The Flood of History

Posted on by under 1950s, Books, Cold War, Communism, e-books, fallout, Fiction, flood, history, missile race, Novel, space, spies, suspense, Television

It is the late 1950s, and the Andersen family is at war with itself. As back-to-back hurricanes ravage the rural town of Pennsboro, the family suffers an irredeemable loss. Georgia becomes mired in a haze of medication and TV. Marsh retreats into work and fantasies of the redhead next door. Wil, a precocious boy with a fondness for a girl with almond eyes, suspects his parents are possessed by the aliens from his favorite movie.

Adding to their private grief is the collision of consumerism and the Cold War, and the rising threat of Soviet missiles that may render obsolete America’s last hope for defense, the newly completed Distant Early Warning Line. With the launch of Sputnik, the family’s anguish comes to a head.

As the Andersens watch the first man-made satellite write history across the sky, they wonder if they, and the world, will ever find peace. Inspired by true events, Distant Early Warning portrays the fears and dreams of a generation as it navigates the promise and perils of mid-century America.

Central to the story is the Flood of ’55, which devastated the Atlantic seaboard from Pennsylvania to Connecticut. Our family was lucky. While the backyard flooded, the house, located a mile from the rampaging creeks, managed to stay dry. when the rain ended, my father piled me in the car for a view of the destruction. I would later call it the disaster tour.

Given that I’d interviewed countless survivors during my time as a journalist, the opening chapter of Distant Early Warning felt as if I were chest-deep in the water as it washed away the Andersen’s house. August 18 is the anniversary of that fateful event. Let’s hope we never see a repeat.

Chapter 1

THE RAIN FELL like darkness, like retribution, like madness. It poured for the better part of that week in August of 1955, great sheets of water blowing over ground baked to rock by drought. And then, as quickly as it had disappeared, the sun returned, lawns sparkling like champagne and children vaulting puddles despite their parents’ warnings of tetanus and polio. The urgent throb of water, pinging the roof, pooling the yard, sluicing the streets—disappeared within hours, the creeks high but confined to their banks, relief spreading over the town like a quilt on a winter night.

       Georgia Andersen was sick of the rain. Gazing at the yard, she thought it a miracle they’d survived Hurricane Connie. And now, six days later, Connie’s twin, Diane, gathered her skirts, taking aim, giving Georgia a narrow window between storms to finish the chores. She’d put Penny down for a nap and made sure Wil had something to do other than splashing through the grass with the dog. Slipping into rubber boots, the wicker laundry basket tight against her hip, she trudged through the yard to pull sheets from the line, keeping an ear tuned to the radio and the creek that after days of rain had reached a boil. An infamous waterway that joined the Pennsboro Creek below the Iron Bridge, it drew its name from John Sullivan, the Revolutionary War general who cut a swath through the Northeast before decimating the Iroquois in New York. The creek’s sudden rise seemed in honor of the general. It was not a good sign.

       With the first damp sheet, Georgia realized that, lured by the break between storms, she’d made a mistake in hanging laundry. The air, thick as tar, burrowed into the knit top she’d worn for Wil’s birthday—an impractical choice for a woman with a seven-year-old and a colicky baby, but Marsh would approve.

       From the radio in the kitchen, the announcer read the want-ads as if it were just another day.

       For sale: used mobile home, twenty-seven-foot Walco 1953, $2,200. Houck Trailer Sales. Dial Pennsboro 4-0902.

       Georgia wished they’d broadcast an update on the storm. The Pennsboro Post reported that, four days after Hurricane Connie hit North Carolina, Hurricane Diane made landfall at the same place, near Wilmington. The second storm was moving at fourteen miles an hour, bringing more rain and wind gusts of up to ninety-five miles an hour. The forecasters in Pennsylvania didn’t seem worried, predicting that Diane would exhaust herself against the Appalachian ridge. They called for rain and windy conditions, the rain diminishing to showers that evening, and compared Connie and Diane to rambunctious twins, harmless as a pair of two-year-olds bent on throwing a tantrum.

       How could they be right? All year, the weathermen had missed the mark, the excessive snow of February followed by a dearth of rain in March and April. Then the drought, July the driest month in years, with temperatures soaring into the nineties, far too warm for the Northeast, the hot spell dragging through August, with no relief in sight. Lawns baked. Patience withered with the grass. The creek by their house dried to a jagged stitch. Then, in early August, Connie hit, killing twenty-seven people in North Carolina and dumping more than ten inches of rain on eastern Pennsylvania. And now Diane, drawn into Connie’s wake, threatened to drench the already saturated ground. They couldn’t take another storm.

       Clean, deep mined anthracite. Stove and nut, $12.90. Pea, $11.50. Low ash. Cramer’s Coal.

       Not fifty feet from their home, Sullivan’s Creek bounced over rocks and broken limbs as if it were running an obstacle course, shouting its challenge to the town. Wil said he could hear the water talk. Such an active imagination. She was afraid to ask what he heard. What would the other children think, his teacher or his father, for that matter? She feared for Wil, a small boy with big ears and shy eyes, his sandy hair fine as a girl’s. The world didn’t make room for dreamers. Then again, neither did the creek.

Wreckage of the Iron Bridge that linked the boroughs of Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg, Pa.

       Unknown to her son, she also heard the murmur, the warning beneath the gloss, the repudiation of their complacency, their obsession with comfort, with all things shiny and new. Tailfins and barbecue grills, Buicks and Breck. If nature wanted to reclaim the land, she would, and nothing they’d built would stand in the way.

       Baby carriage, good condition, reasonably priced. Phone PB 4-1892.

       Penny would turn six months in September. Georgia could sell the carriage, contribute to the new house.

       Thunder shook the clouds, dragging its bootheels across the treetops, beginning its march. Her nerves vibrated in response. Within those clouds, something coiled, something terrible that waited for them to drop their guard. Her head confirmed it. A change in the weather, her husband would say. A drop in barometric pressure, his brother the Civil Defense chief would offer. An early warning, she thought, but as with most premonitions, she guarded the feeling. Even her family might not make room for dreamers.

       The first pelt of rain stung her arms. Loading the basket, she turned to watch her son bound across the soggy yard, playing tag with an imaginary friend. He was almost too old for these games. And yet she wanted to preserve this part of him forever, the part that believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the innate goodness of people. She chased Wil toward the back door and, two by two, they marched into the ark.

       Inside, the air tightened its grip, as if the storm would burst through the walls at any moment. Georgia opened the windows to the sound of the creek as it churned beneath the bridge, one of only four lifelines out of town. Before he’d gone to work at the newspaper that morning, Marsh had told her not to worry. The dams and bridges that held during Connie would survive Diane. Besides, forecasters said the storm was weakening. If there was an emergency, the authorities would tell them what to do. Yes, she’d said, but what if they had to leave? Where would they go? To the church or the fire hall or the basement of the courthouse, he’d said, even though each sat perilously close to the lowest part of town.

       Yes, it’s true. Two machineless waves for $7.00 or $3.95 each. Suzanne’s Curl & Twirl, Pennsboro.

       She hadn’t had a perm since Penny’s birth. As if those things mattered.

       Dampness clung to the sheets, to her clothes, to her hair. Everything smelled like the cellar. She had to make room in the next load for the baby’s diapers, so she folded the sheets and left them in the basket by the playpen. She’d air and iron them later, when she felt less unsettled.

       The sprinkles had turned to drizzle. If the creek rose any higher, their neighbor would be the first to evacuate—an early warning sign that should have calmed her nerves. She checked the thermometer tacked to the windowsill. The temperature had dropped to eighty-four, the sign of a front on the move.

       At the kitchen sink, Wil mounted a stepstool and ran water into a metal bowl for their beagle, an animal with perpetually droopy eyes and ears, as if, in her first months of life, she, too, had grown weary of the rain.

       “Didn’t you give her water this morning?” Georgia asked.

       “Skippy’s hot.”

       Wil dipped his head, the way he did when reprimanded. She hadn’t meant to shame him. She wished he never felt that way, never felt bullied at school, by the children or his teachers or any of the well-meaning adults who felt justified in disciplining other people’s children because no one would challenge their authority.

       Georgia forced a smile. “How did you know?”

       “Her tongue was sticking out.”

       She bent until his eyes met hers. “Doesn’t it always?”

       “That’s how they stay cool. They stick their tongues out.”

       “Now how do they do that?”

       She caught the cautious glance over his shoulder to see if anyone would scold him. Confident no one else could see, he stuck out his tongue. She laughed, which earned a smile in return.

       “Well, Skippy is just a puppy. She’s going to need a lot more water than that.” He could let the rain fill the bowl, but she topped it anyway. “There. That should hold her.”

       The screen door slammed. She watched her son slog across the side yard to the coop and set the bowl in front of the dog, the water sloshing over his sneakers. Kneeling, Wil scratched Skippy’s neck, the dog’s ear dwarfing his small hand. By the time Marsh got home, both would be soaked.

       Wanted: office girl, experienced. Write to Box No. 88, care of the Pennsboro Post. Sewing machine operators: hand sewers, experienced only. Apply in person at Kingdom Dress Co. No phone calls, please.

       She could sew. When Penny got older, she could work outside the home, help them save for one of their own. If Marsh would allow it.

       The screen door complained of rust and age. Wil had pushed halfway through the opening when Georgia said in a forced whisper, “Shoes, please!” Shucking them into the corner, he sat at the kitchen table, waving his feet as if treading water, and asked if he could change the radio station. He fanned through Frank Sinatra, the Les Baxter Orchestra, the Mitch Miller Chorus, and a bouncy new song called “Rock Around the Clock” before landing on KYW News Radio in Philadelphia. The announcer described the flooding in North Carolina and the path of Diane, now headed up the steep slope of the mountains through Virginia and Maryland. The wind speed and rainfall amounts had dropped, but the storm marched on.

       “Not so loud,” Georgia said. “We don’t want to wake the baby.”

       Through the ceiling, Georgia heard the faint murmurs of a waking child. Soon, she’d need to change and feed Penny and start dinner—Italian meatloaf with Parmesan cheese and tomato sauce—but she could not wrest her eyes from the window. The rain had turned the air to tinsel. It pelted the roof in a steady tattoo. It would lie in wait all night, watching for an open window, a broken board, a crack in the foundation, any chance to wash them from their beds. For the umpteenth time that day, she mounted the stairs, the loose rubber treads clacking under her heels. Hefting Penny from the crib, she buried her nose in the whorl of hair at the baby’s crown, the warm scent of powder giving way to the faint tang of the bathroom.

Our house outside the flood zone

       “Time to get you some new duds.” Dropping the old diaper in the pail, pushing the oversized safety pins through the cloth, she let the Chordettes’s “Mr. Sandman” drift through her mind, along with a fantasy very different from the song. Bring me a dream, she thought, but make sure he knows how to feed and change a child.

       Baby clamped securely in her arm, she made her way downstairs. In the kitchen, she lowered the volume of the radio, set Penny in the playpen, and gave into Wil’s incessant request to watch TV. Regardless of the storm, Marsh would arrive at his usual time. He would rest a hand at the small of her back, nuzzle the lobe of her ear, and tell her not to worry. He would assure her the hurricane wasn’t as terrible as she’d imagined and that this, too, would pass. She would inhale his aftershave and brush the stubble of his cheek, and sway to the murmur in her ear.

       Her insides stirred, one of the few times since they’d had Penny. She stole a look to see if Wil had noticed. He squinted at the television as if it were an eye chart, oblivious to everything except the world on the screen. In the playpen, Penny crawled toward imagined freedom beyond the bars. Stepping outside, sheltered by the overhang, she watched for her husband as rain burst through the trees, bringing with it the smell of ancient things—rotting wood, decaying leaves, the dying lawn. In the shifting currents, the grass moved like seaweed, resigned to its fate, waving farewell to a former life.

       She crossed her arms against the dampness, the coming night, the storm that hid within its folds. What had happened to them? While Penny’s birth had gone as well as expected, it had opened a gap with Marsh, giving her a kind of vertigo. What had upset their careful balance? Was it lack of sleep, a change in Georgia’s appearance, the presence of another child, another mouth to feed? The baby’s colic exacerbated that distance. Even Wil noticed it, claiming she spent all of her time with the baby. He must have felt deeply to risk discipline for speaking his mind. Yet she could not ignore the child they’d prayed to conceive. Wil and his father would have to accept the little of herself she had to spare, until Penny grew old enough to care for herself. How long would they wait? That drought of attention could last forever.

       By 8:30, the sky had turned to ink. Rain continued to thrum against the roof. Retrieving the baby from her playpen, Georgia shooed a protesting Wil upstairs, reminding him to change into his jammies and brush his teeth. With the baby down for the night, her time had finally arrived. Switching on the television, she settled on the couch and tried to watch Fear Strikes Out, a movie Marsh would have liked about center fielder Jimmy Piersall. But at 9:30 the lights vanished with a snap. Suddenly blind, she groped toward the telephone. It was out, too. Now there was no way to call Marsh, even if she knew where to find him. And he had taken the car.

       From the street, shouts competed with the swish of tires, then a shudder as something heavy struck the bridge, rattling the house as if the earth had broken in two. The room squeezed her heart. Inhaling through her mouth, she told herself she was responsible for the children and had to think of their welfare. Marsh said that, if the town declared an emergency, the fire chief would blow the siren, and someone would come to their rescue. She could wait for the siren, but not in this stifling dark.

       Groping through a drawer in the kitchen, she found a small flashlight, thumbed the button and, checking that Skippy was safe, traced a path upstairs. Awakened by a noise in the street, Wil emerged from his room draped in sleep. Cradling Penny—the baby fussed but didn’t cry, the cereal settling for once—Georgia led him downstairs, where she rummaged through another drawer to find their good tapers and a box of matches. Placing the candles on the table, she opened the screen door and peered into the dark. She didn’t need a light to hear the rush of water across their yard. The town’s storm sewers were designed to handle a hard rain. Their home was not.

       Wil noticed it first. Lifting a hand to stay his questions, she listened to the tinny sound of water trickling into the house. Opening the door to the basement, she played the flashlight over a small lake, the surface foaming like root beer. The seasonal items they’d stored bumped against the bottom of the steps—boxes of clothing, Christmas decorations, a pair of lawn chairs Marsh had promised to fix. Within the time it took to identify each object, the water rose to the second step, then the third. In minutes, it would reach the kitchen, sweeping them and their possessions through the front door.

       The playpen sat a good nine inches above the living room floor. She set Penny inside and turned to her son.

       “You’re a big boy now. I need you to help Mommy move some things upstairs.”

       Slipping into her boots, assuring herself that Wil had buckled his, she tottered down the basement stairs, hanging onto the railing, calling for Wil to be careful. The water had risen so rapidly, she had to duck to see under the rafters. Playing the light over the walls, she watched as water gushed between the stones, flooding the furnace and coalbin and inching dangerously close to the fuse box. They’d used the last of their spares, and there was no way, once the power came back, she was going to wade through that water and use a penny to complete the circuit.

       Urging Wil up the stairs, she closed the door and leaned her head against it. Even with the curtains open, the windows appeared blank, the streetlamps dead. The flashlight cast a narrow cone in one direction only. There was no place to set it and see clearly enough to climb the stairs to the bedrooms. Georgia would have to hold the light and the furniture, and her hands were already slick with sweat. She and Wil were able to lift the lamps, books, and ottoman onto the dining room table. The rugs they lugged upstairs and piled into the bathtub. There would be a mess to clean before she could bathe Penny, but it was the best they could do.

       Where was Marsh, and was he all right? And where were the firemen he was supposed to send? Wil’s bedtime prayer rang in her head. Now I lay me down to sleep.

       The radio had died. Rain thrummed against the roof, the sound clotting her ears. She considered leaving, but where could they go on foot? Besides, there was a house between them and the creek and a concrete retaining wall lining one side of the bank. The town must have thought it would hold the water or they wouldn’t have built it.

       Thunder rolled over the house, rattling the windows, shaking the floor. Wil took her hand. Penny issued a startled cry. Lifting her from the playpen, Georgia moved to heat water for a bottle before she realized the appliances were as dead as the lights. Dumb, she thought and dutifully pushed a nipple through its plastic ring, mixed the formula with tepid water from the tap, and let it sit.

       If I should die before I ’wake.

       The fire sirens came on with the whoosh of a gas burner, the sound oscillating between panic and fear. It cut through her chest. The creek would ignore the warning. Georgia pictured it as a mythic creature rising on stout legs, beating its chest, thundering its demands. She, too, would not be moved. They would ride out the storm until help arrived.

       The sound of rain intensified. It seemed to buckle the walls. Holding Penny and the flashlight, she instructed Wil to jam towels under the back door. That would keep some of the water at bay. The basement posed the real threat. The old stone walls could collapse. Before sealing the cellar, she ventured a last look. Clasping the light to the baby’s back, Georgia aimed at the door. With her free hand, she reached for the knob and hesitated, her fingers suspended in the beam, her body sensing the weight of something trapped beneath the stairs, the pressure on a dam ready to burst. As if watching herself, she grasped the handle and cracked the door.

       Even as she stumbled back, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake.

The back of our house after the Flood of ’55

Rebels with a Cause

Posted on by under Books, e-books, Fiction, history, Music, mystery, Novel, suspense

Days before the Woodstock music festival is set to begin, Elizabeth Reed faces a bigger problem than whether to run away with her boyfriend to an unknown future in New York state. U.S. Marshals begin to forcibly remove squatters from a spot on the Delaware River the government has claimed for a dam, a spot very near Elizabeth’s home, which has also been scheduled for flooding.

Working as a stringer for the local newspaper, Elizabeth agrees to photograph the assault. Despite her fears—her parents face eviction and the confiscation of their land—and her discomfort around a far-too-forward reporter, she accompanies him to cover the eviction. Confronted by a wall of armed marshals, her fantasy of making it to Woodstock looks wishful at best.

This chapter, which occurs near the end of the book, marks a turning point for Elizabeth, as well as the country.

Although Born Under a Bad Sign is a novel, it is based on events I witnessed as a journalist. Note the eviction and possible internment of the squatters by the marshals. It raises a question may struggle with today: Have we learned anything from that decade of peace and love?

33.

STEPHEN DUFFY PULLED the car onto the shoulder near the roadblock where the U.S. Marshals had established as base camp and patted Elizabeth’s knee. His fingers were plump and pale, with dark red hair that looked as if it had been sewn between the knuckles. She brushed away the hand and produced what she hoped was a stern look, one that seemed lost on him, since he was staring through the windshield.

       “Don’t be intimidated by the guns,” he said and gave her knee another tap. “They almost never shoot photographers.”

       She followed his gaze. There were at least a dozen state police officers and five times as many marshals, the latter dressed in battle gear—blue jumpsuits with pistols strapped to their waists, gasmasks hanging from their belts, shotguns at the ready. As she and Stephen stepped from the car, heads turned. No one looked happy to see them.

       Elizabeth felt excited and nervous. She’d been up half the night, worrying about the raid on the river people as the locals called the squatters. Yet Stephen had forbidden her from contacting them. Given the complete lack of information, she’d prepared as best she could, dressing in work boots and shirt over military fatigues she’d purchased at the army navy store. Her father’s fishing vest provided enough pockets for lenses, film, and a notebook for jotting the names of the people she photographed—“collecting IDs,” as Stephen had described the process. She’d strung both Nikons over her neck, one in front, the other on the side, fresh batteries in the motor drives. With no camera bag to intrude, she could move quickly.

     Stepping from the car, she felt she might have to. The marshals formed a wall in front of the roadblock. They were backed not only by the state police but a half-dozen construction workers, probably the same ones who had crushed the buildings in the village. They stood beside their backhoes and bulldozers and drank from Styrofoam cups that steamed in the predawn air. It had rained overnight and now, at a quarter to six—an ungodly hour for them but late for Elizabeth—the mist hung in the trees like tent caterpillars, the marshals hovering above the roadway like ghosts.

       Behind her, doors slammed, and a half-dozen cars disgorged the competition, readily identifiable by their clutter of notebooks, tape recorders, cameras, and lights. Fedoras with press cards attached would have made for a better photo.

       Stephen approached the roadblock. “Do what they say, but don’t let them push you around. Be aggressive. You’ve got as much right to be here as they do.”

       Elizabeth thumbed the film advance lever until she thought it would snap. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I am the very opposite of aggressive.”

       “Then stay back. Use a long lens. Duck if you hear gunfire.”

       She felt a chill unrelated to the temperature of the air, which had to be over sixty by now. “Thanks for the warning.”

       “Go for emotion—weeping mothers, crying babies, any sign of violence against the squatters. Treat them like they’re the Israelites fleeing Egypt, with pharaoh and his chariots hot on their trail.”

       He didn’t wait for a reply but moved steadily toward the front line.

       Elizabeth hurried to catch up. “I guess the photo essay didn’t do any good.”

       Her photo spread of the valley’s destruction had hit the newsstands days ago and she hadn’t heard a reaction from anyone.

      “Our Harrisburg bureau chief walked a copy to the governor’s office. You should be proud.”

       “It didn’t stop this.”

       “One small hole in the dam,” he said. “Keep poking away.”

       “I thought that was ‘plugging away?’”

       “Only if you’re a little Dutch boy with a lot of digits.”

       “You have the strangest sense of humor.”

       He gave her the full-bearded smile. “You’ll get used to it.”

       Journalists flanked their sides, the group moving toward the barricade in a wave.

       “Why are there so many reporters here?” she asked.

       “We’ve got friends in high places.”

       “The attorney general called you personally?”

       “He’s running for governor on a law-and-order platform and wants a head start. That’s him over there, the short guy with the salt-and-pepper hair and beard. Make sure you get him in a shot.”

       Elizabeth spotted a man wearing a navy windbreaker with US MARSHALS imprinted on the back. He said something to one of the state troopers and laughed.

       She felt appalled. “This isn’t theater. People’s lives are at stake.”

       “Politics as usual. You’ll get used to it.”

       She thought she wouldn’t but didn’t have time to speak, because the marshals moved out, walking River Road until they reached the dirt lane that led toward the river and the squatters’ camp. The reporters tried to follow but were stopped by the state police.

       “Let ’em through!” the man in the windbreaker shouted and led the way.

       Stephen trotted next to him, talking and writing as he plowed through the undergrowth. Elizabeth grabbed a shot of the pair. Then, hoping to stay ahead of the marshals, she slipped through the woods, climbing over stone rows and broken patches of barbed wire to emerge in the field where she’d first spotted the camp. She was in position when the invading army arrived. They were methodical, breaking into teams of two, banging on doors, checking every house, barn, outbuilding, lean-to, wigwam, and tent. The message was always the same: the inhabitants had thirty minutes to evacuate.

       The river people poured into the field, shirtless men and barefoot women cradling babies and half-naked children running like refugees from a village in Vietnam, frightened, crying, fleeing the occupying force. Not everyone gave up their homes. One man shouted down the marshals from a rooftop. Another climbed a tree and refused to leave. A third held a baby aloft, as a shield or sacrifice, Elizabeth couldn’t tell.

       She photographed everything that moved, took a knee to reload, and kept firing. When she got closer, she gathered the names, ages, and addresses of the places where the river people had lived, always expressing her sorrow at the evictions. Despite Stephen’s warning, she asked permission to take their pictures, shooting portraiture in the middle of the skirmish, marveling at the beauty and strength of their faces. If the marshals waved her off, she rounded the buildings and approached from a different angle, silhouetting the law as it marched the squatters toward the road. The exodus was almost Biblical.

       When the heavy equipment arrived, Elizabeth retreated, using a longer lens to document the destruction as the bulldozers demolished houses and barns, scraping into heaps the tents, mattresses, bicycles, and belongings left behind. The sound was pitiless, dogging her as she moved from house to house in an attempt to stay a step ahead.

       The thought of all those homeless people made her stomach turn. Were they under arrest? Would the marshals separate the adults from their children? Where were they being taken? Where would they live? And when the law was done with the camp, would it come for her family, and anyone else who stood in the way of the dam?

By the time we got to Woodstock . . .

Posted on by under Books, e-books, Fiction, history, Music, mystery, Novel, suspense

It is 1969, capstone of a tumultuous decade, and life in the rural town of Pennsboro, Pa. is about to explode. A dam that would flood the valley pits family against family. Protesters riot. Buildings burn. Amid the chaos, two lovers risk everything to fight for their dreams.

Elizabeth Reed feels conflicted. She loves the river the government wants to dam and a musician who can’t settle on any one person or place. Hayden Quinn, the guitarist Rolling Stone calls the next Jimi Hendrix, feeds a single obsession—to play Woodstock, the biggest concert of his life. He presents Elizabeth with a terrible dilemma: stay to save her family farm or relinquish her dreams to follow Quinn into the unknown.

Born Under a Bad Sign not only tells their story but the story of a generation. It’s opening sets the stage for a very personal battle for peace and love.

1.

FROM BEYOND THE hills came a jagged flash of light. Elizabeth Reed counted five seconds before the sound rumbled across the infield of the raceway, this makeshift venue for the largest outdoor rock concert on the East Coast. Another flash, and another ripple of thunder. In an improvized call and response, the crowd echoed its approval. The tower that held the lights and PA system trembled. So did Elizabeth’s arms and legs. She let the dizziness pass and, willing her stomach to settle, tucked both cameras under her arms and climbed to the sky.

      The warm-up band had just finished, the announcer promising that Orwell, fresh off its national tour, would soon take the stage. A wall of people surged forward. Despite the scalding July heat, this was the group’s homecoming and the locals had turned out in force, thousands of ragged kids with beards and muumuus, jostling each other in a fog of beer and smoke. Two years after Monterey Pop and the festival had come of age. So had the band.

      The tower swayed enough to cause Elizabeth to question her bravado. Despite the knot in her stomach, she climbed past speakers and spotlights for a better view of the makeshift stage, a plywood floor laid across a half-dozen flatbed trailers. The platform had been hastily constructed for the festival, the biggest in Pennsylvania’s Minisink Valley and a warm-up for one she’d heard could be even bigger, next month’s Woodstock Music & Art Fair in nearby New York.

      That was the real object of the evening’s performance, a final rehearsal for Orwell and its leader, Hayden Quinn, the guitarist Rolling Stone had called the next Jimi Hendrix, the man that Elizabeth, fresh out of high school, had followed halfway across the country as the band’s unofficial photographer. It was make or break time for the group. The band’s manager, Elizabeth’s Uncle Morey, had invited the man organizing Woodstock, Michael Lang, to attend the concert. So far, she hadn’t seen anyone fitting Lang’s description.

      As the wind rose to meet the night, Elizabeth realized that, if the crowd pressed closer, the tower could tip. Since her dizziness disappeared if she didn’t look down, she focused on the distance, tracking the Delaware as it wandered between Pennsylvania and New Jersey like a nomad, flowing freely despite the government’s effort to dam the river and drown her family’s farm. With the telephoto lens, she could isolate her property, snug in the rich bottom land of the valley. Camera in hand, river and fields spread below, she felt exhausted, scared, and ridiculously happy.

      Voices below startled her. Dressed in black, two members of the security crew waved her from the tower. The yelling morphed into the sound of hammering. Against the raw wood of the stage, Tommy Reed nailed cardboard cylinders to rows of two-by-tens, preparing the fireworks for the evening’s finale. He seemed dwarfed by the munitions.

      When the sound system kicked in with a recording of “Crossroads,” Elizabeth gripped the metal pipes to maintain her balance. Despite the rush of adrenaline, her arms ached from lugging a pair of heavy Nikons all day. With a normal lens, the weight seemed bearable. But when loaded with a zoom and a motor drive, the outfit felt as if it weighed as much as a bale of hay. Before she descended, she snapped a picture of Tommy as he wired his makeshift rig, the camera hot and slippery in her hands. Heaven help them if she dropped it on his head.

      As soon as she landed, the security officers assumed their positions in front of the stage while the roadies assembled the last of the equipment. Her older brother Robbie frowned as he arranged cymbals and tightened the drumheads, his rusty hair in a deliberately unhip buzzcut. Reaching above his head, Cordell White plugged his bass into a stack of amplifiers and plucked a few notes. Unlike Robbie, who wore his usual white T-shirt and shorts, Del had dressed for show in leather pants, a jacket of purple satin, and a high-crowned Navajo hat with a yellow plume. Both of them looked frustrated, or mad.

      Tommy caught her eye and jerked his head toward the edge of the stage. He, too, appeared angry, a look that was highlighted by chapped lips, hair the color of licorice, and a nose as sharp as a chisel. The only festive thing about him was the tie-dyed headband.

      “Hey, Cuz,” she said, drawing a face that signaled either irritation or fatigue.

      He smelled of oil and mint. As usual, he wore sunglasses so dark that she wondered how he could see to connect the fireworks. Pecking him on the cheek, she took in the rows of rockets, mortars, and Roman candles that crowded both sides of the stage and felt a twinge of concern. “Aren’t they a little close?”

      Tommy scratched his back with a screwdriver. “Close?”

      “To the band.”

      Another crack of thunder and Tommy dragged a tarp over the pods. “Wait and see.”

      As security stopped a ginger-haired man flashing press credentials, Elizabeth regained the tower. One by one, the members of Orwell wandered onto the stage to a cascade of applause. Robbie positioned his cymbals, Del and Quinn hunched over tuning pegs, and Mattie, jiggling her ample ass, asked the crowd how they were doing. As the band struck its first tectonic chord, the audience thundered their approval.

      Mattie belted out the first number with a ferocity that shook the towers, all trace of her Southern accent lost in the ricochet of sound. Robbie thrashed as if he were drowning in one of the cow ponds on the family farm. Even Del, who usually bobbed in place, stalked the boards, his face a darkening cloud.

      Quinn followed with a scorching lead that featured a collision of Bach, Thelonious Monk, and Hendrix. Shirtless now and barefoot, he played with a single-mindedness akin to religious devotion, prowling the stage, slashing his guitar, bending strings until they threatened to snap. He hammered the neck with both hands as if playing a piano, the sound a frenetic cross between Paganini and Robert Johnson, the shaman who’d sold his soul to the devil for his talent.

      From her perch, she tracked the band, feeling more than hearing the smack of the mirror as it lifted to admit the light, the whir of the motor drive as it advanced the frames. Pace yourself, she thought, or you’ll run out of film.

      Like a tsunami, the intensity of the music grew, Quinn hurtling his body into the wave of sound, his head bowed, shoulders hunched, fingers on fire. Dreadlocks flew as he reared, face twisted in ecstasy, the notes tracking across his lips. No matter how many times she’d seen the show, Elizabeth felt stunned, and not just by the acoustical acrobatics. With the flick of his fingers, Quinn guided the music from brave to anxious to calm. Elizabeth felt warmth and humor, sadness and pity, and so much in between. It astonished her that anyone could convey such emotion without the use of a single word.

      The band continued the pace, blazing through songs as if racing to an uncertain end. By the close of the set, their faces shone with euphoria and sweat. Robbie raised his sticks, caught the eye of Quinn and Del, and they miraculously finished on the same beat, even as Tommy launched the first volley of fireworks, burning the night in a shower of red and gold.

      The musicians filtered off stage, waited a beat, and returned to a swelling ovation. With a deep bow, and a nod from Mattie, they launched into one of the medleys Quinn had arranged as an encore. Even before Elizabeth traced their faces through the telephoto, she could tell that, as the music grew more frantic, they struggled to hear. Hitting the final chorus, Mattie looked over her shoulder as if she were lost in the woods. Robbie buried his head in his drum kit. Del and Quinn traded places, Del moving to the monitors along the wing while Quinn arched over the stage to listen to the PA speakers.

      The music had grown so loud that Elizabeth could barely feel the vibration through the camera body as the motor drive cranked through another roll of film, thirty-six exposures in a matter of seconds before she hunched to reload.

      This time, the band didn’t leave the stage. They bowed slightly, as if they’d expended so much energy they had little left for movement, before launching into the second encore, a reprise of their single, “Bomb Babies,” that ended in a cataclysmic version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Quinn had shortened the piece for maximum impact and, when he nodded, Tommy let loose with his final volley.

      From the corner of the viewfinder, Elizabeth watched the skyrockets arc into the night and explode in phosphorescent swirls. She grabbed a shot of Tommy, who timed the bursts to coincide with the downbeat. As the encore hit its crescendo, he quickened the pace, unleashing a white-hot assault that mimicked the original cannon fire. The band fed off the energy, Quinn and Robbie flailing, Del leaning dangerously close to the fireworks while Mattie spread her arms to embrace the crowd.

      Then, as Elizabeth lifted the camera to her face, the stage flashed with a blinding light and the world exploded.

The moral hazard of AI (no, it’s not the apocalypse)

Posted on by under Authors, Books, Creativity, Editing, Fiction, Innovation, Nonfiction, Novel, Photography, Technology, Writers, Writing

I just received a note that Narrative magazine’s Spring 2026 Story Contest is accepting entries. Narrative winners and finalists have won Pulitzer and Pushcart Prizes, as well as placement in high-profile anthologies. In addition to publishing emerging writers, the magazine says it reaches a worldwide audience of 325,000 readers. It’s good market for literary writers.

Unless you’re using artificial intelligence, or AI. Narrative’s contest guidelines end with a single sentence: “We do not accept work that includes machine-generated text.”

For authors and other creatives tempted to enhance their work with AI, the writing is on the wall: Using Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, CoPilot and others to research and critique your work is acceptable. Using those services to generate content is not. (We’ll talk about the use of AI in photography in a bit.)

Commercial publishing

Where do commercial publishing houses stand on the use of AI??

According to Microsoft’s CoPilot, Penguin Random House UK advises writers that AI is not a substitute for human imagination and that AI tools may be used selectively but with caution. PRH, which only accepts manuscripts through literary agents, offers no specific advice for authors on the use of LLMs on either its U.S. or UK sites.

At business and academic publisher Wiley, authors may only use AI technology as a companion to their writing process, not a replacement. “As always, authors must take full responsibility for the accuracy of all content, and verify that all claims, citations, references, and analyses are aligned with their expertise and research,” Wiley states on the AI guidelines page of its website.

Authors must also document their use of AI tools and “disclose the use of AI technologies when submitting their material to a Wiley-published journal.”

The Authors Guild offers a model clause for contracts between authors and publishers that discourages the use of machine-generated text in a work. “Author shall not be required to use generative AI or to work from AI-generated text. Author shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [a de minimis/5%] AI-generated text.”

Self-publishing

For independently published writers, Amazon—the world’s largest platform for self-published books—requires a disclosure for those who used AI to create their work. The company’s content guidelines for books released through its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) arm offers this warning:

“We require you to inform us of AI-generated content (text, images, or translations) when you publish a new book or make edits to and republish an existing book through KDP. AI-generated images include cover and interior images and artwork. You are not required to disclose AI-assisted content. We distinguish between AI-generated and AI-assisted content as follows:

“AI-generated: We define AI-generated content as text, images, or translations created by an AI-based tool. If you used an AI-based tool to create the actual content (whether text, images, or translations), it is considered “AI-generated,” even if you applied substantial edits afterwards.

“AI-assisted: If you created the content yourself, and used AI-based tools to edit, refine, error-check, or otherwise improve that content (whether text or images), then it is considered “AI-assisted” and not “AI-generated.” Similarly, if you used an AI-based tool to brainstorm and generate ideas, but ultimately created the text or images yourself, this is also considered “AI-assisted” and not “AI-generated.” It is not necessary to inform us of the use of such tools or processes.”

Why does that matter? Because, according to wordsrated.com, Amazon releases more than 1.4 million self‑published books each year.

Photography

Photographers are also grappling with the use of AI, with organizations disqualifying from competition images that use generative AI. Contests run by the Florida Camera Club Council (FCCC) allow the use of AI to remove noise (what film photographers call grain) and other distractions from images but forbid the machine generation of images.

FCCC’s contest rules are simple: if you add something to an image you did not photograph, that photograph may not quality for competition.

“Every part of an image must be the maker’s own work,” FCCC says on its website. “Artificial Intelligence or Al cannot be used to add elements to an image that were not taken by the maker. Al functions such as denoising, healing, sharpening, expanding canvas are allowed, as long as Al generated objects, people, or other elements are not introduced into the image. Makers may be asked to submit original images prior to approval.”

Why does this matter? Because people expect an artform that began its life documenting reality to provide them with visual truth, and organizations like FCCC, which screen entries from some 50 independent camera clubs throughout the state, have become the gatekeepers of that tradition. FCCC is not alone. There are thousands of photography clubs operating in the United States, according to DuckDuckGo’s search assistant. Microsoft’s CoPilot puts the number at 700.

Moral hazard

The same ethical considerations apply to writing. Using AI tools for research is OK, as long as writers follow the traditional rules of authorship and disclose the source. Using those tools to create words and images from the ether is also acceptable, as long as we disclose that fact, although it does create a moral hazard where corporations take risks for which others—writers, photographers and other creatives whose work is appropriated to train these applications—pay the price.

We’ll let the bots have the next-to-last word.

“The benefits of AI tools for creatives are surprisingly broad and often transformative,” according to ChatGPT (prompt: what are the benefits to creatives of using AI tools?). “AI can offer prompts, variations, or even complete drafts that help kickstart human creativity. While AI is powerful, it’s not a replacement for human creativity.”

As long as we’re transparent.

Open circuit: no generative AI used to make this photo I took of a circuit board.

A Not-So-Distant Warning

Posted on by under 1950s, Advertising, Books, Cold War, Commerce, Communism, Culture, e-books, fallout, Fiction, flood, history, missile race, Novel, space, spies, Television

August 18, 1955 is a day that will live in infamy for people of the Northeast. That was the day the Flood of ’55 ravaged our small town. Back-to-back hurricanes Connie and Diane turned peaceful creeks into raging torrents, sweeping aside towns from Pennsylvania to Connecticut and killing hundreds, seemingly in the blink of an eye.

As a child, I don’t remember much of that time, but years later, as a journalist investigating the events of that terrible night, I was stunned by the hardship and heroism of those who survived. With the benefit of hindsight, I decided to explore their stories through a series of novels.

The first book in the trilogy, Distant Early Warning, introduces us to the Andersen family as they struggle to recover from the devastating flood. The novel, and the ones to follow—Cold Fire and Good People—portray the dreams and fears of a family, town, and country as they navigate the promise and perils of Cold War America. Distant Early Warning doesn’t only refer to the DEW Line, the system of Arctic radar stations designed to detect incoming Soviet bombers. The title serves as a metaphor for the internal system that warns us of impending danger, warnings we often ignore.

Russia, rockets, race, and repression—issues the Andersens tried to resolve in the ’50 that revisit us today. As does their struggle for mercy and hope.

Theirs is a journey from darkness to light. Follow it here. Or start with that terrible night of August 18 in this excerpt from Chapter 4.

The Iron Bridge that before the Flood of ’55 connected the boroughs of Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg, Pa.

AT TEN TO NINE, Georgia let Skippy out for a short walk, wiped the dog’s back with a dishtowel, and moved her box into the kitchen. This was Georgia’s time. Switching on the television, she settled on the couch and tried to watch Fear Strikes Out, a movie Marsh would have liked about center fielder Jimmy Piersall. But at 9:30 the lights vanished with a snap. Suddenly blind, she groped toward the telephone. It was out, too. Now there was no way to call Marsh, even if she knew where to find him. And he had taken the car.
       From the street, shouts competed with the swish of tires, then a shudder as something heavy struck the bridge, rattling the house as if the earth had broken in two. The room squeezed her heart. Inhaling through her mouth, she told herself she was responsible for the children and had to think of their welfare. Marsh said that, if the town declared an emergency, the fire chief would blow the siren, and someone would come to their rescue. She could wait for the siren, but not in this stifling dark.
       Groping through a drawer in the kitchen, she found a small flashlight, thumbed the button and, checking that Skippy was safe in her makeshift bed, traced a path upstairs. Awakened by a noise in the street, Wil emerged from his room, still dressed in his life vest and rocket pack, ready to battle whoever he imagined had attacked the house. Cradling Penny—the baby fussed but didn’t cry, the cereal settling for once—Georgia led him downstairs, where she rummaged through another drawer to find their good tapers and a box of matches. Placing the candles on the table, she opened the screen door and peered into the dark. She didn’t need a light to sense the rush of water across their yard. The town’s storm sewers were designed to handle a hard rain. Their home was not.
       Wil noticed it first. Lifting a hand to stay his questions, she listened to the tinny sound of water trickling into the house. Opening the door to the basement, she played the flashlight over a small lake, the surface foaming like root beer. The seasonal items they’d stored bumped against the bottom of the steps—boxes of clothing, Christmas decorations, a pair of lawn chairs Marsh had promised to fix. Within the time it took to identify each object, the water rose to the second step, then the third. In minutes, it would reach the kitchen, sweeping them and their possessions through the front door.
       The playpen sat a good nine inches above the living room floor. She set Penny inside and turned to her son.
       “You’re a big boy now. I need you to help Mommy move some things upstairs.”
       Slipping into her boots, assuring herself that Wil had buckled his, she tottered down the basement stairs, hanging onto the railing, calling for Wil to be careful. The water had risen so rapidly, she had to duck to see under the rafters. Playing the light over the walls, she watched as water gushed between the stones, flooding the furnace and coal bin and inching dangerously close to the fuse box. They’d used the last of their spares, and there was no way, once the power came back, she was going to wade through that water and use a penny to complete the circuit.
       Urging Wil up the stairs, she closed the door and leaned her head against it. Even with the curtains open, the windows appeared blank, the streetlamps dead. The flashlight cast a narrow cone in one direction only. There was no place to set it and see clearly enough to climb the stairs to the bedrooms. Georgia would have to hold the light and the furniture, and her hands were already slick with sweat. She and Wil were able to lift the lamps, books, and ottoman onto the dining room table. The rugs they lugged upstairs and piled into the bathtub. There would be a mess to clean before she could bathe Penny, but it was the best they could do.
       Wil hovered at her side, jittering as if he had to go to the bathroom. “Can we bring Phil upstairs?”
       Marsh had spoken to Wil about how, as people grew older, they said goodbye to their imaginary friends, but now was not the time for a sermon. Besides, the Philco had cost nearly five hundred dollars, more than a tenth of what Marsh earned at the paper, and Georgia wasn’t about to lose it. She and Wil tried to drag the television up the narrow stairwell but couldn’t shove it past the first few steps. They left it on the landing and made their way to the kitchen.
       Where was Marsh, and was he all right? And where were the firemen he was supposed to send? Wil’s bedtime prayer rang in her head.
       Now I lay me down to sleep.
       The radio had died. Rain thrummed against the roof, the sound clotting her ears. She considered leaving, but where could they go on foot? Besides, there was a house between them and the creek and a concrete retaining wall lining one side of the bank. The town must have thought it would hold the water or they wouldn’t have built it.
       I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
       Thunder rolled over the house, rattled the windows, shook the floor. Wil took her hand. Penny issued a startled cry. Lifting her from the playpen, Georgia moved to heat water for a bottle before she realized the appliances were as dead as the lights. Dumb, she thought and dutifully pushed a nipple through its plastic ring, mixed the formula with tepid water from the tap, and let it sit.
       If I should die before I ’wake.
       The fire sirens came on with the whoosh of a gas burner, the sound oscillating between panic and fear. It cut through her chest. The creek would ignore the warning. Georgia pictured it as a mythic creature rising on stout legs, beat its chest, thundering its demands. She, too, would not be moved. They would ride out the storm until help arrived.
       I pray the Lord my soul to take.
       The sound of rain intensified. It seemed to buckle the walls. Holding Penny and the flashlight, she instructed Wil to jam towels under the back door. That would keep some of the water at bay. The basement posed the real threat. The old stone walls could collapse. Before sealing the cellar, she ventured a last look. Clasping the light to the baby’s back, Georgia aimed at the door. With her free hand, she reached for the knob and hesitated, her fingers suspended in the beam, her body sensing the weight of something trapped below the stairs, the pressure on a dam ready to burst. As if watching herself, she grasped the handle and cracked the door.
       Even as she stumbled back, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake.

By the Time We Got to Woodstock

Posted on by under Books, Culture, e-books, Fiction, history, Music, mystery, Novel, suspense

August 15, 1969, capstone of a tumultuous decade. Life in the rural town of Pennsboro, Pa. is about to explode. A dam that would flood the valley pits family against family. Marchers riot. Buildings burn. Amid the chaos, two lovers risk everything to fight for their home—and a chance to command the stage at a rock festival in a farmer’s field in New York State, an event we now know as Woodstock.

I grew up in those times, in the shadow of an unpopular dam, the government’s eviction of squatters, surrounded by the sounds of peace, love, and revolution. To understand the contradiction, I wrote a novel about those two kids. The result was Born under a Bad Sign, a dramatic and nuanced portrait of love and loss in the Sixties.

It begins, as many of our stories do, with a crush. Elizabeth Reed loves photography, the river the government wants to dam, and a musician who refuses to commit. Hayden Quinn, the guitarist Rolling Stone calls the next Jimi Hendrix, feeds another obsession—to play the biggest concert of his life. He presents Elizabeth with a dilemma: stay to save her family’s farm, or follow him into the unknown.
With saboteurs targeting everyone she loves, Elizabeth faces the greatest risk of all—whether to trust her head or her heart.

You can read the full story of their struggles here. Or start with Chapter 1 and the night the world fell away.

1.

FROM BEYOND THE HILLS came a jagged flash of light. Elizabeth Reed counted five seconds before the sound rumbled across the infield of the raceway, this makeshift venue for the largest outdoor rock concert on the East Coast. Another flash, and another ripple of thunder. In an improvised call and response, the crowd echoed its approval. The tower that held the lights and PA system trembled. So did Elizabeth’s arms and legs. She let the dizziness pass and, willing her stomach to settle, tucked both cameras under her arms and climbed to the sky.
       The warm-up band had just finished, the announcer promising that Orwell, fresh off its national tour, would soon take the stage. A wall of people surged forward. Despite the scalding July heat, this was the group’s homecoming and the locals had turned out in force, thousands of ragged kids with beards and muumuus, jostling each other in a fog of beer and smoke. Two years after Monterey Pop and the festival had come of age. So had the band.
       The tower swayed enough to cause Elizabeth to question her bravado. Despite the knot in her stomach, she climbed past speakers and spotlights for a better view of the makeshift stage, a plywood floor laid across a half-dozen flatbed trailers. The platform had been hastily constructed for the festival, the biggest in Pennsylvania’s Minisink Valley and a warm-up for one she’d heard could be even bigger, next month’s Woodstock Music & Art Fair in nearby New York.
       That was the real object of the evening’s performance, a final rehearsal for Orwell and its leader, Hayden Quinn, the guitarist Rolling Stone had called the next Jimi Hendrix, the man that Elizabeth, fresh out of high school, had followed halfway across the country as the band’s unofficial photographer. It was make or break time for the group. The band’s manager, Elizabeth’s Uncle Morey, had invited the man organizing Woodstock, Michael Lang, to attend the concert. So far, she hadn’t seen anyone fitting Lang’s description.
       As the wind rose to meet the night, Elizabeth realized that, if the crowd pressed closer, the tower could tip. Since her dizziness disappeared if she didn’t look down, she focused on the distance, tracking the Delaware as it wandered between Pennsylvania and New Jersey like a nomad, flowing freely despite the government’s effort to dam the river and drown her family’s farm. With the telephoto lens, she could isolate her property, snug in the rich bottom land of the valley. Camera in hand, river and fields spread below, she felt exhausted, scared, and ridiculously happy.
       Voices below startled her. Dressed in black, two members of the security crew waved her from the tower. The yelling morphed into the sound of hammering. Against the raw wood of the stage, Tommy Reed nailed cardboard cylinders to rows of two-by-tens, preparing the fireworks for the evening’s finale. He seemed dwarfed by the munitions.
       When the sound system kicked in with a recording of “Crossroads,” Elizabeth gripped the metal pipes to maintain her balance. Despite the rush of adrenaline, her arms ached from lugging the heavy Nikons all day. With a normal lens, the weight seemed bearable. But when loaded with a zoom and a motor drive, the outfit felt as if it weighed as much as a bale of hay. Before she descended, she snapped a picture of Tommy as he wired his makeshift rig, the camera hot and slippery in her hands. Heaven help them if she dropped it on his head.
       As soon as she landed, the security officers assumed their positions in front of the stage while the roadies assembled the last of the equipment. Her older brother Robbie frowned as he arranged cymbals and tightened the drumheads, his rusty hair in a deliberately unhip buzzcut. Reaching above his head, Cordell White plugged his bass into a stack of amplifiers and plucked a few notes. Unlike Robbie, who wore his usual white T-shirt and shorts, Del had dressed for show in leather pants, a jacket of purple satin, and a high-crowned Navajo hat with a yellow plume. Both of them looked frustrated, or mad.
       Tommy caught her eye and jerked his head toward the edge of the stage. He, too, appeared angry, a look that was highlighted by chapped lips, hair the color of licorice, and a nose as sharp as a chisel. The only festive thing about him was the tie-dyed headband.
       “Hey, Cuz,” she said, drawing a face that signaled either irritation or fatigue.
       He smelled of oil and mint. As usual, he wore sunglasses so dark that she wondered how he could see to connect the fireworks. Pecking him on the cheek, she took in the rows of rockets, mortars, and Roman candles that crowded both sides of the stage and felt a twinge of concern. “Aren’t they a little close?”
       Tommy scratched his back with a screwdriver. “Close?”
       “To the band.”
       Another crack of thunder and Tommy dragged a tarp over the pods. “Wait and see.”
       As security stopped a ginger-haired man flashing press credentials, Elizabeth regained the tower. One by one, the members of Orwell wandered onto the stage to a cascade of applause. Robbie positioned his cymbals, Del and Quinn hunched over tuning pegs, and Mattie, jiggling her ample ass, asked the crowd how they were doing. As the band struck its first tectonic chord, the audience thundered their approval.
       Mattie belted out the first number with a ferocity that shook the towers, all trace of her Southern accent lost in the ricochet of sound. Robbie thrashed as if he were drowning in one of the cow ponds on the family farm. Even Del, who usually bobbed in place, stalked the boards, his face a darkening cloud.
       Quinn followed with a scorching lead that featured a collision of Bach, Thelonious Monk, and Hendrix. Shirtless now and barefoot, he played with a single-mindedness akin to religious devotion, prowling the stage, slashing his guitar, bending strings until they threatened to snap. He hammered the neck with both hands as if playing a piano, the sound a frenetic cross between Paganini and Robert Johnson, the shaman who’d sold his soul to the devil for his talent.
       From her perch, she tracked the band, feeling more than hearing the smack of the mirror as it lifted to admit the light, the whir of the motor drive as it advanced the frames. Pace yourself, she thought, or you’ll run out of film.
       Like a tsunami, the intensity of the music grew, Quinn hurtling his body into the wave of sound, his head bowed, shoulders hunched, fingers on fire. Dreadlocks flew as he reared, face twisted in ecstasy, the notes tracking across his lips. No matter how many times she’d seen the show, Elizabeth felt stunned, and not just by the acoustical acrobatics. With the flick of his fingers, Quinn guided the music from brave too anxious to calm. Elizabeth felt warmth and humor, sadness and pity, and so much in between. It astonished her that anyone could convey such emotion without the use of a single word.
       The band continued the pace, blazing through songs as if racing to an uncertain end. By the close of the set, their faces shone with euphoria and sweat. Robbie raised his sticks, caught the eye of Quinn and Del, and they miraculously finished on the same beat, even as Tommy launched the first volley of fireworks, burning the night in a shower of red and gold.
       The musicians filtered off stage, waited a beat, and returned to a swelling ovation. With a deep bow, and a nod from Mattie, they launched into one of the medleys Quinn had arranged as an encore. Even before Elizabeth traced their faces through the telephoto, she could tell that, as the music grew more frantic, they struggled to hear. Hitting the final chorus, Mattie looked over her shoulder as if she were lost in the woods. Robbie buried his head in his drum kit. Del and Quinn traded places, Del moving to the monitors along the wing while Quinn arched over the stage to listen to the PA speakers.
       The music had grown so loud that Elizabeth could barely feel the vibration through the camera body as the motor drive cranked through another roll of film, thirty-six exposures in a matter of seconds before she hunched to reload.
       This time, the band didn’t leave the stage. They bowed slightly, as if they’d expended so much energy they had little left for movement, before launching into the second encore, a reprise of their single, “Bomb Babies,” that ended in a cataclysmic version of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Quinn had shortened the piece for maximum impact and, when he nodded, Tommy let loose with his final volley.
       From the corner of the viewfinder, Elizabeth watched the skyrockets arc into the night and explode in phosphorescent swirls. She grabbed a shot of Tommy, who timed the bursts to coincide with the downbeat. As the encore hit its crescendo, he quickened the pace, unleashing a white-hot assault that mimicked the original cannon fire. The band fed off the energy, Quinn and Robbie flailing, Del leaning dangerously close to the fireworks while Mattie spread her arms to embrace the crowd.
       Then, as Elizabeth lifted the camera to her face, the stage flashed with a blinding light and the world exploded.

But our intentions were good

Posted on by under Audio, Authors, Books, Business, Commerce, Creativity, Culture, e-books, Fiction, Internet, mystery, Novel, Technology, tourism, Writers, Writing

Our writers’ group had a discussion this morning about the use of AI to generate content. Is it a high-tech form of plagiarism? Does the work to which it is applied constitute original art? Digitally generated voices have already rendered obsolete the narrators of audio books. Will AI do the same to writers?

To illustrate the dilemma, one of the authors said he was astonished at the accuracy and sophistication of the answers he’d received after asking Microsoft’s AI assistant to summarize the chapters of his memoir. He’s about to pitch the book to an agent and was looking for a convenient way to describe the work.

Another writer said she’d used AI to generate a summary for the back cover of her memoir and felt pleased with the result.

I’ve used AI for research but never for pitching or publication. So, when the meeting ended, I uploaded the text of my first novel and asked Microsoft’s Copilot to write a summary for an agent. It might have taken 18 seconds to get an answer. It wasn’t what I’d expected.

I’ll let you judge whether it’s appropriate. But first, some background.

Peak Season is the first in a series of crime novels featuring a former police officer turned real estate agent and a retired state trooper who virtually lives on his boat along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is a mystery novel, popular fiction that tackles a number of contemporary issues such as property rights and the environment.

I pitched the manuscript to a number of agents. This was before ChatGPT and other large-language models came into vogue, so my email was entirely human-generated. Here’s what I sent:

Dear [agent’s name redacted]:

She’s the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Responding to a domestic disturbance, CW (Candace) McCoy is forced to shoot a fellow police officer to prevent the death of his wife and child. Internal affairs rules the shooting justified. CW can’t and fears she’s inherited the killer gene from her father. Refusing to carry a gun, she quits the force and escapes to Southwest Florida to sell real estate, care for the grandfather who took her in after the murder of her family, and silence the demons that threaten her new life. But even in paradise during peak tourist season, there’s no outrunning bad blood.

Original book cover

Declared dead by the courts, Bobby Lee Darby appears in CW’s office to demand the family friend clear his name in a scheme to bilk millions from investors. When CW refuses, the fugitive financier kidnaps her grandfather and triggers a chain of burglary, assault, and murder that convinces local police the former cop has gone rogue.

Racing to find Darby and her grandfather, CW must confront her violent past, risky affairs, and love-hate relationship with Florida before those personal demons turn her new-found paradise into hell on earth.

A former journalist with Dow Jones, I am the author of The Spirit of Swiftwater and other books, with an eponymous website (jeffwidmer.com) and an extensive social network.

Since you look for new voices in women’s suspense and represent [authors’ names redacted], I think the CW McCoy series would make for a good fit with your agency.

I’ve included the first three chapters below. Would you like to see the complete 72,000-word manuscript and the first chapter of the second book in the series?

OK. Despite my heroic effort, that letter didn’t work, and I wound up independently publishing the novel in 2014. But what if I were to pitch a rewrite and use AI to generate the query letter? When I fed the text of the entire manuscript into Copilot, I got this:

Dear [Agent Name]:

I am thrilled to introduce Peak Season, a novel that captures the electric tension between fleeting beauty and the transformative impermanence of life. Set in a sun-drenched coastal town where every summer day burns with both promise and poignancy, this story follows [Protagonist Name], a determined soul navigating the dizzying interplay of desire, loss, and rebirth. As the town swells with the vibrant energy of peak tourist season, long-hidden family secrets, unexpected romances, and personal reckonings emerge, forcing our heroine to confront the true cost of chasing a dream—even when that dream burns as bright as the midsummer sun.

AI-generated cover

At its heart, Peak Season is a deeply atmospheric exploration of the human spirit. It invites readers to savor the bittersweet cadence of relentless change: the ephemeral thrill of new beginnings and the heart-wrenching inevitability of endings. Through lyrical prose and raw, immersive storytelling, the novel paints an intimate portrait of individuals who, like the turbulent coastal tides, are in constant flux—seeking meaning in moments both fleeting and profound.

I believe that Peak Season will resonate with readers who appreciate literature that not only entertains but also challenges them to reflect on the impermanence and intensity of life. Its richly woven narrative and authentic emotional depth offer a fresh voice in contemporary literary fiction—a voice destined to captivate audiences in today’s dynamic literary landscape.

Thank you for considering this submission. I would be delighted to send you the full manuscript and discuss how Peak Season can find its place among today’s most compelling literary works.

Warm regards,

The transformative impermanence of life? I’ll accept raw, immersive storytelling. Even a fresh, contemporary voice. But literary fiction? A bridge too far, and an inaccurate reading of the tone of the book, which is more Chandler and Evanovich than Proust or Joyce.

But enough of my views. What do you think? Is AI the shortcut to greater productivity and happiness or a Trojan Horse we’ll live to regret?

Ask your computer or phone. They’ll know.

Spirit Dance

Posted on by under Creativity, Culture, Music

What started as a night of peace and music has become one of the most famous attractions in Sarasota, Florida.

The Siesta Key Drum Circle has been a tradition on Siesta Key Beach for more than two decades. The drum circle began in the 1990s when a small group of local musicians and artists gathered on the beach to play music and dance. Today, the impromptu gathering has swelled to more than 1,000 during peak season, fronted by a core group of two dozen drummers and joined by an equal number of dancers.

According to one of the event’s founders, former military surgeon Marguerite Barnett, local polymath David Gittens organized a full moon drumming ceremony in 1993 by the site of the grandmother tree on the south end of Siesta Key. It was attended by nearly a dozen drummers and one dancer and was led by David in meditative African drum rhythms. The event was so inspiring that the group collectively decided to hold a weekly event at Beach Access 8, until it outgrew the parking a few years later and was moved to the main beach.

As word of the gatherings spread, more people began to join, and the Siesta Key Drum Circle was born. The circle quickly became a popular attraction for both locals and tourists. Except during severe weather, the drummers have performed every Sunday, starting an hour before sunset.

While visitors enjoy the crystal sands of Siesta Beach, others have found a spiritual connection to the circle.

“We original organizers did not do this with the intent of making an event,” Dr. Barnett told Siesta Sand in 2021. “For most of us, it is our church—a chance to put the cares of a busy week behind us and lose ourselves to the rhythms. For some of us, it has led to a community, relationships, and lasting friendships.”

I’m happy to say I made a couple of friends this past Sunday as Dr. Barnett and the drummers invited a group of photographers into the inner circle. They give a lot. Here’s our chance to give something back.

Click on an image for a larger view.

Now Hear This

Posted on by under Authors, Books, e-books, Fiction, mystery, real estate, suspense

All five books in the CW McCoy/Walter Bishop series of mystery novels are now available in audio from Amazon. And all at less than $10 a piece, a third of the usual cost.

The series follows former police officer and real estate agent Candace McCoy as she tries to balance career and crime with the care of her grandfather. The setting will be familiar to many—a tony beach town remarkably similar to the twin Florida cities of Sarasota and Bradenton.

You’ll find audio, e-book, and paperback versions of the novels here:

Faces of the Fair Part 2

Posted on by under Photography

Who goes to a county fair these days? Apparently a lot of people—140,000 attended last year’s Sarasota County Fair, according to its website. While the swirling lights of the rides attract our attention, it’s the people who enjoy those rides that make these fairs memorable.

Here’s a smattering of images from Saturday’s event. Enjoy the view.