Art Imitating Life?

 My newest book, SHADOW HILL, due to be released in August has the following descriptive blurb: 

“Just days before Morris Cutter, a retired powerful oil executive, is scheduled to give a pseudo-scientific report to Congress that will delay crucial action on climate change for decades, he and his wife are found shot to death in their Greenwich, Connecticut, home. The police call it murder-suicide. The couple's son refuses to accept the official conclusion and hires Geneva Chase, crime reporter turned private detective, to prove otherwise.

“Genie soon learns that there are suspects everywhere, including within the deceased's immediate family. Morris Cutter's own daughter hadn't spoken with him in years, and his nephew is a climate activist with a radical organization. But Cutter's former company has a vested interest in keeping a low profile until it is able to present its mock-science on Capitol Hill. Genie is bribed, then threatened, to wrap up her investigation before the scheduled hearing date and to concur with the police findings.

“When the lead scientist of the study goes missing, followed by Cutter's daughter, Genie begins to piece together what actually may have happened to Morris and Julia Cutter, putting herself in harm's way as she races to find the truth.”

In addition to being the president of our county's chamber of commerce, I'm also the president of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast (BAPAC) representing over 42,000 businesses from Maine to Florida.

On Thursday of last week, I was invited to testify in front of a Congressional Subcommittee and Mineral Resources at a hearing called, “Protecting Coastal Communities and Ocean Resources from Offshore Drilling.” I was there to support a bill called the Clean Ocean and Safe Tourism (COAST) Anti-Drilling Act that, if passed, will permanently ban offshore oil drilling off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.  

Similar bills are moving through the House of Representatives protecting the Pacific Coast and the western coast of Florida. 

In SHADOW HILL I write about how some lawmakers know the truth about climate change and how dangerous it is but are still hellbent to support burning fossil fuels.  I suspected that was true, but after seeing the performance of some of the members of the House of Representatives, now I’m certain.

It’s ironic when one of the witnesses offering testimony against the bills that will ban additional offshore oil drilling, said that in the state of Louisiana, the percentage of revenue they get from oil helps to build levees and mitigation efforts to protect against powerful hurricanes and sea level rise.  The irony of that is if we weren’t burning fossil fuels like we’ve been doing, we wouldn’t have more and more powerful hurricanes or rising sea levels.

This week, we saw the shutdown of the Colonial pipeline from a cyber ransomware attack.  Here in North Carolina, there were long lines at the pumps for the better part of a week.  One of the members of the committee in their opening statement said, “See?  See what happens when we cut off the supply of gas and oil?”

I wanted to point out that this was not a lack of supply.  This was a lack of security being in place to safeguard the smooth flow of supply.

Enough about oil and how art imitates life. 

The mask mandate has been removed here in our state for those who have been vaccinated.  I’ve missed seeing peoples’ faces and their smiles. I’ve missed shaking hands and the hugs.  

I know we’re not out of the woods yet, but boy it feels good. 

Thoughts From Capitol Hill

This week I took a break from working on my fourth novel and flew to Washington D.C. where I joined a group of about fifty coastal business leaders and elected officials to talk to our federal legislators about banning offshore oil drilling and seismic testing. This lobbying effort was coordinated by Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization focused on influencing specific policy decisions on the national level to preserve and restore the world's oceans.

The trip fit nicely with the book I’m working on with the working title of Shadow Hill. That term is coined by one of the characters, already dead in the first chapter from a murder-suicide event. Instead of calling it Capitol Hill, he derisively called it Shadow Hill. The reason being, everyone on the Hill has a secret agenda hidden by the shadows.

So in addition to my lobbying effort, it was also a research trip.

Here are a few of my observations from my trip to Shadow Hill.

I lost count of the number of security checks I had to go through, and that doesn’t count airport security TSA. Every federal building we entered forced us to empty our pockets and walk through the metal detector. Which made me ponder that if everyone on the Hill is so concerned about weapons, why don’t they tackle simple common sense regulations like universal background checks for gun ownership for the rest of us?

The day we were in and out of Senate and House offices was also the first day of the impeachment hearings. Every congressional office had a television tuned into the hearings so the aides could keep track of what was going on. Not surprisingly, the televisions in the Republican offices were turned to Fox, the Democrats were watching CNN. Same hearings, same discussions, same questions and answers…different networks.

Even the televisions in the cafeteria were turned onto the hearings. Half tuned into Fox, half tuned into CNN. I was reminded of the last time I’d been in DC and the looking up while I ate my hamburger and seeing multiple images of Stormy Daniels.

I was amused by the hierarchy of offices. For example, the more senior members of the House were ensconced in reasonably spacious offices in locations close to doorways and bathrooms. The newest members of the House were not. We visited a Representative who had just been voted into office in a special election in North Carolina whose office was so cramped, we held our meeting in the hallway. His office, by the way, was way the hell away from the closest exit. If I remember correctly, it was right next to a janitor’s closet.

In spite of the fact that I’ve been to Washington several times to lobby for various causes, I’m always impressed by the grandiosity of the place. On this particular trip, I was blown away by the Capitol Visitors Area. It was where we were greeted by a cocktail reception with our delegation and additional elected officials. I don't recall ever seeing so much marble.

I was driven back to Dulles Airport to fly home by a cab driver who was originally from Ethiopia and had immigrated to the United States twenty years ago. He told me how much he loved this country. He loved the freedoms we seem to take for granted. We also had a comprehensive discussion about politics and I was very impressed with his knowledge of the political players and current events and he had the inside scoop on what was going on with the impeachment hearings. If you want to know what’s going on, ask a cab driver in Washington D.C.

Some of the earlier blogs over the last couple of weeks talked about what people read while waiting for their flights or on their airplane. I noted, like everyone else, that most people were staring intently at their phones or tablets. Smatterings of people were reading books. One man shocked the hell out of me by reading a…gasp…newspaper.

Back to working on my manuscript. I’m on deadline.