Author Monte Dutton covered many NASCAR events during his career as a syndicated newspaper sports writer
The secret is out. It’s almost an April Fool’s Day prank. Only this one is real.
Many readers have requested it. It matches Monte Dutton’s generally acknowledged field of expertise. His sixth novel, Lightning in a Bottle, is about stock car racing.
Barrie Jarman is the hope of racing’s future because he is a link to its past.
The teen-aged native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, is talented, articulate, intelligent, brash, and mischievous. To the image-conscious braintrust that runs the sport, Barrie is a wild Mustang – and, yes, he drives one – who must be broken.
Ain’t no way.
The yarn is told mostly through the narration of Uncle Charlie, a racing veteran who took in Barrie at age 16 and helped him get a shot at the big time. Only Charlie, it seems, can nudge Barrie in the right direction, and only Charlie knows when it’s time to get out of his way.
This novel, Dutton says, began as a shot in the dark. “I have another novel that is almost complete. One night in January, I was down in the dumps for a variety of reasons and had a sleepless night. Most of it was just brainstorming. Some of it I probably dreamed. I finally got up, gave up on sleeping, put some coffee on, and sat down to write the Prologue because I didn’t want to lose it.”
Writing the entire novel took less than three months. He finished it in two drafts. In the past, it took three. An editor agreed that it was ready.
Meanwhile, Dutton kept it a secret.
“That’s probably part of the reason I got it done so quickly,” he said. “I want this to be a complete surprise. Only three people know anything about it. One is the editor. Another is a close friend. The third is my mother.”
Until … now.
Dutton crisscrossed America for 20 years, writing about automobile racing. After authoring several sports books, the Clinton, South Carolina, resident and Furman University graduate turned to fiction.
“I’ve had a really good March in sales,” he said. “At the beginning of the month, my worldwide author rank on Amazon was about 220,000, it was 14,000 the last time I looked. In literary fiction, I went from 7,294 to 573.
“That doesn’t mean I’m doing great, but it means that all the books are creating people who want to read the others. My social-media following is heavy on race fans. That’s why so many have expressed to me their desire to have me write a racing novel. I didn’t ever have a great aversion to it. I just needed a story that excited me. I just needed a sleepless night.”
Lightning in a Bottle is available at Amazon.com in print for $16.95 and Kindle edition for $3.99.
The Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Bottle-Monte-Dutton-ebook/dp/B06XX1WVXB/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1490799416&sr=1-4&keywords=lightning+in+a+bottle
The print edition: https://www.amazon.com/Lightning-Bottle-Monte-Dutton/dp/1544840306/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1490799416&sr=1-3&keywords=lightning+in+a+bottle
Monte Dutton may be reached via email at duttonm@bellsouth.net or by phone at (704) 913-1143.
FICTION BY MONTE DUTTON
The Audacity of Dope (2011)
The Intangibles (2013)
Crazy of Natural Causes (2015)
Forgive Us Our Trespasses (2016)
Longer Songs: A Collection of Short Stories (2016)
Cowboys Come Home (2016)
Lightning in a Bottle (2017)
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