Discover "Racing the Dream" by M.T. Bass & meet the author!

 

Racing the Dream

by M.T. Bass

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GENRE: Action and Adventure

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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

a Rafflecopter giveaway

M.T. Bass will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Meet the Author

1. Can you tell me a little about yourself, and how you became an author?

I just kind of stumbled into being an author. All the pieces parts were there, though. When the music conservatory thing didn’t work out for me, I  switched over to the English Department and studied creative writing with poet and novelist Robert Flanagan at Ohio Wesleyan University. I wrote verse to help me with my songwriting aspirations. When I flamed out on that and ended up in Colorado, I tried my hand at scribbling out novels and collected my fair share of rejection slips until the eBook craze hit in 2011. Since then I’ve published twelv, with another one on the way next year.

2. What is your book about?

Racing the Dream is the third book in my aviation adventure series and it deals with the revival of pylon air racing in the early Sixties. Hawk returns from being a mercenary fighter pilot in Congo in the previous book.  He doesn’t quite know what to do, until his buddies, Father Bob and Sparks, design and build a Formula 1 air racer.  There’s lots of flying action and, of course, a romantic angle with Allison, a beach-blonde surfer girl who is also a wing-walker. It was great fun to write.

3. Who is your hero/heroine? Is he/she based on someone in real life?

Hawk is a former P-51 Mustang pilot who served in World War II. He’s been a movie stunt pilot, ran a bush flying operation in Alaska, and fought as a mercenary pilot in the Congo Civil War.  He is kind of a conglomeration of most of the fighter pilots I’ve read about (Chuck Yeager, Bud Anderson, Robin Olds, etc.). And I’m sure there is a bit of me tucked in there, too.  Allison is a new character and it was great fun creating her character. I have a follow-up story in mind for both of them after Racing the Dream. 

4. What are your favorite times for writing? Morning? Evening?

I like to write first thing in the morning before I do anything else, like going through my email inbox, reading the news, checking social media, or start moving about the cabin—well, I do get myself coffee first. I like writing when I’m totally refreshed and undistracted.  After that, I don’t really care what happens to my day. Not really, but I’ve put the best part of it into my work.

5. Who are your favorite authors? Did they influence your writing, and if so, how?

My five favorite authors are: 1) Joseph Heller; 2) Kurt Vonnegut; 3) Mark Twain; 4) Thomas Berger; and 5) Carl Hiaasen. I think the main thing about them all is that there is a serious vein of humor that runs deeply through their books—and mine, too.

6. Did you have a favorite book as a child? Did it influence your choice to become an author?

My favorite book was Sabre Jet Ace.  It’s a biography about Joseph McConnell, Jr., who was the first triple jet ace, flying F-86s in the Korean War. It had no influence on me becoming an author, but it did inspire me to become a pilot.