Real LIfe and Fiction--The Climate Question

 By Thomas Kies

A while back, I asked the question, will you include the pandemic in your writing?  I’m going to ask you another question, will you ever include climate change in your writing? 

I did that extensively in my fourth book Shadow Hill.  That was the one that was Edgar nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award.  

Yes, I’m bragging just a little bit.

But I did talk a lot about climate change, climate change deniers, fossil fuels, the oil industry and the subsidies they get from the federal government. Of course, I also talk about embezzlement, vandalism, and murder.  It’s a murder mystery after all.

Just last weekend, I was scheduled to do a book event and signing at our local library.  The night before, I got an email from the organizer asking me, “In light of the storm, would you like to postpone?  We can’t cancel the caterer, but we’ll let you make the call.”

What storm?

I’ve worked for newspapers and magazines nearly all my life and the result is-- I’m an unrepentant news junkie.  That includes following the weather, especially here on the coast where we get the occasional hurricane.  Plus, we live on an island, so we’re particularly sensitive to really bad weather. 

I opened my laptop and took a look.  Sure enough, there was a storm that had formed just off the South Carolina coast and was coming our way.  Only minutes before, it had grown into a tropical storm, and it was now named Ophelia. 

Where had that come from? It was a complete surprise.

However, we’ve been through tropical storms here and they’ve never been a really big deal.  Some rain, some wind, pop open a bottle of wine, and let’s have a party. 

So, I said, “Let’s do the book signing as scheduled.”  And we did.  All the while, the wind howled, and the rain came down sideways.  We still had about twenty people show up, which I considered to be a win.  

And that was before the storm actually hit land.

That night, before Ophelia actually made landfall, NOAA was saying it could potentially reach land as a Category 1 hurricane.  And we were sitting right at ground zero. 

Long story short, we lost power that night into the next day, one of our trees came down, and I regretted that I hadn’t prepared better.  

But I’d had no real warning.  None of us did.

A week later, the same thing happened further north when a storm hit New York City, Long Island, and Connecticut and dropped over eight inches of rain in a very short period of time leaving streets and subways severely flooded.  It came suddenly and without much warning. 

The reason for these sudden storms seems to be the unusually warm waters in the Atlantic as well as a great deal of water vapor in the air.  The results of climate change?  I’m going to say yes, and you can argue with me if you so wish.

Increased opportunities for wildfires, more powerful storms and hurricanes, lengthy droughts.  Will this enter your fiction? Will it become subject matter for your novels? I’m currently working on my sixth Geneva Chase novel, and it takes place on a barrier island during a hurricane.  

Yes, I mention climate change and how the warm ocean waters act to supercharge storms.  It’s not the main part of the story, but it’s a fact of our lives now.

Will it ever be part of your fiction? It’s certainly part of our reality.