I’ve been neglecting my blog. I’ve been consumed with several projects, including editing two books – it’s so exciting to work with other writers as an editor. That’s how I started my career in journalism, as a copy editor. It always seemed like something I could do while I wrote other things, and I did, though I eventually became a reporter (and videographer and photographer). I’m also working on the third Storm Seekers novel, Zap Bang.

But in the meantime, I’m scheduling events for 2014. Come see me at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science on Jan. 12 at 2 p.m. I’ll be sharing stories, videos and photographs from my 17 years of chasing storms in Tornado Alley and Florida.

Happy holidays, everyone. (Oh, yeah, and if you need a gift or a good read for that new Kindle or tablet, won’t you consider Funnel Vision and Tornado Pinball?)

I have several events coming up, and I hope you can join me to talk about storms and books!

On Sunday, Nov. 10, I’ll sign books at a party marking the launch of a new storm photography exhibit. It will include photos from this year’s chaotic storm season. The party is 2-5 p.m. at Rocket City Retro Mid-Century Modern Furniture & Design, 331 King St., in Cocoa Village. The free event will feature wine, hors d’oeuvres and storm videos in addition to photography of tornadoes, lightning and severe weather, displayed amid Rocket City Retro’s stylish furnishings and gifts from the 1950s to the 1970s. My photos will be on display through Nov. 30.

I’ll also be at the Meet the Authors Book Fair Nov. 23-24 at Eau Gallie Civic Center, which happens in conjunction with ArtWorks. I’ll be signing “Funnel Vision” and “Tornado Pinball,” the first two storm-chasing adventures in the Storm Seekers Series. 

Also catch my storm photography Dec. 2-31 at the Cocoa Beach Library, 550 N. Brevard Ave. In a free library talk on Dec. 4 at 6:30 p.m., I will discuss what it takes to shoot great storm and lightning photos, drawing on 17 years of experience chasing storms in Tornado Alley and Florida. And I’ll sign books, in case you haven’t picked up yours yet.

See you out there!

This is not a book-review blog, as a rule, but when the folks at Simon & Schuster asked if I’d like to take a peek at Michael Farris Smith’s novel of meteorological calamity, “Rivers,” I couldn’t resist. I’m sure they didn’t ask me because of my brilliant literary insights. I’d guess it’s because I’m a storm chaser and weather geek. But before I talk about the weather, I have to address the story — especially because the storms are really secondary to the characters.

“Rivers” follows in the steps of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” if incrementally less grim and less spare. In a near future when the United States government has written off the Gulf Coast as a hurricane-blasted wasteland, Cohen is a builder who’s decided to stay behind among the survivalists, the desperate, and the treasure hunters digging for troves of cash they think were buried by the fleeing casinos. We soon find out why: He’s still dealing with a storm-precipitated personal tragedy, and his home is the last vestige of his happy life.

Cohen lives an isolated existence made less lonely by a stray dog and horse and punctuated only by supply runs. But what’s left below The Line is certainly no Walden Pond, no place for quiet contemplation as nature reclaims the land. It’s more like the zombie apocalypse without the zombies. It’s a place of redneck primitivism, woman-enslaving cults and mercenaries who shoot first and ask questions later as one devastating storm after another rakes the tattered lowlands. When a generous impulse jeopardizes Cohen’s bulwarks against the chaos, he’s forced to confront the worst elements of this world and his own demons, choose alliances and try to find his way out.

Smith’s sentences stretch out like Cohen’s dreary days, in a loping, run-on, hypnotic rhythm. The author shifts point of view between characters with a sometimes irritating fluidity. His flashbacks feel more conventional, with more orderly paragraphs that reflect Cohen’s then-contented days at home and on an enchanting vacation in Venice with his wife among the “rivers” there.

Smith writes of one of Cohen’s moments of despair:

He felt as if he were sitting at the end of the world, in a place that the light had long ago abandoned and undiscovered creatures moved about in the black using their instincts to feed off one another. Somewhere unknown to man and unsafe for man and forgotten by the one who had created it. He was going to die in this place and it wrecked his spirit at first but then this became an apathetic notion. He didn’t know what there was to live for. And he didn’t know what there was to die for. Only that he would die in this forgotten place and be a part of its unaccounted history.

The water ran down his head and face and arms and legs. Under his skin. In his bones.

The “rivers” on the Gulf Coast seem ever-expanding in this apparent global-warming-caused disaster, though climate change is merely implied by the fact of the storms. The storms themselves seem to be, technically speaking, hurricanes that come every few days, though their behavior is at times unusual for tropical systems (pardon me while the weather geek has her say). Warm-core tropical systems rarely leave people cold or bombard them with massive hailstones. But maybe this crazy weather is beyond our ken as we try to foresee a future that eludes even the climate scientists.

What’s more important in the confines of the novel is that the untamed and relentless storms are reflected in the ragtag, ruthless humans living in their domain, and it will take an extraordinary person to rise above the madness. The plot is almost as unruly as the weather, but in the last fifty pages it presses the accelerator and drives hard to the end.

Will you like “Rivers”? “Like” isn’t really the term one applies to apocalyptic novels, but readers drawn to desperate, poignant survival literature may admire it. If you’re looking for a story about meteorological carnage, “Rivers” is a lot more, and a lot less in the weather department, as the storms only set the stage for the human drama. This isn’t storm porn. And on a personal note, I never like seeing animals in peril, even in a “literary” novel.

That said, I found the novel interesting and ultimately compelling, particularly in its forceful climax. I appreciated that, like the weather, it kept me guessing. Like a brutal storm, “Rivers” will test you — and it might make you think twice about buying waterfront property.

Writers are pretty good at anguishing over stuff, and I’ve been anguishing over what makes a book successful. I have two novels out there, and a third on the way, but sales are slow. There’s no lack of advice and paid schemes aimed at authors who want to live the dream and make a lot of money, but is that the only measure of success?

Certainly, selling a lot of books is some measure of success, and since I don’t sell a lot (“yet,” she said hopefully), I haven’t met that bar.

Success could and should also be about writing a great book, whether it’s fiction, poetry or nonfiction. This quality is more difficult to measure, though reviews or a fan following might help convince you that you’ve achieved it.

Lastly, do you like your own book? Writers are a self-critical bunch, or at least the best ones are, and so they may be more likely to beat themselves up over their flaws. If you can see flaws, chances are you have some perspective on your work. And in spite of those flaws, if you still like your work, if it satisfies you at some basic level, then you probably are a success, even if it’s only in your home office.

Those who are simply out to sell books, which is what we are told over and over again we must do as professional writers (professional = paid), seem to take different tracks to achieve their goals. And since (a) I want to write to please myself but (b) I’d also like to sell some books, I’ve been wondering if selling books has to mean, in some sense, selling one’s soul.

I love Pixel of Ink and check out the free e-books it mentions every day. I even download and read some of them. But despite its diverse highlights, sometimes I think I’m reading the same description over and over. I don’t care how hot young-adult fiction is; when the summaries are interchangeable, either there’s an appalling lack of originality, or people are writing to a formula to sell books. They go something like this: “When 16/17/18-year-old Jane discovered she had hidden powers to fly/move stuff/read minds/time travel/talk with fairies, she never counted on learning about them with hunky teenage alien/sorcerer/telepath/angel/vampire Joe, her secret protector. Together they must save the world/fight the totalitarian dystopian government/hide their superpowers while they go to high school.” Hey, I get it. Young people (especially young women) want stuff to read that they can relate to, and we all like a good escape.

As a girl, I devoured Trixie Belden detective stories and mysteries by Phyllis A. Whitney and other books starring young women, and I enjoyed them. (This was in the Pre-Twilight Era.) But by high school, I was reading a lot of different stuff, some crappy, some brilliant, and I appreciated an author that had respect for my brain. I think it’s great if young readers consume everything to sharpen their critical acumen, but as a writer, I’d like to feed them well. Some books transcend their genre and sell a lot because they’re genuinely good (“The Hunger Games,” for instance). But I’m depressed by the amount of stuff that’s more derivative than daring.

I wonder sometimes if I could write in one of these genres deemed “hot,” maybe under a pen name. Maybe I should sell out, join the crowd – not that there’s a guarantee I’d sell books then, either. And you have a point if you say, no, you should just write a really good book that will sell because it’s really good, no matter what the subject matter; make your own trend. But, let’s face it, books have a leg up when they’re in a marketable genre, and a leap up if they seem to be kind of the same as something else that was already popular. Some literary agents say you shouldn’t write to a trend, because by the time your book is out, the trend may have changed. That advice doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone, and my general impression is that many agents and publishers are fond of proven sellers, not iconoclastic new voices. After all, publishing is a business, and art is its increasingly rare offspring. (Gwen Stephens shares one agent’s perspective on writing to trends here.)

If you had any doubt about marketing that capitalizes on previous successes, look at book covers. Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books retweeted a great image of a cover today (as spotted by @helen_machness) that shows hands holding a rose, “Twilight”-style, but with wrists bound, to make it clear it’s in the sexy-book-dominant-guy category. That’s in case the title, “The Diary of a Submissive,” didn’t give you a clue. It’s one thing to trade on the conventions of your genre for your book cover; it’s quite another to rip them off. I did a quick check online and found three different covers for this book (marketed as memoir) by Sophie Morgan; two were in shades of gray. Or should that be Shades of Grey?

I enjoy well-written genre books. And I might even write a mystery or a romance or a young-adult fantasy someday. But I don’t want to do it just because I think it will sell, especially if the formula involves a passive female creature whose one goal in life is to be noticed by a man. We deserve better as writers and as readers. Success may be elusive on every level, but perhaps we can start by finding it in the obscurity of our home office, writing stories from the heart.

 
The blue moon – the full moon on August 20 – was a magical photographic opportunity for me. I was able to shoot a lightning storm with the full moon overhead, from the beautiful vantage point of Cocoa, Florida, looking east over the Indian River Lagoon.

I’ve photographed not-so-great shots of the moon with a thunderstorm before, but nothing like this. Better yet, there were multiple shots, though the lead one shown here is definitely my favorite.

Meanwhile, prints of this photo (and other lightning images) can be ordered here.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

The beaches have been under siege here in Brevard County for the past couple of days as ominous shelf clouds have swept over the sun-worshipers and surfers, harbingers of downpours and lightning close behind. I’ve caught photos in the past couple of days at Cocoa Beach and Satellite Beach. In both places, some folks didn’t seem to be in a hurry to escape the lightning danger, which was high. I take a risk, too, when I stand on the beach to shoot a photo, and I’m well aware of it.

Today’s storm over Satellite Beach was especially beautiful. As dangerous as the lightning might have been, I couldn’t look away. See all the 2013 chase reports here.

Still need a beach read for this summer? My storm-chasing adventures, “Funnel Vision” and “Tornado Pinball,” are just $3.99 as e-books. They’re also in paperback. Check ’em out. (You can quite literally check them out of the Brevard libraries, too.)

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

Boundary collisions were evident on radar the afternoon of July 21, leading to storms, but I waited until they were well under way and a severe storm warning was issued before I headed out to take a look.

I stayed ahead of a pretty but fragmented shelf cloud from Merritt Island into Cocoa Beach, Florida. Shelf clouds always seem to reach their majestic maturity when they hit the beach.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

I love a nice shelf cloud, and I’ve missed a few of them this season. Florida always has more, though, and I caught one this afternoon as a pretty line of storms rolled through Brevard County.

Storms set up in a line moving northeast across Brevard County, Florida, today. An outflow boundary was evident on radar, resulting in an undulating shelf cloud of varying drama. I stayed ahead of the line from Rockledge to Port Canaveral, snapping photos along the way.

Roll over a photo to see its caption, and click on any of the pictures to start a slide show of larger images.

I’ve never attempted a stop-motion film before, and that news won’t be a surprise to someone watching “The Chase: a silly storm safari.” It’s primitive, but it’s a fun first try. I just need to cultivate a great deal of patience before I try to shoot another one, given the painstaking frame-by-frame photography in each stop-motion clip.

The film is a combination of short video clips and stop-motion, all shot with my Nikon D7000. I set up the maps and toys, including several miniature storm-chasing vehicles, on our pool table and lit it well. I used shredded cotton balls to make the clouds, and a posterboard for the sky. Check it out:

I was lucky to get invited to an Independence Day party on a top floor of a condo overlooking the Indian River Lagoon and Cocoa, Florida’s excellent fireworks display on Thursday. Shooting fireworks is a lot like shooting lightning – you need a tripod and a camera you can put in manual mode so you can hold the shutter open for several seconds. But at least you know approximately where the fireworks are going to be.

Want to see more? Here’s a slide show. Prints are available.