Book Details

Title: ....................... Experience Pipeline
Genre: .................... Surfing/Young Adult
Author: ................... Quinn Haber
Publisher: ................ Casagrande Press
Publication Date: ...... April 8th, 2008
Format: ................... Paperback, 188 Pages
Size: ....................... 5.5” X 8.5”
Illustrations: ............ B&W maps and photos
ISBN: ...................... 978-0-9769516-3-6
Price: ...................... $14.95
Distributor: ............... Wilderness Press, 800-443-7227
Publicity: .................. Paul Diamond, 858-405-6765

Book Description

Experience Pipeline puts you in the middle of surfing’s most famous and
dangerous contest, the Pipe Masters event. In this ‘determine your own adventure book’, you’re the surf star, and you’re competing against two other pros for the world title. The action is gripping, the drama is high, and the waves are huge and out of control! Whether you’re dropping down the face of a 20-foot wave, getting tubed, wiping out, or getting rescued, the action is fast and riveting. Your unique story unfolds by the flip of a coin. With 89 possible endings, every time you open this book you dive into a new adventure! A compelling read for both teens and adults alike.

About the Author

Quinn Haber grew up by the beach in Pacific Palisades, California spendinghot summer days in the surf, and nights in the club as the guitarist for SST punk band The Treacherous Jaywalkers. Surf travel started him on a sporadic career of photography and journalism. When the band broke up in 1991, he headed north to Santa Cruz for an education and large, pumping winter surf.

What began as a love of surfing led to an obsessive study of the sport’s
culture and language. From Santa Cruz he moved to San Francisco looking for more action, which he found in heavy beatings and wide open barrels at Ocean Beach. While in San Francisco he worked in publishing for a British book firm and made frequent surf trips to the Philippines. On one of those trips he met his wife, who he now lives with in Oahu, Hawaii. Currently, Quinn works for the state, helping children get free medical care.

He wrote Experience Pipeline as an endeavor to put a reader directly into
the heart of surfing’s most treacherous and famous wave—Banzai Pipeline,the wave that all surfers know but that few will ever surf.

Q & A with Author Quinn Haber

How did you get the idea for this book?
I wanted to get the reader highly involved in the story of surfing the world’s most famous and dangerous wave. I found that the second-person, present tense narrative did that well. The multiple story lines and the format (where the reader
flips a coin at the decisive moments in the story to move forward) free the reader from the predetermination inherent in traditional books.

Who is this book written for?
Surfers of all ages will love this book because it delivers the kind of fun, excitement and unexpectedness that they find in the sport itself. The book is also great for those who have never tried surfing, because it gives the reader a firsthand, virtual experience of riding big waves.

What was the hardest part about writing this book?
The hardest part was ensuring the continuity of all the plots. There are hundreds of possible plots and endings. Making all of those plot lines and combinations align was tricky. I had to write a program to keep track of it all.

What is the hardest part about surfing?
For beginner surfers it’s the rigors associated with paddling for a long time, trying to stand and keep balance, and learning to drop in on steep waves without nosediving. For experienced surfers, it’s overcoming fear in big waves, paddling into big waves without the aid of a Jet-Ski, doing advanced aerials, and trying to catch some waves when the line-up is really crowded.

What is the strangest experience that you’ve had while surfing?
I was surfing with friends on the Italian island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea. We were surfing in front of a castle that sat on a very small rock island. Somehow the wave wrapped all the way around the island as it broke, so we rode in circles around this castle. It was magical.

What is the scariest experience you’ve ever had while surfing?
I got caught far outside at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. The waves were 20 feet and powerful; the wind was blowing out to sea, and the currents were sucking me out further. I was out there alone, well after dark, paddling frantically and
taking serious beatings trying to get in. I made it to the beach, stood on the sand then collapsed. Another time at this same beach, I was surfing and I saw a large great white shark swimming in the face of a wave, coming directly at me from 30 feet away. I caught the first wave I saw and rode it all the way to the dry sand. In both instances I think I kissed the beach.

How long have you been surfing?
Only 20 years. Not long, really.

Do you have any advice for people who really want to surf at Pipeline?
Yes… don’t try it! Unless you are a professional surfer with a lot of experience surfing highly dangerous waves in ultra-crowded conditions, you have no business surfing at Pipeline. You will imperil your own life and the lives of others. Read
Experience Pipeline instead. It’s the next best thing.

Media inquires contact Paul Diamond at 858-259-0813
or casagrandepress@aol.com

 

New book conveys the rush and heart-pounding thrill of surfing

Open the new paperback Experience Pipeline and within a few pages you could be dropping down the face of a 20-foot Hawaiian wave or running off into the sunset with a good-looking Brazilian bodyboarder. Or, you could die!

Experience Pipeline places you in the middle of the Pipe Masters contest—the final stop on the world surfing tour. The Pipe Masters contest is a gripping, high-drama event held in huge, out-of-control waves. Author Quinn Haber has captured the riveting essence of the contest in his debut book.

Haber puts the reader on their own surf board, in the thick of the contest, at surfing’s ultimate destination – the world famous Pipeline on the North Shore of the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The reader gets to experience the actual conditions that professional surfers would encounter at this spot.

Pipeline’s huge and powerful waves break over a frighteningly shallow reef.  Perfect rides or career-ending (and even life-ending) wipeouts happen on this fast moving court. Even the most experienced surfers can find themselves facing a full-throttle disaster in a blink of the eye.

Those who know Pipeline wonder why someone isn't killed there on every swell. Just about every winter at least one surfer dies at the break, and usually it’s an expert surfer. 

“I wanted to create a reading adventure that was heart-pounding and full of action and possibilities—an experience not unlike surfing Pipeline,” said Haber. 

A freelance writer, Haber applies personal knowledge of the sport developed over many years of surfing Ocean Beach near San Francisco and writing skills he honed while working at a publishing firm.  He now lives with his wife on the island of Oahu, and works for the State of Hawaii. 

The book offers a unique experience. You begin on page one, but rather than reading in sequential order, you flip a coin at the end of each page and follow the prompt.  If you get a heads, you go to one section, tails you are told to go to another. This format gives you a sense of the actual randomness and unpredictability of surfing Pipeline. 

“I didn’t want to bind my reader to one fixed story,” said Haber. “So I built in lots of possibilities. The book has 89 different endings and there are some 300 adventurous paths to those ending. Every time you read it, you experience a new plot-twisted fate.” 

Haber even captures the local parlance of Hawaiian surfers and explains the jargon in a 15 page A to Z glossary. 

The web site www.experiencepipeline.com includes a sample storyline from the book along with the glossary and Pipeline facts and trivia. 

 

The Next Wave in Young Adult Reading

(SAN DIEGO, CALIF) – Open the new paperback Experience Pipeline (Casagrande Press, April 2008) and within a few pages you could be dropping down the face of a 20-foot Hawaiian wave or running off into the sunset with a good-looking Brazilian bodyboarder. Or, you could die!

It all depends on the toss of a coin, which in this book is the mode for moving from page to page. There are over 300 possible storylines, which all begin when you paddle into the waves at the Pipe Masters contest—the last stop on the professional surfing tour. It’s just you—the reader—and your two rivals on the final day of competition. If your coin flip comes up “heads,” you may end up out-riding your competitor to a champagne-drenching victory; if you get “tails,” you might get pummeled by the whitewater and crash into the coral reef.

Targeting a book to young adults is tricky. The new generation of digital natives is more enamored with playing high-action video games, text-messaging and changing up playlists on their iPods than with reading books. To author Quinn Haber’s credit, each plot-twisting chapter is only half a page long, the storylines are gripping and unforeseen, and each read is different from the last. The unlikely format of this book may have just the right elements for short-attention span readers.

Haber, who lives on Oahu, admits his approach is similar to the 1980s’ Choose Your Own Adventure series that provided young readers a dozen or so possible endings. In Experience Pipeline, Haber maintains, “I wanted to create a reading adventure that was heart-pounding and full of action and different each time—an experience not unlike surfing in big waves.”  He says he was inspired by sci-fi movies like Minority Report and Vanilla Sky, films in which the future is alterable. “I didn’t want to bind my reader to one fixed storyline. I wanted to give them the actual random, haphazard scenarios that professional surfers often encounter.”

The wild commercial success of the Choose Your Own Adventure formula could bode well for the reception of Haber’s alternative book format. “I know that moving from page to page based on a coin toss is a little…different. But, the spirit of youth is one of shirking convention,” he says.

His breadth of storylines is equally factual as fantastic. Colliding with your opponent during the competition? Yes, this happens. Wiping out, getting sucked into a coral reef cave, finding a treasure cache of gold in that cave, then winning the contest? That’s a pipedream.

Will such an unorthodox approach to young adult fiction win or wipeout at the bookstore? Let’s flip a coin and see.