Category Archives: Release Blitz

“Both tender and bracing, this is a book that refuses easy answers, inviting readers to sit with discomfort, discovery, and the quiet power of resilience.” —Jeannine Ouelette, author of The Part That Burns and director of Writing in the Dark,

Throughout her life, Renee Gilmore has been in love with the open road. Her passion for exploration has taken her across all seven continents, but the real journey has been much more personal. In Wayfinding, she confronts the impetus behind her wanderlust: a lifetime shaped by loss, betrayal, and sexual violence, beginning in childhood.

Told through a series of car trips and postcards from the road, this powerful memoir maps a route toward healing, acceptance, and hope, with stops at Waffle House and the Monaco Grand Prix along the way.

Narrated with unflinching honesty and flashes of humor, Wayfinding is the story of a fiercely resilient woman determined not only to survive but to completely remap a life of freedom, connection, and joy.

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“Her ability to write about painful experiences without sacrificing her sense of wit, her gift for incisive observation, and the need to make space for self-reflection is a testament to Gilmore’s masterful gifts as a storyteller.” – Roy G. Guzmán, author of Catrachos: Poems

“This capable writer brings the reader through what is at times a difficult journey, yet her clear-eyed, innovative narrative driven by her inner strength makes this a worthy trip”– Kate St. Vincent Vogl, author of Lost & Found and co-author of Iron Horse Cowgirls

Exclusive Excerpt

Angels in Plaid Shirts

Thank you, Angels.

Twenty miles outside Sidney, Nebraska, I heard the thump, thump of a tire that was breathing its last, leaving its skin in the right lane of I-80, and its bones on the wheel. It was January,
and I was leaving Minnesota in the rearview and heading to Albuquerque. I was a mid-year transfer student to the University of New Mexico, and it was time to go. I was both driving toward my future and away from something else. Away from a lot of things. I had made mistakes, and I had put myself in danger – real danger – more than once. In the previous two-and-a-half years, I had been battered and nearly destroyed by two separate assaults, and I lost the scholarship I needed to stay at the Catholic college I attended in northern Minnesota. I made terrible choices in men, money, and alcohol. I had recently come home from studying abroad in Ireland, and during the last couple of months I was there, I got engaged to a boy, and then we broke up. It was messy, and I felt lost.

When I got back from Ireland, Duluth had gotten too small, too cold, too provincial for me, and I needed a change. There were too many people I knew, and too many places that held very bad memories. I fired off applications to colleges in warm places that I could sort of afford. I was accepted by Arizona State, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of New Mexico. New Mexico was the cheapest. I prepared for a new start in the desert.

I didn’t know a soul in Albuquerque, and that was okay with me. The inside of my 1976 Plymouth Duster was packed to the rafters with pots and pans, clothes, and my Smith Corona typewriter, hefty in its light blue case. The trunk of the Duster was a treasure trove of shoes, frying pans, and bedding in white garbage bags, anchored by my 50-pound RCA television.

I had been fiddling with the radio, trying to find the sweet spot between Jesus and Dolly Parton, when I heard that sound and felt the pull of the wheel. I had been on the road for hours that day, driving by dormant cornfields with their lonely stubby stalks, waving at truckers, and eating gas station doughnuts. I was trying to make it to my grandmother’s house in Fort Morgan, Colorado, for lemon cake pie, homemade biscuits, and easy games of cards. I confidently flew by every exit for Grand Island, Nebraska, where my family usually stopped, with the hubris that only a 20-year-old can possess.
I pulled over on the shoulder and stopped. This was years before cell phones. If I got out, that flat tire was going to be real. I thought I would just sit for a minute. I hummed along to Led
Zeppelin on the radio. Ate a chocolate-covered donut. That minute turned into five and I finally clicked out of my seatbelt and opened the door. Yep, the left rear tire, flatter than flat and missing several layers of rubber. I knew how to change a tire – my father wouldn’t let me out in the world without it. We had practiced and practiced

when I got my driver’s license at 16. By practice, I mean my father stood in the driveway, in his baggy jeans, plaid shirt, and cardigan, smoking a cigarette. He pointed out where I missed something, very occasionally telling me, that was pretty good. I knew where to locate the jack, I knew how to loosen lug nuts, and I could heft the spare out of the trunk. I knew what to do.
I opened the trunk and sighed. It had taken two of us, my father and I, to get that huge RCA television into the trunk.
There is no way one of me was going to hoist it out. And the spare tire, which we had checked just two days before, was tucked in its compartment under everything. I looked to the freeway, and there were no cars for several flat miles, in either direction.

More sighing.

I started unloading the trunk on the side of the road.

Comforters. Shoes. A spare winter coat. My red Slimline telephone. I dug and lifted until nothing was left in the cavernous space but that damn RCA. I rocked it one way and then the other. There was just no way I could get it out. I stood with my hands on my hips. I was a 20-year-old girl with no more good ideas.
I turned toward the freeway. I heard the distant rumble of 18 wheels eating the road. Long before I saw it. I had no choice. I flapped my right hand listlessly. I tried hard to look brave and tough and not cry. Tried not to think about the fact that I could be kidnapped right there by the side of the road, or murdered. My picture and story would end up on 48 Hours, for sure. The mountain of a vehicle started to slow, edging toward the shoulder, and came to a stop with a whoosh of air brakes. The driver, with his straw hat, cowboy boots, brown suspenders, and round belly, stepped down from the truck cab. He was as old as my dad, sun- soaked and strong. “Looks like you have a problem there, little lady.” Without permission, two tears wobbled down my face as he approached me. He hitched up his jeans. “Let’s see what we got.”

He helped me yank that TV out of the trunk like a tooth from a socket. We grabbed the spare tire and the jack and got to work. I jacked up the car, and he unscrewed the lug nuts. One was very stubborn and he swore at it with great creativity and enthusiasm. We pulled that tire off, and as we did, the rest of the
rubber shrugged off the rim onto the ground. We put the wheel, its once-shiny surface now pitted and scratched, on my front seat, and loaded everything back into the trunk. He got on his CB and found out good news and bad. The good news was there was a garage 20 miles away, in Sidney, and they could get me a tire. The bad news was that they would get it tomorrow. Or the next day. He told them I was coming.
I thanked him and offered him ten dollars for helping me, but he laughed and told me to spend it on a new tire. I pulled back on the interstate, and drove far slower than the posted speed, with the radio off, straining to hear any signs of distress from the spare tire. There was honking, as I was passed by every car and truck heading in the same direction. I made it to Sidney. I found

the garage and pulled a third of my cash out of my red wallet to pay George the mechanic for the new tire. I left my car and most of my possessions in his care. I stayed overnight a few blocks away in a Howard Johnson’s Motor Inn, with the dresser pushed in front of the door. When I walked back to the garage early the next afternoon, the tire had arrived. George clearly felt sorry for
me. “Hey, I got a kid your age.” He didn’t charge me to remove the spare and tuck it back into the compartment in the trunk, next to the jack, under the bags of bedding, and the RCA. George said that damn TV weighed 60 pounds.

I made it to Fort Morgan, a day late. I stopped overnight, ate two good meals, and was sent on my way in the morning, with a lemon cake pie and a plastic fork. From Fort Morgan, it was about an eight-hour drive to Albuquerque. I arrived right before the sun was thinking of setting over the mesa, and there was just enough golden hour left to read the street signs. I already had my key, so I hauled everything out of the Duster and up to my apartment until nothing remained but the TV. I stood in the parking lot, in the deep twilight, and assumed the hands-on-hip position, as I stared into the trunk. An angel, in the shape of a plaid-shirted man named Terry Garcia (or that’s the name he gave me, anyway), asked me
if I needed some help. Together, slowly, we carried that TV from the parking lot up the stairs to my second-floor studio apartment. The next morning, I wanted to thank him. I described him to the apartment manager. She said that no one named Terry Garcia lived there. I never saw him again.
I was not prone to thinking about God, about angels, about mysterious, mystical protectors. I attended Mass when required by family obligation, I lit candles in church because the ritual was comforting. But my hard-edged cynicism about religion, about those all-powerful beings who supposedly lived in the clouds, who controlled what happened to me in everyday life, had begun to seep in. It all started to make less sense than when I blindly accepted it earlier in my life. All the dogma, the unlikely-to-be-true Biblical myths I absorbed during five years of Catholic school, two years of confirmation classes and then Catholic college. I mean, didn’t God control the hands of the men who wrote the Bible? Whispered in their ears, shared the Truth™, the Good News, His word, to control the people? But I digress.
Maybe a benevolent God, a personal savior did not, could not exist. I was starting to think that maybe this patriarchal God was just not for me. Maybe I just had “daddy issues.” How would this Father God explain sitting on the sidelines while I experienced such horrible, evil things? I was sad and angry and I wanted answers. But at that point, I didn’t have anything better to replace Christianity, Catholicism so I continued to search. I wanted to believe so badly.

Copyright, 2025, Renee Gilmore. Excerpted from Wayfinding: A Memoir with permission from Trio House Press.

About the Author

Renee Gilmore is a multi-genre writer, essayist, and poet. She writes about her experiences growing up in a family of car enthusiasts – mechanics, racers, and collectors – and navigating a family full of secrets. Renee holds degrees from the University of New Mexico and Hamline University and identifies as a person with a disability. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Louisville Review, Fatal Flaw, and Pink Panther Magazine, among others. She lives in suburban Minneapolis with her husband, Steven, and works in corporate learning and development.

Brimming with dark humor, violence, and mystery, The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is a blood-soaked slasher sure to keep readers guessing until the very last page.

Rose DuBois is not your average final girl.

Rose is in her late 70s, living out her golden years at the Autumn Springs Retirement Home.

When one of her friends dies alone in her apartment, Rose isn’t too concerned. Accidents happen, especially at this age!

Then another resident drops dead. And another. With bodies stacking up, Rose can’t help but wonder: are these accidents? Old age? Or something far more sinister?

Together with her best friend Miller, Rose begins to investigate. The further she digs, the more convinced she becomes: there’s a killer on the loose at Autumn Springs, and if she isn’t careful, Rose may be their next victim.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHILIP FRACASSI is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of the story collections Behold the Void and Beneath a Pale Sky. His novels include A Child Alone with Strangers, Gothic, and Boys in the Valley. His stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, Southwest Review, Interzone, and Black Static. Philip lives in Los Angeles.

Little Deaths All in a Row: Essays on Sex and Death, is a personal, philosophical, and scientific journey. While at first glance sex and death may seem diametrically opposed, in these essays Earley uses her intimate encounters to illustrate the ways in which they are unexpectedly and inextricably linked. Using her personal experiences as a queer mother, a volunteer hospice caretaker, and a scientist as a multi-faceted lens through which to view these topics, she offers readers new ways to think about what it means to be alive, even in the face of death.

The essays in this book are in continuous and direct conversation with one another: driven by intellect, scientific insights, and emotional power, they forge insightful connections between sex and death that illuminate and interrogate two of the central truths of our human condition: sexual and mortal. In the tradition of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body, and Melissa Febos’s Abandon Me, Little Deaths All in a Row aims to spark a dialogue between the rational sphere of the brain and the intuitive realm of the body; between the erotic choices we make, and the end-of-life choices we are not always able to make, but are witnessed by others. This is the narrative mystery that serves as the engine of the book.

Embodied in the work is the gamut of Earley’s erotic experiences of queer love, both the ecstasy and the heartbreak. She dives into the struggles and joys of her life as a mother of two children in a non-traditional, queered family structure.

As a hospice care volunteer, she is continually at the forefront of others’ experiences of death and dying, and the very different processes each person goes through. As a scientist, she has studied the brain chemistry of death, and has stared down traumatic memories of her own near-fatal wounds, searching for links between pain and pleasure, temporary moments of release, and permanent endings.

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About the Author

Elizabeth Earley is a clinical scientist with a background in biology and organic chemistry. She is the author of the popular Substack series, Queering Reality, with 100,000+ subscribers. She is also the author of two novels: A Map of Everything, a debut finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize; and Like Wings, Your Hands (Red Hen Press), winner of the Women’s Prose Prize (judged by Aimee Bender), the American Fiction Prize for Best LGBTQ novel, and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction by the Publishing Triangle, alongside Ocean Vuong and Jacqueline Woodson. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University-Los Angeles. Her stories and essays have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The First Line Magazine, Fugue, Hair Trigger, and Glimmer Train, among other publications. She was awarded the David Friedman Memorial Prize for Fiction and was twice a finalist for the AWP New Journals Award. She has received two Pushcart nominations and was a finalist for the 2011 Bakeless Literary Prize for Fiction.

Amid the gangland wars of Prohibition, one fisherman’s long-shot play to secure his family’s future brings disaster to everyone he loves.

Based partly on family lore, Matt Riordan’s follow-up to The North Line is for readers of Jeannette Wall’s Hang the Moon and S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed.

Eld should’ve known better. Hell, he did know better. But watching lesser men hit big paydays—men who didn’t fight in Europe—grew unbearable. So, when the opportunity arises, he reaches for a little something extra for his family, and even more for himself. With Prohibition expiring in a matter of months, his turn from fisherman to rumrunner was supposed to be temporary. It seemed the perfect plan. Even Maggie, Eld’s normally sensible wife, is on board.

Things don’t go to plan. Amid the region’s players battle to capture the biggest piece of a shrinking pie, Eld’s tiny family operation is caught in the crossfire. One bitterly cold night packing whiskey across Lake Huron costs Eld dearly, and his family even more.

Hunted by gangsters and squeezed by the Depression, Eld, Maggie, and the children are scattered: Eld to Canada on a doomed quest, Maggie and her daughter forced into finding sanctuary in a faith more cult than religion. When they finally reunite, they may not even recognize each other as the same people who crossed their fingers and threw the dice for a shot at a better life.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Riordan grew up in Michigan but spent his early twenties working on commercial fishing boats in Alaska. After college, Matt drifted from commercial fishing through a variety of jobs before landing in law school. He then became a litigator in New York City, where he practiced for twenty years. He now lives with his family in Australia.

After quitting her job with an awkward text to her boss, Lucie Frost planned to live out her early retirement fantasy. Except she was lost, an empty nester with no job, no structure, no identity, and no clear purpose. Everything changed (with the help of wine) after she binge-watched the television program 90 Day Fiancé one day, which led to a stream of answers to her question about midlife: What do we do with our lives when our jobs or children are no longer making those decisions for us?

Her trivia-filled memoir, How the Hell Did I Not Know That, follows the first year of Frost’s postretirement era, a year when curiosity pulled her off the couch and into a world where she discovered how to build a fulfilling life from the smallest of wonders—things like how to unboil an egg with urine (but why, oh why?), where the vice president of the United States lives (something we should know?), and why the sky is blue (wait, didn’t we learn that in third grade?).

How the Hell Did I Not Know That is a witty and honest companion, a girlfriend, if you will, for women in midlife who are struggling to find their place in the world, who are concerned about misogyny, climate change, and the industrial prison complex, just not while watching the latest episode of The Bachelor. Frost shows us that women “of a certain age” need to take themselves seriously while remembering to laugh at inappropriate things and that they can find meaning in life by relying on the power of curiosity.

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About Lucie Frost

Lucie Frost retired as a lawyer and is now a humor and satire writer. She is a regular contributor to NextTribe and has written for Slackjaw, Belladonna, Points in Case, and other publications. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.