Supercell
El Niño and SUPERCELL (the novel)
Last week I blogged about El Niño and its connection, or lack thereof, to wintry weather in the Deep South. This week I’ll take a look at El Niño and its influence on severe storms–supercells and tornadoes–in the same region. There’s a late-winter/early-spring climatological maximum in Dixie of severe storms (before the focus of the…
Read MoreSAM TOWNSEND (a character in Supercell), OWNER AND OPERATOR OF THE “GUST FRONT GRILL”
Sam Townsend, rheumy-eyed, weatherbeaten and heavyset, sports a face folded with age and memories. If you ever searched for him in a crowd, he wouldn’t be difficult to spot. He wears a black stovepipe hat with an eagle’s feather jammed into the hatband. Half Osage Indian and a Vietnam combat veteran, Sam is conflicted by…
Read MoreGABI MEDEIROS, FBI AGENT, AD HOC STORM CHASER (character in Supercell)
Gabi Medeiros is a Special Agent with the FBI. Born of a Russian mother and Portuguese father, she’s attractive but not classically beautiful. As she once explained, “I gotta watch what I eat, or I get a little heavy in the ass and start looking like a female Michelin Man.” Divorced and the veteran of…
Read MoreCHUCK RITTENBURG, STORM CHASER (lead character in Supercell)
A decade ago, Chuck Rittenburg was the most successful professional storm chaser in the business. The founder and president of Thunder Road Tours, he was a sought-after guest on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “60 Minutes” and The Weather Channel. He was a frequent talking head on network newscasts. And he and his company…
Read More“YOU AREN’T DOING THAT AGAIN”–SOME THOUGHTS ON CHASING TORNADOES
My wife Chris and I are watching coverage of the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado, the devastating EF-5. It’s gripping, gut-wrenching, heart-rending stuff. After while, we can’t watch any more and turn off the TV. Chris grasps my arm. “You aren’t doing that again,” she says. “Doing what?” I ask, not making an immediate connection to any…
Read MoreSUPERCELL, A MORE IN-DEPTH LOOK
Beyond the one-line description of Supercell being “a fast-moving thriller set against tornado chasing on the Great Plains,” what the heck is the novel about? Here’s the “elevator pitch” for it (an “elevator pitch” means the author’s got only the duration of an elevator ride to pitch his/her book to an agent or publisher): Chuck…
Read MoreTHE AUTHORING LIFE
For my non-Facebook friends, it’s time to bring you up to date on my authoring life. First, my upcoming novel is now called Plague. It was born as The Koltsovo Legacy and went through three or four title changes before reaching the “carved in stone” stage. Plague. Second, the release date for Plague is September…
Read MoreAFTER THE CHASE, INDELIBLE MEMORIES
Was it fun? people ask, knowing I’ve just returned from a tornado chase on the Great Plains. Sure it was fun. If your idea of fun is sitting in a van for 10 hours a day, reeling in the miles (3500 of them in seven days); or waiting and waiting and waiting for something to…
Read MoreHUNTING UNICORNS
Yesterday, Silver Lining Tours and I might as well have been hunting unicorns as tornadoes. Tornadoes? We didn’t even see a towering cumulus! For awhile, we thought we might have chance at a big storm far to our west just north of the Kansas border in Nebraska, but, like legislation in the U.S. Congress, it…
Read MoreTHE MOTHERSHIP
Yesterday was a weird day for storm chasers. We spent a lot of time camped out on dirt roads next to fallow fields and curious cattle in southeast Nebraska waiting for something to happen (photo below). Nothing did. Several storms rumbled and grumbled for a couple of hours, but just couldn’t get their acts together.…
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