[at-l] AT Trail Stories, Volume I

[Tim Hewitt <thewitt@fairchildsemi.com>]

So, it's like this. I am working on a book about my thru hike. Many of you
already know this, and yes, I know there are lots of these books already. I'm
doing this for personal closure, OK. Nuf said.

I had originally considered adding in a chapter for other thru hikers to send me
their trail stories. I had intended this for people who would not otherwise
publish anything short of an article in Trailways or their local newspaper. As I
was working through this concept, I decided to take it one step further. 

Here's the deal.

I'm offering to serve as editor for a new series of books; tentatively titled
Appalachian Trail Stories - Volume I (and II and III and IV, and well, you get
the idea).

The book will feature trail shorts - stories that otherwise would not be printed
for wide distribution. This is not for your end-to-end journal story, but for
other stories about the trail, your experiences as a thru hiker, your best and
worst days, etc. Jack? You wanna tell all about the Doyle? Here's a good way to
do it.

If you want to write a 350 page trail book - well go ahead, just don't send it
to me for inclusion in this book. If you want to write 30 short stories, please
do. We'll just put them in future volumes; spreading around the wealth so to speak.

I'm still working on the details, and I'll have a web site up soon with
specifics, but I wanted to let you - my trail family - know first. I'm also only
interested in long distance hiker stories here - no offense to those of you who
have only done weekends or several hundred miles of the trail. I'm likely going
to limit this to people with 1800 miles or more of the trail behind them. Why?
Well I think these guys need help :). Seriously, I want to give something back
to the thru-hiking community that helped me to make it through my walk in the
woods, and those of you who did the big miles really inspired me.

Will you get paid for your work? Absolutely. I suspect that royalties will be
split between the editor (that's me) and the authors based on some arbitrary
rules I make - though equitable if I can be trusted to make such a split based
on quantity and interest of the story you submit.  These would be paid out for a
limited time after publication - say 10 years - and then any additional
royalties will go to the editor. This is more for ease in tracking _you_ than
anything else. I don't imagine that there will be any serious money to be made
in any of this, but that's not my goal anyway.

I'm doing this to help all of you get your stories published. If I can make a
buck while I'm at it great. It won't be my driving force however. If you don't
think I'm serious, look at the website I built and now maintain as a volunteer
at 
http://wcha.org. I do silly things sometimes for little or no pay and like it.
Yeah, I guess I am a bit on the stupid side sometimes.

If anyone is interested in participating, please let me know. I'll specifically
send you an invitation when I'm ready to accept manuscripts - probably before
the end of the month.

There is plenty of writing talent out there, and I'm willing to read it, cull
it, turn it into a book, and fight with a publisher to get it to market.

Anyone wanna play?

-Paddler
GA>ME Class of 99
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