How The Storm Series came to be

*Warning: this will contain a few spoilers because sometimes I fangirl about my characters like they're real people...*

For some authors, their idea for stories aren't always as clear-cut as "I like stories about x, so I'm going to write a story about x." I am, indeed, a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, but this isn't what got me writing The Storm Series.

My divorce is actually what got me started down the path.

My novels rely heavily on realistic scenarios (or at least as close as I can get). Before my divorce, I could've never written this series with a realistic approach as I knew nothing about growing, canning, or foraging my own food. It was out of necessity that I learned these things.

After moving out and getting my own place, I was up to my eyeballs in debt. I got a second job working at a grocery store, but even with working 70-80 hours a week between the second job and working full time (plus overtime) at my primary job, it just wasn't enough to have enough money to pay my bills, put gas in my car, and eat. I had to scrounge change together to put gas in my car to get to my second job. It was scary there for a while.

Even with a store discount and a minor coupon obsession (not quite extreme couponing...I'd say I've gotten to Jedi Knight level but not quite Master), buying healthy food on a limited budget was extremely difficult. I decided to try canning my own fruit as a way to both save money and keep eating healthily. I waited until fresh peaches went on sale super cheap at my second job, looked up a canning recipe that wouldn't require sugar, found canning supplies cheap online, and got some glass jars at the thrift store.

Once that was successful, I started looking up all the recipes I could to can my own tomatoes, pickles, oranges, and applesauce. Then I started trying to figure out how to grow my own food so that I could can it and save even more money. I lived in a small apartment at the time, so I had to improvise by using the container garden method.

Lars "watching over" my garden that first year.

I didn't have much success with growing that first year; I now realize that I didn't have enough sunlight where I was located. I also didn't know anything about fertilizer and ended up scorching most of my plants (oops!). I did get two delicious tomatoes out of it, though, from which I harvested seeds and am still growing their descendants six years later. The second year I had a millipede infestation and learned about diatomaceous earth as I started growing my vegetables organically after the fertilizer incident.

That second summer I also learned about foraging. I was walking in a wildlife reserve and discovered its trails were lined with blackberries and raspberries, and I was pretty excited. Then I came across a mulberry tree during peak season and ended up collecting a few cups of the delicious fruit from its branches. Coincidentally, mulberries are also in season right when blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are super cheap at the grocery store, so I ended up making my own mixed berry jam. YUM!! I then got onto a foraging kick...harvesting food with zero effort in its production? Sign me up!

Between looking up growing methods, canning recipes, and foraging tips, I started visiting a lot of prepper/homesteading/survivalist websites. There are so many great, information-laden sites out there with all sorts of ways to be more self-sufficient, and it fascinated me greatly. I had discovered a world I never knew existed: fishing without a pole, tanning your own leather, making your own cleaning products, using plants as medicine, filtering water with sand and charcoal? I was hooked. I started drinking in all the information I could, printing out everything I found to have handy in case the web links ever stopped working and/or if the power ever went out. I am still adding to it five years later and will probably be doing so for a long time.

I need a bigger binder.

One thing about prepper sites is that, obviously, they are preparing for the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI). Many of them are not fond of the government as a basis for what they think will cause TEOTWAWKI. Keep in mind, as well, that much of my research was done throughout Obama's administration, and many of these prepper sites are laden with ultra-conservative folks. Most of the time, political views didn't matter to me on these sites; if society crumbles, who we voted for in the last election is essentially a moot point. I don't want to get too political, but I consider myself a moderate, left-of-center. Some of these sites, I noticed, assumed that only christian, conservative, heterosexual, caucasians would be left. I had gotten into a few forum arguments with some of them, trying to stress upon them that straight white males are not the only people who will survive a disaster and that turning down a doctor because of the color of his skin or his religion in a TEOTWAWKI situation would be ridiculous. It never got anywhere, of course; I was impeding on their turf, and I was vastly outnumbered. I just avoid those sites now as there are plenty of other places to get my information.

Then Hurricane Sandy happened.

At first, Pittsburgh was told we would be getting the edges of the storm and to prepare for power outages, bad winds, flooding, etc. My now-husband (we had only been dating for a few months at this point) and I prepared for the worst, using the everything I learned as well his own personal experience as he lost his home in the floods from Hurricane Ivan.The shelves in our grocery store were pretty barren, a common occurrence any time a storm* is mentioned in the weather, so thankfully I had already stocked up on food the last time stuff went on sale and I had a couple extra bucks.

I personally go for the canned food, but to each their own...

As we were getting my apartment ready, I started thinking about the 2003 power outage in NYC and how easily one little circumstance could affect so many people. It didn't have to be an EMP, a nuclear attack, or hyperinflation as so many prepper sites caution: it could just be one really bad storm.

And so the concept for The Storm Series was born.

At first, the story was just going to be about a bad power outage from which Meghan and Steve had to bug out and survive in the wilderness with his hunting skills and her growing/foraging skills. I had gotten the first chapter written, but then the story went stagnant. It was missing something, and I couldn't put my finger on it for a very long time. Then I started reading the Dragonlance books--a series based on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign (which I have been playing for over a decade)--and I realized what I needed for the story: a group of adventurers with different skills and backgrounds. The characters in my book are actually based off of D&D characters: Harry and Steve are fighters, Bryan is a cleric, Tori and Chloe are druids, Meghan is a ranger, and Taylor...well, she's not done yet, so who knows what she'll end up being...is "badass" a class? ;) I think she'll end up being a rogue, actually; she's super sneaky when she's walking around in the woods. Bobby couldn't even tell she was right next to him when he got to the cabin for lessons.

Fun fact: I also used D&D to map out the final battle in Facing the Storm.

Another fun fact: Tori and Chloe were borrowed from another unpublished novel of mine called Avoiding the Norm that I wrote back in 2006-2007. Synopsis: Tori--a spoiled, rich brat--gets paired with Chloe during a debate assignment, they end up falling in love while studying together, Tori comes out of the closet, her parents kicked her out, and she moves in to Chloe's mother's attic. Dealing with her parents' abandonment as well as a lot of shit from her peers in school, she gets emancipated and starts rebuilding her life. I could geek out about Chloe and Tori all day as they are closest to my heart out of all the characters (except Taylor, who is growing on me pretty hard) because they've lived in my head the longest. I think three people in total have read that manuscript. One of these days I'll finish editing it. I also borrowed them as a way to further demonstrate to those who think like some prepper sites do that all kinds of different people are going to be ready when the shit hits the fan--plus Tori has had her world turned upside down already and had to rebuild, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that it would've had an impact on the way she pictures the permanence of any situation.

The scene in Braving the Storm where Bryan walks home right after the Blackout is also based off of what my stepmother went through the morning of 9/11. She worked in downtown Pittsburgh, and getting home after the Towers were hit took over 6 hours. She ended up having to walk out of town and have my dad meet her halfway home. Cellphones weren't as common back then, either, so it was a scary situation for her as getting a hold of my dad was difficult due to phone lines being tied up. The pain in his legs the next day is also based off the pain I felt walking up and down hills back to my old apartment after work one day when I couldn't get a ride home. I walk a lot more these days thanks to Kaylee, but back then I was pretty sedentary so I was ill-prepared for such a walk.

Now that I'm done geeking out about my characters...

The story itself has evolved so much since its inception. It was originally only going to be one book, but that's clearly changed as there are going to be at least four books in this series. I spent many an evening with friends discussing everything that would happen if the eastern grid went out--the stock exchange, the food supply, currency, other countries, and so on. There was a friend's party I had attended one night, and her front porch was filled with a group of people who were geeking out with me for most of the night over all the things they could think of that could be affected by a blackout of that magnitude, and it was a blast. The more I write the books, the more scenarios pop up. I've actually had to start expanding my knowledge on the Great Depression for book 3; I want to make sure I know what happened during the first one so that the government can learn from their mistakes for the Second Great Depression. I also have to start studying more on the Wild West as that will essentially be the theme of those living in the Blackout Zone, but factual information about anything other than the gunmen of the time is much harder to find online. I'm going to have to try and find books on the subject so that book 3 doesn't sound like some cliched John-Wayne-esque movie.

I once got a 3-star review for Braving the Storm saying it was more like a survival guide than an actual story. While I'll be the first one to admit that the first book is a bit slow--I had to build the world, and realistically society isn't going to completely crumble into a world of savages overnight--I take the aforementioned review as a huge compliment. I want people to read the book and learn something while also being entertained. I enjoy that my readers place themselves into the scenarios presented within The Storm Series and think what they would do. To me, that means I did my job. I personally think it's exciting when you can be entertained and also learn something in the process.

To wrap things up, I don't have the financial woes that I used to (thank goodness), but I have become so accustomed to growing and canning my own food that I don't think I'd ever go back to buying canned tomatoes and peaches in a grocery store unless I had to. This is a good thing for the novels, because every good and bad experience I have with being self-sufficient just ends up being great source material for the books. For example, expect an appearance from this little jerk in Book 3 because he won't stop breaking into my garden to eat my green beans:

Mr. Groundhog: #1 on Jen's Most Wanted list

Now that my green bean plants are 6.5 feet tall, tough, Mr. Groundhog just can't keep up.

This is what has grown in the week I was gone. Take that, groundhog!

I foresee some canning in my near future! :)

Until next time!

*The storm link is both an interesting read and a delightful collection of amusing memes for those who know about impending snowstorm milk and bread hysteria.