Book Club Inquiry

I love book clubs and have been a member of one myself. I would love to come and visit your book club either virtually or physically (in the Sacramento/Foothills area).

Connect with me through Novel Network:

All book club scheduling is done via Novel Network. This is a free service that arranges a 30-minute online visit either by FaceTime, Skype, or phone. The visit is free and so is your membership. There is, however, a small fee for longer, one-hour online and/or in-person visits. Please click here to sign up for your Novel Network membership and to request an in-person or online visit to your book club.

Thank you!

Goodreads Giveaway throughout August!

The Bereaved comes out in August, and the launch party is days away. I wanted to share some fun stuff with you. For one, there’s a Goodreads Giveaway going now through the end of the month. (Click the link there to enter.) No charge to enter, of course. Don’t be silly. Of course I want you to win a copy!

Then there’s The Bereaved book trailer. I’m working on posting it to the site here; it goes live on Friday on social media. Which, by the way, for me now is mostly Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, although I am definitely on TikTok, and I have a toe in the water at Spoutible and Post, and my old account still lingering on Twitter, aka X. Follow the links on the main page to find me!

The Bereaved book trailer:

YouTube Book Trailer

And then there’s just the joy of holding the book and seeing friends reading or receiving their books. This makes me so very happy.

Thanks, Simi, Ann, Laura, Lisa, Dad and Glenn!

Not to go bonkers here, but it’s all part of the book release, marketing and all that. More to come! Stay tuned.

Tick Tock

Countdown is on for my book launch — August 8, in Grass Valley, 6-8 pm, at the UUCM: Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains. I’m ordering cake! I’m placing ads!

You like cake, don’t you?

We’ve been collecting reviews, including this starred review:

Tracey does a masterful job in this novel, developing Martha as a relatable narrator; readers will find that their spirits rise and fall with hers. For the most part, her life in the city is almost too wrenching to witness. The most painful aspect of the story, wonderfully handled by Tracey, is its depiction of the casual cruelty of the righteous folk who think they should be thanked as they break families apart. This novel is based on members of the author’s own family; baby Homer became William Lozier Gaston, who’s Tracey’s great-great grandfather.

An often painful but uplifting novel by a writer at the top of her game.

Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)

Planning the book tour, writing essays and blog posts, and the like–it’s the kind of zany fun part of getting published. It’s midsummer, and ideally I’d be sitting out in the hammock with a book or a notepad. But not this year. Why, you ask? A couple of reasons.

  1. Weird weather– it was chilly for most of June for some reason (cough–climate change–cough!)
  2. I’m doing some research that involves reading old family letters and they would blow around outside.
  3. We have a ton of ants and mosquitos this year, probably because of high rain and snowpacks over the winter. Too many bugs– on and near the hammock.
  4. I must admit it — I have a small case of breast cancer. I was diagnosed in March after a wonky mammogram, had lumpectomy surgery in May, and have been undergoing radiation treatment over the past few weeks. Two more weeks to go, and I will be super radiated and ready to launch. My diagnosis was early, and it’s a Stage 1A, one breast, and they have high hopes for 100% cure. So my fingers are crossed as much as anyone can cross them. I haven’t posted about this on social media but it’s true. I was planning to post *after* I finish radiation. As in, fait accompli. So far, so good.

So bear with me as I go squiggly with book release excitement. Know that I am finishing up revisions on my historical novel slated for next fall release through Sibylline, and the letters? Research for the next novel, also historical fiction based on my an-sisters, as I like to call them. Won’t this look good on a cake?

I’ve got my eye on you…

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.💔❤️‍🩹❤️

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