How A Newspaper Article Generated An Idea For A Novel

“Print is dead.” That sad obituary on the newspaper, magazine, and book businesses has implanted itself in our post-fact society. Today, Facebook posts from your crazy aunt or tweets from someone semi-employed and living in his parents’ basement grab the wheel and steer our cultural conversations into crazy town.

I write today to proclaim that the reports of print journalism’s death are greatly exaggerated — to borrow a witticism from cynic-in-chief, Mark Twain.

Today, I put forth a short tale of how an article from The Sacramento Bee newspaper generated an idea for my first novel.

I freely admit that my idea may be as inconceivable as the possibility that anyone in government is “deep.” I will, however, let you, dear reader, be the judge. Just to be clear, you don’t have subpoena power, cannot convene a grand jury, and absolutely cannot award damages for any reader of my novel who suddenly encounters PTSD.

Because I care about you, I offer only a summary of the series of articles about the wildfires that struck the state in 2017.

In October 2017, a series of 250 wildfires started burning across the state of California. The wildfires broke out throughout Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte, and Solano Counties.

These wildfires caused around $14.5 billion in damages, including $11 billion in losses and $1.5 billion in fire suppression costs. These fires killed 44 people and hospitalized at…