A Long Trek Home to Come Out in October

Erin McKittrick's book about the trip she and her husband Bretwood Higman undertook in 2007 and 2008, from Seattle to Unalaska, entirely under muscle power, will come out in October. Here's an extract from Erin's post about the book at her trek blog:

I’m not just writing a book. I have written a book.

Hig and I recently saw a movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly about a man who had been entirely paralyzed except for one eye, and still managed to write an entire book that he dictated by blinking - one letter at a time. I tried to remind myself of this during the hours I spent pecking out words one-handed, trying to combine book-editing with baby nursing. Now that Katmai is a bit older, he can hold himself in place, allowing me to type this blog two-handed.

When we finished our journey, I had a bean-sized baby in my body, and the seed of a book in my mind. The first draft was due at the same time as Katmai. And it seemed as if both of my “babies” developed in parallel. At the beginning, progress was slow - the physical baby so small as to not even be a bump, while the book was not much more than a jumbled set of notes from my nightly journals. Towards the end, both were gigantic, and imminent. I sat in the hotel room in Homer, laptop on the far side of my enormous belly, hurriedly finishing the book as I waited for Katmai to arrive. I sent off that draft the day before his due date. He was born four days later. I was lucky he didn’t come early.

I pushed the book out of my mind, waiting for the editors at Mountaineers Books to get back to me, focusing on setting up life with this new little person. Until it landed back on my lap, a few months later. I had a bit less than three weeks to edit an entire book. So back in May, while everyone in Seldovia was digging in their gardens and enjoying the wonderful spate of hot sunny weather, I was stuck at my computer - editing. I would occasionally click over to Amazon - noting that it was already possible to buy the book that I was currently editing. It was a good reminder that the whole thing was in fact really happening, and that I’d better keep focused if I wanted what was in that book to be any good!

And now I’m done. The book comes out in October, and Hig and I will be doing a small book tour in October/November, through Homer, Anchorage, Seattle, Portland, and maybe a few other places along the way. Stay tuned for details! I’ll be selling signed copies here at Ground Truth Trekking when it’s out (and I’ll probably post a sample chapter), so sign up to get a reminder email if you want to know when the book comes out or when I might be through your town!