B&O Railroad Museum Presents Tracks

Tracks: A Novel in Stories takes place on Amtrak’s Cardinal Line — a train traveling from Penn Station in Baltimore to Union Station in Chicago. It travels along the old B&O line of tracks. And the book even features the old B&O headquarters (now a train-themed Hotel Monaco) as well as the B&O Railroad Museum.

So the next event was a match meant to be: Tracks @ the B&O Railroad Museum!

I’ll be talking about trains and Tracks, and signing copies of my book at the museum this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. You can find me docked at Bay 14/15.

The B&O Railroad Museum calls Tracks “A great gift for the fiction reader or train lover!”

Enjoy a day at the B&O Railroad Museum. While you’re there, stop by Bay 14/15 to talk trains and get your own autographed copy of Tracks!

Learn more about this and other train events at the B&O’s website calendar of events.

http://www.borail.org/Calendar-bo.aspx


Find out more about the B&O at the museum’s main page.

http://www.borail.org/


Find out about other Tracks events at the novel’s website, where you can also read excerpts, reviews, endorsements, listen to NPR readings, and more.

www.TracksNovel.com


All Aboard for the B&O Railroad Museum!

Train Songs and Stories Tonight

Tonight’s the night! If you like trains, music, books, drinks, or parties, you’ll want to be at Cyclops Books and Music tonight! We’ll be enjoying “A Night of Train Stories and Songs @ Cyclops” from 7 to 10 p.m.


The lineup includes readings from my novel in stories, Tracks, set on a train traveling from Baltimore to Chicago. I’ll be joined by other authors and poets with train-themed readings: Lauren Beth Eisenberg, Holly Morse-Ellington, Virginia Crawford, Danuta Hinc, Eric Campos, Jessica Gregg, and Shirley Brewer.


Live train songs will be performed by local band Red Tractor Factory.


Rail drinks (or at least beer and wine) will be served, as well as tea and coffee.


Oh, and everything is free—the readings, the music, the drinks, and the entire party. Everything but the books; those will be for sale. (It is a bookstore, after all.)


Join us tonight from 7 to 10 p.m. for A Night of Train Stories and Songs @ Cyclops Books & Records.

Learn more (and chime in) at the Facebook event page.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=227546907304518


Or visit the evite page.

http://new.evite.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fb_share_widget&utm_content=fb_link&utm_campaign=invite#view_invite:eid=0064AAPMTMDWJMM5WEPBB4ISFUU43Y&gid=fb

Next Week is Train Week

Interesting, how some things seem to come in threes. Next week, there’s an engine, boxcar, and caboose of train-related events. It’s already got some people calling it the unofficial Train Week in Baltimore.


The Engine: Train Week gets started with Blood on the Tracks at Cyclops Books & Music on Sunday, November 13 at 8 p.m. Activist Brian Willson brings his extraordinary story to Cyclops for an unforgettable night of history, horror and hope—and he also brings copies of his new book, Blood on the Tracks.
www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=185466228202347



The Boxcar: A Night of Train Stories and Songs @ Cyclops takes place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 16. I’ll be reading excerpts from Tracks: A Novel in Stories. Friends and fellow writers will share their own train-themed stories and poems, including Holly Morse-Ellington, Shirley J. Brewer, Lauren Beth Eisenberg, Eric Campos, and Danuta Hinc. And live train songs will be performed by Red Tractor Factory. Free rail drinks will be served, and the party includes social time with a playlist of train songs and conversation.
www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=227546907304518


The Caboose: Tracks at the B&O Railroad Museum. Come visit the B&O Railroad museum on Saturday, November 19 between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and stop by bay 14/15. I’ll be stationed there with a display for Tracks. We’ll enjoy some train talk, and I’ll sign copies of the book the B&O Railroad Museum calls “a great gift for the fiction reader or train lover!”
www.borail.org/Calendar-bo.aspx


Next week is full of train events. Woo-hoo!

Five Train Stories Worth Riding

Recently, I was a guest blogger on C.M. Mayo’s popular writing blog, Madam Mayo. I was invited to write about five train stories—a list including both movies and books.

As I wrote for the post: “The train is a wonderful setting for a story. Trains are mysterious, exciting, and always in motion, the setting virtually unset. Strangers on a train are placed side by side to share a journey into the unknown, and in many cases, by the end of the line they are no longer strangers. Movies, novels, stories; adventures, comedies, mysteries—genres and themes as diverse as the passengers on a train. There are hundreds, but here are five train stories worth riding.”

What are the five train stories included in the post? You may know some; others may surprise you. Check them out at http://madammayo.blogspot.com/2011/07/guest-blogger-eric-d-goodman-5-train.html.

Today is Tracks Day

Today is the day—Tracks has arrived via Atticus books. Tracks is on the bookshelves of bookstores (brick and mortar as well as online) across the nation.

Want a taste before you order your copy? Tune into Baltimore’s NPR station, WYPR, on the radio or online tomorrow. That’s 88.1 FM and www.wypr.org. I’m reading from Tracks on NPR’s The Signal at 12 noon and again at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 1. The broadcast will air again on Saturday, June 2.

With the release of Tracks, I’m sighing a breath of relief. It’s a big moment for me as a fiction writer—decades in the making. It may have only been five or six years from first draft to agent to bookstore shelf … but prior to writing the first lines of Tracks, I spent decades writing fiction. From the moment in the third grade when I got hooked by a short story assignment, I dreamed of the day I’d have a literary agent and an independent publisher share my novel with the world. All of the prior novel drafts, comments from publishers, agents, and editors, and hard knocks lead me to what has become my debut novel in stories.

As surely as I’m breathing that sigh of relief, I’m also holding my breath. I’m a debut fiction writer with a small indie press facing an army of goliaths. You may have notice I’ve punched up the publicity for Tracks, in recent weeks, and that’s why. It’s hard for a debut book to be heard in the chorus of established bestsellers.

So please consider sharing Tracks. Whether you tweet it, post about it on Facebook, send an email to your list, mention it in your newsletter, suggest it to your book club, share it with a friend, ask about it at a bookstore that doesn’t have it in stock, or just mention one of the stories that may have hit home with you in a conversation—anything you can do to spread the word about Tracks is very much appreciated. Each advocate is an extra arrow to still my quiver, to continue battle with an army of goliaths analogy.

Today has been a whirlwind with all of the activity on Facebook, online, postcards, phone calls, and all of the congratulations. Thanks to all.

It’s been a long and winding line of track. Now it’s time to enjoy the ride.

Learn more about Tracks at www.TracksNovel.com where you can read excerpts (long and short), listen to past NPR radio readings, find out what others are saying about Tracks, get a timetable of readings and events, and order your copy.

If You’ve Only Seen the Front, You’ve Only Seen Half

The full cover for Tracks, a novel in stories, has been revealed! Take a look at the picture above. The front cover has been out on the Internet and in catalogs for months. This is the first time the full front and back cover layout has been released to the public.

The warm, earth-toned cover was designed by London-based designer Jamie Keenan. In designing the cover for Tracks, Keenan said, “The basic idea was to find an image of tracks that mirrored the ideas in the book — beginnings, endings, uncertainty, transformation, possibilities ...”

And if you think Keenan’s blurb is cool, check out the ones on the back cover!

Keenan knows his book jackets; he’s even filled auditoriums with his “Twenty Immutable Theories of Cover Design.” And he’s certainly put them to work with covers for authors such as:

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Stephen King

H.G. Wells

George Orwell

Junot Diaz

David Foster Wallace

Philip K Dick

Anthony Burgess

Tennessee Williams

Jean-Paul Sarte

Rudyard Kipling

Garrison Kellior

Nick Hornby, and

A.M. Homes.

Learn more about Jamie Keenan and see some of his favorite cover designs at his website.

www.keenandesign.com

Visit the Tracks website for more about Tracks.

www.TracksNovel.com