Adventure Research

Monkey-Rope Press operations were pleasantly cloistered inside for most of the weekend, with a seasonally appropriate but still impressive blizzard hitting Chicago with brutal force on Sunday. I spent hours over the weekend at my desk, drawing and testing and re-testing character designs for the book project with only drudging progress. In a moment of particularly focused frustration and distraction, I checked the weather report online: not only were there winter storm advisories (no surprise there), but there were also flood advisories. With 50mph winds, the waves in Lake Michigan peaked at 20 feet high near the beach and higher deeper in the lake. It hit me: an important scene in the book I am working on occurs in a storm on the ocean. Time for a field trip to the lake!

The waves crashed loudly, but they were only barely audible over the whir of the wind. The snow kicked up by the gusts were intermittently blinding, and if it says anything about the chaos of the storm I only felt safe getting as close to the lake as I did in the picture above. It was powerful and beautiful. Best research ever!