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Tracks of My Tears
A fictional account of the cover up of sexual assaults on a college campus by the athletic department and administration.
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May 22, 2020
Tracks of My Tears, as stated in the "Authors Note" is inspired by the scandal that rocked Baylor University in 2016. Sexual assault and cover-ups.
Barry Hoffman takes us on a journey through the lives of several victims as well as the detectives and investigators determined to aide the victims.
The horror genre has always been something I have preferred but within it is a genre all its own. In Tracks of My Tears, Barry Hoffman enters the world of psychological horror. As a parent, after reading this, my first thought is, what will my daughter encounter when she enters college? Should I even let her go?
While reading Hoffman's story, I was completely consumed with every character. I could feel their sorrow and pain, and even the joy and relief when something took a turn for the better. He truly encompasses every aspect of each characters personality and transforms a story into something alive.
Would I recommend Tracks of My Tears? Absolutely. This book is heart-breaking, gut-wrenching and yet phenomenal. This is also a novel that, though I have a digital copy, I will be purchasing so I can share with others.
It could be said that Tracks of My Tears is a "psychological journey of tears..."
After completing the novel, I was given the pleasure of interviewing Barry Hoffman. The following is what he had to say...
Barry Hoffman Interview
R: First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to speak with me today.
B: No problem at all
R: To begin, could you tell me and your readers a little about yourself?
B: I was a teacher (in Philly) for 30 years, teaching 5th grade up to 8th grade. While I was teaching I began writing short stories for the kids in class and from there ended up writing my first novel, Hungry Eyes. I left teaching in 1999 and now I write and I publish signed limited editions of books by other authors.
R: As I am fairly new to this, do you have any advice for myself or any other new reviewers?
B: Mention the genres you are interested in reviewing (when you contact different publishers) so that you don't get sent books that you have no desire to read at all. Since parts of your review could be used on the back of a future edition of a book or on a website, try to use at least one line that can be quotable. Personally I don't think too much of a review should be a synopsis of the story, just enough to wet the readers appetite, then discuss the theme of the book and characters and stuff like that.
R: What made you decide to base Tracks of My Tears on the Baylor University incident?
B: Almost all of my books are ones that are kind of ripped from the headlines. My first story, Hungry Eyes, was about a girl that was actually kidnapped from a neighbor and the police searched the neighbors house at least three times before they found her and she was taken away from her mother because her mother was negligent. What I did was I took that framework and advanced that story (she was 12 years old) and wrote a novel about what that person is doing now having gone through that trauma. I am taking something from a headline and fictionalizing it. With Baylor, I had read a lot of stories and written stories about sexual assault of women and I thought that the whole idea of a University covering up the athletes assaults was just something that appealed to me as a writer, that I could run with that. I basically took the Baylor incident and put it on steroids.
R: I live in Texas so I am aware of the incident, but how much would you say of your novel is factual?
B: There were bits and pieces as well as the event itself. Its pretty well known that athletes often escape punishment for what they have done and it depends on the University. There are also a lot of judges that still don't understand the impact of sexual assault on the victim. The person has to live with it the rest of their life. Even if you do have a strong support system, you are always a recovering victim.
R: How did you research to prepare for this?
B: I interviewed some victims of assault and read a lot of impact statements, not only from Baylor but other court cases to familiarize myself with the feelings that a young woman would have. Each character has a unique story.
R: As a writer, and as a man, from where did you draw your inspiration in order to place yourself so convincingly into a female victims perspective?
B: First of all, when I was a teacher, the girls that I taught had very distinct personalities, the boys were more lumps of clay at that age. They didn't have the scope of personalities that girls did. The girls were very open. I had all of these different perspectives. I have three kids, two of them are daughters and I have a granddaughter. I also taught at inner-city schools and often times, a single mother or a grandmother would come up for report cards and they all kind of gave me characters to base my various books on.
R: What can your readers look forward to next?
B: What happens often is I spend a lot of time with my characters and they don't like to let me let go of them, so I end up sometimes writing a second or even a third book using the same characters and adding some characters. I just finished the first draft of a book using the same characters and University that I made up for Tracks of My Tears, this time using articles about cheerleaders, professional cheerleaders from professional teams, that had been abused in a variety of ways.
Another that I have finished and want to wait to publish is a female version of Lord of the Flies. Its something I have planned on doing for at least 10 years. I've wrote notes and pages and have kept it in a huge file. I keep looking at it and thinking "its too monumental of a job". Something finally kind of hit me that made it a little easier to tackle. All the characters are new and other than some back story, it involves 20 girls in an apocalyptic setting and they ended up stranded on an island alone. There's a mythology of Mother Earth feeling that as creator of all life, feeling that she has to start from scratch. An epidemic kills all but a few people of the world. There are different groups on different islands and if they can prove themselves worthy, they will be the ones to start a new society. The book focuses on one group. It ended up being a lot of fun.
R: That sounds exciting and I'm sure your readers as well as myself will be looking forward to that. I don't have anymore questions but I just want to say thank you so much and I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer these few.
B: I'm more than happy to do it. I think when you interview an author you get more insight into an author and his writing. One of the things that I mentioned before is that the characters are as important if not more than the plot. The protagonists all have flaws. The book is the journey of these characters attempting to overcome their flaws, not always successfully, but they do get better.
Barry Hoffman takes us on a journey through the lives of several victims as well as the detectives and investigators determined to aide the victims.
The horror genre has always been something I have preferred but within it is a genre all its own. In Tracks of My Tears, Barry Hoffman enters the world of psychological horror. As a parent, after reading this, my first thought is, what will my daughter encounter when she enters college? Should I even let her go?
While reading Hoffman's story, I was completely consumed with every character. I could feel their sorrow and pain, and even the joy and relief when something took a turn for the better. He truly encompasses every aspect of each characters personality and transforms a story into something alive.
Would I recommend Tracks of My Tears? Absolutely. This book is heart-breaking, gut-wrenching and yet phenomenal. This is also a novel that, though I have a digital copy, I will be purchasing so I can share with others.
It could be said that Tracks of My Tears is a "psychological journey of tears..."
After completing the novel, I was given the pleasure of interviewing Barry Hoffman. The following is what he had to say...
Barry Hoffman Interview
R: First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to speak with me today.
B: No problem at all
R: To begin, could you tell me and your readers a little about yourself?
B: I was a teacher (in Philly) for 30 years, teaching 5th grade up to 8th grade. While I was teaching I began writing short stories for the kids in class and from there ended up writing my first novel, Hungry Eyes. I left teaching in 1999 and now I write and I publish signed limited editions of books by other authors.
R: As I am fairly new to this, do you have any advice for myself or any other new reviewers?
B: Mention the genres you are interested in reviewing (when you contact different publishers) so that you don't get sent books that you have no desire to read at all. Since parts of your review could be used on the back of a future edition of a book or on a website, try to use at least one line that can be quotable. Personally I don't think too much of a review should be a synopsis of the story, just enough to wet the readers appetite, then discuss the theme of the book and characters and stuff like that.
R: What made you decide to base Tracks of My Tears on the Baylor University incident?
B: Almost all of my books are ones that are kind of ripped from the headlines. My first story, Hungry Eyes, was about a girl that was actually kidnapped from a neighbor and the police searched the neighbors house at least three times before they found her and she was taken away from her mother because her mother was negligent. What I did was I took that framework and advanced that story (she was 12 years old) and wrote a novel about what that person is doing now having gone through that trauma. I am taking something from a headline and fictionalizing it. With Baylor, I had read a lot of stories and written stories about sexual assault of women and I thought that the whole idea of a University covering up the athletes assaults was just something that appealed to me as a writer, that I could run with that. I basically took the Baylor incident and put it on steroids.
R: I live in Texas so I am aware of the incident, but how much would you say of your novel is factual?
B: There were bits and pieces as well as the event itself. Its pretty well known that athletes often escape punishment for what they have done and it depends on the University. There are also a lot of judges that still don't understand the impact of sexual assault on the victim. The person has to live with it the rest of their life. Even if you do have a strong support system, you are always a recovering victim.
R: How did you research to prepare for this?
B: I interviewed some victims of assault and read a lot of impact statements, not only from Baylor but other court cases to familiarize myself with the feelings that a young woman would have. Each character has a unique story.
R: As a writer, and as a man, from where did you draw your inspiration in order to place yourself so convincingly into a female victims perspective?
B: First of all, when I was a teacher, the girls that I taught had very distinct personalities, the boys were more lumps of clay at that age. They didn't have the scope of personalities that girls did. The girls were very open. I had all of these different perspectives. I have three kids, two of them are daughters and I have a granddaughter. I also taught at inner-city schools and often times, a single mother or a grandmother would come up for report cards and they all kind of gave me characters to base my various books on.
R: What can your readers look forward to next?
B: What happens often is I spend a lot of time with my characters and they don't like to let me let go of them, so I end up sometimes writing a second or even a third book using the same characters and adding some characters. I just finished the first draft of a book using the same characters and University that I made up for Tracks of My Tears, this time using articles about cheerleaders, professional cheerleaders from professional teams, that had been abused in a variety of ways.
Another that I have finished and want to wait to publish is a female version of Lord of the Flies. Its something I have planned on doing for at least 10 years. I've wrote notes and pages and have kept it in a huge file. I keep looking at it and thinking "its too monumental of a job". Something finally kind of hit me that made it a little easier to tackle. All the characters are new and other than some back story, it involves 20 girls in an apocalyptic setting and they ended up stranded on an island alone. There's a mythology of Mother Earth feeling that as creator of all life, feeling that she has to start from scratch. An epidemic kills all but a few people of the world. There are different groups on different islands and if they can prove themselves worthy, they will be the ones to start a new society. The book focuses on one group. It ended up being a lot of fun.
R: That sounds exciting and I'm sure your readers as well as myself will be looking forward to that. I don't have anymore questions but I just want to say thank you so much and I really do appreciate you taking the time to answer these few.
B: I'm more than happy to do it. I think when you interview an author you get more insight into an author and his writing. One of the things that I mentioned before is that the characters are as important if not more than the plot. The protagonists all have flaws. The book is the journey of these characters attempting to overcome their flaws, not always successfully, but they do get better.
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