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I’ve been posting chase reports in scattershot fashion. After yesterday’s squall line … not much to see … I posted a report from the May 20 Duncan, Oklahoma, tornado. It was small, and the condensation funnel didn’t extend all the way to the ground, but we had confirmation that the circulation did indeed contact the ground. After we saw it, we saw the radar from the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado and knew we had missed a large and devastating tornado. A lot of the storm chasers (and there are so many these days) were in our target area and missed it, too. Here’s the video, which you can also find on the report page with all the photos.

See all the 2013 reports – they’re growing! One of my favorites so far is from May 26 – a gorgeous, sculpted supercell in Nebraska. Here’s a photo from that day. This storm had both incredible structure and dazzling lightning. Video will come later.

Normally I don’t go around quoting myself, but I couldn’t help but think of a line from my novel “Tornado Pinball” when I saw this rotating updraft spinning above our heads during a storm chase May 24: “The rotation above the road drew him in, a swirling gateway to infinity, all the circles of nature, a tunnel to the past.”

This storm, which I chased with friends from northeast Colorado into Nebraska, was filled with high-based rotation, shear funnels and lightning and eventually was severe- and tornado-warned. But the “cinnamon bun” swirl above our heads was its most beautiful and entrancing moment. This video includes time-lapses of it.  You can find the full report with video and photos here.

With all the driving during my chase, I’m way behind on posting photos, but I have a new video online. You can click through to the May 18 report to see photos and now video of the chase culminating in two tornadoes west of Larned, Kansas, near Rozel. Or check out the video right here:

I can’t believe I’ve only been in Tornado Alley for three days. I’m already seriously sleep-deprived, and I haven’t had time to edit any of the video I’ve shot. But I did just post photos from yesterday’s epic chase with friends, from a storm near Ness City, Kansas, to the last two tornadoes from a storm west of Larned, Kansas – both on the ground at once! Check out the photos and report here.

On the second day of my Tornado Alley sojourn, meant to get me in position for subsequent chases, I managed to catch up with a cluster of pretty storms in northwest Kansas. They were, at one time, severe, but when I photographed them in a gorgeous twilight, they were simply prolific lightning producers. I’ll add video later, but for now, click to see some photos from Thursday.

Sometimes social obligations make it hard to chase storms, but a nasty severe storm came to me on Sunday in Rockledge, Florida. I was at a party and went outside to shoot photos of the approaching storm. The lightning became very intense as it neared, so I retreated from the home’s driveway to the alcove at the front door. Note: This is not a safe shelter from lightning, but I felt less exposed there. I shot a little video, then switched to stills, just before a lightning bolt hit a tree just on the other side of the home’s garage. The flash and bang were instantaneous – what storm chasers call a “flang” – and it scared me thoroughly. I was lucky it didn’t hit any closer. Afterward, I got photos of the palm tree that was damaged. There was a hole blasted in its trunk.

Read the full report and see the photos here.

You can tell it’s been a dull storm-chasing season for Tornado Alley, at least so far. Storm chasers on social media are posting a lot of “from the vault” and computer-model-related posts and not much in the way of recent storms.

In the last year – May 2012 to April 2013 – there have been just seven reported tornado-related deaths in the United States, Harold Brooks reports on NOAA’s U.S. Severe Weather Blog. That’s the lowest 12-month number since 1899.

What’s good for the public in terms of gentle weather is pretty dull for weather fanatics – who would prefer to see tornadoes in unpopulated areas – but Italy is picking up the slack. Several tornadoes struck in the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy on May 3, a date that shall go down in infamy in the States as the anniversary of the deadly 1999 outbreak, including the F5 that devastated Moore, Oklahoma.

Here’s an amazing compilation of the May 3, 2013, Italian tornadoes from YouReporter.It:

I’ll be heading out to Tornado Alley soon, I hope. There will likely be interesting storms there this week, but I’m still waiting for a more active period … or I will take my chance on what comes, perhaps as soon as next week.

The line between erotica and the rest of fiction keeps blurring with the advent of such genres as New Adult and the mainstreaming of sexy books. While this phenomenon doesn’t mean that all books are trending toward the titillating, it does make a writer stop and think about how to write such scenes better.

Even if your writing hasn’t strayed that far into the bedroom, at some point you have to face the question of whether and how to write a sex scene. Such scenes are difficult to do well and even more difficult to craft objectively, given their nature — for, done well, they are intimate not just physically, but emotionally.

Sex scenes have always been around, in various states of undress and literary merit. I’m a proponent of the idea that a great book is a great book, no matter what its genre, but great sensual books are scarce. A lot of them are hilariously formulaic; have you seen Siren’s publication guidelines? Some sex scenes are intentionally silly; others are robotic, awkward, or drunk with kooky metaphors. As a reader, I’ve found consuming books labeled erotica is a lot like eating french fries. Soon after, I feel undernourished and slightly guilty for not ordering a salad. I want substance with my sensuality. Combining the two makes for a more powerful reading experience.

The challenge any writer faces when dealing with physical intimacy in a story is meeting his or her goals in terms of what he/she’s trying to deliver. If you want to write a searingly erotic novel that also is a compelling exploration of theme and character, you’re a rare writer (and probably someone I want to read). If you just throw sex scenes into your book because you think it’s something the reader wants, but you aren’t really inhabiting the scenes in any meaningful way, then you’re not fulfilling the story’s potential. Or maybe you deliberately write “clean” for a certain kind of audience, and that’s a choice, too. Whatever your choice, you need to write to your comfort level, as long as it’s not holding you back as a writer.

I want a novel to nourish my soul and entertain me, and I want to write that way, too. I have that English-major (slash-journalism-major) background that compels me to impart a story with what I hope are literary themes and values, even if there’s a good deal of plot and, to get back to the point, some sex. I don’t see sex scenes as some sort of hot lava cake served with a fish-and-broccoli dinner (to abuse the food metaphor further) just to make it more mouth-watering. Sex scenes offer an opportunity to advance the characters and their relationships, to illuminate their expectations and ability to communicate with others, and to immerse the reader inside their heads. Sexual encounters, whether good or ill, are among the most intimate and powerful experiences people can have, thus they are invaluable fodder for a writer who wants to pull the reader as, ahem, deeply into the characters as possible.

There’s a broad range of stories that use intimate scenes well and creatively. In literary history, perhaps the most lauded sensual novel is D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” which was published privately in 1928 but wasn’t published openly in the U.K. until 1960 because of its forbidden words and sexy scenes (says Wikipedia). Compared with today’s erotica, now perhaps unfortunately defined by “Fifty Shades,” it seems ridiculously tame. I find Lawrence much more meaningful than most of what passes as erotica, as he deals with themes of balancing mind and body and transcending class. Of course, books don’t have to be on a college syllabus to get sex right, and usually aren’t; note the well-written popular romance novels of Roxanne St. Claire, whose books have indubitably hot sex scenes that are crucial to her characters’ inner turmoil and eventual commitment to each other.

There’s certainly no need to justify sex scenes, but I’m not crazy about bad ones. As writers, we should strive to make them great. My novels are about a whole lot more than sex, but they contain sex scenes; I hope they’re memorable, but they are only about three percent of the latest book. They’re part of the story because sex scenes help illuminate relationships. Connections between people – including missed connections – offer ways for individual characters to learn about themselves. Still, like most of us, I worry about getting the writing right. I’ve been a little surprised, if not discomfited, by readers’ reactions to the sex scenes in my newest novel. I’ll gratefully accept descriptors of “steamy” and “sizzling,” but I don’t want those scenes to define or unbalance the rest of the book.

I think all writers gain perspective on their book in subsequent drafts, but intimate scenes can be among the most difficult to look at with objectivity. Total objectivity can leach them of spontaneity and emotion. Yet I tweak those scenes endlessly to shape their rhythm and meaning, in hopes the reader will experience the shifting feelings between the characters and their inner justifications and thoughts, as well as their primal yearnings. A beta reader, writers’ group or editor can help you identify when these scenes go off the rails, or if something strikes a sour note. Sometimes that reader will help you hear the little bell that was ringing in your subconscious, telling you something wasn’t quite right. Intimate scenes are just one more reason to have that kind of feedback on your work.

If you’re a writer who’s really uncomfortable with sex scenes but wants to pen them anyway, having an honest editor is all the more important. She can help you with tone and help you see how the scene can advance your story. You need someone to give you advice who is going to be really frank with you and isn’t afraid to talk about stuff. You know, sex stuff. If you can talk about it, you can write about it. Do a little research. Opinions from the opposite sex wouldn’t hurt, either. I’m certainly not going to dictate how to write a sex scene, but I do know that sharing it before publication, while possibly painful and embarrassing, can be extremely helpful . . . even if using a certain word in my writers’ group prompted hooting and hollering and an extensive discussion of hysterically weird euphemisms for the male organ (“bawdle” was one of that evening’s inventions).

How would you label your novel’s sexual content? Does it define your book as erotica? Or does it shape the story’s drama, literary theme or romance? Is it a throwaway moment in a thriller? Not the latter, I hope. Readers will approach your scene with varying expectations, and, let’s face it, their very personal tastes will help shape their reactions, whatever you write. But whatever the intimate scene may be, as a writer, don’t throw it away. Make it meaningful and important, because it is.

Further reading:

For nitty-gritty, humorous advice on writing sex scenes, check out Delilah S. Dawson’s post at Terrible Minds.

For a hilarious Twitter discussion of ridiculous places characters have had sex (please, for F’s sake, don’t put them on a horse), see this post from Smart Bitches’ Sarah Wendell on Storify.

And feel better after reading The Guardian’s excerpts from its nominees for the Bad Sex in writing award, 2012.