Author Spotlight Week - Q&A with Connie Chastain

STEPH: I don't know much about Storm Surge. Can you tell us a little about it?

CONNIE: It's the story of a young woman, Briana Farrior, who works for a consumer watchdog agency. Her employer helps her to land a job at an independent adjusting firm owned by a man suspected of insurance fraud. Her job is to find evidence of his wrongdoing and help bring him to justice, but she quickly comes to believe in his innocence. In fact, she falls in love with him, and he with her. But there are obstacles -- her guilt about the deception necessary for her to get the job, his hurt and distrust when he learns of her deceit. There are other obstacles for them to overcome, including a Category Five hurricane. All fictional hurricanes are Category Fives these days.

STEPH: Where did the inspiration for the story come from?

CONNIE: It came from the saying, "Write what you know." I know the upper Gulf Coast, its culture and people, from having lived here for three decades. And I know about the property and casualty insurance industry from having worked in homeowner claims for over ten years.



STEPH: How long did it take you to write?

CONNIE: I started writing it in July 2008, and finished in June of 2010, but I was writing other fiction during that time frame.



STEPH: Did you have to do a lot of research? If so, what did you do?

CONNIE: I'm pretty familiar with hurricanes and disaster response, so that didn't take a lot of research; but the villain in this story is a criminal and I had to research crimes, prison sentences, while life is like for an ex-con.

STEPH: Are you a plotter or a panster?

CONNIE: Plotter. I plot scenes and timelines on a calendar; I keep a spreadsheet of scenes as they're written, including word counts. I do genealogy for the main characters and chart their personality, Myers-Briggs-style. I have to know what's going on during the timeframe I'm writing about, whether I reference specific things in the story or not, like the news headlines of the day, fashion, and popular music. I find out everything I can -- for example, in my first novel, I know -- thanks to Sky and Telescope's website -- that when the hero and his wife kiss under the moon on their tenth wedding anniversary, which is June 23, 1983, the moon is full.



STEHP: Cast the movie. Who are the leads?

CONNIE: I honestly don't know. I'm not that familiar with films and televsion, but most actors and actresses seem too sophisticated and worldly for upright Justin and unsophisticated Briana. However, going strictly by appearance, Ryan Carnes, who evidently is a fairly typical Hollywood hedonist, looks very much like Justin.

STEPH: How long have you been writing?

CONNIE: I started writing fiction in the 1980s, inspired by Rex Stout, author of the great Nero Wolfe detective novels, a few authors who wrote Star Trek novels, and various romance writers, particularly Dixie Browning. I wrote a behemoth psychological romance back then that was reaching 200,000 words when I quit writing. I started writing fiction again in 2005 or so.



STEPH: Do you have an ebook reader? If so, which one?


CONNIE: No, I just have Kindle emulating software for my computer. When I get one, it will probably be a Kindle.

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STEPH: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

CONNIE: Read "How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively" by Rudolph Flesch; I wasn't able to write a thing worth reading before I found that treasure. Join a good crit group, and analyze the crits you get, but more importantly, critique the work of other writers. You will learn a lot about what needs improving in your own writing that way. Pay attention to the rules of writing, but not so much that they rob you of your voice.

STEPH: Tell us a little about the place you live in.

CONIIE: I live in Pensacola, Florida which is characterized by most of the elements discussed in my first spotlight article about the Gulf Coast. But to be a bit more specific, Pensacola's nickname is the City of Five Flags, which represent the nations that have claimed it during its history -- Spain, Britian, France, the Confederacy and the United States. It is especially -- inordinately -- proud of its Spanish history.

The city also prides itself on being the oldest European settlement in North America, having been colonized by Don Tristan de Luna and a band of settlers in 1559, beating out St. Augustine for that honor by six years. However, the de Luna colonists gave up and sailed back to New Spain after -- you guessed it -- a hurricane devastated the settlement, while St. Augustine has been in continual existance since September of 1565.

Florida's westernmost city is home to the Pensacola Naval Air Station, which is home to the famous Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron. Like it's coastal sister cities, Mobile and New Orleans, Pensacola celebrates Mardi Gras with parades and festivals. And while there's no French Quarter here, it isn't unusual to hear, "Laissez les bon temps roulez." Let the good times roll.

STEPH: Thanks for being here this week, Connie!
Smiles
Steph


Connie's book is avail as a PDF, html, and epub format on the Desert Breeze website: http://www.desertbreezepublishing.com

Author Spotlight - Excerpt from Storm Surge

Enjoy this excerpt from Storm Surge by Connie Chastain.
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"Is Fay a bad storm?" Briana asked as they neared the apartment. The back porch light had burned out, and they trod carefully through the unaccustomed shadows.

"It's a more-rain-than-wind storm right now--" Justin stopped in his tracks, and Briana looked up at him in surprise. His eyes were fixed on the back door, which stood ajar.

"I closed and locked that," Briana said, "I know I did. How--"

"Hush up and get behind me," he said softly, and Briana did. He carefully pushed the door open and stiffened. He reached inside, flipped a light switch, and the kitchen overhead came on. She tilted her head to see past him and covered her mouth to silence a gasp.

The apartment was in shambles, the contents of drawers and cabinets strewn in heaps on the floor, chairs overturned, sofa cushions tossed about.

Justin took a step back and reached behind him to take Briana's arm. He turned and ushered her to the driveway and tersely ordered her, "Get in the car."

She climbed into the 4Runner while he opened the console and took out a squat, stocky pistol so small his hand swallowed it. He took his keys from his pocket and inserted one of them into the ignition.

"Wait here. Keep the doors locked until I come back."

Too frightened to breathe normally, Briana gripped the door handle as he returned to the back door and disappeared. The lights came on in her bedroom and bath.

Get out, please. Come back. Come back to me.

In a few moments, as if he'd read her mind, his silhouette filled the back door and he walked to the car. She punched the button that unlocked the doors, and he slid behind the wheel. He returned the pistol to the console, opened his cell phone, and dialed 9-1-1.

"My name is Justin Adair. A-D-A-I-R. I need to report a break-in with vandalism of personal property. The address is 604-B Trussell Street. It's a duplex apartment, west side. The tenant is my girlfriend, Briana Farrior. Yes... Yes... We'll be in my vehicle, a blue 4Runner, in the driveway. All right, thanks."

He flipped the phone shut and dropped it into his shirt pocket. "Probably take them forty-five minutes to get here." He looked across at her frightened expression and trembling hands and his terse, take-charge manner evaporated. "Ah, sweetheart." He put his arms around her and pulled her as close as the console allowed. "Gotta get a vehicle without one of these," he muttered as he stroked her hair. "Don't be scared. It'll be all right."

But she couldn't stop her tears, and she moved away from him to avert her face and brush at her eyes. At length, she said, "It was probably Eddie."

He looked at her sharply. "What makes you think that?"

"He was probably looking for something."

"What?"

"That day we measured your house, I came home and Sylvia was here. She had an envelope for me and told me to keep it until I heard from her. She said it contained evidence against you. I asked her what evidence, but she wouldn't say. I don't think she knew. I was going to burn it because I didn't want to know what was in it. But then I thought maybe you'd want it or need it someday, so I put it in a safe place."

His brows pulled together but he kept his voice calm. "Where'd you put it?"

"In a safe deposit box at Cornerstone Bank in Andalusia. That was where I went the day I took off work."

"Did you read what was in it?"
"No."

Justin ran a fist across his lips, unable to completely suppress his exasperation. "Sweetheart, why didn't you tell me about this when we were at your parents' house?"

"You'd already forgiven me for so much. I didn't know if this might... exceed your capacity and make you not love me anymore."

He pursed his lips and blinked a couple of times. "I'm a little put out with you right now," he conceded, "but I'll get over it. Anger's a feeling; feelings come and go. But love is constant and steadfast, and the capacity to forgive is limitless. Oh, come on, don't cry. We need to talk."

She brushed tears off her cheeks, swallowed hard, cleared her throat. "All right."

"Briana, try to understand. Somebody wants to ruin me. Destroy my company, my ability to make a living. Maybe send me to prison. They're trying to use you and people at your old job to do it. I really don't need you to hold out on me anymore."

"Okay, I won't."

He pulled her to him again and kissed her temple. "Here's what's going to happen. After the police get done, I want you to gather a few things, whatever you'll need for a couple of days. We'll lock up your apartment and go to my place for the night. First thing tomorrow, we'll drive to Andalusia and get the envelope. Tonight or tomorrow, I want you to call your landlord, tell him what happened, and ask him to change the locks and install deadbolts."

She nodded.

"And if you remember anything, no matter how insignificant it seems, I want you to tell me."

"Yes, I'll tell you."

She shuddered in his arms, and the remnants of his anger evaporated. "Don't be afraid, Sparky. I won't let anything happen to you."

Author Spotlight - Connie Chastain talks about the storm in Storm Surge

At one point in Storm Surge, my protagonists, Justin and Briana, are watching television and Justin presses buttons on the remote control....

The Weather Channel came on the screen. Tropical Storm Fay was still far away, down in the Keys.

Justin murmured, "The ECMWF is predicting the storm will cross the state, move into the Atlantic, and then veer westward across the panhandle and into the Gulf. Let's hope not."

"What's ECMWF?"

"The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. They have a reputation as one of the most accurate forecasting bodies on the planet, so we're probably in for a lot of rain and possible flooding in a few days."

No other storms loomed on the horizon, just a tropical wave trying to form off Cape Verde. Justin narrowed his eyes.

"We need to keep an eye on that one, too," he said. "At this time of year, that place, Cape Verde, is where monster storms are born."

The Cape Verde Islands, off the west coast of Africa, are indeed the birthplace of hurricanes that can be come monsters. Wikipedia says about two hurricanes per year originate there.

According to NASA and the NOAA, the reason they can, and frequently do, become monster storms is because they have a long trajectory over warm oceans — which are ideal conditions for hurricane intensification.

Earlier in the story, Justin explains storm surge to Briana and cites Hurricane Camille, a storm with origins off the west coast of Africa.

"Tropical cyclones are areas of low pressure. They pull the water up under them, like when you sip liquid with a straw, only the sides of a storm's low pressure area aren't straight. So the water sucked up is more like a dome beneath the hurricane. Between the dome and the water pushed by wind, a storm surge is a lot higher than sea level usually is. When it reaches shore, it floods low-lying areas. But flooding is only part of the damage. The water is wind-driven, very turbulent and destructive. Smashes buildings and uproots vegetation, and the resulting debris does more damage."

He clicked links that featured photos of coastal damage from storm surge -- smashed buildings, uprooted trees. Briana stared and whispered, "I always thought hurricanes damaged things with wind. Storm surge. That's scary."
"Yeah. It's the deadliest part of a hurricane. The wind's bad. Knocks down trees and power lines, breaks windows. If it's strong enough, it'll rip the roof off a house, but it doesn't smash buildings to rubble, like a tornado. But storm surge can."
"Oh, my," she said softly, and swallowed hard, spooked a little by the gravity in his voice.
"When Camille made landfall, a twenty-four foot storm surge crashed into Biloxi. Smashed everything in its path."

A few weeks later, Justin and his staff are watching the weather forecast in the conference room at his the office. The news is about Hurricane Fay, which is headed for their territory....

"If nothing steers it away from us, we'll get lots of rain over the weekend," Justin added. "Not much wind or storm surge, though. Nobody's expecting us to need policy dumps."

When a hurricane headed for Gulf States claim territory, certain procedures were set in motion by the four major property and casualty insurers that subcontracted claim handling to Justin's company. One of the most crucial procedures was the dumping of all coverage information for policyholders with property in the affected area to Gulf States' server.

Normally, individual policy and coverage information accompanied new claim files downloaded each day, but when long-term, widespread power and communications outages were anticipated, the information was transmitted en masse well ahead of time because without it, not a single claim check could be issued, not even the standard, thousand-dollar emergency advance.

"At least, we won't need them for Fay," Justin added. "But that one -- who knows?"

On the screen, the view had changed to a computerized depiction of the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern portion of North America. The Cape Verde tropical wave from two days ago was now a tropical storm named Kathy churning about a thousand miles east of Tobago. The predicted three-day track had it entering the Caribbean and staying over water. Where it would go from there was anybody's guess.

"I don't like to wish trouble on other folks," Gil Anderson said, "but I think we need to be on our knees praying that that sucker heads for the Yucatan or Texas."

Like Camille, monster 'canes Andrew and Ivan were born off the west coast of Africa. The fictional hurricane in Storm Surge, Kathy, is patterened after Hurricane Ivan, making landfall in the same area and causing much the same damage.

But, interestingly -- for some, perhaps -- the most notorious hurricane to strike in recent years, Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi coast on August 29, 2005, was not a Cape Verde storm. Katrina formed over the Bahamas August 23.

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Photo Caption and credit: Hurricane Ivan entering the Gulf of Mexico between the Florida and Yucatan peninsulas. NOAA

Author Spotlight - Connie Chastain talks about the food in Storm Surge

In Storm Surge, several days into hurricane season, heroine Briana brings a big batch of homemake chocolate chip cookies to work. Hero Justin ambles out of his office after her offer a snack.

"Have I ever told you," he said, "that chocolate chip cookies are a weakness of mine? My mama controlled me with them when I was a kid."
They laughed together and looked into each other's eyes for a moment, the way it had happened several times before.

The exchange prompts Briana to think, Always over food. Wonder why?

Food -- whether home-cooked or restaurant fare -- plays a ubiquitous role in the lives of the characters in Storm Surge as it does in real life on the upper Gulf Coast and most other areas. It's more than mere sustenance. People play, work, make deals, break up and fall in love over dining tables laden with food, around all-you-can-eat buffets, at drive-throughs and take outs. Food and drink are the lubricant that smooths humanity's social interactions.

On her very first day at work, Justin takes Briana to lunch to "go over a few things" before he leaves town on a business trip.

They went to Nick's Oyster House and took a table on the deck overlooking the Cutter Cove Marina. Canopied by a cloudless blue sky, warmed by a barely-there breeze, they chatted amiably and dined on fried oyster po'boy sandwiches, bowls of tasty gumbo and large glasses of sweet tea.

Although the location of the fictional Nick's Oyster House, a Cajun seafood place, is similar to that of The Fish House ( http://bit.ly/dMaWWn ), which overlooks Pitts Slip Marina on the shore of Pensacola Bay, the menu more closely resembles that of Jerry's Cajun.Cafe and Catering ( http://bit.ly/eSwzjb ).

Nick's has a recurring role in the story. So does pizza from Double Jacks, which Justin describes as, "Locally owned pizza place, secret recipe, better than any chain pizza I've ever had." I had no real-life counterpart to Double Jack's in mind when I wrote Storm Surge, although there are any number of pizza places in Pensacola that would suffice, including Hopjacks and Ozone Pizza Pub.

Justin shares two bittersweet last date meals with his somewhat girlfriends -- with Kami at the Rocket Drive-In, patterned after the Sonic Drive In ( http://bit.ly/eXWENG ), and with Margo at McGuire's Irish Pub which is patterned after, well, McGuire's Irish Pub on Gregory Street in Pensacola ( http://bit.ly/fS5aeW ).

But there's plenty of homemade food, too. Adjuster Susan Stinson brings a big dish of homemade lasagne to work for the crew. On the Kemp's sailboat, Kelsey Kemp serves big platters of "...crisp, raw veggies and dip, meat and cheese cubes, ham and sour cream rolls held in shape by toothpicks." And when Justin follows Briana to her parents' house to smooth over a rough spot in their relationship, her mother, Linda, offers Justin lunch:

"Why don't you let me make you a sandwich? Ham and cheese, chips, sweet tea." .... Linda busied herself for a few minutes, and what she put on the table to go with the sandwiches on their plates was more than just a snack -- macaroni salad, cold baked beans, tomato slices. Southern comfort food, the kind Justin had grown up with and still loved.

There are any number of other references to food in Storm Surge. Hmmm, I wonder if I was hungry the whole time I was writing this novel!


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Image Credit: Copyright by Ilco and StockXchange.com

Author Spotlight - Connie Chastain talks about her upcoming novel, Storm Surge

I'm using my Spotlight week to share the elements that inspired my romantic suspense novel, Storm Surge. I'll start with the location -- the upper Gulf Coast of Florida, which goes by several aliases -- the Panhandle, The Miracle Strip, the Emerald Coast, the Western Gate to the Sunshine State, among others.

My favorite, though, is The Redneck Riviera, a moniker that rightfully belongs to Gulf Shores, Alabama, some 30 miles west of the state line, but which has gradually been spread eastward by the uninformed, all the way to Panama City Beach.

If, as some say, the Gulf of Mexico is America's Mediterranean, the Riviera part makes sense. The Redneck part makes sense, too, when you realize that the upper Gulf Coast has been the traditional vacation destination for working class families from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for generations. By the way, for Southerners, redneck is one of those terms that's offensive or not depending on who's using it.

What you find here is a beach of blinding white sand of the purest and finest quartz in the Florida. It is the result of millions of years of erosion of the Appalachian Mountains, the second oldest mountain range on earth. In the valleys between dunes feathered with sea oats that turn golden in late summer, motorists catch glimpses of the turquoise Gulf stretching to a lighter blue horizon. Sabal palms and gnarled live oaks draped with garlands of Spanish moss shade the creamy blossoms of spiky yucca filamentosa, the only yucca plant native to the eastern states.

You also find places to eat and play without end -- seafood shacks, surf'n'turf restaurants, Cajun cafes, Goofy Golf, amusement parks, the Gulfarium, para-sailing, deep-sea fishing and sailing charters -- to name but a few.

But it's not totally paradise. This is the sub-tropics. It's hot and humid in the summer. Really hot and really humid, so humid that the beautiful blue sky of spring and fall turns to a white haze in summer. There are lizards, snakes and alligators, and red-tail hawks big enough to snatch up a small dog. The mosquitos are the size of small birds (okay, so that's an exaggeration). There are also sand burrs, fire ants, and cockroaches (called "palmetto bugs" by the more refined ladies of the coast) so big they'll take your breath away.

And there are hurricanes.


The fictional hurricane in my story, Category Five Kathy, is patterned after Ivan, the storm that made landfall just west of Pensacola during the 2004 Hurricane Season from Hell, when a record four storms struck Florida within weeks of each other.
I'll write more about hurricanes later in my spotlight week, along with Southern heroes and sweet, ditzy Southern heroines, coastal cuisine and end up with an excerpt from Storm Surge.

But for now, I'll leave you with this lovely view of the white beach and Gulf of Mexico seen through golden sea oats.

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"Photo Copyright by HeidiH and Dreamstime."

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Storm Surge will be avail 15 APR from Desert Breeze Publishing.