Wine, chocolate and a Cat-3? Destin author's new book makes evacuation planning fun — and tasty

If you have to prepare for a hurricane evacuation, why not make it fun?

“Nobody wants to do evacuation preparedness because it’s boring or scary,” Brenda Barnes, author of “The Wine and Chocolate Evaluation Plan” told The Log. “If you make it fun, they’ll come and have a good time and learn something there.”

The book, which came out this month, discusses how to plan for a successful evacuation: Where you and your family will go, what you have to take with you, pet evacuations, making sure you have all necessary medication and evacuating elderly relatives. Barnes recommends talking about planning with friends and family members, preferably by throwing a wine and chocolate party.

“It gives you an excellent, altruistic reason to go out and buy wine and chocolate,” she said.
Barnes wrote the book because she spent six years as a community health nurse, including working evacuation centers and on the ground after large disasters, such as 1992’s Hurricane Andrew.

The experience drove home the fact that growing numbers of people were moving to areas prone to hurricanes or wildfires, and that “people are told to evacuate, they’re never told how to evacuate ... I’ve been there at the other end where they’ve broken apart because every trace of their past existence is gone.”

The writing had been harder than she anticipated, Barnes said, because “I kept having to think, what is my intention? My intention is to reach a certain group of people and get my message across. I wrote it and rewrote it and kept asking a lot of good friends to read it, and got input from them about what would work and what would not work.”

Barnes also turned to friends when she decided to self-publish and get the book out promptly, rather than go through the slower route of waiting on a traditional publisher.

Friends such as Amber Hill served as models for the photos in the book; it’s being distributed locally at the fashion store Houston 8 and the Edge of Paradise Day Spa; and her friend Mistei Roebuck is helping Barnes promote it.

Friends, family, Roebuck, Hill and some of Barnes’ other contacts in the community all attended her launch party July 8 at Barnes and her husband Frank’s Regatta Bay home.

“Oh my God, people are buying them!” she said as one guest picked up three copies.

The drawback to self-publishing, Barnes said, is distribution, but “I am content for now to go out and speak to my community and try to get as many people prepared as I possibly can. I have been told I should have an agent and literary lawyer. I don't have any of those people. It is just me going out in my community and talking to my neighbors and that feels right for now.”

Buy the book
Brenda Barnes will hold book signings for “The Wine and Chocolate Evacuation Plan” today (July 15) from 5 to 8 p.m. at Sundog Books in Seaside and on July 23, 5 to 8 p.m., at Houston 8 at 34940 Emerald Coast Parkway in Destin. For more information visit wineandchocolateplan.com.