Summer Storms & Other Natural Disasters

Since the THIS SUMMER STORM anthology is all about storms, I began thinking about all the different storms and natural disasters I’ve lived through. Now, my mind is imagining ways to use all of these experiences in a book.

I grew up with tornadoes in Illinois and am still terrified of them today. The second a tornado warning was posted, I cleaned out the closet under the basement stairs to fit my nine family members. While other kids were playing in puddles, I was shaking under the stairs. My brothers and sisters would make fun of me.

Moving to California as a teen, I had to deal with earthquakes. No warnings or alarms. Just a sudden jolt in the ground and the immediate dash for cover. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1989 World Series earthquake where the Bay Bridge collapsed. I was working at the mall when the shaking started. I dove toward an interior wall for cover. Light fixtures fell, the floor cracked, and a jewelry store window shattered. The historic town I lived in was destroyed. 

Traveling in Japan, I experienced a typhoon. The rain was coming down sideways and the wind was hurricane force.

Speaking of hurricanes, I was in Mexico when Hurricane Emily struck. For days management would give reports of the hurricane’s approach. The storm was like a stalker. I was evacuated to a convention center. Just me and a thousand of my closest friends with no electricity and no air conditioning through an entire night.  Each person got enough space to sit, but not lay down. After the hurricane passed, we returned to the resort to find it had been destroyed. Roofs ripped off buildings. Pools filled with black water and debris. The beach completely washed away.

This past winter I was having dinner at the top of a Colorado mountain, taking two different gondolas to get there. A surprise snow storm came in with gale force winds while I ate. Heading down, the winds were so strong they had to stop the gondola several times. For several minutes. Sitting in the carriage hanging by a thin wire in the sky, I rocked back and forth like a carnival ride over a dark abyss. A freezing dark abyss.  When I arrived at the halfway point, they directed me to a closed restaurant for shelter to wait for the wind and snow to die down. Eventually, I was taken off the mountain by snow cat.

One storm or natural disaster I haven’t experienced is an avalanche. I live in Colorado now so my eyes are always searching the mountain tops…watching and waiting.

What are some of your storm and natural disaster stories?

For more information about other books in the Lost Daughters of Atlantis series, visit my website at www.allieburton.com.

A Current So Swift by Kristy McCaffrey

Post by Kristy McCaffrey

I’m pleased to have a story in the just-released Young Adult anthology, THIS SUMMER STORM. In “A Current So Swift,” a wilderness course on the Green River in Utah has sixteen-year-old Amy Whittaker stuck on a raft with football players and cheerleaders from her high school. No longer able to maintain a low profile among the more popular crowd, she wonders how she’ll survive the week. Even more distressing—Sawyer Tate, her crush since seventh grade, is also in the group. When a torrential rainstorm flips the boats and strands everyone, Amy is forced to take charge. And when Sawyer makes it clear he has feelings for her, remaining invisible is carried away on a current so swift.

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I based this story on my own experience rafting the Green River when I was sixteen years old. My parents insisted that I take an Outward Bound course, since I was such a homebody. My trip wasn’t nearly as eventful as the crisis that befalls Amy and her classmates; and, while there were a few other teenagers in the group, it was mostly adults. But I hope I was able to convey how being in the wilderness can strip down many of the social norms we’re accustomed to in our everyday life. In Amy’s case, being forced to abandon her persona of detachment is made all the harder because she is with kids that leave her feeling socially intimidated. I threw in the love story because in my other life as a writer, I pen romance novels.

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't locate a photo of my trip on the Green
River. This is a photo of Lava Falls Rapid in the Grand
Canyon, considered one of the most fearsome
stretches of whitewater on the Colorado River.

I hope readers find my story enjoyable. I don’t normally write Young Adult, but I do have another YA short story available on Kindle. “Echo of the Plains” is a sweet historical western romance. Eli Ryan searches for the renegade stallion, Echo, in the Texas desert, but Cassie Callahan's stubborn protection of the horse just might steer him off course. Learn more at http://www.kristymccaffrey.com/YA-Short-Stories.html

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Kristy McCaffrey is the author of several adult historical western romances, as well YA short stories. She loves to travel and frequently writes about her adventures on her blog, Pathways, at www.kristymccaffrey.blogspot.com.