Singer and songwriter Steve Earle has sold two books to Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group’s Twelve imprint.

He will publish a memoir in 2014 and a historical fiction novel about “a runaway slave who survived the battle of the Alamo” sometime after that book. Danny Goldberg and Jesse Bauer for Goldve Entertainment negotiated the deal. Grand Central Publishing executive editor Ben Greenberg acquired the book and will edit. Here’s more from the release:

Earle’s memoir, the book he swore he would never write, will be a literary work in three acts.  The first section will focus on meeting Townes Van Zandt and the complicated friendship and musical mentorship that ensued, taking place in Texas and Tennessee.  The second section will center on bottoming out in Nashville, culminating in a prison sentence, during which Steve got clean.  The heart of the third and final section will be recovery, starting around the recording of the masterful album, Train a Comin’. The novel is work of historical fiction and will tell the story of a runaway slave who survived the battle of the Alamo.

Earle published I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. (Earle photo via Ted Barron)