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May is a month away – and for me, that means my annual Tornado Alley trip is about that far away, too. I’ll likely head out with the first good system, but it will be after May 1, when I am speaking to the Camera Club of Brevard about photographing storms and storm chasing.

Saturday was a good warmup. That’s when Jim Leonard played host to a storm chaser gathering in Boynton Beach, Florida. There was good food, lots of good storm video, and lots of tale-telling, of course. Enhancing the experience were some pretty little storms that rolled through.

There are a lot of storm chasers tearing their hair out tonight on Facebook as they see media coverage of the San Antonio tornado – and all the other tornadoes that have struck in the past couple of days. This is even worse than the “There was no warning!” cliche that showed up on ABC after a recent outbreak, when there was lots of warning, relatively speaking. In this case, as noted by chaser Scott McPartland, a TV station in San Antonio was telling people to send in their tornado photos in the middle of the event, when its audience was in imminent danger, instead of telling people in the path of the storm to seek shelter.

This kind of coverage is wrong on a number of levels, but just for starters, it’s encouraging untrained people to risk their lives for a photo. The request for images, especially during the event, subtly minimizes the danger by implying that it’s perfectly OK to stand outside in a tornado and take photos. Storm chasers do this kind of thing all the time, but we have some idea of how the storm will behave, in what direction it’s moving, and when to get out of the way. When “news” people take the same path as sensationalistic reality shows, which tend to present chasing as an amusement-park ride, they are sending a message that somehow holding a camera will prevent you from getting killed.

There’s another side effect of this crowdsourcing of severe weather events: Photos of tornadoes from OTHER days and storms are being sent in and put on TV as part of the current event. This hoaxing is becoming widespread, and TV stations and other media outlets (print/online included), eager for free and dramatic content, are posting them without checking the facts. Not only are they treading on someone else’s copyright, like that of my friends at Cloud 9 Tours, but they are obfuscating the truth and making themselves look silly in the process.

I’m not into media-bashing. I still work for various media outlets as a freelancer. But news people have a job here, and it isn’t getting hot ratings. While many on-air meteorologists and journalists do a fantastic job of warning the public during severe weather, irresponsible coverage will only incur more criticism and damage journalists’ credibility. The first concern in a life-threatening situation should be to pass on warnings to the public, not get the “extreme” shot. And a little verification of all those nice, free reports from citizen journalists wouldn’t hurt. At some point, immediacy ceases to be an excuse.

Storm chasers get great footage, but some of the most dramatic and intense footage I’ve seen has been by people who shot tornadoes from their homes or backyards. It’s not just their proximity to the storm in question; the storms are coming to them, after all. It’s also the sense that their homes are in peril; that their nightmares are coming to life; that they’re envisioning the destruction and what will come after – or remembering a disaster that came before.

The character of Judy in my novel “Funnel Vision” has this feeling whenever she sees a tornado, and especially if a storm threatens her town in Kansas. It’s easy to put yourself in her shoes when you see videos like this one by Kevin Adkins from West Liberty, Kentucky, on March 2. I have dreams about wall clouds and tornadoes like this – massive and ominous, whose real-time rotation is so rapid it looks like a special effect. The fact that the tornado is grinding through the mountains makes this video even more surreal; like a horror-movie monster, its terrible form can’t be seen until it’s just about to consume you.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Court Lewis, host of American Variety Radio on select public-radio stations, about storm chasing and my novel “Funnel Vision” for a show that will air starting this week. Catch it at 8:30 p.m. this Thursday on WETS 89.5 FM (Tri-Cities, Tennessee); at 7:30 a.m. Sunday on WFIT 89.5 FM (Melbourne, Florida); at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on WMFE 90.7 FM (Orlando, Florida) and 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15, on WQCS 88.9 FM (Fort Pierce, Florida). Or you can always catch it in the archives online after it airs.

If you missed me on Nerdy@30 on Blog Talk Radio, listen here. That was a lot of fun, too. Host Marcus Kastler lives in Kansas, so he has firsthand knowledge of severe storms.

I had a great time today chatting with UCF students in online classes. Great questions. My madly typing fingers got a great workout. Does your group need a speaker, or would your book club like to discuss ‘Funnel Vision’? Let me know.

My paperback has joined the Kindle edition on Amazon… hooray! Want a copy of this storm-chasing adventure novel? Help Funnel Vision stir up a tornado in Amazon’s rankings on Tuesday by buying your copy then! The ebook is just $2.99; the paperback list price is $14.95. Don’t have a Kindle? The Kindle ebook reader app is free on multiple devices, including your iPhone, iPad and Android. Thanks and happy chasing!

WHERE TO BUY

On Amazon: Funnel Vision Kindle edition  | Funnel Vision paperback

Also on B&N Nook | Smashwords | Coming soon to iBooks/iTunes

Read more about the book …

And in case you missed the book trailer:

I was wondering if the giveaway of ‘Funnel Vision’ had gone live yet on Goodreads, and holy cow, has it ever! I’m grateful for the requests and look forward to sending the five books out when the giveaway period ends Jan. 30. The Goodreads gods determine the lucky winners in all giveaways.

Here’s more stormy fun. I’ve just uploaded to YouTube a video I did almost five years ago, featuring 10 years of storms packed into 10 minutes. There’s a smattering of hail, lightning, storm structure and tornadoes, including several time-lapse clips and music.

Book trailers are so much fun to make. It’s like the very best version of your book, or the idealized, one-minute version. Actually, if you really did it like Hollywood, you’d probably have multiples … one that emphasizes the action (this one kind of does), one that emphasizes the romance, one that emphasizes the emotional personal stories … you’re getting it. Anyway, here it is. The trailer includes several snippets from storm-chasing video I’ve shot over the years. I’ll be publishing Funnel Vision later this month.

… Or how I learned to stop worrying and love my novel

I used to review a lot of books, mostly for The Sun in Baltimore, a newspaper I worked for in the 1990s. I loved books, still do, and I was surrounded by smart, inspiring writers. Among them were richly talented critics and reporters who were or have become famous for their novels, including Stephen Hunter and Laura Lippman. For a few months, I was actually interim book review editor at The Sun, while the new editor was formulating his vision. I was handed that task – in addition to an editing job I was already doing – when I told my boss that being a book review editor was my dream job at the paper. It turns out, it wasn’t.

There was a huge backlog of books that hadn’t been considered and a tsunami of books pouring into the office. It was overwhelming, and I didn’t spend my time reading novels over hot cocoa and doughnuts. I spent my time organizing the deluge, prioritizing reviews, and saying no to publicity people. Despite what was probably considered, at the time, generous book-review space – space almost unheard of now in most newspapers – we probably reviewed less than 15 books each week, even including occasional roundup reviews of five or six titles. I wrote some of those, too.

From this experience, I understood that even books published by the big houses, even books written by people I’d actually heard of, wouldn’t necessarily get reviewed. Self-published books were simply never, ever considered for review, and for good reasons. One, there were too many “legitimate,” vetted books up for consideration; and two, most of the self-pubbed books were terrible.

Fast-forward to the last few years, when I worked at a newspaper in Florida and wrote about, among many other things, books and authors. We gave self-published books a mention, because there were so many local writers putting them out. Some of them were certainly worth the publicity they got; in fact, a few of them merited feature stories for their intriguing topics, interesting authors or writing pedigree. But the truth is, a lot of self-published books are still pretty bad. Some people publish in a vacuum, without doing their research, without the benefit of a critique group, without investing in good design, without understanding anything about the industry. They are, in their own eyes, Published Authors, a title I’ve long desired but wanted to get the hard way.

As my editor during an early internship told me a few thousand years ago, “Don’t you know? Every journalist has a novel in their bottom drawer.” I was one of them. The first one I wrote was pretty awful. The second one was fun and captured the zeitgeist of the time it was written, but I gave up too soon on publication after a handful of rejections. In the interim, I started chasing storms, and then, I started writing Funnel Vision, a novel about storm chasers.

I had tremendously valuable input from a critique group, and I got the novel into a state where I was ready to submit it to agents. I did. A lot. Some asked to see chapters. A few asked to see the whole thing. But no one said yes, and I grew weary of rejection, again. I believed in my novel, but it is a bit of a genre-bender – an adventure story with humor, drama and romance – and a novel like that seemed unlikely to find a home with a publisher who wants a shelf label, who wants a novel of a type that’s already been successful.

Despite my frustration, I still didn’t want to own the stigma of being self-published.

Then, as you know if you follow publishing, the world changed. It is changing, incredibly rapidly, and traditional publishing is going through a massive upheaval. E-books’ popularity is growing. There are some major self-publishing success stories. And while I didn’t think I’d be the next Hocking/Konrath/Locke, I finally decided that it might be time to give it a shot. Not only is publishing the Wild West; other books about storm chasers are out there – books I have studiously avoided reading – and I didn’t want the one I wrote five years ago to be irrelevant and overtaken before I even got it out into the world. Besides, as strange as it might sound, I had started writing a sequel.

So I set out upon one more revision. With fresh eyes, I added a couple of scenes. I found out even more about my characters. And I set the wheels in motion: cover, formatting, and all the fun aspects of becoming your own publisher. I believe in this book. Reading it again and again, as I have been in the final phases of getting it ready, I’m enjoying it, too.

I still have fears of being dismissed as part of the self-created slush pile, as some still see self-publishing. I cringed recently when I saw a bookstore employee venting on a Millions post denigrating self-publishing, saying, “Self-published authors are the bane of our existence.” I’m not a “hater” of the industry, as that column implied. I’m not naive. But I have my reasons for making this choice.

Why would a cynical book-critic type self-publish? I have a story to tell, a story I love. Time is ripping by, and the wheels of publishing turn slowly. While I still have fantasies of being the Published Author with the imprimatur of the Official Publishing House on my book, I know now it’s not the only way. And in the current publishing climate, it’s going to be even harder for me to find an Official Publishing House to accept my particular flavor of adult fiction.

I want my story to find readers who enjoy its world as much as I do. I hope they do. Look for Funnel Vision later this month.

I was on the East Coast Monday while beastly tornadoes hit Oklahoma. You may have seen the video of chaser Andy Gabrielson’s car rolling over while chasing one of them. He says the steering locked up, but whatever happened, it happened while he was driving backward at high speed. I’d prefer not to be so close that I have to drive backward to get away from anything! Andy, fortunately, was not badly hurt. Here’s the TornadoVideos.net (Reed Timmer’s crew) video of the incredible tornado, and Andy’s car flipping (at about 1:40).

What did I see yesterday? A pleasant little rainbow over the Atlantic Ocean.

My short documentary film “Chasing Reality” will appear in the Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 9-10, at The Oaks theaters in Melbourne, Florida. It’s about the decidedly non-extreme ordeals storm chasers endure to get a glimpse of that elusive tornado.

You can download this month’s Brevard Live magazine, which contains the festival program, or pick it up at local bars and restaurants. There are lots of highlights, from “A Beautiful Belly” on Friday night and the red carpet reception, to a bevy of Florida, horror and short films. The Florida Filmmakers & More showcase Saturday morning at 10 a.m. will feature my movie and several others. Come out to see it! It’s $10 to get into Saturday morning’s program – as well as films and a filmmakers’ roundtable Saturday afternoon – and $60 for an all-access VIP pass to two days of events, including the Friday reception and Saturday night party. It’s a great deal, and all proceeds go to Unconditional Love Inc., a nonprofit HIV patient care center.