A Buzz Kill Named Harvey
My writing is taking a new direction in 2026!
A Buzz Kill Named Harvey is the sequel to Art and Artifice: A Memoir—A Story of Love, Deception, and Healing on the Texas Gulf Coast which, as you know, was released in August 2025.
The cover you see here is temporary, until I get the professionals on the job. But that hurricane image is one of the official NASA photos of Hurricane Harvey as it approached the Gulf Coast in August 2017.
Art and Artifice wraps up at the end of 2007 as I moved back down to Rockport from Houston, Texas, after leaving Paul for the last time. I celebrated my freedom on Mustang Island beach on New Year’s Day, 2008. Finally, the relationship drama is over and I start building a new life for myself.
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I thought I would be in Rockport one year, tops. But life had other plans for me, and 10 years later I was still there. When Hurricane Harvey roared into my town in 2017, I was watching helplessly from an overseas vacation, not knowing what I would go home to.
A Buzz Kill Named Harvey is written! If you’ve followed my Gail’s Story blog for a while, you may recognize that title—I took it from the blog post I published in 2021 entitled Preikestolen Kicks My Ass (and a Buzz Kill Named Harvey).
However, I’m doing things a bit differently this time around.
I am releasing A Buzz Kill Named Harvey in serial format, chapter by chapter on Substack, so that I can approach the storytelling in a new way. One reason is that I have extensive photodocumentation that I am including with each chapter, and it’s cost prohibitive to do that in printed format.
I am releasing one chapter each week on Substack; subscribers will get an email announcement when they post. (You can subscribe here on Gail’s Story or on Substack; both mailing lists will get the announcements.) A comprehensive, linked table of contents is provided at the bottom of this introductory post. Initially, all chapters will be free to read; then they will eventually go behind a paywall.
If you choose to become a paid subscriber on Substack to support my writing, you will receive a free copy of the EPUB that is released when the final chapters are published. I predict this will be around October or November of 2026.
I’d like to get this story out to as many people as possible. The recovery from a natural disaster is, as far as I’m concerned, the real untold story. We all see tornados and hurricanes and floods and earthquakes on the national news, but once the main event has passed, it’s off to the next big thing. The news rarely covers the day-to-day struggles of how people pick up the pieces after this kind of disaster.
I lived for a year in a town devastated by one of the most destructive hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast. I experienced first-hand the Good Samaritans who showed up to help complete strangers, never asking for payment or even a thank you. I also saw people brought to their knees by FEMA, their insurance companies, and their employers. It’s these behind-the-scenes stories I feel compelled to tell in this sequel. So please—share and forward these chapters as much as possible!
I hope you enjoy my new approach to storytelling, and enjoy reading along as my new life in Rockport unfolded.
