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Windmaster Legend by Helen Henderson |
For many years at every conference, lecture, and workshop I attended, the most often preached guidance was "Tell a good story." With "Write what you know," so close a second that it was just as often in first place as second.
While I have written tales based in the past and say I like to fly with dragons or hang with mages, I'm sorry to admit that in reality I don't. Research helps as does my imagination. But that isn't really knowing. So add "experienced" to part of the definition of knowing and it is easier to follow the rule.
One setting (or event) that both myself and my characters have experienced is a storm.
Blizzards from my childhood and later years provided the inspiration for the sandstorm that trapped a character in a cave in Windmaster Golem.
Winds howled outside the cave. Just beyond the entrance, columns of sand wheeled and pirouetted. Relliq watched the otherworldly dance. Anger mingled with dread. Desert storms were known to last for days. Some lasted season after season until the dunes swallowed up entire cities.
The characters in my current work in progress have to survive a different type of storm -- a tornado. When I started writing the scene my personal experience was primarily with blizzards, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. Superstorm Sandy was front and center in my memory as I didn't live that far from where she made landfall and had just finished archiving the photographs of its aftermath.
Although I now live in what is called the Dixie Tornado Alley, my experience with tornados was limited to local news coverage of the Christmas Eve tornado in Mississippi and our town warning sirens going off whenever the national weather service issues a tornado alert for our county. After the first alert and two hours of "wall to wall" non-stop reporting with the storms going farther south, not much thought was given them on later alerts. Then came Mother Day 2021.
The local news broke into regular programming with details of a tornado
sighted in our town and the warning to immediately go to our safe room.
My husband got out a map and started tracking the tornadoes path by the
roads announced. After I put my mother in an inside room, I alternated
between a sky watch and the news with its minute by minute radar
reports. Luckily the tornado didn't zig right towards my side of town and dissipated
before reaching an apartment complex and the three nearby schools.
Considering the weather events experienced in the world of Windmaster will I become a storm chaser in my real life? After the excitement of what could have been a close encounter with a tornado, my answer is an emphatic "No."
To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL
Find out more about me and my novels at Journey to Worlds of Imagination.
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Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a husky who has adopted her as one the pack.
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I once came close to one when living inFt. Worth. It zipped along the street about a block from where I lived. Keep writing about storms.
ReplyDeleteMy house was hit by a tornado in Arizona in 1998. I wasn't home at the time. I'll always remember the sob in my husband's voice when he told me on the phone we may not have a house anymore. Fortunately, although the damage was intensive, the insurance covered it, and we didn't lose the house. But We feel really small when nature knocks off our houses.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Nashville for 4 eventful years back in the 80's. The South has rough weather, that's for sure, but I didn't know you could have snow like shown in that first picture! Wow! Enticing blog. :)
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