My name is there! You'll find it on page 542 of the book, Jackson by T.P. Jones.
"Information on the practice of TV weather forecasting was generously provided by meteorologist Tim Heller..."
So how did my name end up in the Acknowledgments section of a newly published novel?
Back in the late 1980s, I was working at KDUB-TV 40, a tiny television station in Dubuque, Iowa. One night I got a phone call from an author who had moved to town to research a book he was writing. One of the characters was a TV weatherman. The author, Tom "T.P." Jones, wanted to hang with me to see what I did behind the scenes.
Jones spent a few nights with me but then I didn't hear from him for the longest time. I assumed the book never got written. But after almost 20 years, he emailed last month to tell me the first volume in the "Loss of Certainty" series had been published.
Walter Plowman is a popular TV weatherman on KJTV in Jackson, Iowa, the setting for the book named for its location. Jackson is going through a drought, but Walter knows the weather is about to change and so are the lives of many in this small, close-knit river city. The local meatpacking plant, the biggest employer in Jackson, is struggling to stay open, faced with new competition from the unappetizingly named, Modern Meat. (The author's description of the kill-floor in "JackPack" will make you think twice about eating ham for awhile.) The story and all the characters are fictional, but based on real people and real events.
To be clear, Walter the weatherman is not me. But the author recreates my cramped office at KDUB-TV and borrowed some of my forecasting methods. Just like I did back then, Walter works on a computer he calls "Hazel" and employs the help of "weather families" to monitor local rainfall and temperatures. The weather center is adorned with weather maps on the wall and local weather records are written down by hand. Jones included some details that I had long forgotten.
The weatherman is only a bit character in this novel and in the second installment called, The Gamble. But Jones told me Walter Plowman will play a pivotal role in the third book of the series, River Rising, which will be published later this fall. You can guess what happens in that story. I'm predicting a best-seller!
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