As mentioned above, I'd gotten bogged down like a saber-tooth tiger in the La Brea Tar Pits on the STEAMROLLER IV project, and when that happens, all the sass and sizzle come out of the narrative and the prose flows like 90-weight gear oil at the North Pole. No wonder Santa uses reindeer.

As I said, I have since figured out how to bring the final novel back to life again, but that didn't happen until I switched my tack (the sailing term) and tactics and went to work on a second short-story book, POTSIDE COMPANION II: RESPONSIBLE JOBS AND IRRESPONSIBLE DRIVING, [see cover image below]. It's basically a collection of tales, tall tales and outright embellishments/fabrications about some of the crazy jobs I've had over the years (drug store delivery boy learning to do doughnuts and bootleg turns in the snow in the store's VW Beetle, phonebook inspector & replacer in nice-to-sketchy-to-scary neighborhoods all over Chicagoland, hod carrier for a pair of Country & Wester-loving hillbilly bricklayer brothers from Tennessee who used to run a pool hall together in Paducah, KY, fast-food fry cook, cleanup guy in a veterinary clinic for large farm animals, parts counterman, motorcycle mechanic, gasping and sweltering heater in a drop forge, paper plate-line packager, steam pipe cleaner at the Coors brewery in Golden, CO back when people used to go out there to buy the stuff just to bring it back to where you couldn't buy it locally, low-level drug dealer, foreman of a communal hippie leather clothing factory in the slums of Oakland, CA, etc.) and all the cars and motorcycles I either owned or had available to me or almost killed myself on or in as those adventures unfolded.

And so everything was going along pretty damn good. I had something like 14 or 15 stories that I really, really liked (and, moreover, that my people-I-couldn't-do-without editor/critics seemed to like as well), and everything was cruising along nicely until...

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE:

So I wuz thinkin', see, how much fun it might be if I did a story about all the different LOTUS cars I've had the opportunity and good or bad fortune to drive and race and break and crash and fix and maybe try to sell to some unsuspecting sucker who has stars in his eyes just like I do when it comes all the wonderful yet only semi-rational cars and world of Lotus.

Looking back, my name and psyche have been linked to a lot of different cars (damn near anything British with two seats and an ill-fitting top, Corvairs, all the Ferraris and such that I couldn't then nor ever will be able to afford, etc., even some Porsches) but, if I'm honest about it, I spent an awful lot of my on-track time and racing career in two makes of cars: Alfa Romeos and cars of the LOTUS persuasion. And seeing as how I won a lot of races and even a championship or two and also almost killed somebody driving Lotus racecars (none of which I owned, by the way) and since that led me to adventures, disasters, stirring campaigns amd bitter, suck-it-up disappointments in everything from THE OLDEST LOTUS IN NORTH AMERICA (which I ever-so-lightly crashed into a concrete wall at a time trial in Nassau) to Lotus Sevens, Lotus Elevens, a pair of Lotus Elites, the Lotus 17 the owner and I campaigned (and won with) in the Rolex Vintage Endurance Championship, Lotus 18, 20, 22 and 27 open-wheelers, three really sweet Elans (including a real 26R...I think), a rare Lotus 47 Europa racer and several good races (except when I blew it up) in the last factory-built Lotus racing car (the X-180R Esprit Turbo) to ever win a professional racing championship! Plus personal encounters with famous people like Jay Leno, Stirling Moss, Paul Newman, Dan Gurney, David Hobbs, Brian Redman, Doc Bundy, Hurley Haywood, David Murray, Jim Fitzgerald and the guy hidden under the staircase who used to roll cigars for Fidel Castro. And of course the stories are chock-full of history, lore, legends, insights, spurious rumors and outright lies about averything remotely Lotus.

Oh, and I was once featured speaker at the Lotus Club L.O.G. National Convention and I help out instructing on track days for our local Lotus Club.

In any case, I thought it might be a fine idea to set it all down. Problem was...there was an AWFUL lot of it. But I kept writing and plugging away and writing and plugging away, and about the time I came up for air, I realized I had over 50,000 words set down for this ONE FREAKING CHAPTER!

It was beginning to dawn on me that what I REALLY had was a whole other book. Which I am almost done with now (should wrap up the final chapter tomorrow!) and will hopefully have in hand and avilable in softback, limited graphics, B&W PREVIEW EDITION form at the big W.I.C. Vintage Race weekend at Road America July 12-14. Fingers crossed. See cover image below.

The "real" book (coffee-table quality, LOTS of pictures, many in color, fancy paper, embossed dust jacket, etc.) will be ready in time for the holidays. What a swell idea for a Christmas present!

By the way, even though this book is demonstrably, even defiantly Lotus-centric, I promise it will entertain, inform and edify anybody who likes my other books. Really it will.

Honest.