It’s our in-joke. Sort of a shibboleth for writers. We use it to spot infiltrators who are not our own. “Cleaned your browser history lately?” If they stare blankly back, then they’re probably not a writer. If they look offended, they’re definitely not a writer, and also, you have to wonder what they’re Googling at 2:00 a.m.? I’m currently focusing this blog on amateur writing while being as little help to other writers as possible. It’s not rudeness, just realism. There are famous authors with brilliant and helpful blogs out there. I am neither famous nor brilliant. I like to think I can pull off “occasionally amusing” on a good day. Incidentally, all of the work I’m going to reference in this post is discussed here, along with downloadable samples or linked drafts. It’s optional reading, like the gym.
If you’re not a writer, you still know the spiral. One minute you’re checking, “How long is the Tube ride from Soho to Chelsea?” so you can check Serah’s commute in “The Halferne Incubus.” Two hours later, you’ve memorized every underground and overground route between Sainsbury’s and Carlyle Square, Google Street-Viewed two of them, and now you’re calling The Cadogan Arms to see if they can overnight one of their mushroom and onion pies in dry ice to Indianapolis because it sounds life-changing. That’s just Google Maps, mind you. Meanwhile, you’ve sampled a couple of local bands, watched a detailed video tour of Waitrose & Partners, and are engrossed in watching your first cricket game.
You want specifics, though. Fine. The original plot of “The Pessimal Design” was a straight-up techno thriller where a computer engineer discovers terrorists have infiltrated his company to poison the city’s water supply, which runs, conveniently, through the machine level of his office building. It felt a bit to close to “Batman Begins,” so I pivoted. In the meantime, for “technical accuracy,” I conducted a series of searches that, out of context, should’ve lit up a federal dashboard somewhere. No one called. Apparently, Homeland Security had better things to do than monitor one novelist with a curiosity problem.
- Which poisons are water-soluble?
- What is the population and square mileage of the greater Denver area?
- How much cyanide is required to taint a water supply over
154.726 sq miles, such that it would be lethal to 729,019 people? - Where can you purchase cyanide in quantity?
Now, the kicker, and a common theme among all of these: Checking those boxes that say “no cookies” or “don’t track me,” or clearing your browser history and thinking that’s it, is all a lie. First off, it turns out it’s not illegal to purchase cyanide. Any reputable chemical company will sell you barrels of the stuff. However, if you make the mistake of visiting their website to check prices (in the interest of accuracy), let’s just say that somehow Amazon is watching. Even though they don’t sell cyanide itself, they can’t help but try to sell their “equivalent.” About three days later, Alexa chimed at me with an alert. “Darrin, I found an offer on an item you might enjoy. T-Miles 99.5％ Potassium Ferricyanide, AR Grade (Analytically Pure), Chemical Reagents. It’s $21.00 for 250 grams. Would you like me to add it to your cart?” After that, every banner ad on every site was offering me bottles of Potassium Chloride, Cyanidin Glucose Caplets, Cyanide Test Strips, and potassium citrate gummies.
“The Halferne Bodhi” is both the most depressing and the scariest of the bunch. I can’t be the first author to fall hopelessly in love with a city and start planning retirement there. The book’s set in future Kaunas, Lithuania (because I once knew a girl from there, and my daughter is 1/4 Lithuanian), and I researched that city within an inch of its life. For the purpose of the novel, I decided Old Town barely changes over a few centuries while the rest blossoms into a megalopolis, because the climate will be perfect in a few decades, obviously. After enough YouTube street-walks, Google Street View, and Google Translate sessions, I’m fairly certain I could bluff my way through a career as a Kaunas tour guide. Minor detail: I’ve never “actually” been there.
Nearly every Old Town location in the story is legit, with a few educated predictions. The underpass by the Zen Rabbit sculpture? Real, just not yet in its final form as I describe. You can trace Sheng’s route from Rayna’s office, across the square, past the Town Hall, over the “Vytautas the Great Bridge,” and up the Aleksotas funicular to the transit port that will someday be there. I particularly obsessed over the city’s churches — the distinctive bulk of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, the intricate calm of the Cathedral-Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul, and my favorite, the elegant modernism of the Kauno Kristaus Prisikėlimo bazilika. I had to know the details … because in my story there’s a riot and things go boom, and if I’m going to fictionalize destruction, my debris patterns should at least be accurate. Professional pride.
Apparently, I’m still welcome there. My YouTube pre-roll ads are still almost exclusively to Baltic cruises and Lithuanian luxury stays, Expedia keeps suggesting Kaunas as a weekend getaway flight, and Amazon? They must have heard a rumor because they sent me a survey, and question 13 was, “Which of these things do you plan on doing in the next six months: a) Move to a new residence … b) Buy a car … c) Change jobs … d) Travel to Kaunas, Lithuania …” I am not making that up, and I’m still wiping coffee off the monitor.
Then there’s “The Halferne Imprecation,” my sci-fi military medical drama. Google alone wasn’t going to cut it, so I dove into a few AIs to see how well they could extrapolate. No spoilers, but we’re talking “top-secret mind control” meets free will vs. groupthink with a dash of present bias. That meant researching drugs that can induce psychosis, the existing literature on the most effective torture techniques employed by governments and Fortune 500 companies, and the psychology of dismantling mental coherence. Many AI models refuse on principle (good for them). Others will cheerfully point you straight to empirical sources the moment you say, “This is for a novel,” cross your heart, and upgrade to premium. Suddenly, the subscription feels “worth it.” (It isn’t. Also, AI is bad for the environment. We should definitely never use it, he typed into a server farm.)
In the end, I’ve made peace with my browser history. It’s a chaotic scrapbook of the roads I took to write something that could survive the scrutiny of a fandom I don’t even have. It records my curiosity, my questionable impulse control, and my longstanding weakness for Eastern European females. Out of context, it’s incriminating. In context, I look like the love child of a Star Trek mind and an “Anarchist Cookbook” imagination. I can live with that.
So to the watchful bots, the nosy ad networks, and the one FBI intern who drew the short straw and has to sift through this mess: Hi! I’m not building a doomsday device. I’m writing novels. If you know “how to gently break the laws of thermodynamics for dramatic effect,” send sources. And if you catch me at 5 a.m. typing “can grief be a color?” wish me luck. I’m probably closer than I think.
In the meantime, I’ll continue searching, writing, and apologizing to the Lithuanian ambassador. If this post gets flagged for mentioning cyanide, explosions, or psychological torture, so be it. I’ll just print my browser history, staple it to a book proposal, and title it: My Algorithm Thinks I’m Dangerous: Essays on Curiosity and Other Crimes.
