Steve Earle penning memoir he said he’d never write

Musician Steve Earle has announced he will write two books for publisher Twelve: a novel and a memoir. A memoir, he admits, was not something he’d been planning.

“It’s the book I swore I would never write — I’m writing a memoir,” Earle told theMusic.co.au.

Earle’s past includes Grammy awards, acting, addiction and a stint in prison. His politics -- anti-war, anti-death penalty -- have made it into his songs. He’s also a novelist; his first book, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” was published last year.

“I’ve always written stories,” he told The Times in 2011. “My songs are stories. A lot of people wonder how to write a story in three minutes. With a book, you have to figure out what to prolong and what not to.”

Earle continued, “Wrestling a novel to the ground was about 100 times harder than I expected. In the middle of it, I swore I’d never do it again. But now that it’s done, I’ve got another idea.”

That will, most likely, be the novel that Twelve will publish. But the memoir comes first.

“It’s not an autobiography, it’s a literary memoir, a little more abstract. It’s not like, ‘I was born a poor black child ... ,’ ” Earle told the Australian website, alluding to the Steve Martin movie “The Jerk.” Although it’s a personal story, Earle says, “I think it’s about something besides me. It’s really about heroes and mentors good and bad, so obviously the first part is about [renowned songwriter and Earle’s mentor] Townes [Van Zandt], before I started making records -- the record-making aspect is in other books about me I understand, I’ve never read any of them.

“The second part is about the period of time that everybody thinks they know about but don’t, which is the three-and-a-half or four years just before I sorta slipped off the edge of the earth and the period when I was gone. And the third part of it is basically about recovery -- I think it’s going to end long before the present day, we’ll see.”

Twelve publisher and editor Cary Goldstein said in a statement, “Steve Earle is a legend, plain and simple -- a brilliant musician, and an essential storyteller. It is an honor for us to make a literary home for him here at Twelve.”

Earle’s memoir is coming in 2014, with the novel the following year.

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