Connie Lacy's Blog, page 8

Hurricanes and the future

Watching the devastation over the last few weeks, first, the terrible flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Houston, then, Hurricane Irma lashing Florida, takes me back to a scene in book #2 of my Climate Fiction trilogy. In Albedo Effect, Book 2 of The Shade Ring Trilogy, a category 6 hurricane named Pascual strikes Florida's Gulf Coast in the year 2117. I wrote a category 6 storm because I wanted to include natural disasters that scientists say might very well become more common and more violen...

The 1960s – when social consciousness hit the airwaves

When you think of music of the 1960s, what pops into your mind? The Twist by Chubby Checker? Ricky Nelson’s Hello, Mary Lou? Maybe it’s Come Together by the Beatles, or Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone. All of those songs were popular in the 1960s. But the first two were in the early sixties. Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone hit the charts in 1965 and Come Together was released in 1969. Needless to say, the volatile decade of the 1960s saw a huge transformation in the music everyone heard on the...

Warning, warning... I told you so...

In the early 2000’s I began seeing a noticeable increase in news stories about climate change, which was usually referred to at the time as global warming. It seemed like I read a new dire warning nearly every week. There was growing concern about melting glaciers, melting at the poles, rising sea levels, droughts – you name it. Visions of that Kevin Costner movie, “Waterworld,” floated through my mind.One day I had this vivid mental image of a young woman with a device on her wrist giving he...

The year my father was in Vietnam

As I write my new novel set in the 60s, sometimes I feel like I’m traveling back in time. The teenage character in my book, due out this fall, is one year older than I was that particular year. And while Angie is definitely not me, we do have some things in common, including that our dads were serving a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1966.Doing research for Angie’s story has brought back the ugliness and futility of that war. Like Angie’s dad, my father told me the rationale behind US involvement...

Down Syndrome character in Aerosol Sky

A diverse future is just one of the themes of The Shade Ring Trilogy. When I started doing research on future technologies, climate predictions and future cultural scenarios, I repeatedly ran across articles about how diverse the population will be in the United States by the end of this century. So my cast of characters includes quite a range of ethnicities – African-American, Mexican-American, Indian-American, American Indian, Korean-American, Chinese, Russian, multi-ethnic individuals – yo...

An easy riddle: when is an author’s fifth book also her third book?

The answer? When the author’s fifth book is the third book in her just completed trilogy. I’m referring to my NEW book,Aerosol Sky, Book 3 of The Shade Ring Trilogy. It’s now available in ebook and paperback on Amazon, and in paperback from Barnes & Noble.Plus – and this is a mega plus – I’ve also just published an ebook box set that includes the complete trilogy! Am I excited or what? It’s called:The Shade Ring Trilogy: The Complete Trilogy Books 1 – 3. It’s available on Amazon. So if you ha...

Eliminating characters – an insider’s look at “The Shade Ring Trilogy”

As I gear up to publish the final installment in “The Shade Ring Trilogy,” I’m pleased to report that two characters I deleted from the first book before it was published DID make a comeback in books 2 and 3.  I deleted them because there were too many personalities for readers to keep up with as the story began on that expedition to sunken Charleston.Originally, the graduate students on the excursion in Chapter 1 of “The Shade Ring” included Neave Alvarez, her cousin and friend, Lena, and tw...

Downsizing the future

Okay, it looks pretty cool. But how would you really like to live in a house or apartment with less than 400 square feet of space? I’m talking tiny houses, micro apartments. There are TV shows about this movement. There are Pinterest pages with all kinds of nifty ideas on keeping your stuff nested and organized. But could you do it? Live in one of those itsy-bitsy homes day in and day out? Well, your great-grandchildren may have no choice.In “The Shade Ring Trilogy,” one of the characters liv...

Good-looking characters in my books

I guess it’s true: we like our leading men to be handsome. We also like our leading ladies to be beautiful. Or, at the very least, cute. And I have to admit, the main characters in my novels tend to fall into those categories.Maybe it’s because escaping into a make-believe world, we like the people we’re reading about – who we’re living vicariously through – to be above average, shall we say. And, as an author, I’ve largely adhered to that preference.The leading man in “The Shade Ring Trilogy...

Wrapping up my trilogy

I’m on the home stretch – polishing and revising book #3 of “The Shade Ring Trilogy.” It’s been a fun, challenging, memorable experience. A fellow author asked me recently if I would miss the characters once the trilogy is complete. I have mixed feelings. But, for sure, I’m really glad I got to know Neave Alvarez and the other characters! And it’s been a thrill to set my story a century in the future when, as the blurb says, “oceans have risen fifteen feet and it’s 120 degrees in Atlanta.”One...