A meteorologist at a local news station writes a novel about a super hurricane. If that isn’t wish fulfillment, I don’t know what is. The meteorologist in question is WABC-TV New York’s Bill Evans, who teamed up with novelist Marianna Jameson to write Category 7 (Subtitle: “It’s the Biggest Storm in History!”). The super hurricane in question is Simone, the product of a mad scientist named Carter Thompson who has learned how to create and guide impossibly huge storm systems. So now Simone is threatening to wipe Manhattan clean off the face of the earth, and only a courageous group of meteorologists can stop it.

And how about this for an apocalyptic first sentence: “Rain lashed through the hellishly hot Saharan sky, hurling itself groundward with chaotic fury only to evaporate before it made contact with the dying earth.”

Read the excerpt here.