On Saturday 7/14/2012 I announced the following:
It is with joy bordering on the profane that I announce that Bentley Publishers, publishers of the best damn automotive repair manuals in the world, has signed me to publish my 350 page book, tentatively titled "Car Nut: Why men love cars, and how fixing BMWs saved my sanity (a memoir with actual useful stuff)." It's my life, viewed through the lens of cars, in a way that other car guys and the women who love them will instantly relate to. It's that miserable Triumph GT6+ I owned in college. It's rebuilding the engine of Maire Anne's VW bus in the kitchen of the apartment in Austin. It's the 25 BMW 2002s. It's the 3.0CSi I've owned for 25 years. It's loving how my 911SC gurgles. It's teaching my kids to drive in the Suburban on the beach late at night on Nantucket. It's a defense of men as intimate caring creatures, even though we often appear to have the emotional intelligence of algae. It's an explanation of why, in a world in which we have so little control, I thoroughly enjoy working on cars and get such a charge out of identifying, diagnosing, and completely fixing a problem.
Can you tell I've been practicing the elevator speech? How does it sound? I think it's pretty good considering Maire Anne (the best wife a car guy could ever ask for) and I celebrated last night and I was drinking Death in the Afternoon (Hemingway's favorite cocktail -- champagne and absinthe).
