The Car that led to The Book

When you write a book, a lot of people ask where the idea came from.

Is it based in personal experience? The materialization of a long-held dream? Did the story kind of write itself? Or, was it simply an epiphany?

Well... kinda, yes, yes, and kinda.

My novel, HIDING BEHIND THUNDER, grew from the seeds of another project, itself the result of a 30-year dream. It started with a car. And my wife.

Pictured above is my 1964 Ford Galaxie that I built as a tribute to NASCAR legend Fireball Roberts. The car is a (barely) street-legal recognition of NASCAR's tumultuous Golden Age, driven (never trailered) to car shows and events near my home town. The car was the realization of a long-held dream, itself based upon witnessing cars kind of like this in the mid-1970s and beyond.

How "The Dream" of "The Car" began

Pretty much since I started walking, I've been a fan of stock car racing, and in the NASCAR Grand National Series in particular. A little over 30 years ago, I was walking back to my job when David Pearson's 1975 #21 Wood Brothers / Purolator Mercury drove right by me on the street!

Well, despite my surprise, I was still pretty confident that it was NOT the REAL car. But I still thought it was pretty cool. I mean, imagine driving what was essentially a race car on the street! It would be a while before I would learn about these promotional cars and how they were simply a factory vehicle with lookalike paint schemes and graphics. Still, I thought it pretty awesome!

Over the next couple years I would also chance upon a Gatorade Olds and later a Skoal Oldsmobile. But, like the Mercury I had seen earlier, they were simply flashy street cars. Sure, I wanted one of my own, but as the dream grew, I also wanted it to be a little different.

Enter "Project Fireball"

Fact is, I really didn't start out intending to build Fireball Roberts' old car. For nearly 15 years I tried to talk my Uncle Ronnie out of his old metallic blue '64 Galaxie that had sat idle in a mass of weeds on his horse property gathering layers of dust and serving as a community housing project for field mice, wasps and black widows. My hope had been to turn that particular car into a replica of Ned Jarrett's 1964 #11 Bondy-Long car simply through fresh paint and decals, in the same vein as the promo cars I has seen in the past. It never happened, but the dream was never forgotten.

Then, in 2006 I came upon an eBay auction for a '64 Galaxie, located in Fresno, CA, only about 170 miles south of my home. The car was the victim of an arson attempt, with a serious dose of fire and smoke damage.

I mean, what better platform for an early NASCAR replica?

Damned if I didn't get it, despite my wife's perpetual eye-rolling!

I gutted the interior, installed a roll cage, and, after removing all of the chrome, filled 161 holes in the body. But then came the task of deciding which car to re-create. Enter my wife.

As flexible as she normally is, she was just not content to see a car in our garage painted in a hue that she found offensive, or the same color as any vehicle we already owned. In frustration, I finally handed her a picture book of 1964 Galaxies raced in NASCAR. She jabbed her finger at a picture and said, "I like the purple one."

Fireball Roberts.

My wife has good taste.

The idea for the book is spawned

So, while researching the purple Galaxie, I also researched further on Fireball Roberts. And there I really learned about the man, the competitor, the athlete, the mentor to young drivers, the legend, and the tragedy. The more I delved into everything that surrounded him, the more I wanted to tell his story from the perspective of one of the young drivers he could have mentored and befriended. And from there, the story did begin to write itself.

Thanks to a dream, a car, a legend, and an understanding wife.

Please check out HIDING BEHIND THUNDER, now specially priced at Amazon.com, and available for downloads to Kindle, Nook, and many other e-readers -- even your PC -- at Smashwords.com

By the way, if you buy the e-book through Smashwords.com, they are offering a 33% discount coupon code if purchased by October 15, 2011.

Download the first 15% of the book for free to get a flavor of the story. Then, if you wish to purchase it in its entirety, enter the code TV78Z at checkout, and instead of paying the normal price of $5.99, you pay only $3.99! Not a Smashwords.com member? It’s free to sign up with no obligation!

Oh, and to read the entire story about "Project Fireball", go to CarDomain.com and check it out!

The Patriotism of NASCAR

Call it a "redneck" thing, but NASCAR and American patriotism go hand-in-hand.

As we honor those who died in the horrid attack on American soil on September 11, 2001, we still hear from those who question the wars we've engaged since this tragedy. Our servicemen and women fight and die for our continuing freedom, much of it because nearly 3000 people, many of multinational heritage, died while enjoying the freedom we hold so dear.

The NASCAR community honored the fallen with an incredible array of paint schemes this past weekend at Richmond International Raceway, and there is already a vast array of memorabilia for sale that will profit from it. Such is the American way.

But the American spirit runs deep in NASCAR, and has well before all of the commercialism we now easily associate with it. America's Armed Forces recognize this, and use the cars, drivers, and races as a recruiting platform. Even that goes further back than this weekend.

During the 1991 Daytona 500, NASCAR recognized the conflict known as "Desert Storm" by sponsoring five cars (already racing with minimal, to no sponsorship that weekend) representing the five branches of the military, and decals of the American flag adorned virtually every car in the field. Not as commercialism, but as a proud display of heartfelt patriotism.

NASCAR grew from the ashes of World War II. Our servicemen -- and women -- returned home and sought some kind of normalcy. American sports are a great platform for that. And NASCAR was a big part of that. American cars, and predominantly American drivers and crews fought on the "battlefield" of NASCAR competition. Many of these participants were veterans of the war, having put their lives on the line to defend their country, and now putting their lives on the line to entertain its people.

And it didn't end there. Through the years many veterans took to the track, having, in my opinion, earned a place there.

60s NASCAR veteran Larry Frank was indeed a veteran. A no-nonsense hard-charging ex-Marine, he wasn't one to back down from a conflict, and was even known to give chase, with or without a car, if he felt it was warranted. He is probably best known for his NASCAR "conflict" that is the stuff of legend.

During one race, "Little Joe" Weatherly was driving in his own hard-charging style, but seemed to focus most of his beating and banging on Larry Frank, doing a lot of damage. After the race, Frank chased ‘Little Joe' into the parking lot. Not wanting to tangle with Frank without the protection of a car around him, Weatherly jumped on a car's roof. Even that wasn't going to stop Larry Frank, so Little Joe ran across the roof of every car parked in that row, leaving a trail of dented roofs along the way. And, in true NASCAR style, both men laughed about it the next day.

Army veteran Nelson Stacy drove a tank as he served his country. That might have had something to do with the way he drove on the Grand National circuit during his brief NASCAR career.

Nowadays, many of the drivers in NASCAR's top three series started too young to have had a career in the military. But, that doesn't mean that they can't show their American pride, even if it comes at 200 miles per hour.

Never Forget.

Falling off the face of the net

Keeping a blog updated isn't necessarily a problem, provided you have a life that allows opportunity to do so. As a writer, the act of writing (a book, a blog, an article somewhere) should make it easy to post just another piece of worthless drivel in some shape or form. I guess that's what I'm doing here.

Between writing, edits, and formatting, I put together my novel HIDING BEHIND THUNDER in about 14 months. I'd like to think that's not too bad if one takes into consideration that I type with only my index fingers, my right thumb (space bar) and my right ring finger (backspace key... which I seem to use a lot). That leaves me with six other rather useless digits that tend to only get in the way, especially over the course of creating a 137,000-word self-proclaimed masterpiece.

Not that those phalanges are wasted in other ventures, mind you. I mean, it's not like I'm going to have them surgically removed just so I can write another book or add another blog here. That would have a detrimental effect on my being able to communicate my feelings about the behaviors of other drivers for their benefit.

Then there's that little issue of actually working a full-time job and having a full-time family. That will slow things down. Oh, and let's not forget the modern time-wasting monster called commuting, which eats up another hour and a half of potential writing time each working day (but doesn't seem to impact my ability to put those previously-mentioned middle fingers to use). So, where am I going with this?

Although HIDING BEHIND THUNDER isn't actually flying off the shelves at your local bookstore (which likely has a lot to do with bookstores not yet carrying the thing), I've already had people asking if I'm working on my next magnum opus. (Not to be confused with a really big cartoon penguin.)

Yeah, I'm trying to work on another novel, but I've found that promoting a book is almost harder than writing one. So, where am I going with this (you ask again)?

I'm wondering if I should take a break from writing and just work on the promotion. (Kind of what I'm doing at the moment.) You know, somehow convince enough people to buy my book so I can retire and just keep writing between attending lots of NASCAR races.

Resting upon one's laurels isn't really a bad thing, provided you have laurels to rest upon. Which I don't.

But, I never wrote my 60s-era NASCAR novel expecting to get rich... although it sure would be nice. No, I wrote it because of my passion for the sport and its rich history, threads that I've woven into a satisfying coming-of-age story. Really.

So, again I ask you --nay, beg you -- to at least check out HIDING BEHIND THUNDER, now specially priced at Amazon.com, and available for downloads to Kindle, Nook, and many other e-readers -- even your PC -- at Smashwords.com.

Who knows? Maybe you'll want to see me write another one, too.