This deep dive started while researching my novel, Floodline. Brief reminder - Floodline is a financial conspiracy thriller around the notion that whoever controls the world’s water controls everything. Learning about water led me down a rabbit hole on water rights law, the geopolitics of scarcity, how quietly water is already being bought up, fought over, and even weaponized. So here we are.

💧

We take water for granted. It falls from the sky. It comes out of our taps. We swim in it, cook with it, drink it without thinking. But water is one of the most extraordinary, mysterious, and greatest gifts of our planet. And when you really start to look at it closely, water is a force of nature with its own personality.

🌊 The Ocean Is Warming. And It’s Angry.

Do you remember Hurricane Sandy? I do. And if you were in the NYC region in late October 2012, I bet you do, too. The storm tore into the northeastern United States with a force that felt almost personal. Nearly 200 people died. Dozens of coastal communities were consumed, and flooding reached deep into lower Manhattan. The financial damage for the US topped $65 billion.

Sandy was a wake-up call. But what made it so catastrophic wasn’t just the wind. It was the ocean underneath it. Warmer ocean water is rocket fuel for hurricanes. The warmer the surface water, the more energy a storm can pull from it, the faster it intensifies, and the more moisture it carries when it finally makes landfall. As ocean temperatures continue to rise, we should expect more storms like Sandy — and worse. Bigger. Faster. Angrier.

The ocean has absorbed the overwhelming majority of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. That heat has to go somewhere. And increasingly, it goes into storms. Water is trying to tell us something.

🌀 Water Has a Dual Nature

Across many cultures, water is understood to have two sides:

The Giver 🌱

Gentle rain coaxing seeds. Rivers feeding civilizations. The morning dew. Life, made possible.

and

The Destroyer 🌪️

The hurricane erasing coastlines. The flood swallowing homes. The drought cracking earth to dust.

In physics, we describe water as having polarity, positive and negative charges within a single molecule that give it its unique properties. But in a deeper sense, water has always been understood as something that holds opposites together.

Water moves. Water changes. It’s often a mirror for the inner life. Water has long been linked to emotion, intuition, and the inner world. Think about how we use “water language” when we speak —-

• I was flooded with grief

• She felt a wave of joy

• We were emotionally drained

Or how a soft spring rain feels tender while a hurricane feels like rage.

🏺 Sacred Water - The Ancient Southwest

Nowhere is water’s sacred status more vivid than in the desert cultures of the American Southwest. I lived in Santa Fe, NM for years and know this firsthand.

Ancestral Pueblo peoples built entire civilizations around water. Kivas (underground ceremonial chambers) were used for water rituals and prayer. Petroglyphs across canyon walls in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah often show rain clouds, lightning, and Kokopelli , the hump-backed flute player associated with water, fertility, and the bringing of rain.

The Hopi Rain Ceremonies

The Hopi people of northern Arizona perform elaborate kachina dances as a call to the spirits for moisture in the desert. Water is a relationship, something respected and given thanks.

Tlaloc & Mesoamerica

In Mesoamerica, Tlaloc (the Aztec god of rain and water) was one of the most important deities in their entire world of gods, worshipped for centuries across central Mexico. Water meant life. Drought meant death. No gray areas here.

Egypt: The Nile Was Everything

Egyptian civilization was the Nile. The annual flood deposited rich silt across the floodplain, and without it, Egypt was an unlivable desert. Their gods, calendar, agriculture, and national identity were all organized around that river.

Across cultures and over time water has been held sacred. Take a moment to think about how we think about water today, and how many of us take it for granted or “I’m sick of all this rain…”

🌍 Where Did Earth’s Water Come From?

I couldn’t stop thinking about this one! Where did this water come from in the first place?

When our solar system was forming about 4.5 billion years ago, our baby Sun was spewing intense radiation everywhere. The heat would’ve been too much for ice water to survive in the area where Earth was forming…. So what happened?

No one was around then… But the leading theory involves Late Heavy Bombardment which would have happened 4 billion years ago when our area of the solar system was pelted with comets and asteroids from the outer solar system. I know, it’s really that big!

A lot of these objects being thrown our way were full of ice and volatile compounds, including …..water 💦. Billions of impacts, over millions of years, delivered the water that now fills our oceans, glaciers, rivers, and rain clouds. Wow.

Water came to us from space. From ice-filled rocks crashing into our forming planet. It was a gift from the universe.

🔬 You Can’t Make Water (Not Easily, Anyway)

Here’s the rub. We cannot make water in any practical sense.

Yes, I always thought just stick two H’s onto an O…. but no, not simple at all.

In nature, hydrogen doesn’t float around solo, it exists as H₂ (two hydrogen atoms bonded together) while oxygen exists as O₂. To make water, you need to break the bonds of both which requires an enormous amount of activation energy. Energy is also required to then force the atoms to recombine in a very specific configuration. The angles matter. The attractions between atoms have to be exactly right.

You can’t just mix hydrogen and oxygen gas together in a room and expect water to appear. At least not in a good way….

When hydrogen and oxygen do combine, the reaction releases an enormous amount of energy all at once. It’s why hydrogen is explosive. I wasn’t here May 6, 1937, when the Hindenburg lit up and burned to the ground as a result of this uncontrolled chemistry.

The problem is getting these atoms to react in a slow, controlled, specific way that produces clean usable water rather than a fireball. We need exact temperature, exact pressure, and the right catalyst. Get any of those wrong, and you have either nothing happening or the Hindenburg.

Nature figured this out over billions of years. We have not although bright minds are trying.

Water, once it’s gone from a region, doesn’t come back easily. It doesn’t appear out of thin air. We have what we have.

💧 Sadly, Humans Can’t Survive Without It

A human body can survive for weeks without food, but without water, you have roughly three days. Much less during extreme heat.

Every cell in our body requires water for circulation, temperature regulation, brain function, immune response, digestion.

🧠 Brain Function

Even mild dehydration can impair concentration, memory, and mood. Our brain is about 75% water.

🩸 Circulation

Blood (mostly water) carries oxygen and nutrients to every cell in the body.

🌡️ Temperature Control

Sweating is how our body cools itself. Without enough water, it shuts down, and we’ll bake from the inside.

🦠 Immune Defense

Lymph fluid which runs all throughout our bod, is almost entirely water. Dehydration weakens these defenses.

Water is not a supplement and it is not a KitKat (guilty pleasure). It’s our basis for human life.

We are mostly made of water, organized into a temporary, walking, thinking shape. One day, Earth will reclaim us.

🏜️ The Water Wars Are Already Beginning

The Colorado River supplies water to roughly 40 million Americans across seven states: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and California. It irrigates millions of acres of farmland, fills Las Vegas, supplies Phoenix, helped build LA of today.

It’s complicated. And it’s running dry.

Lake Mead, the enormous reservoir fed by the Colorado River sites behind Hoover Dam, where its dropped to historically low levels. You can see a “bathtub ring” of white mineral deposits that shows how far the water level has fallen.

The Colorado no longer consistently reaches the Gulf of Mexico as its been drained, diverted, and consumed faster than the watershed can replenish it. Our warming planet is only accelerating the depletion.

Negotiations between the seven Colorado River Basin states have grown increasingly tense. The water rights treaties that govern the river were written in the 1920s (it was really wet in those days) and they overestimated how much water the river actually carried. The math never worked.

This is happening right now, in real time, across the American West.

I once read a line in Bloomberg Magazine that has stayed with me:

“Whoever controls the earth’s water will control the world.”

Think about that. There is no replacement for water. There is no lab substitute. You cannot invent a new molecule to fill that role.

Water is the one truly irreplaceable resource on the planet, and we treat it like it’s infinite. The Ancient Pueblo people knew. Water simply will not last. The Colorado River is not an outlier. It is a preview.

Water’s reckoning is on its way.

💧 Thanks for reading. If this resonated, share it with someone who has ever stood in the rain and felt something.

What does a hornet’s nest look like?

They can be ginormous!! And the nests are usually tucked away, safe from the elements. You’ll find them mainly in the eaves of houses and such. I’ve had them as well. I’m scared so I called the exterminator who sprays the nest so the hornets inside die off and those out and about don’t return. Once activity is gone, they remove the nest but it leaves an awful sticky substance behind that takes years to weather away. Or a very strong power wash.

I actually see one in my neighbor’s tree. Without the leaves it’s hard to ignore.

This guide includes a great subject —”social wasps” — check it out!

And what does a hornet look like?

Angry looking bugger isn’t it? Skinny and fierce.

In fall (when my story takes place) a hornet's nest has a low, persistent hum with a papery whispering. These are the hornets busily crawling about and working hard to repair the nest for the winter. This is how their queen will be protected. Unfortunately these worker hornets will soon be dying off. Maybe this is why they sound irritable and angry. The colony is at its largest now and most dangerous.

Imagine stepping on one of these nests….

Don’t worry, I’ll tell you! 🫣

The nest itself gives way with a papery crunch. But that humming of the workers becomes a roar as hundreds of hornets explode out. A swarm of yellow and black (Go Steelers!) If you are the poor fool, you’ll be bitten not once like a bee, but over and over and over.

They’ll crawl into your clothes, your hair, and give off a smell alerting all nearby hornets to get their hornet asses over here, pronto.

Pain goes from individual needle-pricks to fire. You might try to run and swat them away but they’re pretty persistent. Worst case scenario—nausea, dizziness, and difficulty breathing followed by anaphylactic shock even without prior allergies!

And anaphylactic shock is no joke. Blood pressure drops super fast, airways narrow and you can’t breathe. If you’re not carrying around a handy EpiPen, you will probably die in minutes.

Y’all get the idea? Well, that’s what I’ve learned this morning about hornet behavior.

Of course, thinking about the word hornet got me thinking of the book The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson. Do you all remember this author’s story?

Recap — Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist who spent his career investigating right-wing extremism and hate groups while working at the anti-fascist magazine Expo, which didn't pay well. He wrote the Millennium Trilogy (including The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) partly to create financial security for his long-time partner Eva Gabrielsson, whom he never married due to safety concerns from neo-Nazi death threats.

In November 2004, at age 50, Larsson died suddenly of a heart attack soon after delivering all three manuscripts to his publisher. He never saw any of them published or selling millions of copies.

And because they weren't married, Swedish inheritance law gave everything to his estranged father and brother while Eva got nothing, despite being together for 32 years.

The only proof I can share for now is this picture of how I tracked my progress —- Hank Phillippi Ryan shared this as one of her tracking / reward tools and I borrowed it ❤️. You get one smiley face for every 1,000 words completed ⤵️

I will also share what I did after I finished:

✅ Downloaded everything to Word (originally written in Google docs)

✅ Solid spell- and grammar checked

✅ Asked AI (I prefer Claude) for a full plot and pacing check, and realized I still have mountains to climb 🏔️

Finding the joy in the process, much like it is to actually climb a mountain, you take one step after another, pause when you need to, then take another step after another, pause ….

Floodline takes place over the 8 days leading up to Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City on Monday, October 29, 2012.

Today, I finished draft #3 of Day 1. I did not read it again, but will begin with Day 2’s revision instead.

My goal is to do this until I finish all 8 days and have a solid Draft #3 in front of me.

Then I will read the whole thing.

And finally, I will write the one POV that is still missing in my story.

That of Water… 💧🌊💦

Karin Slaughter’s latest book, We Are All Guilty Here, started off a new series - all new characters and in a new, fictional place called North Falls. Like most of her books, this one was also set in the south. But We Are All Guilty Here came out 10 years after the 2015 publication of Pretty Girls. Ten years is a milestone, and for this review, I considered the two books against each other. Both were read back-to-back to create as “fair” a comparison as possible, but it’s important to note that Pretty Girls was a stand alone while We Are All Guilty Here is the first book in a new series.

5 Craft Lessons

1. plot, pacing — is this unputdownable? 👣

Pretty Girls was super tight and fast paced, despite a ton of graphic imagery. Rapid-fire dialogue and close POVs on family members made the entire story very intimate. Read this in two days…We Are All Guilty Here was structured as a police procedural, and because of the slower burn, it was an easy decision not to take it on a cross country flight. Nonetheless, both were remarkable stories.

2. characters — do I care about them? 🧡

The characters in Pretty Girls were memorable and distinct in both dialogue and action, leaving a very strong sense of who each is as their own person. Stakes for the characters — good and evil — were visceral and deeply personal. We Are All Guilty Here was populated with a much wider net of people with less room for depth; as a result, the emotional punch of what the characters experience felt diluted. Worthy to note that this is the first book of a new series, and there will be room for a lot more character development. But even a single book in a series should read as a compelling standalone, agreed? And given Karin Slaughter’s writing talent and experience, it seemed fair to have that expectation.

3. tension, atmosphere — how do I feel while reading? 🤔

I could not put down Pretty Girls even though this book is ten years old. I was so drawn into them and their story (in that order). I needed to know what happened next. The atmosphere was heavy and tense throughout. I could see the places, the farm… But setting did not serve as its own character here as it did in We Are All Guilty Here. The small-town where everyone knows everyone, and guilt and secrets are shared, lent a persistent level of claustrophobia. Both books were incredibly atmospheric, but Pretty Girls could have been in any town/place; whereas We Are All Guilty Here could only be in North Falls, where everyone was hiding something.

4. writing style - what authorial choices shaped the ride for me? 🎡

Pretty Girls was written with sharp, tight prose and fast, brutal, graphic detail that shocked and matched the pace of the story itself. We Are All Guilty Here was a more complex story landscape with layered twists and shock, but at times the procedural details seemed to overwhelm the story. We Are All Guilty Here felt like a more “grown-up” author writing, triggering deeper rooted fears as compared to the blatant violence of Pretty Girls.

5. payoff - did the ending land? 💰

Which story will stick with me longer? The ending for Pretty Girls contained extraordinary family revelations and twists that led to a devastating conclusion. We Are All Guilty Here was so different with the concept of collective guilt for a broader moral punch, and a much bigger societal takeaway. At their hearts, both are stories about violence against women/girls and both are ridiculously well-written. Both will be memorable for very different reasons.

Closing Takeaway ✍️

I hold Karin Slaughter to a very high standard because of her talent and experience. As such, I go into her stories with great expectations. In addition to the notes above, what also I took away as a writer from reading both books was the crisp, authentic dialogue and how the dialogue served to reinforce the setting and the character relationships, both interior and exterior. Truly gifted writing in both books.

P.S. Karin Slaughter is quick-witted and darkly funny; she charmingly shares her observations like she’s sharing a secret with you (or her cat)…. 😂 Fortunate to have heard the author speak at a book launch event earlier this year.

This morning, as my yoga teacher put a pillowcase on a bolster for me, he asked me about my writing style. Without much time to think, I said, “I lean heavily on a solid outline.”

I went on to explain that I didn’t always write this way. That I used to have a general idea and jump into the writing, letting the muse guide me. No doubt I generated content, and it could’ve even been great content.

The problem though, was that I often lost the plot threads writing freeform like this, and no matter how hard I tried on rewrites, I couldn’t string things together to hold water. I like my stories to have complex plot lines, and so I decided with Floodline, I would follow the James Patterson outlining approach (love him, or not).

Mr. Patterson is known for his 60 to 70 page chapter outlines which lay out his entire novel. He could spend months on the outline. My understanding is that when he starts to actually write, he does not deviate much, if at all, from the blueprint.

I embarked on this over the summer of 2025, and quickly realized I needed to do a little prep work. My tools were simple: A Google Sheet.

On my Google sheet, I named one tab in my Google sheet Lifeline where I mapped out all my characters’ life moments. Things like where and when were they born, married, college, etc. This helped me keep dates in place - especially relative to one another - and also track the different time periods, generational divides, and major world events.

A second tab in the same Google sheet is called Storyline. This is where all my plot points for each character are mapped against a timeline. It’s an easy grid to follow. This way I can be sure each character has their own story arc and, when necessary, characters can cross over each other as needed.

I was now ready to write the first draft of my actual chapter outline ala Mr. Patterson. My paragraphs ranged from a handful of sentences to half a page, depending on how much was on my mind, and details I didn’t want to lose. By the time I was done, I had 40 pages, single spaced and in a font less than 12 point since I need to print to edit, and want to minimize how much paper I use.

I’m finishing up Draft #2 of this chapter outline now, adding more to existing points of view, layering in new ones, and cleaning up plot points and typos along the way. It’s a slow process, and I’m on the middle to end of it which is also the busiest section of Floodline.

The novel takes place over eight days, ending on Monday, October 28, 2012. Any guesses on what happened that day to make it notable? And where?