FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 26, 2014, Emporia, KS

Emporia Author Trio Releases Green Bike, a Group Novel

Green Bike, published by Meadowlark, September 1, 2014, follows the lives of three couples, using the McGuffin, or shared symbol, of a classic Schwinn bike to link parallel tales. Authors Kevin Rabas, Mike Graves and Tracy Million Simmons wrote the novel collaboratively, and in the spirit of serial works, it was written improvisatorially and episodically on a shared webpage.

The story begins with two graduate teaching assistants at K-State, a couple who share an apartment near campus. Bea comes home with a new bike and Calvin knows that Bea is seeing someone else. Bea’s bike is borrowed or stolen throughout the narrative, sometimes by Miles, an English Professor at K-State who falls in love with Bea later in the novel. Meanwhile, in a separate but related tale, a young man in his late teens tends to his ailing mother, who wills him one of her favorite things in life, the green bike. The young man falls in love and spends the summer fixing up the bike just before he begins college at K-State.

“Green Bike reads like jazz improvisational solos: each author works the narrative threads, making them distinct yet seamlessly interwoven to create a layered novel. Like the classic Schwinn of the title, this book will lead you on a wonderful adventure,” says Hardy Jones, author of Every Bitter Thing.

Rabas called the novel “a wild campus romp.” He said, “It’s at once a love story, a love triangle, a kunstlerroman (artist’s way novel), coming of age tale, wild college days tale, and tale about losing an aging loved one. How can it be all of these things? Because it’s a novel of parallel tales. We’re not just in one narrative. We’re in three.”

The book will be available in print and as eBook at all major online bookstores. Learn more at www.meadowlark-books.com.

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Kevin Rabas co-directs the creative writing program at Emporia State University and edits Flint Hills Review. He has four books: Bird’s Horn, Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner, Sonny Kenner’s Red Guitar, and Spider Face: stories.

Mike Graves teaches Intensive English and TESOL courses at Emporia State University. His writing has appeared in Thorny Locust, Flint Hills Review, and elsewhere. He has recently finished a novel about a private detective set in 1937 Wichita. When life conjures its riddles, he turns to back roads and baseball for answers.

Tracy Million Simmons is a freelance writer with more than 500 articles in print and the yearbook editor for the Kansas Authors Club. Her novel, Tiger Hunting, was published in 2013 and was the winner of the 2013 J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book award.

Meadowlark is an independent publisher, born of a desire to produce high-quality books for print and electronic delivery. An imprint of Chasing Tigers Press, Meadowlark will focus on developing a collection of books that focus on a Midwest regional appeal, via author and/or topic. They are open to working with authors of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and mixed media.

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