Megaflood — The Good Reviews Keep Coming In

It’s great to see reviews of Megaflood written by people who really liked my story and took the time to say so. An example:

“Perfect mixture of cataclysmic history, DNA science mystery, and Native storytelling at its finest! Author Thomas P. Hopp has delivered yet another superlative, page-turning thriller in his Northwest Tales series. With a combination of the very real geologic history of cataclysmic events surrounding the Missoula Floods that swept across the American West obliterating everything in their path, along with descriptions of Native encounters with mammoths and sabertooth cats, a modern science DNA mystery, and tribal relationships. This book is storytelling at its finest, where science meets natural history and the spiritual.”

And here’s a nice headline:

“Cave lions, sabertooth tigers, and shortfaced bears

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Seattle Tsunami – My Book Had It Right

My novel The Great Seattle Earthquake dramatizes what would happen if a quake of magnitude 7.8 should strike the Seattle Fault. I researched the book heavily before writing, and it looks like I got it right. A report, newly released by Washington State’s Department of Natural Resources, describes a quake of 7.5 and the incredible inundation that would strike the city’s waterfront several minutes later.

Although the map is a little too detailed for easy reading, let me point out that the wave would reach heights of 23 feet in Seattle’s Central Waterfront, and a whopping 42 feet at the Great Ferris Wheel! Wow! That’s almost worse than I had written about. Almost.

Actually, I’d say my own personal tsunami “model,” which I made up to help me imagine the human dramas that would take place, was a pretty good estimate of how bad things could get. So it’s also fair to say my book, published in 2019, remains an accurate dramatization of the horrors and heroisms of that day.

Washington DNR has done their duty to shake up the complacency of people who live on or near the Seattle Fault. But they need some help driving home just how tough it could be for waterfront homeowners, first responders, baseball stadium crowds, people traveling on freeway bridges or–gulp–entering the waterfront Highway 99 tunnel. All this and much more is dramatized in great detail in my novel. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it might be time to, huh? Here’s a LINK to booksellers who can provide a copy for you.

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You Go, Cavegirl!

As my new novel, Megaflood, climbs sales charts at Amazon and other major booksellers, I’d like to take time to thank the person most responsible for the book’s meteoric success: its heroine, Denawe.

She’s the young woman, not yet sixteen years old, who faces one challenge after another, from abduction to battling a fierce sabertooth cat to fleeing in the company of her love, Temokin, from fierce warriors bent on their destruction. Then comes the ultimate threat of all, an apocalyptic flood that swept half the State of Washington during the Ice Ages 14,000 years ago!

The image above evokes the beauty of a girl who embarks on an adventure far beyond what the average female of our times–or any times–might expect to experience. No, the bronze bust wasn’t cast to commemorate my story. It’s a statue of Sacagawea, the legendary guide of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805. But Denawe would have looked much like her. Both women were natives of the Pacific Northwest, separated by only 14,000 years, a geological twinkling of an eye.

And the two heroines have much more in common. Both were abducted from their tribes and marched far away to be slaves and someone’s personal property in villages far from home. Sacagawea was horse traded to the fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau and became his wife. Denawe, too, is subject of a bidding war, with mammoth ivory, the hide of a colossal short-faced bear, and an amulet carved from a sabertooth tiger fang as part of the bride price.

But these two women, Sacagawea and Denawe, were much more than mere objects of barter. They stood on their own and made their way boldly in the world. History tells us how Sacagawea guided the Lewis and Clark party over the snow-clad Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. My story tells how Denawe joined together with her young warrior love to lead the Mammoth People on a path to salvation in the face of an annihilating flood.

Here’s the rest of that statue, a state monument in Sacagawea’s homeland near Salmon Idaho. Here, the two heroines diverge a little. Sacagawea carried her infant son with her on her journey, while Denawe was as yet unmarried. But never fear–matters of that nature can change in a hurry. So, does Denawe become a wife and mother in the course of my book? Read it, and find out!

Megaflood is available at all major booksellers’ websites in ebook and paperback versions. Click this link to go to a page where the different sellers are listed. If you’ve already got your copy, please remember to review it on Amazon or other booksellers’s pages. Those reviews are deeply appreciated by us authors, and can help encourage the booksellers’ crunching computers to try and sell more books. Thanks!

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Megaflood Unleashed

Megaflood is here! The ebook and paperback versions of my new natural disaster thriller are being released today. You can find them at all major outlets, from Amazon to Apple Books, to Barnes and Noble, and more. If you took advantage of the discounted presale opportunity, your ebook account already has a copy waiting. If not, it

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The Sabertooth Amulet

This amulet, discovered on a body in a bog in my new novel Megaflood, is a central clue to happenings 14,000 years ago. Not only is it a priceless artifact and focus of present-day conflict between tribes and museum researchers, but it

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MEGAFLOOD – First Look at the Cover

I got my first physical copy of Megaflood today. There

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A 14,000-Year-Old Murder Mystery

Talk about an exotic setting for a mystery! The desert cliff shown here was once a waterfall three hundred times the size of Niagara that roared with the entire volume of the mile-wide Columbia River. This rampart is just one of two great circular cataracts that existed in Eastern Washington during the Ice Age. Part of the second can be seen to the right.

People who lived here must have been in awe of its thunderous roar. Native Americans of a long-forgotten tribe had only recently crossed from Siberia into North America. And where there are people, can murder lurk far behind?

My latest novel, Megaflood, is set against this 14,000-year-old backdrop. And as if that weren’t dramatic enough, the Ice Age animals that lived alongside the people were equally stupendous. Giant pachyderms came in three sizes: huge (the Wooly Mammoth), colossal (the Mastodon), and titanic (the Columbian Mammoth), the last of which made an elephant look like a pup. And that

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Roly-Poly Dinosaurs

Here

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The Way to a Dinosaur’s Heart

Jurassic Park's ducky Parasaurolophus

Is through his stomach, right?

Well, that may apply to T rex, but what about all those plant eaters? In my Dinosaur Wars books I always explore new possibilities for dinosaurian looks, behaviors, and

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Smashwords discounts my e-books in July

Just so

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