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Author’s Note
Thank you for downloading Lightstorm. I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked the story or got something valuable out of it, please leave a review on your preferred retailer’s website, and tell others what you thought about it, and let me know what you liked (or didn’t like). I appreciate all feedback and support from readers. Thank you.
A Brief History: Way back in April 2000, I was living in Orlando as a senior at the University of Central Florida, slowly building up my writing portfolio, when I had this crazy idea to look at pictures of icebergs on the Internet. I have no idea anymore what prompted it—though, I did have a polar bear calendar hanging on my wall at the time, so that probably had a big influence—but there I was scouring photo after photo of these brilliantly blue ice cubes that were larger than any building I’ve ever been inside, and I started thinking about what a short story involving these ice blocks would look like. After deeper investigation, I found myself researching the great nation of Greenland (I guess it’s great?), and learning more about its many amenities, including igloo hotels, glaciers, and, yes, a bowling alley. I also learned about its high rate of suicide, but I didn’t want to spend much time exploring that any further. Maybe for another book someday. Probably not.
With all of this newfound research under my belt, and admittedly the first time I’d actually researched for a story, at least to this extent, I started drafting an adventure tale about two photographers with different shooting styles who make a bet that one has a more successful method than the other, and the crazy things the “action” photographer does to get his shot. The rivalry just sort of worked, and the subject matter, the calendar, I’m almost positive was influenced by that polar bear calendar I had hanging on the wall just off to the side of my desk (next to my The Fifth Element poster, which inspired another iconic location, at least to me, in my biggest story to date—more on that another time). By the time I was finished—a month later—I was prouder of it than any other story I’d written so far.
It wasn’t perfect, of course. Over the years I’d written stories I was happier with. Gradually, I found myself less impressed with it, less so than when it was still fresh in my growing portfolio. That feeling was no doubt inspired by the feedback I had gotten on a site in 2004(?) from a user who had claimed that photographer stories were dull (the user credited The Bridges of Madison County for this—not my fault!), and I wondered if there was some merit to that. Other things I’d learned about fiction writing over the years had also lent to my questioning whether “Lightstorm” (short story version) was as good as I’d first thought. Were the stakes ever established? Were they strong enough to carry a story? Did I just write a series of action shots and string them together?
The truth is, all of those factors were probably lacking. And because I wasn’t thinking on a multilayered level back in the spring of 2000, I didn’t know it.
But every time I go back and reread it, I still find myself entertained. Why? Because I’m a sucker for good fish out of water stories, and what better fish to stick out of water than a ballsy sports photographer who hails from a desert state and will do anything, including screwing with the natural order of things, to get his shot, and will go to even the polar opposite of his native environment to get it. And, you know, there’s a budding romance in there happening, and who can resist that, even if the story isn’t about that? So, I still enjoy it.
Other than that, I think it’s worth noting that the original version, which is not too far off from this one, was among the short story lineup in my self-published 2005 print book, Life Under Construction: The Collection of Junk, Volume 2. For this ebook version, I cleaned up some lingering grammar problems, added the modern-day frame (the talk show sequence), and changed a few details within the core story, including the year, which was originally set in 2000, to make it more relevant. I made these changes simply to justify the original writing, which was about two photographers who used analog equipment to do their jobs. In this day and age, with everything going digital, I thought that the original context would be too antiquated without the frame, and I didn’t want to force too much suspension of disbelief onto readers. Also, it gave me an excuse to turn the Lightstorm into something even more mysterious, as the original version was always about Jake discovering the beauty in nature without having to manipulate it. The new ending, with him floating off, is just a way to bring the story into our modern fantasy, comic book movie culture, which I’m a huge fan of (again, more on that in the near future).
With that said, I hope you weren’t expecting this to turn into a superhero story. It was never designed for that. But, if you are looking for a superhero story, I do have an entire superhero series coming soon, so keep your attention over this way.
Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to leave a comment or a review wherever you downloaded this. Thanks.
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Lightstorm Page 18