Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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  • Mike Scott Thrillers
    • Held Hostage: Search for the Juncal
    • Water Crisis: Day Zero
    • Turks and Chaos: Hostile Waters
    • The 3rd Key: Sharks in the Water
    • Oil and Water: Crash in Curacao
    • Return to Cayman: Paradise Held Hostage
    • Heart of the Maya: Murder for the Gods
    • Wreck of the Huron: Cuban Secrets
    • Guardians’ Keep: Mystery below the Adriatic
    • Flooding Hollywood: Fanatics at the Dam
    • Cayman Cowboys: Reefs Under Pressure
  • Withrow Key
    • Lyin’ Fish
    • Tales from Withrow Key
  • Agent AJ West
  • About the Author
    • Publicity and Interviews
  • Nonfiction
    • For Cheap Lobster
    • Heart Survivor: Recovery After Heart Surgery
    • Oral History
      • Batter Up!
      • Memories of the Valley
      • WV Voices of War / Common Valor
      • Capturing Memories: How to Record Oral Histories
    • Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story
    • Keep on, Keepin’ On: A Breast Cancer Story
    • WV Voices of War / Common Valor
    • Russia: The New Age
    • Scuba Diving Safety
  • Free Short Fiction
  • Other Fiction
    • Sea Turtle Rescue and Other Stories
    • River Town
You are here: Home / Archives for Water Crisis

On Substack: Problems with freshwater

September 28, 2024 By Eric Douglas

You can find this post on Substack as well.

This week we’ve finally gotten appreciable rain where I live. It’s been months. Fortunately we avoided the flooding rains that people not that far to the south of me have endured. According to the National Weather Service, we’ve been in “exceptional” drought. The grass hasn’t grown. Trees have been dropping their leaves since late July or early August. The last time I cut my grass was June. 

We normally have lots of birds in our yard. I feed them all winter and provide a fallow area where they live and build nests. On a typical evening, I can identify 10 or more species of birds. 

But not this summer. There are a few, but most seem to have moved on in search of water. The Elk River is a couple miles away. The ground is too hard for them to find worms. There aren’t as many bugs crawling around or flying through the air. 

I’ve watched the news all summer and marveled at our dry air and heat while other parts of the country have been slammed with floods. (Everyone has been hot.) 

As the planet continues to warm, weather patterns are set to change. Some places we live now will become unlivable and temperate areas will be hotter and drier. 

Many of my novels involve current events, history and science. I might make up places and people, but the science is all real. I don’t write science fiction, but scifi is often about extrapolation — taking what we have and wondering what it will look like in the future. Think about Dick Tracy’s watch or tricorders and tablets on Star Trek.  

The major theme of Water Crisis: Day Zero is, obviously, water. I wrote this book a few years ago, inspired by a situation in Cape Town, South Africa where the city of more than 4.5 million people was within just a few days of running out of fresh water — its Day Zero. Researching deeper, I found that wasn’t an unusual scenario and civil wars have even started over fresh water resources. 

That’s where water refugees move to cities to get access to fresh water, putting strains on city services, leading to uprisings. The civil war in Syria is an example of this. 

But it’s not just in desert climates. Fifteen plus years ago, I was living in Durham, North Carolina when the local water reservoir was within a couple weeks of running out of water. A tropical storm hit the Carolina coast and in one weekend, everything was back to normal. 

About two weeks ago, a small community in West Virginia — Richwood — was within a few days of running out of freshwater. The Cherry River was down because of the drought. The city managers were even contemplating using water in a fracking well — if the radioactive levels in the water tested low enough. 

This week, suddenly, we got more rain than was even forecast, even before Helene slammed into Florida hard enough that it brought heavy rain to the southern Appalachian mountains. Everything is back to normal.

Water out west is a prime commodity. The Colorado River doesn’t make it to the ocean any more. I saw a photo recently showing an area in the San Joaquin Valley in California where the official elevation had dropped dozens of feet because the water table below ground has been pumped out for agriculture.

The point of all this is, some people don’t believe in sea level rise or even climate change. But it’s hard to ignore things like running out of water when it is right in front of your face. 

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: Drought, Freshwater, Mike Scott thrillers, Substack, Water, Water Crisis

Using stories about the ocean as teaching opportunities

December 29, 2023 By Eric Douglas

(This week’s substack article is below. Follow this link for previous essays.)

https://www.booksbyeric.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2015-06-02-01.44.22.mp4

I’ve been fortunate to have a career that has involved telling stories and working around the ocean. I’ve gotten to write about the things I’ve seen above and below the waves. 

One of my goals when I started writing novels was to expose readers to the magic of the ocean. Coming from the recreational dive industry, I hoped divers would enjoy my books so I attempted to make the diving as realistic as possible. 

But, I have written with nondivers in mind as well. I want those readers to be excited about my stories. I want some of them to decide to learn to scuba dive and explore the ocean. And I want everyone to learn a few things about the ocean itself. 

Recently, I read an essay called Why We Need New Stories About the Ocean: Natalie Hart on the Urgency of Literature That Brings the Ocean into the Climate Story

One thing Hart discussed was the difference between literature about the climate versus the ocean. With climate-based stories, the reader is likely predisposed to have an interest in the overall topic. But with the ocean, it is typically just a setting for a love story, adventure story or even a story of personal reflection like a memoir. 

“People can come to books that feature the sea, with no motivation to understand the ocean at all, but they can learn or feel something about the sea through the process of reading. And perhaps these people that we don’t normally reach are the most important of all.”

I don’t write science fiction, but I’ve always understood the genre as taking what is known and extrapolating it into the future. Think about concepts like Warp Speed and digital tablets from Star Trek or Isaac Asimov’s Three Rules of Robotics. 

With my books, there is always something readers can take away when it comes to oceans, water, the environment, or reef systems. 

An example of that is the 10th novel in the Mike Scott series. It’s all about the shortage of fresh water and the international upheaval that causes. 

Recently I saw a story that drought conditions and sea level rise had allowed more salt water intrusion into the Mississippi River causing problems for municipal water supply systems. So many things I extrapolated in Water Crisis are coming true and causing problems. 

There are times, as a fiction writer, I question whether I am doing any good. I want to influence people to love and respect the ocean while being in awe of everything we don’t know about it. But it’s easy to get frustrated and wonder if anyone is listening. 

And then I shake that feeling off and go back to writing. I continue to tell my fiction stories with truth as the background to help people learn whether they want to or not. 

 

Filed Under: Adventure, Diving Tagged With: adventure, diving, Fiction, Mike Scott thrillers, Substack, thriller novels, Water Crisis

Real Thugs: A Cult of Murder — Small groups of travelers have disappeared all over the mid-Atlantic without a trace. When bodies turn up with what appear to be ritual markings, FBI Agent AJ West is on the hunt for what might be a serial killer. Or something even more sinister. It’s a race against […]

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