THE HURRICANE LOVER is fiction. Climate change is real.

Set on the Gulf Coast during the devastating hurricane season of 2005, Joni Rodgers' novel The Hurricane Lover weaves real weather feeds from the National Hurricane Center and actual emails to and from FEMA officials into the story of an obsessed weatherman, an ambitious journalist and a con artist using chaos as cover for identity theft and murder.

"It's about 40% fiction," says Rodgers, who volunteered with relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and witnessed Hurricane Ike up close and personal. "The rest comes from what I heard and saw that summer and from five years of mind-blowing research."

Rodgers, a New York Times bestselling author repped by William Morris Endeavor, says she chose to indie publish the novel because she wasn't willing to "sacrifice relationships for car chases" or water down the politics to accomodate a corporate publisher.

"Two weeks before Katrina, a prominent scientist at MIT - a guy with no political dog in the fight - published the results of a study clearly connecting the dots between climate change and megastorms," says Rodgers. "I wanted to make the science accessible by placing it in the context of these characters' lives. My hope is that the suspense will keep the pages turning, the reality of what happened will blow readers' minds and the human heart of the story will stay with them."

Read The Hurricane Lover FREE on Kindle today and tomorrow.

Comments