Year of the Cicadas

Cicadas make an appearance (every 17 years) in my novel CLOUD OF WITNESSES. At the end of the novel with several other apocalyptic events swirling around my young protagonist, Roland fetches his bicycle (late to school again) from under the trailer and finds it covered in cicadas. 

I pulled my bike out of the rack in front of the school and shook half a dozen cicadas off the seat. They had begun to hatch earlier in the week, googly red-eyed insects the size of my index finger, emerging from underground near the roots of trees. They clung to whatever they could attach themselves to: mailbox posts, the carcass of the Datsun lying in the ravine, Granny’s vinyl chair.

Soon after hatching they molted a tobacco-brown tissue-paper-like exoskeleton. I could barely walk without crunching and cracking them under my feet like dry leaves. Granny had taken to netting and frying them up in her black-iron skillet with a bit of grease. “Taste just like bacon,” she stated, wings and legs sticking out between her gapped front teeth.

I eased out of the school driveway trying to avoid rolling over cicadas. It was the last day of school.

And, since this has been deemed the year of the cicada with two blooms emerging at the same time, I wanted to remind my blog readers to order a coy of CLOUD OF WITNESSES. It's a great read--especially if you are interest in cicadas, the history of the Iranian Revolution, and Appalachian Ohio.

I know, quite a web we weave when writing a novel.