Author's Note

This is a work of fiction. Well, most of it is anyway. The general chronology of the events you’re about to read tracks with the bumpy road of my last few years wandering the Great Basin and the Northwestern USA. The places and towns and cities are real. The picture I’ll paint about life on the road and living in people’s homes is real. But the people are not. I’ve learned that you really don’t want to write about people, because they, well, they have opinions about how they’re portrayed. Plus a lot of the time I was wandering around I was alone and that wouldn’t make for the most interesting read. So for the protection of any parties involved, the people are not real. Got it? The people are not real.

I’m pretty adamant about this, in part for the protection of people that I have encountered on my travels and the respect I have for the homeowners. All of these people are now part of my extended family and I love them – most them anyway – very much the way one loves the crazy family they were born into.

The emotions are real. The change our main character goes through is real. The astrologer you’re going to meet in Chapter 1 . . that totally happened. Since I’m a photographer, you’ll also see photos of real places. And the dogs, the dogs are also real. I decided to use the real names of the dogs, because they are only with us for a short time and I want to honor the time that I spent getting to know and love them. This book is dedicated to Tucker, Banner, Sox and Gertie who are no longer with us and all of the dogs everywhere. They are wonderful creatures whose real purpose in this world is to love and be loved. We could certainly be more like dogs if we were being honest about it.

I hope you enjoy this very unlikely adventure story. And the next time you see your dog, tell them that I say “hi.”

The book was originally dropped as chapters on Substack and now lives on the Slightly Moody web-sister with new chapters being published each week. As the project rolled out, I added music and images to most of the chapters. I hope you enjoy listening to the soundtrack that goes along with this book as it has been a joy to create it. And, yes, as the cover art suggests, I have two more books planned in this series.

Each chapter published and posted from the road as noted at the end of each chapter.

We pick up the story in progress in the middle of one of the most lonely parts of the Great Basin in Nevada.