Let’s discuss the setting of The Blind Eye. Amanda and I are both lifelong Alabamians of the Gulf Coast variety, so we’ve been through more than our share of hurricanes…but nothing like Katrina. Sure, we’d been through the uprooted trees and missing shingles and even weeks without electricity. None of that compares to what happened just west of us on August 29, 2005. New Orleans is a 2-hour drive from our homes near Mobile, so it’s a frequent weekend getaway, as is Mississippi’s Casino Coast. To see those familiar areas and their associated landmarks devastated and transformed the way they were by that storm, well, it was unforgettable…life-altering in fact.
Canal Street in New Orleans Post-Katrina
I weathered Katrina alone in my then home west of Mobile and was never in real danger, thankfully. However, the sheer fury of the winds was such that I watched the siding and roofing stripped from my house and those of my neighbors. For those who’ve never been through an actual hurricane, the damnable thing of it is that it lasts for hours and hours as it crawls slowly over land, meaning the winds and rain just keep belting out the damage without relenting. And when it gets dark and the storm is still blasting away, one’s imagination takes over in terms of the impending danger. Most of my nightmares today are still set in that house on that night in that hellish storm. And I didn’t have any storm surge or flooding of any sort to deal with.
As I began to formulate the foundation of the story for The Blind Eye, the autobiographical (yes, it’s true…) nature of the characters’ motivations just naturally led me to see them in an environment devastated by a hurricane – the setting of my own nightmares. Port Typhon is the New Orleans of the weeks just after Katrina, except no pumps or levees were EVER repaired, and the government just ultimately wrote off the entire place. Once I’d committed to this type of environment for the characters, the obvious story elements that the city itself would offer became apparent. It shaped the character designs, especially those of Great White and the Garbage Men that he hunts, and it dictated the abilities they would need to survive in a submerged city….
The Undertown District of Port Typhon in The Blind Eye
It then occurred to me that the submerged portion of the city, when repopulated, would invite wholly different subsets of denizens than those who fled. The death-soaked waters in the streets would effectively become moats hiding monsters and protecting tyrants in their damaged skyscraper castles. All sorts of criminal ilk would be drawn to such a place – foreign drug cartels, terrorists domestic and international, etc. And those few citizens blindly loyal to their homes, they would stay and adapt, but they would need protection from the evil interlopers, protection that would only come from a few bold enough to take on the powers-that-would-be. And that’s where the masked crimefighters of The Blind Eye come in – you’ll meet them all in the coming weeks, so I won’t spoil anything more here.
I hope that Port Typhon and, in particular, Undertown become characters with nearly the feeling of the human players themselves. The submerged and devastated city is an essential part of the cast which simultaneously both expands and limits the choices of its inhabitants because of its distinctiveness. Our heroes and villains can leap from higher windows, can disappear beneath the fluid streets, must contend with gators during a routine patrol. It’s a setting rife with opportunities for danger and heroics and storytelling. Rack up the frequent flyer miles as you visit.
