THE GREATEST CAR CHASE IN AMERICAN HISTORY BEGINS WITH A RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE.
A highly rebellious loner whose NASCAR dreams have fallen short finds himself the victim of a governor’s plans to run for President of the United States. Wellington Royce, governor of Tennessee is seeking the support of the Fraternal Order of Police to catapult him into the White House by adding more officers to the highways around The Great Smoky Mountains and to pay for them with increased citations on the tourists who visit. Thrown in jail, abused, and set-up, Rick Stevens in a fit of rage accepts an offer to declare war on the highway patrol by the governors political enemies using $20 million dollars to build the car of his dreams in a plan to wreak havoc in what becomes the greatest car chase in history. The chase emerges as a journey of self-discovery, deep contemplation and new-found romance as an impenetrable gauntlet of guns, missiles and the might of the military sits at the finish line and the treachery of politics proves to be more sinister than even death.
Tail of the Dragon is an intensely layered novel that intricately combines the struggles of emotional growth with breakneck action and imminent danger with peril at virtually every mile of this illustrious car chase. What makes this particular story unique is that the chase is actually instigated and is politically motivated by the protagonist. People who have read the early manuscript say the beginning is reminiscent of the film First Blood while the ending is 100X the chase at the end of The Road Warrior. The lead character knowing what to expect builds a car specifically designed to out-run, out-wit, and out-maneuver anything the police or military can throw at him.This includes the latest in composite armor technology of course, but the two most unique attributes to this mystery car that is built for this epic car chase are elements that I am particularly passionate about.
Just like in the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean where the ships needed to be much faster than the ships they were robbing, my editor pointed out to me a few weeks ago that Tail of the Dragon is a modern pirate story and the car in the story was like a modern pirate ship. That was an aspect I hadn’t considered, since I simply wanted to resurrect the good old car chase stories of the 70’s like Crazy Larry and Dirty Mary, Bonnie and Clyde, Smokey and the Bandit,Vantage Point and many others. But in this story the protagonists actually picks a fight with the law, on purpose and for political reasons which conjured up in her mind a pirate story. That was completely unintentional on my behalf, but was simply a byproduct of my interests which any writer is vulnerable to. For the blank page that sits before a writer will soak up the mind of those who fill it, and my mind has a lot bouncing around in it, as anyone who reads here often will know. So yes, my love of pirate lore found its way into my epic novel! It was unavoidable!
To understand what is going on behind the scenes of the puppet show I would refer you dear reader to the great film by Stanley Kubrick called Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman. You can see a previous article I wrote about this very important film by clicking on this link:
The world has gone mad. The proof is in all the people who spoke in that video that have lost the ability to tell right from wrong. All their concern is whether or not Jerry Sandusky should have spoken to the media. Not on the actions he committed. How much proof do you need after all this?
(BY THE WAY, IF I WAS PRESIDENT, THE FIRST THING I’D DO ON MY VERY FIRST DAY IN OFFICE WAS MAKING SURE THE POLICE DID THEIR JOB AND STOP THE PROSTITUTION ON K-STREET. I WOULD NOT ALLOW THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR TO GO ON SO CLOSE TO WHERE I LAY MY HEAD AT NIGHT.)
And don’t be surprised if the last thing they see on this earth is a Confederate Battle Flag flying above their bodies as an army of bandits dressed in skull and cross bone bandanas lead the way!
Oh, it’s not that I dislike alcohol. I enjoy a good beer when I get one, for instance to celebrate my son-in-law’s birthday a few weeks prior we went to the Hafbrauhaus in Newport, which was considered a big deal since the Hafbrauhaus in Newport was the first of its kind to be built outside of Munich, Germany.
Well, I took it personal, because I have let my kids drink if they wanted to since they were 12. I frowned down on it, but I let them drink at family functions and never gave them any restrictions about it.I did this for all the same reasons that drinking isn’t such a big deal to my son-in-law who has been able to drink beer from age 14, because it takes the mythology out of the drinking experience and allows kids to consider themselves as adults.
Civil Disobedience is only about 30 to 40 pages long. It’s really not much more than an essay and in its opening line comes the famous phase, “That government is best which governs least.” Just a few sentences later Thoreau states, “That government is best which governs not at all.” Yet, civil rights leaders and union socialists have used Thoreau as a kind of hand book to protests and how to engage in them. It was the 60’s hippies who have used the words of Thoreau to lie down in the street and fill the jails of their location with their body’s protest, in order to overwhelm the police and their human cages. The big government progressives seem to only have read the words in Civil Disobedience that pertain to slavery, and war with Mexico, which were the hot button issues in 1849, and they missed the true point of the book!
Walt Disney knew what few people were ready to acknowledge when he designed Disneyland, then his much larger theme park Disney World. When I was a kid, I marveled at how Disney got away with having a theme ride about rapists, terrorists, and drunken bastards robbing and looting in an aimless life, and placed that ride within a very short walk from the Liberty Tree in Liberty Square as if both sections of his park were equal in some way. I always felt that Walt Disney was trying to tell people something important. Even though he sold the Disney image with Cinderella Castle there was something under the covers he wanted to instruct every American alive of the importance, and the sign posts are everywhere in Walt Disney World.
This is also why pirates are the keys to understanding what America was supposed to be, and what it still can be. This is also why films like Pirates of the Caribbean, and books like Atlas Shrugged are absolute keys to dusting off American Excepetionalism and becoming once again what we were in the beginning, when freedom was an idea created on a pirate ship, written down by a surgeon, witnessed by a philosopher, studied by revolutionaries, and translated for us by artists. It is why we root for blood thirsty killers like Jessie James even though publicly we chastise them. Deep in our hearts we know that the key to our inner desires is to not fall in line with what society tells us to do. The key is to cast off the control of the politicians and their rules, their laws, their meager attempts to control human beings as though they were cattle. The key to American Exceptionalism is in being…..well exceptional……exceptionally free, and living with a passion to protect that freedom, at any and all cost.
But that’s not all, Duque Marcus Vaccaro, also known as the “Golden Tongue,” is Spain’s most important negotiator. He alone can interrupt the king at any hour, and his imperatives often become reality. He has been dispatched to the Italian city-states, the Knights of Malta, and even to England and France. Devereaux, the French privateer, has lost his sanity to his obsession with finding the Dragon’s Eye, a gem that legend says grants the owner immortality. The beautiful Lady Baptiste, considered both a hero and a scourge, she has even been asked by Madame LaFontaine to be one of her girls. Her allegiance remains true to her ship and crew. Madame LaFontaine is the proprietress of Chateau Fontainebleu, a burlesque house in New Orleans. Her girls report everything they hear to her which she can then sell to the highest bidder. Guy LaPlante born in New Orleans has never seen the France he defends. Both Madame LaFontaine and Vicomtesse Richelieu covert his new-world attitude, but he desires only one treasure: Lady Baptiste. Luc Savard watched Canada become a pawn and forgotten territory while the upstart United States thrived, Savard grew increasingly dissatisfied. Starting life as a pirate preying on U.S. ships was a start, but when he was outlawed by Canada, he vowed to fight on his own until he controlled the entire hemisphere. Tabatha McWarren was run out of Providence. Two months later she arrived in New Orleans with a crew devoted to her life. To join her crew, a sailor must drink a mug of her home-brew of cursed blood. Geoffery Flores signaled his resignation from the French Navy with the dead body of his superior officer, who referred to him as a half-breed. Captain Flores is ruthless to his prey but generous to his crew. Gaston de St. Croix might have damned his soul, but Crimson Angel has shown him the gates of heaven. Jonas Richman knows the seduction of evil only too well. The loss of his family to violent predators left him with a single motivation: the destruction of any servant of evil! Brent Rice has always been signed on with the American Navy; he’s just always been there. Although he has no rank, his stories of ship engagements are so exact, and his knowledge of naval strategy so advanced, he is sought after by every military commander. And finally, Sammy the Skull! While Sammy Skulow was alive, he was considered one of the most brutal and insane captains. It is only fitting then, that his hatred for everyone damned him to living even after his flesh rotted away upon his death as his body roams the seas with his sails set for destruction as a phantom ghost and recruiter for the gates of hell!
People close to the situation wondered if I was upset that the production team of The Immortals used film clips of my work on the Peter Facinelli short called The Delivery produced by Real D 3D in the footage shown at the link for the Daily Motion, instead of bringing me out to Hollywood to do the stand-in work. Real D 3D was involved in both The Delivery and The Immortals.
(EVERYTHING YOU SEE IN THIS CLIP THAT INVOLVES A BULLWHIP IS ME, EXCEPT WHERE PETER IS JUST HOLDING THE FLAMING WHIP–and you may have to watch a 30 second commercial before the actual video plays. Also, remember the whole purpose was to shoot the short with Real D 3D’s new camera system to show what it could do as a sample of 3D for studio investment)
But as I told the 6’8” former offensive tackle Mat Willig who was also on the set, “No, even the work I’m doing on this film can be replaced. They’re getting great reference shots off what I’m doing here.”
As if the No Lakota Levy campaigns were not enough, my work on Issue 2, my occupations, and my family, I have been working through a critical edit and rewrite on my new book tentatively titled The Tail of the Dragon. My publisher is exploring a title change however to capture the epic quality of the story to something like Legend of the Misty Mountains. But it’s still early. So my mind was spinning late in the night as I was thinking about all these tasks at the same time when a friend of mine from those Misty Mountains sent me the picture you see displayed here.
I would say, “This book is about how politicians use public officials and legal manipulation to climb into power. That is the essence of how the governor in the story is using the police unions to solidify his bloc voting in a run for the White House.”
She said, “That is certainly an important part of the story, but it’s not the main theme. This is a pirate story. The main character is a pirate, and a violent one at that. This is also a love story, and a journey of self-discovery. It’s much more epic than the political subplot.”
My anger at systems, at orthodox, at wasted money, at stupidity has its roots in this elementary concept. I think we should all be freer as a people, but to be free, it requires people to be somewhat intelligent and to think. It is evident that we are being herded about like animals in a barnyard by masters who consider themselves above us in the political class. If one of those animals declares, “I’m not an animal, I’m a human being” trouble is not far behind that declaration.
The Overmanwarrior 