Alex Kava - Whitewash

Most of my readers know by now that I do extensive research for each of my novels. I think its important to get enough of the details correct to make the story credible. If readers cant tell where the facts stop and the fiction starts, then Ive done my job. But sometimes it goes a bit deeper. Sometimes its not just about research. Its about real life. Both my stand-alones, One False Move and now Whitewash, came out of very personal experiences.

In 2004 I bought a writing retreat outside Pensacola, Florida. Six months later Hurricane Ivan roared ashore. Nine months after that, Hurricane Dennis. I grew up in Nebraska, so I thought I was prepared, having seen tornado damage. Nothing prepared me for what I experienced.

Everyone sees the immediate devastation. Few see the months and months of the aftermath. Living amongst the ruins is perhaps the best way to describe it. We pile up the debris along the roads and the sides of our properties, waiting for their removal. For months were surrounded by one-to two-story mountains everywhere we go. Only, the mountains arent composed of just uprooted trees and boat piers, but bits of everyones lives.

In the first weeks, each time I drove through those tunnels of debris I noticed something equally heartbreaking, jutting out from the piles: a blue sofa, broken toys, shredded clothing speared onto a section of chain-link fence. I wondered what would become of all that debris. Where would it go?

Less than a year later the piles were gone. Most, not all, of the blue-tarped roofs were fixed. Pine trees started to grow up around those that had been snapped in half. Yet once in a while the rains dislodged an eerie reminder. On a morning walk I saw a plastic, hollow-eyed baby-doll head floating in a rain-filled ditch. I wondered, again, where all the piles of debris had gone. Thats about the same time that I saw an article in Discover magazine titled Anything into Oil.

The article described an incredible process called thermal conversion. TCP could take just about any carbon-based objects, including turkey guts, junked car parts, raw sewage, even old appliances, and turn them into oil. Real oil, better than crude, that could be refined or used immediately. The article talked about a company that already had a plant in Carthage, Missouri, a plant that was already taking slaughterhouse waste from a nearby Butterball turkey packager and turning that waste into oil.

This was amazing to me. Gas prices were on the rise. After two devastating years of hurricane after hurricane, everything seemed to be on the rise for those of us along the Gulf Coast. I couldnt believe that this process, this company, this plant wasnt making major headlines. Further research discovered just a few of the obstacles, including government regulations, the absence of funding, the struggle to be officially recognized as renewable diesel and even the costs of competition. Yes, competition, because turkey guts were a commodity sold for fertilizer and livestock feed. This idea as pure and simple as taking slaughterhouse waste and turning it into oil ended up being much more complicated and political than the science itself.

So I started doing what I usually do when stuff like this fascinates me. I started asking questions, running scenarios around in my mind, taking those complications and conflicts and turning them into plot twistsor what you might call turning them into my own oil. The result is Whitewash.

Though TCP (thermal conversion process) is a reality and many of the details in my novel are facts, I must note that EchoEnergy, its CEO, facility and employees are all figments of my imagination.