Racing the Dream by M.T. Bass
Please welcome M.T. Bass author of Racing the Dream
M.T. Bass will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Racing the Dream
by M.T. Bass
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GENRE: Action and Adventure
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INTERVIEW:
- What or who inspired you to start writing?
I wanted to be a songwriter. So as an English major in college, I studied Creative Writing, specifically focused on verse to help me with writing lyrics. I had some success with it and won a couple of awards. But life always takes you in unexpected directions. I “took a break” from music when I moved to Colorado and started scribbling out novels. I finally came back to songwriting and released a CD called Operation Thunderclap with my group Project Mojo in 2008.
- What expertise did you bring to your writing?
For Racing the Dream, it definitely helped that I am a Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, but there was so much about air racing that I did not know. Besides doing a bunch of research, watching a ton of videos, and flying T-6 racers in Flight Simulator, I reached out to a lot of racing pilots for help and folks like Jack Dianiska, Juan Browne, and Scott Holmes offered incredible insights in putting me into the cockpit of a Formula 1 racer.
- What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?
Even though I’m a pilot, I’m afraid of heights—though my brother-in-law says I’m really afraid of falling. There is still a big difference between looking over the edge of a building and cruising along at altitude in an airplane.
- If you could be one of the characters from any of your books, who would it be and why?
Obviously, that would be Hawk from Racing the Dream. He’s a P-51 pilot. He’s rich. And he gets the girl.
- What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)
Folks—bless their hearts—always advise “Write what you know.” Well, that’s kind of boring. I prefer what fellow novelist Jay Spencer Green (Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s) says: “It’s not about writing what you know, but knowing what you write about.”
- Who is your favorite actor and actress?
I’m not sure who my favorites are, but Annie Savoy and Crash Davis from Bull Durham are definitely two of my all-time favorite movie characters.
- What is your favorite reality show?
It’s a toss-up between Jay Leno’s Garage and American Pickers. What I like most about the shows is how they give you the history of cars and America in the shows.
- Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like to write a series.
In some ways, working on a series is actually a little bit easier than writing a stand-alone novel, because your main characters are already established. Racing the Dream is an action series that puts Hawk into different aviation adventures—a movie stunt pilot in My Brother’s Keeper, a mercenary fighter pilot in Jungleland, and an air racer in this book. As long as you like the characters—which I do—then it’s a breeze.
- Have you started your next project? If so, can you share a little bit about your book?
Right now I’m working on a sequel to Article 15, called Outside the Wire. Ex-Navy SEAL and legal “fixer” Griff is hired to help a Country-Western singer deal with a dangerous stalker. I also have an idea for a follow-up story with Hawk and Allison from Racing the Dream, going to Costa Rica to fly crop dusters in the War on Drugs.
BLURB:
“If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” ~Mario Andretti
Strap down the 5-point harness in the cockpit of a Formula 1 air racing plane and join Hawk as he chases victory! First on their amateur make-shift course over Antelope Acres, then on the re-emerging pylon racing circuit in the early 1960s. And finally, as Hawk battles 7 other top-level pilots at the very first National Air Racing Championship event in Reno!
Abandoning the cloth and his African mission, Father Bob returns to his slide rule to design Hawk’s racer. Sparks, his loyal yet surly mechanic, built it and wrenching both on the engine—as well as on Hawk—keeps them at the front of the pack. Home again in Los Angeles from behind the stick of a T-6 Texan as a mercenary in the Congo civil war, air racing is a new aviation adventure for Hawk. Ride along as he tangles with fellow pilots in “uncooperative formation flying” at two-hundred miles per hour a mere fifty feet off the ground!
And then one day cruising home to Van Nuys airport, Hawk spies Allison, a beach-blonde surfer girl, insanely wing walking on the top wing of a Stearman PT-17 bi-plane. He quickly sets his sights on her.
Fly low…Fly fast…and Turn Left…
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EXCERPT:
Chapter 1 — Antelope Acres
I chased Scotty down the long straightaway. Three hundred feet back. A hundred feet off the ground. One hundred seventy knots.
Quick looks at the panel: Thirty-six hundred RPM. Look: engine oil pressure—green. Look: oil temperature—green.
All good.
Banking hard into the “pylon” at W Avenue G and Myrick Canyon Road over the desert, a shadow on the ground to my left crawled toward my British Racing Green colored wing. He had to be outside. You can’t look to the right. It’s just not safe. But the sun was behind us…
I lofted a bit in the eighty-degree turn—climbed twenty feet or so—then quickly dove back down to close another hundred and fifty feet on Scotty, picking up a bit of his wake turbulence.
Rolling out and down the front straightaway, I found smooth air twenty-five feet above his hot red Jensen Cassutt.
We used the crossroads, a pile of rocks, a little hump in the desert sand, and a windmill water pump to set up our three-mile oval course. I knew Scotty from Van Nuys, but the other three guys were new, from other SoCal airports. We were all on “Company Frequency,” one-two-three point four-five. We joined up in a loose formation for a pace lap, then got down to business with a flying start.
Like Henry Ford said, racing began five minutes after the second airplane was built. And that’s where Father Bob came in. There were a ton of modified Cassutts out there. Anybody could buy the design for $20. But Father Bob used his engineering skills to develop and, with Sparks’ help, build White Hawk Redux, an 85 horsepower, Continental C-85 Goodyear racer that we were pushing over two hundred miles an hour.
It was all unofficial because, after fifty years of glorious history, airplane racing fell off the face of the earth for a while in the Sixties. There were no sanctioned races around anymore, so we made up our own course, kicking up dust devils and rooster tails over the desolation of Antelope Acres. Our version of California street drags.
Of course, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was learning fast.
Around the windmill and up to the forty-foot hump in the sand. I chased Scotty down foot by foot. I knew I could take him.
Only two laps left. It was now or never.
Banking hard into the crossroads, I juiced the power up near four thousand RPM and pulled back on the stick to take Scotty up and outside.
But dammit, I missed him—
In my peripheral vision, a Tweety-yellow racer on my right came toward me.
I flattened my wings and rolled off the power sweeping below him to keep from colliding. But I caught the tornado of his wingtip vortices and involuntarily flipped inverted.
A Joshua tree bloomed overhead in my canopy as I arced upside-down towards the ground at two-hundred-fifty feet. Gravity pulled my shoulders down against the straps of my five-point harness.
Without thinking, back pressure on the stick moved quickly forward to illogically raise the nose with a nudge of left rudder to roll level and maxing out the power…
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
M.T. Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion that while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls, USA.
Born in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy, then worked in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market. He is the author of twelve novels, two novellas, and a book of verse. His writing spans various genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and pilots are featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio.
M.T. Bass Author Links
Website: https://www.mtbass.net
Blog: https://www.owl-works.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/owlworks/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Owlworks
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/mtbass
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5270962.M_T_Bass
Racing the Dream Purchase Links
Author Web Site Info Page: https://mtbassauthor.wordpress.com/racing-the-dream-white-hawk-aviation-stories-3/
Amazon (Kindle Unlimited): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CCSVMSQV
Stories by M.T. Bass
White Hawk Aviation Adventure Stories
My Brother’s Keeper
Jungleland
Racing the Dream
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Murder by Munchausen Sci-Fi Thriller Series
Murder by Munchausen
The Darknet
The Invisible Mind
Motherless Children
Murder by Munchausen Trilogy: Books 1-3
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Article 15
Somethin’ for Nothin’
In the Black
Crossroads
Lodging
Untethered
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
M.T. Bass will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
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