Excerpt from Chatter by Ethan Kross, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Meredith seemed to be working through bad news rather than drowning in it. Thoughts about unpleasant emotions aren't necessarily chatter, and this is a case in point. She didn't start spiraling. A few minutes later, after crossing another street, her verbal stream circled back to her task at hand: "Now, is there a Staples down there? I think there is."

While Meredith processed her fear about losing a beloved friend, a man named Tony fixated on another kind of grief: the loss of closeness in a relationship, and perhaps even the relationship itself. Carrying a messenger bag down a sidewalk scattered with pedestrians, he began a self-referential riff of thoughts: "Walk away ... Look, suck it up. Or move on. Just walk away. I understand the thing about not telling everybody. But I'm not everybody. You two are having a goddamn baby. A phone call would have been good." The sense of exclusion he felt obviously cut him deeply. He seemed to be poised on a fulcrum of sorts, between a problem in search of a solution and pain that could lead to unproductive wallowing.

"Clear, totally clear. Move forward," Tony then said. He used language not just to give voice to his emotions but also to search for how best to handle the situation. "The thing is," he went on, "it could be an out. When they told me they were having a baby, I felt a bit out. I felt a bit pushed out. But now maybe it's an escape hatch. I was pissed before but, must admit, not so pissed anymore. Now it could work to my advantage." He released a soft, bitter laugh, then sighed. "I am certain that this is an out ... I am looking at this positively now ... I was pissed before. I felt like you two were a family ... and you two are a family now. And I have an out ... Walk tall!"

Then there was Laura.

Laura sat in a coffee shop in a restless mood. She was waiting to hear from her boyfriend, who had gone to Boston. The problem was, he was supposed to be back to help her move to a new apartment. She had been waiting for a phone call since the day before. Convinced that her boyfriend had been in a fatal accident of some sort, the night before she sat in front of her computer for four hours, every minute refreshing a keyword search of the words "bus crash." Yet, as she reminded herself, the eddy of her compulsive negative worrying wasn't just about a possible bus crash involving her boyfriend. She was in an open relationship with him, even though this wasn't something she ever desired, and it was turning out to be very hard. "It's supposed to be open for sexual freedom," she told herself, "but it's something that I never really wanted for myself ... I don't know where he is ... He could be anywhere. He could be with another girl."

While Meredith processed upsetting news with relative equanimity (crying at a friend's cancer diagnosis is normal) and Tony calmly coached himself to move on, Laura was stuck with repeating negative thoughts. She didn't know how to proceed. At the same time, her internal monologue dipped back in time, with reflections about the decisions that took her relationship to its current state. For her the past was very present, as was the case for Meredith and Tony. Their unique situations led them to process their experiences differently, but they were all reckoning with things that had already occurred. At the same time, their monologues also projected into the future with questions about what would happen or what they should do. This pattern of hopscotching through time and space in their inner conversations highlights something we have all noticed about our own mind: It is an avid time traveler.

While memory lane can lead us down chatter lane, there's nothing inherently harmful about returning to the near and distant past or imagining the future. The ability to engage in mental time travel is an exceedingly valuable feature of the human mind. It allows us to make sense of our experiences in ways that other animals can't, not to mention make plans and prepare for contingencies in the future. Just as we talk with friends about things we have done and things we will do or would like to do, we talk to ourselves about these same things.

Excerpted from Chatter by Ethan Kross. Copyright © 2021 by Ethan Kross. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.