Last year around this time, I revealed that I'd not only finished my novel, but that my agent was in the process of shopping it around to publishers. 

​You may have noticed that I didn't follow up on that post with news about a book deal. That's because there wasn't one. That fact was what at least in part inspired my post about failure. 

Here's what happened: around ten editors read my novel and six of them had the same criticism-- they weren't "falling in love" (that's verbatim) with the main character. Unlike most other areas of my life, when I receive criticism about my writing, I find it very easy to take in and evaluate. I've always had good readers, and their critiques usually resonate with me.

In this case, though, both I and my agent were completely blindsided. Likewise, when I told my readers the reason the editors were passing, they were all shocked. That particular problem (an unsympathetic protagonist) just wasn't on anyone's radar. It's not that I was surprised at a lack of a book deal--I'm not so arrogant as to think it's something I deserved--, it's that I wasn't expecting my main character to be the novel's Achilles heel. 

My agent and I had to make a decision, then. You see, once you approach an editor and they pass, there are no second chances. Even if the book is re-written, that particular editor won't read it again. Most publishing houses have multiple editors so in theory you could pitch the novel to a different editor within the same company, but my understanding of it is that's not always the best idea for lots of reasons. 

The options were to keep the book on the market and continue pitching it to different publishing houses, but we ran the risk of burning through all the houses with whom we wanted to work; the other option was to pull the book before we lost the other four initial editors to whom my agent pitched it, and I would revise it. 

I love my agent. She said, "if this is the book you've written, and this is the book you want to put out into the world, I'll keep working at it." She told me she had great respect for me as an author and trusted my judgement, which was nice to hear, because I no longer trusted myself. It only took me a couple minutes to decide that I wanted to pull it and do more revisions. It was both a hard decision and an easy one, though mostly it was a demoralizing decision. Because my readers, my agent, and I had never considered my main character's lovability as a weakness, I had no idea how to fix the problem.

It took me nine months to get through the revisions, and it's the most miserable writing and editing I've ever done. I hated it, and when I was about half way through, I threw out all the changes I'd already made because I realized I was writing the wrong novel. Facing the prospect of starting over yet again, I came within inches of quitting. Honestly, I don't know why I didn't quit. I just didn't. 

Throughout those months, my agent gave me space to do the revisions, but I didn't volunteer any updates; I was terrified that if I reached out, she'd remember I was dead weight, and she would drop me. You might think that fear would help push me through the revisions faster, but it had the opposite effect. 

On June 1, with no idea how I'd gotten through it, I pressed "send" on the latest version. They had a few tweaks to my tweaks, which was, at that point, fine, because I'd already spent so damn long on the thing, what was a bit more?

Then, finally, almost exactly a year after the start of the first go, my agent once again started sending my novel out to editors. 

It's now been 26 days since my book hit various editors' desks. According to people who know stuff about this process, responses can take anywhere from "right away to six months." I'm trying not to obsess, but it's impossible. If anything, this wait is worse than last year because I know that I'm done with my book. I and my wonderful readers and my agent have taken it as far as we can. If it doesn't pan out this time, "Worthy" is going on my shelf. 

I'm trying to prepare myself for that, and to think of it as something other than failure. I've had some pretty remarkable successes on my way here, and I'm trying to make that be enough. 

It's not, though; at least not this time around. 

Two days ago was the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which more or less destroyed the city of New Orleans, where I used to live and where I still own a home. Of course, two days ago was already four days in to Hurricane Harvey’s assault on Texas and the Gulf coast. As I write this, my worry for my friends and my adopted city is a constant throb.

It's an appropriate time to talk about hurricanes, and why "the worst ever" might be the new normal. 
 
At its heart, a hurricane is just a thunderstorm on ‘roids. Actually, many thunderstorms all stuck together, swollen, agro, sweaty, and ready to lash out. In order to be classified as a hurricane, the storm has to have winds that are blowing at least 74 miles per hour. Those who are familiar with the hurricane rodeo know, however, that the danger posed by hurricane-force winds is only half the battle—the flooding that goes with a hurricane is as dangerous, if not more so, than the winds. Look at pictures from Katrina and Harvey and you'll quickly understand why that's the case.  
 
They’re calling Harvey a 500-year (or even a 1,000-year) event, a term that can be misleading because the 500-year thing refers to probability, not history; essentially, in any given year, there is a one-in-500 (or .2%) chance of a storm like Harvey showing up and KO’ing Houston. In 2016, there was a .2% chance of a Harvey-esque storm hitting Houston, and in 2015 there was a .2% chance for Houston, etc.  That makes it sound like just plain ol’ shit luck that Houston got 50+ inches of rain.
 
It’s not just luck, though. Or, it's not entirely luck. 
 
As many have already pointed out, this is the third “500-year” storm for Houston in the past three years, and yes, according to the laws of probability, it is possible to have three vanishingly rare events happen three times in a row. After all, if you roll a dice a thousand times, it’s technically possible you’ll roll a six every single one of those times, but it’s not probable.
 
Something is monkeying with the probability of major storm events, and that “something” is, at least in part, climate change.
 
Perhaps you thought that climate change was only about longer summers and melting ice caps. (Insert picture of sad drowning polar bear here.) Sadly, that is not the case. Climate change has its fingers in many pies, and as Chris Mooney pointed out in “Storm World” way back in the ancient time of MMVII, climate change doesn’t necessarily increase the number of storms, but it sure as heck increases their intensity.
 
Here’s why:

1. Warm water evaporates more easily. You can easily see that when we heat water to a boil: it produces steam. It’s also why I use a humidifier in the winter—because cold air doesn’t hold much water.
   1. The Gulf of Mexico has been especially warm this year, which has crammed the atmosphere full of water. What goes up must come down, and that water returns to us as rain.
2. Hurricanes are created and fueled by warm water. Think of the wind as an engine, warm water as gasoline, and the rotation of the earth as a starter. (The earth’s rotation is what gives hurricanes their characteristic swirly shape.)
   1. If my crappy analogy doesn’t make sense, this video does a good job of explaining how a hurricane comes together.  
   2. If warm water is gasoline, really warm water is like jet fuel and it makes that engine go like stink.  
3. Storm surge, the water that gets pushed up into coastal areas by a storm, has been made worse by sea level rise. A hurricane is shaped a little bit like a propeller, and as it turns, it acts propeller-like by shoving water away from its center. Where does that water end up? On land. In your city.
   1. The sea level is rising because our earth is a warmer place. You know how when you microwave a marshmallow it grows into a monstrous, misshapen blob? That’s because you’re applying heat to it, which causes it to expand. When you apply heat to the ocean, it expands and takes up more room, causing sea levels to rise.
   2. Sea level rise also affects our wetlands and estuaries by changing the composition of each. Wetlands and estuaries are things we super-duper want to have because they’re giant sticky sponges that absorb and slow storm surge.

Summer in the Gulf means hurricanes. It always has, because the conditions make it a hospitable place. Right now, though, with an unusually warm ocean and a coastal landscape transforming under the pressure of sea level rise, we've rolled out the proverbial red carpet for hurricanes. What was once hospitable is now ideal. 
 
 Of course, we’ll never be able to draw a straight line from “climate change” to “Harvey” and say with one hundred percent certainty, Aha! Without that, we wouldn’t have had this!  It’s looking less probable, though, that our Harveys and Katrinas are anomalies. You can't engineer a great environment for something and expect it not to show up and take advantage. 

To all Harvey's victims and survivors, you're in my thoughts. Here's hoping this is the last 500-year storm of this decade.