A touch of the real world

So the levies in New Orleans held, as did most of the barriers around Houston and its environs. I know this was a huge relief to everyone living in the area, and most citizens of the US, who aren’t ready for another Katrina situation. But anyone watching CNN can see the enormous vulnerability of these structures. What’s more, their vulnerability isn’t limited to natural disasters. What would happen if there were some sort of terrorist attack against the levies surrounding New Orleans? A strike doesn’t need to be high tech and sophisticated, as I’ve written it in Gauntlet. It would be ridiculously simple for someone to attack New Orleans, simply by destroying their protection. Someone could very easily hire 20 or 30 guys capable of using excavators, or who had access to explosives. They would be able to take out the walls around New Orleans, allowing the city to be destroyed (again) by nature, and then move on. If a strike like that was coordinated with similar strikes along the Mississippi or any of its tributaries, we’re looking at a disaster that could potentially devastate the heartland. We’ve all seen what the yearly floods do to those areas… what if those floods were manmade, and the walls that had been built to keep the water at bay torn down? Quite frankly, it would be impossible to defend against.

It’s a terrible thing when I can’t watch the news without thinking things like this! Although I have heard that real life and the news are the best places for an author looking to brainstorm new ideas…

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as if writing wasn’t hard enough!!!

So there I was, sorting out the plot of another book in the Gauntlet trilogy when disaster struck. Lu-lu, our old cat, had died. Finally after 14 days of grief we obtained a gorgeous little Persian kitten. We’re still in the naming process, but I think the new one will be called “Baby-blue.” We brought BB into the house, and into the master suite, where my wife and I watched her roam about, exploring the perimeters of the room.

We took our eyes off it for a second or two and she was gone.  I mean really GONE.  We looked and looked, over and under furniture, and in every nook and cranny.  The kids were brought into the search and then the other three pets, but it was a no go.  BB had vanished somehow,  into a warp of the space-time continuum.  For half an hour we looked, panic stricken.  BB was nowhere to be found.  Then, for some inexplicable reason I opened the bottom drawer of my clothes cabinet, and there I saw a little immobile piece of smoky grey fluff.  Instantly I recognized it as BB, and I realized what had happened.  The bottom drawer had been sticking out a couple of inches, and, in my urgency to find BB, I slammed, and I mean slammed, the drawer shut, not realizing that that was where she was.  She’d been shut in that drawer the entire time.

The first thought that entered my mind was  “Oh, Jesus, Dick, you’ve killed her.”  I realized that I would be toast with the family.  Banished from the manor, with women, children, and pets screaming at me, throwing kitchen utensils at me as I fled, never to be forgiven.  The next thought that crossed my mind was how can I create the illusion that somehow I was not at fault, that BB, already over the top from being in an airplane for three hours, had killed herself somehow, by snuffing herself out in my shorts drawer.  Fearfully I reached in and felt around. I felt movement, and yes, to my joy, a pulse.  She was fine.  I was the hero for having discovered her, once again the man of the house for having saved the new kitten!

Now, with relief, I can go back to what I was doing — sorting out how to make high explosives out of household chemicals,  wiping out an entire city, with the CIA and co right at my heels.  Back into the new book. That seems to be my life these days. 

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