Tom Pollack

I grew up in Los Angeles California in a large Catholic Family with four sisters, two brothers and great parents. I learned how to sail as a kid and managed to qualify for the US Sailing Team. This allowed me to travel the world in my 20's where I visited 44 countries over 5 years. On the Olympic Campaign trail, I gained a much better appreciation of our marvelous blue planet.

As a result of my interest in sailing, I was invited to Europe in 2004 by H.M. Juan Carlos the King of Spain (he's a sailor) to talk about a new Grand Prix Sailboat class I was promoting called the TP52. They are 52' carbon fiber machines that are fast enough to tow a water skier! Long story short, the King bought a boat and this launched a huge professional racing circuit known today as called the Audi MedCup. This sporting event attracts other European Royalty (like King Harald of Norway) and billionaire sportsmen (like Larry Ellsion of Oracle fame) from all over the world to compete in Gran Prix sailboat regattas held in the Mediterranean Sea.

During this time, I thought of an idea for a full length feature film and was able to convince Roy E. Disney to produce "Morning Light" along with his lovely wife Leslie, also a talented filmmaker. That movie premiered in 2008. The plot was about young high school and college age kids taking on full professional racing teams in a grueling 2000 mile blue water ocean race known as the Transpac race- Los Angeles to Hawaii.

Anyway, in Europe, the Audi MedCup regattas are held in Spain, Italy, Greece, France & Portugal. With an interest in ancient history, I visited famous archaeological ruins (like Pompeii and the Acropolis) and marveled how advanced people were back then given their crude tools and simple technology. I started to imagine how the ancients knew about so many things (like the Earth was round 1000 years before Columbus set sail) and how they passed this knowledge down to future generations.

The dots were starting to come together.

After a memorable night out in the highlands of Mallorca with Spanish Royalty, (see my website www.waywardsonnovel.com for a more detailed explanation) I thought of the main idea for Wayward Son.