It’s here! I’m pleased to announce the release of T is for Train. I’m very happy with what this book has become. It started with the idea of writing about the trip here on my website, but I felt the scope gradually increase every day after getting back from my trip last summer. The result is a 55 page, 16,000 word, hybrid work that is part memoir, part travel writing, part writing craft, and part New Journalism.
I consider it a testimony to a life of Reading, Writing, and Thinking.
Some of my experiences last summer conjured ghosts of my youth. When I was 19, I was facing a breakdown of various sorts. I didn’t know how to deal with it. One morning, I decided to get on a bus and ran away to Minneapolis with no plan other than hitting the road. As I began to write about last summer’s Train Adventure, a return to my youth kept happening and ultimately taught me more about both experiences.
I created this diagram to help explain the book’s structure.
I am highly drawn to the New Journalists and what they and succeeding generations have done with immersive literary non-fiction. I want to do a “big” non-fiction book someday and I also want to borrow their approaches for my fiction too. I highly recommend both Tom Wolfe’s anthology The New Journalism and Boynton’s follow up The New New Journalism. These books have greatly impacted my thoughts on writing.
I did the art work on the book cover. I did it with Oil Pastels and based the slightly abstract work on a photograph I took from the train in Glacier National Park.
I self-published T is for Train on my own imprint through Amazon KDP publishing. I did this for two main reasons.
First, I felt the book was so hybrid to the point that other publishers may not like it. They might want to remove the stuff about writing. They might want more travel. More memoir. I wanted to keep control of it regardless of how weird it might be.
Second, I wanted to experience KDP to see what the model is like. I’ve had the chance to be in some local author fairs and I wanted a book that I had interest in selling. My other two chapbooks had intentional contracts that limited my interest or ability really to sell. For example, I have to buy Tony Bone at list price. If folks want that book, they are better off getting it themselves on Amazon. I also wrote it 5 years ago, so am a little less interested in pitching it. So far I am happy with the KDP model.
I will share more about my imprint and my longer term goals for it soon.
If you read the book, I would love it if you shared a review on Amazon and also let me know what you thought!
Al Kratz 