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Tosh McIntosh's Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology is analogous to the turn signal on a classic, 1960's automobile owned since new by the kind of inconsiderate driver we all love to hate. It's never been used.
Following graduation from the University of Washington in Seattle, Tosh entered the Air Force with the intention of serving a four-year commitment as a pilot before deciding what he really wanted to do with the remainder of his professional life. One ride in a jet trainer consigned that plan to the scrap heap.
Twenty years of flying jet fighters (including two combat tours) remain the highlight of his aviation career. Another ten years as a commercial airline pilot, followed by ten more years flying corporate jets, and currently the enjoyment of sport aviation in light aircraft, have embedded within him a passion for sharing with others his unique perspective of what it means to be an aviator.
From an early age spent watching his father submit articles to magazines, Tosh has maintained a persistent fascination with writing. In 1992, while flying for an airline at the bottom of the first-officer seniority list, on reserve or getting the least productive schedules, bored out of his skull, and compelled to make better use of all the sit time in airports and motel rooms across the country, he decided to buy a laptop and write a novel.
He chose a Mac PowerBook 180 with an "active matrix" screen, which a salesman suggested would be easier on the eyes when scrolling through pages of text. To illustrate the difference between that and passive matrix, the salesman suggested that Tosh type some pages and compare the difference, using a floppy disk to transfer the pages between the two computers. The first sentence he wrote became the opening of the novel OASIS, which Tosh completed over the course of the next few years, a 254,000-word behemoth, about a 13-year-old boy living with his parents on a space station orbiting the Moon.
For the next 11 years, during which Tosh resigned from the airline and began flying private executive jets, he tried unsuccessfully to get a literary agent and contract with one of the Big 6 (at the time) Legacy Publishers. The effort involved 12 major revisions and trimming the manuscript to a less-bloated, but still hefty, 186,000 words.
In March 2003, Tosh decided to try writing a mystery. He wrote the first draft of PILOT ERROR in 31 days, and once again sent out query letters to literary agents. It took 8 years and 8 drafts for an agent to respond to a query letter, writing sample, and synopsis by requesting to see more. In one week, Tosh sent out 3 full manuscripts and 1 partial.
But in March 2011, he removed the novel from consideration by the last of the four agents. From then until November 2011, he taught himself how to format the interiors and design the covers of the print and eBook editions of the first novel in the PILOT ERROR series and indie published it.
In July 2014, Tosh published RED LINE, the 2nd novel in the series, and in September 2017 began the 3rd novel, TEST FLIGHT. Unfortunately, a serious case of writer's block halted progress, fueled by none other than self-doubt that he could finish what he had started.
It took far too long for Tosh to realize that a common recommendation for curing writer's block is to begin a new project. In this case, however, another option finally broke through the fog. Why not dust off OASIS, and he won't have to convince anyone that it's worthy of publication? Opening up the manuscript for the first time since 2008 began a final revision that culminated in publication of the print and eBook editions of OASIS in October, 2020.
As of this writing, Tosh plans to publish TEST FLIGHT next, then dust off the incomplete first draft of OASIS 2 and continue interweaving his love affair with writing and thousands of flight hours in pursuit of one goal: to create stories that entertain and put readers up close and personal within his world of the cockpit.
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