Musings & Thoughts for Tuesday, June 20, 2023, or: On Weather, Writing, and the Importance of Beta Readers

It’s late morning here in Lithia, Florida, on Tuesday, June 20, 2023. This being early meteorological summer – “traditional” astronomical summer begins tomorrow with the summer solstice – it is also a steamy and potentially stormy day. Currently, the temperature is 79°F/26°C under mostly cloudy conditions, but the “feels like” temperature is 92°F/35°C. And this being the subtropical zone, not only do we have thunderstorms in the forecast, but we also have a named tropical storm – Bret – out in the Atlantic Ocean, heading west.

I’m not concerned about Bret right now; it’s too far away in the Atlantic to affect any part of the United States, much less the Tampa Bay area, this week. What I am worried about is the possibility of thunderstorms in my part of Hillsborough County; in Miami, I lost a TV (in 1974) and an e-Machines PC (in 2004) to errant lightning strikes, so I usually avoid using electronic devices that are connected to an electric outlet during a visit by a “boomer.”

Heck, a storm doesn’t even have to be in the neighborhood for a lightning bolt to hit nearby. I lost my PC 19 years ago because even though I knew thunderstorms were expected that day, the skies over my townhouse in South Florida were clear and the sun was shining. I’ve read that lightning can travel a long distance – like 40 miles or so – from a thunderstorm cell to its ‘target,” and that’s what I believe occurred in ’04 when a bolt out of the blue literally hit my neighbor Elena’s tree, killing it and my PC in one fell swoop.

With this in mind, I will keep this blog post short; I need to work on Reunion: Coda for at least an hour before the storms do arrive. I probably won’t get much new writing in today; I need to incorporate some edits to Chapter Seven that were suggested by my kind and patient Beta Reader, a writer, poet, and former Epinions reviewer who lives in California. She agreed to serve as my “second set of eyes” for Reunion: Coda and go over the manuscript to catch mistakes, point out issues with the story, and suggest edits.

I didn’t have a Beta Reader for Reunion: A Story, and even though the first edition was well-received when I self-published it nearly five years ago, my novella had issues that would have been avoided had I such a helpful friend who was kind enough to read the first draft and honest (and objective) enough to point out errors large and small, including typos, the realities of New York City geography and architecture, and whatnot. The basic story and its themes weren’t problematic, but quality control and reality-based accuracy were.

I wanted to avoid a plethora of bonehead mistakes as a first-time novelist, so this time around I sought – and got – someone to assist me in this endeavor. Hence…I have a Beta Reader who, like me, is a writer and Constant Reader, and has certainly proved to be immensely helpful with her advice. So…today I am going to go to my “Beta Reader” document file, grab the sections we looked at last night, and graft them onto my manuscript file here on Word.

I should get going, though. Presently, there are no storm cells or even stray showers nearby. However, there’s some thunderstorm activity several counties to the north of us, and there’s a massive band of rain and thunderheads out in the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t know how fast they are moving, nor do I want to check online for their ETA here, but the forecast does say “thunderstorms will move through your area,” so…if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see you later.