Soul Surfer Johnny Returns: More Wild Adventures

While writing Soul Surfer Johnny the first book in this series I was flooded with so many additional memories of Puerto Tranquilo that I knew a second book was waiting to be written. By the time the first book was finished I had jotted down more than 125 other memorable episodes. I was challenged to write the book that became Soul Surfer Johnny by Joel Fotinos vice president for spiritual books for Penguin-Putnam publishers during a lunch we had in 2007. He had just read my Awakening The Soul: The Trilogy and challenged me to write a novel incorporating the essence of that tome ala the most successful novel of the millennium Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code. While Soul Surfer Johnny is certainly no Da Vinci Code it does carry forth that essence of spiritual growth describing a young mans soul awakening. The heart of the story however remains his many wild surfing adventures most in Puerto. But it wasnt planned that way. A number of years ago I began compiling a list of topics for my Puerto book which I knew I would write some day. But I had no plans of incorporating those memories into the book Fotinos challenged me to write revealing how to create the spiritual awakening possible within each of us. However when I started writing it was immediately apparent where this story was going ... to Puerto where my personal spiritual awakening occurred some 25 years earlier. Thus the first Soul Surfer Johnny book had a serious underlying story of spiritual awakening that seemed out of place in a surfing adventure novel. But it really wasnt because what was being portrayed as happening to Johnny really had happened to me and has occurred to others so I knew it was eminently possible. I had so much fun writing Soul Surfer Johnny that I immediately started writing this book its direct sequel but with a difference. This volume does not have that heavy underlying story of spiritual growth but rather only occasional references to Johnnys continuing awakening. Its mostly outrageous tales of his many Puerto adventures and episodes. This book richly continues the adventures of Soul Surfer Johnny the story of an East Coast bad boy who becomes a good kid as he learns to surf in the waves off Southern California. In the process he joins his own sort of gang then ventures south to the big waves of Southern Mexico. He is guided to Puerto Tranquilo in the late 1970s by several of his fellow Tyrony Bros. gang members who had discovered the fantastic surf break there several years before. There he is witness to and participates in a bizarre series of adventures. Unexpectedly he begins to explore his spirituality and discovers his true inner self for the first time dramatically improving his life. Like its predecessor this continuing wild tale is almost true however sometimes the actual circumstances are slightly enhanced while conveying the basic truth. For example a few wave heights may have been exaggerated occasionally - except in the Big Wednesday chapter which is Johnnys true eye-witness account. But most of the books stories actually happened as described. It makes no claim toward being all-inclusive or a legitimate history of the town. Its just a lot of mostly true stories about a wonderful little town in Southern Mexico. All stories are re-told as accurately as memory serves.