New interview with novelist M.T. Bass

Novelist M.T. Bass is back! Today we’re chatting about his new men’s action-adventure, Racing the Dream.

During his virtual book tour, M.T. will be giving away a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

We’ve previously chatted about Jungleland and Article 15.

Welcome back, M.T. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Born in Athens, Ohio, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy.  After working in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market, I continued to write fiction and I’ve finished eleven novels, including two separate series:  the Murder by Munchausen Sci-Fi Police Techno-Thrillers and the White Hawk Aviation Adventure Books. I don’t read just one type of fiction, so my books span different genres, including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy, and TechnoThrillers. Being a Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and pilots are featured in many of my stories. I currently live on the shores of Lake Erie near Lorain, Ohio.

Please tell us about your current release.
Hawk returns from Africa where he flew as a mercenary pilot in the Congo Civil War, bringing along his faithful mechanic, Sparks, and former missionary priest and engineer, Father Bob.  The two of them design and build a Formula 1 air racer and convince Hawk to take up pylon racing, which has gone dormant since the end of the Cleveland Air Racer in 1949.  The action leads up to the very first National Championship Air Races in 1964.  And along the way, he falls for a wing-walker, named Allison.

I started this novel last year, but the Reno Air Races announced that 2023 would be the last year of the event after sixty years of action. They were very helpful to me and allowed me to use artwork from the original 1964 poster on my cover.

What inspired you to write this book?
All of us pilots know about the Cleveland National Air Races. After a terrible crash there in 1949, the events were canceled and the sport disappeared until Bill Stead founded the Reno Air Races in 1964 and I wanted to write a book about the revival of the sport.  I was fortunate enough to meet Jack Dianiska, who founded the United States Air Racing Association and helped me out immensely as I wrote the book.

Excerpt from Racing the Dream:
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.

I finally caught the blue of the horizon on the bottom of my windscreen. The engine coughed, losing the gravity feed of fuel from my tank.

A hundred feet, but now climbing.

I finally exhaled, then took a deep breath. I raised my left wing around one hundred eighty degrees until right-side-up, veering off from the pylons to the south.

The engine started purring again.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I’ve started in on a sequel to Article 15, which follows former Navy SEAL and legal “fixer” Griff as he helps country-western singer Samantha Cross deal with a dangerous stalker. The book is called Outside the Wire.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I am a reformed English Major from Ohio Wesleyan University and pretty much started scribbling novels right after I graduated.  I chased after publishers and stacked up a few manuscripts, but it wasn’t until the whole eBook revolution that I was able to get my stories out to readers.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I like to write first thing in the morning—like at five or five-thirty.  I do it before I read emails, check social media, or read the news, so my mind is fresh. It’s funny how writing a few hours a day, every day, that before you know it you have a book!  After that I dig into the business side of writing.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I always get dinged in my writer’s groups for having an occasional “run-on” sentence here and there—though nothing like James Joyce’s 4391-word sentence in Ulysses.  But people don’t always think, or feel, or talk in crisp Hemingway-like sentences. So, I think it is another technique (quirk) to be used occasionally where appropriate.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A pilot.  One of my very first memories, when I was only three or four years old, is when one of my dad’s friends took me flying in a Piper Cub. And my favorite kid’s book was Sabre Jet Ace by Charles Coombs—and good luck finding a copy today for less than $350.00. I eventually got my Commercial Pilot’s License and became a Certified Flight Instructor.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I appreciate you taking the time to introduce Racing the Dream to your readers.  I hope they enjoy it.  If they have any questions about air racing or flying, please let me know.

Thank you for your support.

Links:
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