Award-Winning Author Frances Rivetti Explores Climate Anxiety and Community in New Coastal Novel
Floating in the Middle Combines Domestic Suspense with Environmental Drama Along California’s Eroding Coastline
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PETALUMA, CA – Nov 1, 2025 – Fog Valley Press announces the November 1, 2025 release of Floating in the Middle, the highly anticipated third novel from award-winning British-American author Frances Rivetti. This gripping work of domestic noir meets climate suspense as a group of longtime friends reunite for a weekend on California’s crumbling coast to plan their ideal intentional community—only to discover that building utopia may require darker compromises than they imagined.
Set against the dramatic backdrop of the eroding Sonoma Coast, Floating in the Middle follows friends whose weekend retreat becomes a pressure cooker of buried secrets, conflicting visions, and mounting desperation as the changing landscape mirrors the instability of their relationships. When environmental crisis becomes the catalyst for both hope and betrayal, the novel asks: How far would you go to create the community of your dreams?
Original cover illustration is by Laurie Mahan Sawyer, a celebrated Northern California science illustrator based in Point, Reyes, West Marin. She has lived and worked in places with an abundance of flora and fauna to explore in and around beaches and canyons, since birth. “I’m thrilled to be collaborating with Laurie on this novel,” says Rivetti. “Her prolific artwork is deeply influenced by our rich, natural environment in coastal Marin and Sonoma counties.”
The Point-Reyes-based artist hopes to share her concern for this beautiful place we inhabit, and through the creation of her pictures, to inspire understanding and respect for the world around us.
“This novel was born from years of driving Highway One and witnessing the coast transform before my eyes—red-tagged houses falling into the sea, the highway forced inland,” says Rivetti, who has called Sonoma County home since the early 1990s. “I wanted to explore how environmental upheaval affects not just the landscape, but the communities and relationships we depend on.”
Rivetti’s contemporary fiction has earned multiple national indie awards, including a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Big Green Country and National Indie Excellence Award finalist recognition for The House on Liberty Street. A former newspaper and magazine reporter, she brings both journalistic insight and deep local knowledge to her exploration of California’s changing coastline.
Floating in the Middle joins a growing canon of climate fiction that examines environmental anxiety through the lens of human relationships. Rivetti’s novel offers readers psychological complexity alongside environmental urgency, domestic drama alongside planetary stakes.
“I hope to have crafted a story that feels both intimately personal and universally relevant,” says Rivetti. “At a time when many of us are grappling with questions about community, sustainability, and how to live in an uncertain future, Floating in the Middle offers no easy answers—but plenty of compelling drama.”
This marks Rivetti’s fifth book and third novel set along Northern California’s dramatic coastline. Her writing continues to be inspired by the region’s natural beauty, pioneer spirit, and the environmental changes reshaping familiar landscapes.
Floating in the Middle will be available in paperback, and e-book formats through major retailers and independent bookstores nationwide Retail price is $20 for paperback and $15 for ebook.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9904921-8-4.
Ebook ISBN: 978-0990492191
Frances Rivetti will be reading from Floating in the Middle at the Petaluma Historical Museum and Library on November 19th, 2025 at the museum’s inaugural public book group gathering in conjunction with the Blue Zone Project from 5pm to 7pm.
About the author: Frances Rivetti is a British-American independent journalist and author whose fiction has earned multiple national indie awards, including a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A Petaluma, California resident since the early 1990s and former columnist for the Petaluma Argus Courier, this is her third novel set along Northern California’s coast, exploring how environmental changes affect tight-knit communities.
About Fog Valley Press is an Indie Publishing company owned and operated by the author.
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