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!

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.

Oh? The Book?

As I post about NASCAR events, both current and historic, I hint about my novel, HIDING BEHIND THUNDER. Well, I guess I should throw in another post in which the hints give way to out-and-out declaring its existence.

HIDING BEHIND THUNDER is a coming-of-age story set against the background of 1960s NASCAR.

Davey Sutherland is a fugitive, running for his life from a murder he didn't commit. Through a bizarre twist of fate, he finds sanctuary in the rough-and-tumble world of NASCAR. Now known as race driver Colt Kellogg, the young man hides behind his assumed name and identity. He builds a new life, gains trust and friendship, and even finds love. But, will he become a victim of his own growing notoriety? Now caught between the law and people dead set on revenge, Davey spends his new life HIDING BEHIND THUNDER.

There are many reference books available about NASCAR and its rich history. HIDING BEHIND THUNDER is a novel; a seamless blend of fact and fiction, sharing a story of love, loss, death and revenge, while incorporating a significant dose of NASCAR history. Both the famous drivers of the era and the events they raced in over the 1963 and 1964 seasons are portrayed here, intertwined with mystery and adventure.

HIDING BEHIND THUNDER can be purchased in paperback through Amazon ($16.99), my CreateSpace acoount ($14.99), downloaded to Amazon's Kindle reader ($7.99), and purchased for downloads for Nook, Kobo, and many other ePub formats through Smashwords.com (also $7.99).

Yes, it's my first "official" novel, and it's self-published. But, given the encouraging responses I've received about the book so far, I think I need to get started on my next book.

That's my two cents, your mileage may vary.

You found me!

Welcome to my blog for my recently self-published novel, HIDING BEHIND THUNDER. I'm a little behind here and must embarrassingly admit that I signed up with Blogger, and promptly lost my sign-up information. Go figure; I write a 137,000-word novel and somehow lose the intelligence to write about it.

HIDING BEHIND THUNDER is a coming-of-age novel of love,loss, death and revenge, set against the backdrop of 1960s NASCAR. It is a work of fiction that incorporates a significant dose of NASCAR history and fact, but it is not a "book about NASCAR." There are many reference books out there that are written specifically about NASCAR and stock car racing that will give the reader a lot more details about the sport's origins.

Still, readers new to NASCAR, along with those that have followed the sport for years, will come away from the book with a perspective the drivers of the time, and of two of the toughest years in Grand National history.

Please check out the official website at http://hidingbehindthunder.com. The paperback book is available through my page at CreateSpace, via Kindle download on Amazon, and for Nook, Kobo, and other e-formats on Smashwords.com.

More to come as I re-learn some of my misplaced web experience. Until then...