Rather than clutter up the forum by starting a new thread, I thought I would piggyback on John's shameless plug with one of my own.
As some of you know, one of the reasons I have been MIA from many driving events over the last few years (other than plain old lack of funds) is that I decided to discipline myself and finish a project I started in 1972, just to finally get it off my "bucket list." No, this wasn't another car project that has been sitting around for that long.
I started writing a novel a couple years after graduating from college and worked on it sporadically over the years while trying to earn a living in other pursuits (it ain't easy to make any money as a writer). I decided after retiring that it was time to sit down and finally finish it, so I did.
I wrote it under the pen name of Stewart Parks. Parks is actually my real middle name, and also my mother's maiden name. She gave it to me because she was one of three daughters, with no son to carry on the Parks name after they were all married off (in those days, women did not keep their maiden names as often as today). Stewart was the maiden name on my father's side of the family, and I just combined the two to create my pseudonym. (I always wanted a cooler nickname than "Tweety-bird", which I suffered from my whole life, and "Stewball" fits the bill for me.)
Anyway, after sweating bullets over it for two years, through many drafts and rewrites, it is finally out! It is available on
Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions, but you can buy it "publisher-direct" for less
on the Plowshare Media site. You can visit the
preview page here and download the first two chapters for free by following the first link on that page, just to get a taste. Basically, it is a "coming of age" story about a kid growing up in the So. Cal. surfing world during the '60s, with a little "time travel" twist. It's not what I would call "light" reading, it's 336 pages in the serious literary fiction genre, and probably about R-rated (not for the kiddies).
It will take a couple of months for it to work it's way into the distribution chain so that it is available in bookstores (at least by ordering it, even if they don't stock it), and there will be a formal release party for it in the near future. I will definitely post here again to invite all my PCA friends when arrangements are finalized. Those of you to whom I gave advance review copies over the last few months, if you have an Amazon account, please post reviews of it there (unless of course you didn't like it
) Every little bit helps.
Thx,
TT
Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 12:25 pm
, you can see the Pagid brake pads underneath 
Nah, it's just a story...none of it is really true....
