I don’t turn on the TV during Summer. My eyes devour its storms instead. I prefer to sit on my porch, turn the lights off, and watch the thunderheads grow above the horizon. Each season, they form in the west and then crawl eastwards. They growl and rumble while harassing the land with threats of lightning, wind and thunder, tormenting everything as they go. Their drama is way better than anything I can see on television.
There’s something exciting about storms that draws me in. It’s visceral. Primeval. My body wakes when they’re near. I feel more alive when the sky swells with moisture-laden air and promises to deliver drenching rain. When the lightning finally breaks through that wild Beast, my heart races. A flush of heat rises in my skin. Goosebumps form. One localised lightning strike fills me with extreme excitement and the air thumps throughout my body after it finishes me off.
I know thunderstorms well because I used to follow them. I photographed them. I wrote about them several times. When it came time to write about my superstorm, I drew from the deep, personal experiences I had with them. The sensations I got from watching tropical thunderstorms develop, move and deliver their lot, were placed directly into my book’s protagonist. What I saw with my eyes, he sees with his own. What I felt, he feels. Readers will enjoy his innermost sensations when he’s encountering the storm to end all storms.
And now we must say something about sex. After all, some may miss the point of this post. I should formerly connect the dots I laid down in the paragraphs before this one. Yes, let’s confirm that right now. It’s sexual. All of it.
Storms and sex are intrinsically linked — at least, they are for me and my book’s principal character. My part was to bring those two worlds together in the best possible way, so a reader could come along for the ride and get tormented too.
Yes, I revealed a large part of myself on this very blog. I rarely do that.
Sex and storms. There, I said it again. Twice, I’ve made the connection public in this post.
There is the highly charged electricity, the anticipation, noise, frenzied activity, the explosive climax, and then the wetness that follows. These are the bones of my sexually-driven storm story, but it took eight years and thirteen rewrites to give it the proper flesh. Yes, it’s important to mention that too. SEETHINGS wasn’t a quick write. It was a thorough one.
And then there’s the serial killer I wove into the narrative — just to make things extra interesting. Now you’ll want to see where this goes, right?
