LIVING ON THE FAULT LINE

I believe there are two different ways Cascadia, my newest novel, is being read.  It’s dependent, I think, upon where the readers live. When I do a presentation on Cascadia in the Southeast, where I reside, I’ve discovered I need to do a little extra.  I have to set the stage for the drama, because most…

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AN INDIAN VILLAGE, A BOOKSTORE, AND A SCENE FROM CASCADIA

The opening scene in my newest novel, Cascadia, is set in a Clatsop Indian village on the Pacific Northwest coast over three hundred years ago.  Based on research, I placed the village on the present site of Seaside, Oregon. I’m not entirely certain there was an Indian village there in 1700, the date of the…

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WHY I DIDN’T ADDRESS “COUNTING THE DEAD” IN CASCADIA

CASCADIA isn’t totally a novel.  By that I mean it’s not completely fiction.  The event the novel is set against, a massive earthquake and huge tsunami in the Pacific Northwest, is something that’s really going to happen. In my previous novels, EYEWALL, SUPERCELL and BLIZZARD, I depicted major weather events that, while certainly possible, are…

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HOW A NOVEL IS CONCEIVED

I grew up in western Oregon.  It seemed, at least in terms of natural threats, a bucolic place in which to spend my youth.  For instance, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes there were about as common as the Northern Lights in Georgia.   Hurricanes were nonexistent.  Such storms are born over warm oceans.  If you’ve ever…

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