Hello friends!
Welcome to 2024! It’s Pub Day for The Tigerbelles!
My focus right now is to share the story with as many people as possible so that this inspirational team of women can get the recognition they deserve. That has translated into a mass of scheduling for radio spots, podcast interviews, library and bookstore visits, and anything else I can think of. Generally, I’m just making myself available for the next few months.
The publicist at the publisher has been great. Very available to me for requests and insights, and also finding opportunities I wouldn’t have thought of within the sports journalism world especially. But I have found that most of the things that have popped have been through friends of friends in the industry. I’ve been talking up this story to anyone who will listen for the last couple of years with a lot of interest, and now those friends are connecting me to others who are helping.
It's so interesting to see how something I thought might work doesn’t, and then an off-hand conversation turns into a huge lead. But the thing that I’ve found most gratifying is how authors support each other. No one can offer insights like other writers ahead of you in the publishing world, and they remember what it felt like trying to look behind the curtain and seeing only the vaguest hint of shapes. Looking at you especially, Andrew Maraniss!
My best advice to writers who have a release coming up is to seek support from other writers. We can compare lists, share resources, best tips and practices, and overall be open about our experience. The publishing industry is notoriously opaque, and the creators who provide the content are often the last to figure out what works.
I’ve been the recipient of extremely generous support from a crew of authors, and I look forward to the opportunity to pay it forward!
As Mae Faggs, the mother of the Tigerbelles, stressed to her teammates, you don’t graduate until you teach your younger teammates everything you know. The goal is for them to be even better than you. And the Tigerbelles continue to teach us all how to be a team in a world of individuals.
What people are saying about The Tigerbelles:
From Tina Chambers for Chapter 16, a division of Humanities TN – the definitive literary news resource for the state
“Aime Alley Card’s extraordinary book, The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State, describes the women’s track and field program at Nashville’s Tennessee State University from its humble beginnings to the triumphant performance of Wilma Rudolph and her teammates at the 1960 Rome Olympics… By employing an oral history format, with copious first-person accounts of the events she chronicles, Card imbues this inspiring story with an immediacy and intensity that is hard to resist.”
Events:
1/2 Live radio interview with Brian Sebastian of Movie Reviews & More
1/3 at Parnassus Books in conversation with Dwight Lewis
1/4 Live radio interview with Cyrus Webb, Conversations Live!
1/5 Visit with New Hope Academy – where a portion of the book proceeds will be donated to the Edward Temple Scholarship fund.
1/6 book signing at Tennessee State University for the first track meet of the year
1/13 book signing at the Stowe Books 1-3pm EST in Stowe, Vermont
1/16 Grubbie Debut at Porter Square Books/ Grub Street
1/17 Hosting Agent Panel for WNBA Boston
1/22 Presentation at the Walpole Library
Many more to follow throughout the spring including Brookline Booksmith, and The Gloucester Bookstore/Sawyer Free Library. I’ll be keeping you posted, and you can always check my website for the latest information.
Happy reading!
Aime
Congratulations Aime! Such an amazing story and I love to see this book realized. I’m just a couple of chapters in and I feel like this should be in the swag bag for track and field in Paris this summer.
Wooooo!!! 🎉 It’s here. Congratulations, Aime! The cover looks great, and I really think people will love it.