Excitement Builds…

A miniature painting of a blue eye in a round gold frame, atop a vintage photo album with lettering in French.

It has been a long winter and spring, and we are finally in the home stretch before The Bereaved arrives at bookstores and Kindles everywhere.

Excited? YES.

Happy? Thrilled!

Nervous? Not really.

Tired? Energized!

Big plans? Yes!

I loved this “Eye” artwork and was so happy when Sibylline’s art director chose to use it on the cover. I’m leaving the cover image large so you can see the details, and I’ll tell you more about it. Take a look at how it turned out:

Front cover of the novel THE BEREAVED, featuring pink wallpaper and three old photos: one of a little white boy, one of a building, and the center artwork a painting of a blue eye in a small round gold frame, hung with a black bow.

The theme is Victorian mourning, and the Eye artwork centers the book cover. The background is a flocked Victorian wallpaper. It was more golden in an earlier version, but the red really pumped up the energy. The Orphan Train is the bottom photo, an old photo from as late as 1900, or as early as 1870. Hard to tell from the kids’ clothes. This is kind of the quintessential Orphan Train photo that shows up when you Google the term. On the right is a portion of the New York Home for the Friendless, which was an orphan “asylum,” or orphanage, where children who had lost their parents, or whose parents couldn’t keep them fed and housed, landed, if they didn’t make it another way. And on the left? That’s little Willie Gaston, about 8-10 years old. Hard to tell, because children dressed like undertakers in the 1860s.

William L. Gaston was my great-great grandfather, and I have several photos of him throughout his life. He married Winifred McDonald, and had two daughters, then one of them (Laura) had two daughters. Little Winifred (named for her grandma) was my Meemaw, but I never knew her; she died when I was less than a year old. The stories die out over time and no one remembers who came from where — until Ancestry came along and helped me find all the footprints and arrows and signposts.

The Bereaved is the story of how my 2x great-grandpa went from New York to Ohio as an orphan–but it’s told from his mother’s point of view. Who was Martha Seybolt Lozier? My third-great-grandmother, whose DNA runs in all my cells and mitochondria–who was this, and how did she lose her child? Read the novel and find out.

I will be posting more about my upcoming book launch, book tour, and some side quests along the way, to illuminate Martha’s story, and Will’s, and my own. It’s always more complex than you think. But get this: As I learned about Martha, I also found her parents, and their parents, and so on, back to Puritan times, where another long-forgotten grandmother appeared, just in time to become my next historical novel. That woman’s name was Silence Greenleaf, and I went on a trek last fall to find her.

I’d like you to meet here here, first, and next fall (September 2024), in the pages of my next novel, Silence.

A blonde white woman standing in an old graveyard behind a tombstone with hard-to-read old text.
The grave of Silence Greenleaf, 1701-1762; Bolton, Mass., October 2022.

That’s the topic for another day, so I’ll leave you wondering about that, and anticipating the release of The Bereaved, my eight-years-in-progress baby. Links for preorder below. Thanks for checking in!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Target

Walmart

Forthcoming from Sibylline Press Fall 2023

Excited to announce that I have signed a contract and my historical novel, The Bereaved, will be in bookstores in fall 2023. Prepare yourself for nattering and humblebrags with a side of shameless self promotion.

I hope you will love the story of Martha and her Orphan Train children, based on the true story of my fourth great grandmother and her four scattered children. Writing this story was one way I grieved the loss of our son. Martha and her lost boy are so much a part of me. Literally in my DNA.💔❤️‍🩹❤️

#fallbooks #bookstagram #booksofinstagram #historicalfiction #civilwar #suicidelosssurvivor

On the Road: How 10 of My Readings Went Wrong

Looks like the Titanic? In the lobby at the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco.
Looks like the Titanic? In the lobby at the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco.

Ever feel like a schmuck? I have the cure. In no particular order, here are some exciting or dreary adventures that happened to me whilst on the road or giving local readings. Feel better about yourself immediately upon reading!

  1. The bookstore owner giving the reading got my name wrong, my genre wrong, and said the novel (Tongues of Angels) was self-published when it small-press-pubbed. I may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Read more about this memorable event here.)
  2. The Portland bar that was supposed to premiere the Rebel Girl cocktail for the Doris Diaries debut forgot and did not buy any of the ingredients. Disappointing, after much ado, publicity, hoopla and advertising. Luckily, they had other alcohol. Lots of it.
  3. A second bar later on the same tour also did not buy the ingredients for the drink, and the owner was sick, leaving his right-hand man, a waiter, in charge. The right-hand man was annoyed at having a reader in the restaurant and only grudgingly set up the mic. He then stood in front of me, blocking me from the audience, as I was reading, and later, yelled at me in French from the back of the room. Yes, I was heckled in French in a Mexican restaurant in Arizona.
  4. A city library had zero attendees for my reading. I had bought advertising in the town ahead of time, sent flyers around, PRed like crazy, and so did the library. Two librarians came and listened to my presentation. We all felt like schmucks.
  5. I basically had to change my entire poetry reading at the podium because someone had brought impressionable children, just old enough to ask questions. The selection I had prepared was a romantic/sexy set of poems, and – I just couldn’t do sexy talk in front of the kids. Awkward? Yes.
  6. I pride myself on my vintage costumes when reading from The Doris Diaries. At a local reading for the first volume, I’ve Got Some Lovin’ to Do, I wore a lovely green ensemble, authentic from underpinnings outward. When I took my seat, I heard seams tear, I felt elastic give, and suddenly I was a sausage bursting its casing. With 50 people watching. #Sexy? You betcha.
  7. At another reading soon after, I wore a different vintage dress, less sausagy, but with some beautiful ribbon scrolls all around the skirt. As I waited for the reading to begin, I sat at a table and signed books. When I rose to go to the platform and read, the ribbonwork caught on the arm of the captain’s chair and tore out the back of the dress. I kept my front to the audience and kept smiling, despite the draft.
  8. I prepared a standard bio for the bookstore host to read in introducing me, but he scrapped that and instead, rewrote it in rhyme form (not his strong suit). I have blanked out most of the words, but what still haunts me is that final jarring line: “She’s always racy – Julia Park Tracey.” #fml
  9. I gave a poetry reading and had brought along my book, Amaryllis, for sale. As I grabbed one of them to sign, the book flipped open and I realized that the innards of the book were wrong. The inside sections were put together incorrectly, and the poems and acknowledgements were mixed up. Obviously a mistake at the printer – five years ago. I wonder in horror how many of those have been sold. #thingsthatkeepmeupatnight

    I travelled almost 4,000 miles by train in Fall 2012 to talk about Doris in Oregon, California, Arizona and New Mexico.
    I traveled almost 4,000 miles by train in Fall 2012 to talk about Doris in Oregon, California, Arizona and New Mexico.
  10. The time I was on tour, taking Amtrack from city to city, and the crew got my suitcase off the train but not my books. That’s right. Book store, no books. Ring this up: No sale.

I’m not done writing books or giving readings, so I expect I’ll have more adventures to add to this list in the next few months. (I’m in the throes of promoting Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop as we speak.)

In the meantime, be glad you’re not me.

10/6/2013 – Sonoma County Book Launch

Sunday, October 6, 4 p.m.
Occidental Center for the Arts. Book Launch: Reaching for the Moon. Doris Diaries, Vol. 2 with Julia Park Tracey. Further adventures of Doris Bailey Murphy in the Roaring Twenties.

Slide show and reading, “Doris on Horseback,” featuring Doris and her adventures with cowboys, horse racing, and her beloved steed, Mac. And also more cowboys.

Free admission but donations happily accepted! Refreshments sold. (This center was one of Doris’s pet projects, so any donations would have pleased her immensely.)

OCA, 3850 Doris Murphy Ct., Occidental. Wheelchair accessible. Further information: 707-874-9392. (NOTE the address!)

09/26/2013 – Cocktail Soiree at the Heathman Hotel

Thursday, Sept. 26, 5:30-7 p.m.
Come to the Heathman Hotel’s world-famous library to meet author Julia Park Tracey, sample Oregon’s pinot noir and the Rebel Girl cocktail invented for Doris. Hear excerpts from the Doris Diaries mentioning the Heathman by name, and enjoy the literary elegance of this renown hotel.

The soiree takes place in the Heathman’s priceless mezzanine library containing autographed books only by the authors who have stayed at the hotel. The two volumes of the Doris Diaries will be joining the elite collection. http://portlandlibrary.heathmanhotel.com/aboutlibrary.aspx

Doris Bailey met friends and paramours at the “New Heathman” many times in 1928 and 1929. She posted letters and listened to the pianist play. The Heathman is celebrating its 90th anniversary and welcomes readers and fans to an elegant cocktail soiree to meet the diaries’ editor and conservatrix, Julia Park Tracey, reading from “Reaching for the Moon: More Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen (1927-1929).”