the image of the knight on horseback—just like my old copy. It was the first time I had mentioned this book to her, and the first time in ten years that I had mentioned to anyone that I had once been a huge fan of Michael Crichton. She was surprised to hear this since I never made much of a mention of him before.
I settled on buying a used copy of Timeline ASAP. I needed the same copy with the knight on horseback as I once owned; it was the missing link in my book collection. Hell, maybe I’d even read it one day. I purchased the book on Thrift]books and a few weeks later it was delivered, the day before we’d be on vacation. It would be the book I read on my trip!
Tearing the package open, I was immensely disappointed. The book looked like the copy I had. It felt like that copy I had. It was the same book, after all. But something felt empty about the whole thing. I had gotten it all wrong. This wasn’t what I wanted. I left the book home and decided I’d need to buy a new copy of it, one I could call my own the way I had once done for the other.
Then it hit me. It wasn’t the book that I was yearning for, but everything I had thrown away with it when I rolled over and flung Timeline off my bed as a frustrated teenager. Intense memory flooded in—the memory of why I threw the book out, and why I never mentioned Crichton as an influence on me.
In those days I was struggling to stay afloat, unable to understand what I wanted out of life. My dream of becoming an author was spiraling further away from me; I was the one to flush it down the toilet. My younger self made one last attempt to stay connected with everything I had known to love. Reading Timeline would be like hitting the reset button and everything would be back to normal. I’d be happy again.
Wrong. No matter how badly I wanted everything to return to the simplicity of youth, nothing would fix it if I couldn’t fix myself. I couldn’t bring myself to read it. I threw the book to the side, and with it, I cast my hopes and dreams away, too. It would be seven years before I’d pick up a book for fun ever again. Eight before I’d ever consider pursuing writing again.
I always thought I needed to forget the past. Wipe away all the mistakes and run away from them, praying that they never come back to get you. In the last few months I realized that I needed to stop hiding. You have to take ownership of your actions. Once you do, you can move on, and build off of what you have learned rather than eradicating the bad memories and starting from scratch.
I’ve always blacked out this part of my life. Cursed myself for the mistakes I made during that time and how they made me end up here. But here isn’t bad. I’m lucky to be where I am right now, and I’m happy to finally start picking up the pieces I had left behind instead of running from them.
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned some of my biggest influences. There was one person I didn’t mention because I had blocked out the era of my life in which they were so relevant. He is one of the biggest—if not the biggest—influence on my life as a writer: Michael Crichton.
Crichton’s work elevated my reading comprehension and writing ability. He breathed a new and deeper obsession with reading and writing than anything I had ever gotten into before I discovered him. I was obsessed with his work. I wanted to be Michael Crichton, going so far as to completely ripping off Prey for an unfinished Wattpad series that had some moderate success before I blew up my life at the time of chucking Timeline to the side. (Don’t go looking for that Wattpad series; I erased myself from that website.)
It was simply bad timing for my (internal) relationship with the author. I was heading down the road of being a complete shithead, which squashed any hopes I had of pursuing my dreams. Timeline was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It had been the last book by him that I hadn’t yet read. A trip to Borders and a hope that reading it would right every wrong I was building towards. What was I expecting? Maybe I thought the book would be an epiphany, getting my mind right and back on the track I had been since fifth grade.
No book or author was going to save me when I hadn’t saved myself. Frustrated, I couldn’t get into the book and threw out my entire life, not picking up the pieces until I met Melissa so many years later.
I’ve run away from those dark years for too long. I’m finally picking up and pushing through, and the perfect place to do that is right where I left off—by reading Timeline. I picked up the new mass-market paperback (which I now prefer to the old copy I had). I’m ready to rediscover Crichton, an old friend.
Michael Crichton was brilliant. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and is the author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Prey, Disclosure, Timeline, and a slew of other bestsellers. He wrote and directed the original Westworld. He was the creator of the smash hit TV series ER. And he was responsible for the #1 movie, #1 book, and #1 TV show at the same time twice! His resume is mind-blowing. Doctor, author, screenwriter, and director. Holy crap!
Crichton died in 2008 at the age of 66 from cancer—a few months before his son was born. The first time I read one of his books was in 2009. How many more classics would we have seen from him had he not been lost early?
Anyway. I’m grateful for the imprint Crichton left on me. I look forward to finally reading Timeline, even if it’s ten years late. Hopefully you enjoy it, too! Remember, it’s never too late to do anything you want to do. Call your brother, hug your wife, and write that book if that’s what you want to do.
Timeline is our next pick for the Thinking Man Book Club. We’re going to read the first two parts of the book—”Corazón” and “Dordogne”—by next Thursday. We hope you follow along.
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You can even buy me a coffee (or help me recoup the money for that lost copy of Timeline).
Very compelling John! Puberty changes many things. I never read Timeline but just ordered it.
Across the board well done John!