CHANGING CLOTHES: A MONTH-LONG GENDER SWAP

What happens when a heterosexual married couple swaps genders for one month? My husband volunteered to shave his legs and “do all the things a woman has to do” for thirty days. I thought he’d learn about the costs—time, money, effort—that being feminine requires. He thought I’d learn to appreciate warm, simple clothing and stop caring how I looked. We were wrong about so many things.

This 66,000-word hybrid memoir combines narrative, journal entries, and unedited conversations we called “The Bathtub Blogs.” The dual-voice structure lets both partners be heard as we simultaneously navigate shopping, sexuality, power dynamics, and the invisible labor that makes being a woman exhausting. Unlike single-perspective gender explorations, Changing Clothes documents how both partners experience the experiment in real time—discovering how men might behave like women, women might behave like men, and how much of what we call “personality” is actually performance.

Manuscript complete. Currently seeking representation.

THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL QUILT

Most people thru-hike the Appalachian Trail in one straight shot. I finished it the way I had to finish it—in sections, over five years, interrupted by life and bad men and babies. This isn’t a conquest story. This is about learning to leave, learning to come back, and teaching my daughter to do the same.

Over five years, I hiked every direction, every season, completing the trail like a quilt stitched together in pieces. The trail taught me I was capable of leaving—first a disastrous relationship, then a marriage. It taught me I could hike solo, could hike with partners, could build trail family. It taught me the real lesson: you don’t have to do it all at once. You just have to keep coming back.

For fifteen years, I taught my daughter Jinda what the trail taught me. At nineteen, she led her friends on their first backpacking trip—through the same mountains where I first learned about the AT. She taught them to check gear, plan routes, hang bear bags. Leading. Choosing. Capable. Breaking the family pattern of choosing the wrong men. Building a different pattern instead.

This 75,000-word literary memoir will appeal to readers of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Heather Anderson’s Thirst. First section complete, full manuscript in progress.

TRAIL MAGIC & OTHER AT STORIES

The Appalachian Trail taught me about coincidence, synchronicity, and the universe providing exactly what you need when you need it. This collection gathers adventure stories from 28 years of hiking—the moments when ice bridges appear at impossible crossings, when strangers offer loaves and fishes after morning prayers, when lost dogs find their way back through ranger station miracles.

These aren’t thru-hiker conquest stories. They’re about trail magic—the pancake mix that appears when you’re out of food, the perfect ride that materializes exactly when you need it, the wild ponies in Greyson Highlands. Some are dangerous (Mahoosuc Notch ice bridges, hypothermia in the Smokies), some are joyful (a hiker wedding in a field of buttercups), all of them examine what happens when you pay attention to what the trail is trying to tell you.

The collection includes Guardian Angels of Ice Bridges, A Matter of Food, Losing Nordica, Finding Greyson, A Ride Around the Smokies, A Warm Shower in PA, plus stories from Great Smokies hypothermia, Katahdin summit, strawberries on the Humps, and teaching Jinda to hike. Complemented by the “So There I Am” poem series and original photos, maps, and drawings from nearly three decades on the trail.

Structure: Episodic, can be read in any order
Market: Outdoor adventure, hiking community, armchair travelers
Tone: Accessible, wonder-filled, engaging
Strategy: Minimal overlap with The Appalachian Trail Quilt memoir—memoir gets brief mentions, this collection gets full detailed versions

Fifty-six pages complete, additional stories in development.

LIVING WHILE DYING: A CAMINO MEMOIR

Two weeks before leaving for Spain, I couldn’t walk two miles. I had coronary microvascular dysfunction and secondary heart failure from a COVID vaccine reaction. I’d spent months getting my affairs in order, thinking I had a few months left. When I got a diagnosis and then medication helped, I decided to walk the Camino Inglés. My husband and daughter would be in school for nine months and I wasn’t sure I’d still be alive by then. So I went alone—because I needed to do something even if it was hard, so i could know I was still living.

I walked with a friend at first, then solo when she left. I couldn’t carry my luggage up three flights of stairs. I got lost, walked through eucalyptus forests in the pre-dawn dark, and somewhere between Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela stopped focusing on dying and started focusing on living—however much time I had left.

I handed out brochures about coronary microvascular disorders to strangers in cafes. I made friends with Portuguese women on their third Camino. I discovered my heart could do more than I thought it could, even while it was failing. I carried nitroglycerin patches, an inhaler, beta-blockers, and enough medical equipment to fill half my suitcase—but I also carried the possibility that I might see my daughter off to college after all.

This memoir documents the 117 kilometers I walked, the relationships that sustained and complicated the journey, and what happens when you stop waiting to live until you’re sure you won’t die. It’s about resilience, yes, but also about learning to keep coming back—to the trail, to yourself, to the possibility that you might see your daughter off to college after all.

Blog-based manuscript, approximately 30,000 words. In development.

Tama Cathers

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