James Kennedy "Bride of the Tornado" Launch with Matt Bird

Celebrate the launch of local author James Kennedy's new book Bride of the Tornado here at The Book Cellar! James and his podcast partner Matt Bird will be hosting a quiz/trivia night about tornadoes in literature and movies.

About the Book:

A young woman’s secretive Midwestern town is engulfed by a mysterious plague of tornadoes every generation–and she must escape it before it claims her.

Stephen King’s The Mist meets David Lynch’s "Twin Peaks" in this inventive, mind-bending horror-thriller.

In a small town tucked away in the midwestern corn fields, the adults whisper about Tornado Day. Our narrator, a high school sophomore, has never heard this phrase but she soon discovers its terrible meaning: a plague of sentient tornadoes is coming to destroy them.

The only thing that stands between the town and total annihilation is a teen boy known as the tornado killer. Drawn to this enigmatic boy, our narrator senses an unnatural connection between them. But the adults are hiding a secret about the origins of the tornadoes and the true nature of the tornado killer—and our narrator must escape before the primeval power that binds them all comes to claim her.

Audaciously conceived and steeped in existential dread, this genre-defying novel reveals the mythbound madness at the heart of American life.

About the Author:

JAMES KENNEDY is the author of the horror thriller Bride of the Tornado, the sci-fi mindbender Dare to Know, and the YA fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish. He runs the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, in which kid filmmakers create movies that sum up Newbery-winning books in 90 seconds, which screens annually in 10+ cities around the USA. He is also the co-host of the Secrets of Story podcast with Matt Bird. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters.

About the Conversation Partner:

MATT BIRD is the author of The Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers and The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love, both from Penguin Random House.  He has a masters in screenwriting from Columbia University.  He lives in Evanston, Illinois, with his wife Betsy and two adorable children.