Formula ForTwo!

It's something that's been discussed for a long time, but it took a man with the leadership skills, charisma, and questionable judgment of Travis Okulski, Road&Track's new Web editor, to make it happen. Starting yesterday, you'll be able to find me on the R&T website every Thursday.

My debut column is How To Create Your Very Own One-Man Spec Racing Series. I figured I'd start things off light and then, once everyone is hooked on the formula, begin tapping the 55-gallon drums of refined sorrow that tend to litter the deck of my emotional container ship.

I'm thrilled to have a chance to connect with the multi-millions-strong R&T reader base on a more constant basis, but I remain committed to TTAC and its uniquely cerebral "Best & Brightest". I won't be jumping ship any time soon, or at least I don't think I will be. Not that it can't happen. VerticalScope has fired me two and a half times already, I'm kind of like the Billy Martin of TheTruthAboutCars. My latest effort in the "No Fixed Abode" series, recently hijacked by W. Christian "Mental" Ward but returned to me just like Reagan got the hostages back, is A Vestigial Tale.

Just to put it in perspective, here are some word counts:

183,349 – Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 183,833 – Little Women (Books 1&2) – Louisa May Alcott 183,858 – Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë 186,418 – Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 206,052 – Moby Dick – Herman Melville 211,591 – Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 265,000 - My projected output for 2015, Web and print columns 311,596 – The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand 318,540 - The current length of my book project, which is mostly rewritten items from the past but which will also have about 100k of new content 316,059 – Middlemarch – George Eliot 349,736 – Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 364,153 – The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 365,712 – Lonesome Dove – McMurtry, Larry 418,053 – Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell 455,125 – The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien 540,000 - The approximate total of "One Racer's Perspective" and "BMX Basics" columns, 1991-2003 561,996 – Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand 587,287 – War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

What does this prove? Absolutely nothing, except that L. Ron Hubbard still wrote at a much faster pace, and about much cooler stuff.