Where Is Tornado Alley?

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Where Is Tornado Alley?

I’m thrilled to announce that my upcoming book Where is Tornado Alley? is now available for preorder! For the past year I’ve been tracking the progress of this book in my newsletter under the codename of The Incoming Storm, but I can finally talk about it… for real!

This young reader’s nonfiction book is aimed at 8-12-year-olds (or anyone who likes to learn). It’s part of the New York Times best-selling Who HQ series published by Penguin Random House. The title officially releases on January 7, 2025, but is currently available for preorder from all fine book purveyors.

The title even grabbed a mention in Publishers Weekly Fall 2024 preview:

What’s it about?

I mean, clearly the book is about Tornado Alley, but here’s the official synopsis from the PRH website:

Learn about Tornado Alley, the area in the United States where tornadoes are most frequently formed and often cause the most damage.

Robert Miller and Ernest Fawbush coined the term “Tornado Alley” after studying the pattern of tornadoes that occurred around Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. They determined that the highest number of tornadoes in the United States took place across states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. In this exciting new book, readers will learn about the history of Tornado Alley, other weather phenomena in the area, and what you can do when there is a tornado headed your way. The book also reveals how tornadoes are formed, how storm chasers do their work, and how they help researchers predict new tornado patterns.

I don’t understand, Wes… How did you trick someone into paying you to write a book?

Fair question.

The long-running Who HQ series (10+ years, 250+ titles) features nonfiction books that answer important questions for curious readers—Who Is…, What is…, Who Was…, Where Is…, What Do We Know About…, What’s the Story of…, etc.—and are sold in book stores, kid specialty shops, and even airports! In fact, a toy store is where I had my first encounter with these titles, back in November of 2022.

My wife and I had taken my then-3-year-old daughter to a toy store on a cold and dreary Ohio afternoon. As the kiddo checked out the various stuffed animals and miniature dinosaurs, I wandered. I’m always on the hunt for books. Even though my daughter can’t yet read, she loves stories. I want to ensure that our bookshelves have plenty of age-appropriate titles that she can grab as she grows.

I found an entire rack of the Who HQ books and picked up several that suited my own interests (Where Is Area 51?, and Who Was Frank Lloyd Wright? among them). The books are short, just over 100 pages. I flew through each of them in about 20 minutes. I loved how the information was conveyed simply and—gosh darn it—I learned something from each title I read.

When I finished those books, all I could think was, “I could write something like this!”

And… that’s about the time I remembered that I’m a professional writer.

I set out to discover how I could get in on the action. After a bit of networking, I was ultimately provided a way to contact the series editor. Excited, I sent her a cold email letting her know that I was the perfect person to write a book like this! After all, I’d written several nonfiction books already, AND I had a kid!

Imagine my shock and surprise when the editor emailed me back a day or so later asking me to submit an age-appropriate nonfiction writing sample. And wouldn’t you know it, I’d been working on a new nonfiction project! I took a day to tailor a couple of paragraphs for the 8-12 age range and fired it off.

And then… nothing happened. The holidays of 2022 came and went. I questioned everything about the writing samples I’d sent. I worried I hadn’t captured the voice or tone or vocabulary to write for 8-12-year-olds. Cue imposter syndrome and heavy self-doubt.

Two months later, in February 2023, the editor emailed me out of the blue. She was planning her spring 2025 list and there was a single title that still needed assigned: Where Is Tornado Alley? While I was no expert on tornadoes, I had grown up in the Midwest, and had even been through one or two twisters myself. I was being given my shot. I could take it or leave it. I took it.

In the ensuing months, I became an expert on tornadoes. I read half a dozen books on the subject. I learned how and why tornadoes form. I learned about the alley itself. I researched two other dangerous alleys in the US. I watched documentaries about storm chasers. I submerged myself in historical records about the first ever tornado warning. After digesting a ton of information, I hammered together the tightest outline possible. Once it was iterated upon and approved, the first draft of the manuscript came easily. The most surprising part was how much fun the process was. When writing is fun, it’s much, much easier.

When I was young, I read all the time. I didn’t go anywhere without a book in hand. In this digital age, books remain very important to me. I want kids to know that reading for entertainment is a valid choice. I want to keep them interested in reading. In learning. In staying curious.

So, here we are. “I could write that!” is now, “I have written that.”

Know a curious kid who likes to read? Consider preordering them a copy.