Hurricane Janet
Janet. Now there’s a hurricane name you probably haven’t heard in a long time. With good reason. It was retired after the 1955 season. Janet was a category 5 monster that ripped through the western Caribbean Sea in September of that year. On September 26 at 8:30 a.m. EST, a Navy reconnaissance plane, a twin-engined…
Read MoreA Seismic Shift
I’ve been asked by a handful of friends if they’ll eventually see copies of EYEWALL on the shelves of their favorite bookstores. The honest answer is, “Probably not.” Well, they may find a few copies at the Barnes & Noble close to where I live in Atlanta, and perhaps in bookstores around St. Simons Island,…
Read MoreBattle Ribbons and Purple Hearts
I was a bit surprised after I announced that I had gotten a contract for EYEWALL that among the very first people to high-five me, metaphorically speaking, were published authors, some of whom fired off congratulatory emails to me within a matter of minutes. (Love the electronic age!) The rapid responders ranged from NYT bestsellers…
Read MoreKeep on Swinging
It’s kind of weird that I should recall an incident that took place so long ago, that it should become a key catalyst in my contemporary determination to become a novelist. When I was a kid, maybe about 11 or 12 years old, I loved baseball. I couldn’t get enough of the dusty diamonds and…
Read MoreThe Paper Bag Principle
My brother, who is in the construction profession in Oregon, has a principle that he applies to all of his business dealings. He calls it the “Paper Bag Principle.” Simply stated, the PBP is this: a deal isn’t done until you have the money in a paper bag, metaphorically speaking, and are walking away with…
Read MoreCathedral Alfresco
Having grown up in the land of big timber, the Pacific Northwest, I’m not easily awed by trees. In Georgia, pines soar to great heights, oaks are sturdy, and magnolias, well, magnificent. But they don’t quite match up to the old-growth Douglas fir and Sitka spruce that adorn the coastal mountains of my Fatherland. Well,…
Read MoreBe afraid, very afraid
I thought I’d pretty much figured out the ultimate hurricane nightmare scenario for my novel EYEWALL: a rapidly strengthening category five storm barreling into an unsuspecting, heavily populated barrier island on a holiday weekend. It’s an event that’s within the realm of possibility, albeit of very low probability. But reality has a funny way of…
Read MoreHurricane Jeanie
It’s funny. In all the months I spent working on EYEWALL, I touted it, in what’s known in the business as an elevator pitch (because of its brevity), as the story of a crippled Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft that becomes trapped in the eye of a violent hurricane. Well, it certainly is that. By…
Read MoreSometimes a Long Journey Ends Close to Home
Sometimes a long journey into the wilderness ends close to home. That’s where my journey, a quest to find a champion–a literary agent–for EYEWALL ended. I began my odyssey in 2008, but after half a hundred rejections from agents, I realized the book wasn’t good enough. Not one agent requested the entire manuscript. (For those…
Read MoreThe Rise and Fall of The Weather Channel
In a blog last September I said, “I suppose no one at The Weather Channel is indispensable, but the person who comes the closest is Steve Lyons.” Now, amidst gnashing of teeth and rending of garments by those who know Steve well, he’s leaving the channel. I for one–and not the only one–see this as…
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