Guest Post: RRBC “Spotlight Author” SARA HATHAWAY on Day After Disaster

Today I am honored to have Sara Hathaway, author of The Day After Disaster and fellow RRBC member, as a guest on my blog. Sara is here to tell us a bit about the philosophy behind her book.

Day After Disaster Philosophy
One day, as a teenager, I was hanging out at the Middle Fork of the American River. I asked my girlfriends that I was with, what would happen if we lost all power tomorrow? I was absolutely horrified when they replied, “we wouldn’t have our curling irons or blow dryers.”

I have never been your typical “girl”. I just wasn’t raised that way. My mother was the middle child in a group of five girls and quickly became my grandfather’s masculine counterpart. She helped him with all the chores a boy would have and eventually became a very skilled upholsterer, working with her hands. She was as big a “tom boy” as her daughter turned out to be.

I grew up in Michigan. My family would go out fishing on the Great Lakes with my grandparents in huge fishing boats with all the latest depth finders, downriggers and planer boards (that’s fishing jargon). We had picnics at the gun club where we had .22 rifle competitions for back to school supplies. Eventually, I was only allowed to use the oldest guns without sites because I was winning too much gear. I learned how to fillet fish and gut animals. Not exactly doing my nails and following the latest fashion (camouflage wasn’t really a fashion back then).

Guess I should have known how differently my future girlfriends would have thought about a power outage. My first thoughts had been on computer networks, food refrigeration, and public safety. I pondered the question I had asked and their response for many years and honestly I have never stopped.

I still live in the country, side by side with nature, but I have watched the world closely. I have watched our society become more and more dependent upon electricity. Our global communications are made possible by satellites orbiting the world, dependent upon solar power. Computers weave into every facet of life. They control our vehicles. They control our homes. Our social life is conducted via Facebook and Twitter. Everyday life is made easy with the assistance of a machine. TVs flip on and technology allows us to fast forward through commercials (just like we always dreamed of). Food is ready in seconds with the handy, dandy microwave and what about coffee? Have you ever had to use a percolator? Would you know how to make a cup without power or a single serving bag?

Life hasn’t been this way for long but unfortunately we are forgetting many life-preserving skills rapidly. Just a couple of generations ago they knew not only how to grow a garden but what to do with the food to make it last all year. They knew how to flush a carburetor to get your engine running. They knew exactly where the meat they were eating came from because chances are it wasn’t living too far away, even if you lived in the city. They understood death in a world without modern medicine and grew to accept it. They were survivors.

Have we, as an American Society, learned enough to survive in their world, one void of computers and modern technology? I don’t think so. Most of the parents I know in recent generations have always wanted their children to have an “easier” life. One better and less laborious than the one they lived. People have grown up sheltered from a natural reality and instead had it substituted with technology. This is crippling the American Society and the problem is just getting worse.

It’s time to wake up and remember. It’s time to ease the pain of the grocery bill by growing your own food and preserving the food you grow or buy from other neighborhood farmers. It’s time to learn how to survive without the precious electric meter running. It’s time to learn how to walk through a forest and know what is available for you to eat there. There may never come a day when these skills are necessary for everyday life but what if they were? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to learn sooner rather than later and by all means pass these essential skills down to your children?

About the Author:

Sara F. Hathaway is an individual with an insatiable urge for learning. She grew up in the woods of Michigan, fishing, hunting, gardening, canning, and horseback riding with her family. She loved to learn about the stories of times past from her great grandparents and grandparents. She learned about a time much different from our own when a trip to the grocery store was not all it took to make sure your family was fed. She delighted in the outdoors and learning how to survive there without the trappings of modern life.  She has extensively researched and practiced survival techniques and utilized forgotten life-sustaining methods of the generations past.

After moving to the rural mountain landscape of California, she attended The California State University of Sacramento and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in General Business Management. She managed many businesses, all while working on the manuscript for her novel, Day After Disaster. Eventually she realized that her passion for the outdoors and learning about survival techniques outweighed her passion for the business world. She took her marketing skills and applied them to launching a successful platform for her first novel.

Sara still lives in Northern California with her husband and two sons where she is at work on the sequel to her first novel. She delights in helping other authors find the same marketing success and enjoys her time that she gets to spend honing her survival skills while teaching these skills to her sons.

She is currently  at work on the sequel to her first novel and helping other authors skyrocket their careers to the next level. For more information and a free copy of “The Go-Bag Essentials” featuring everything you need to have to leave your home in a disaster visit: www.authorsarafhathaway.com

Book Description:

Day After Disaster is an apocalyptic, adventure novel, featuring a dynamic young woman, mother and wife, Erika, who is thrust into a world turned upside down by a series of natural disasters. Finding herself alone in a city mutilated by this disastrous situation, she must save herself. Once free of the city confines, she desperately tries to navigate through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to get back home to her family. Not knowing if they are alive or dead she must call on all of her survival instincts to plot a course through this broken environment.

Book Links:
http://www.authorsarafhathaway.com/#!saras-survival-stuff/c1mzf
http://www.amazon.com/Day-After-Disaster-Changing-Earth/dp/1631221345
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/day-after-disaster-sara-f-hathaway/1119581911?ean=9781631221347

Follow Sara online!
Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/sarahathaway19
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.S.Hathaway
Website: http://www.authorsarafhathaway.com/