KEN PELHAM

June 6 Newsflash! Okay, I never claimed to be a meteorologist. As soon as I said it was too early for hurricane season, up pops Tropical Storm Andrea in the Gulf of Mexico. As I write this, Andrea is sloshing ashore in Brigands Key. Or where the fictional island is located, at any rate. And of course, there's not really much left of Brigands Key after the bitch goddess named Hurricane Celeste slammed into the island. Anyway, it looks like this might be a helluva season coming at us in 2013.

The calendar just flipped June 1st, so hurricane season is officially here. Now I don't necessarily agree with that date...anyone who's lived along the Gulf Coast or the U.S. Atlantic seaboard knows that they're unlikely to see a hurricane in June, or even July. The real season is August and September. On the other hand, the waters are warmer every year, so it's reasonable to assume tropical storms will begin earlier. Nevertheless, I thought I'd highlight this by returning again to the MRJ story linked below...

Janet Rudolph's wonderful quarterly, MYSTERY READERS JOURNAL, covering the gamut of mystery fiction, has a short piece of mine in the Florida-themed Winter 2013 edition. Titled "Storms, Mayhem, and Mystery", it reveals a bit of my Brigands Key thinking. I'm reprinting the story here, but I encourage mystery lovers to subscribe to MRJ, or to buy the individual issue...it's chock-full of terrific writing by noted authors who use Florida as the springboard of imagination.

Click on the links and enjoy!

--kp