Be Brave, Be Strong
That book I wrote about the Tour Divide
A one-star review on the now-nearly-defunct Barnes & Noble website has become my favorite elevator pitch about my most popular book:
“woman gets dumped by boyfriend and does a ridiculously hard mtn bike race across the continental divide (Canada to Mexico).”
I can’t put it more succinctly than that. The story is not unique (as Joseph Campbell argued, every story known to humanity is a derivative of the hero’s journey.) But it was my hero’s journey, and I wanted to add my voice to the human narrative. I wanted to shout my affirmation that it is possible to be a puddle of emotional goo, physical flaws, and lifelong neuroses, and still do hard things. As soon as I finished the Tour Divide on July 6, 2009, I set out to tell my tale of derring-do. This proved to be a bumpier road than the race itself. Because at least a handful of readers are curious about the process of creating a book, this is a brief history of “Be Brave, Be Strong.”
The writing process is almost a complete blur to be now. I completed nearly 200,000 words choked with anger and awe in the span of about eight weeks in January and February 2010. For the first two weeks of that frenzy, I was feverish and deeply ill with what was probably the Swine Flu. For the next six weeks, I used the lingering symptoms of my illness as an excuse to curl up in my 40-below sleeping bag on my bedroom floor and tap out word vomit. In truth, I was barely functioning with situational depression about the rest of my life surrounding the Tour Divide story — the aforementioned dumping, returning to rainy, cold Juneau to work a job I had long since burnt out on, moving myself and my cat into a small bedroom in the home of a fussy older woman who would not let me use her kitchen or washing machine, and feeling isolated from all of my friends and family. The 102-degree fevers that came with Swine Flu were a welcome distraction, as was escaping into the adventure that still gave me a similarly warm, woozy feeling every time I returned to it.
After I finished the first draft, I became distracted for a few months while I tried to remedy all of the causes of my depression. I finally quit my job for good, cut off contact with my ex, and moved to Anchorage to pursue the dream of being a writer. During this time, I wrote queries for freelance articles, completed a few (discouragingly few) paid articles, and revised my manuscript. Admittedly, I mostly flitted about, riding my bike and cultivating new friendships in sunny Anchorage. It was spring in Alaska. Life was bright and exciting again.
My main project for May 2010 was sending out queries for my manuscript. I garnered mild interest from a couple of agents who suggested a revision and resubmission. Most of the small publishers I queried ignored me entirely. One small press made me an offer, but it seemed abysmal. They’d start out with a print run of 500. I’d only be making royalties. I’d be lucky to earn $1,000 off my book in that scenario.
It only took a few months to realize that freelance writing was not so great and that I was going to starve if I kept it up for much longer. So by the end of May, I started applying for jobs and quickly landed a dream job. Before summer solstice, I had vacated Alaska and was on my way to Missoula, Montana, to work as an editor at Adventure Cycling Magazine.
Life was pretty great in Missoula. I was happy, and for a short time at least, I stopped feeling that strong compulsion to release my stories to the world. But life continued to move quickly. Having determined that I would be happily single with my bikes and cats until cronehood, I just happened to meet an intriguing man named Beat while volunteering at a 100-mile race one month later. We struck up an online friendship that developed into a long-distance relationship. By March 2011, I was moving to California to pursue a fulfilling long-term relationship. Although I held onto a few freelance projects with Adventure Cycling, I needed something to fill my time during these first months in California. So I returned to the manuscript.
I was not interested in continuing to send stacks of printed paper into the void. The querying process is so deeply soul-sucking. A writer has to possess either complete confidence in their project or skin as thick as Kevlar to endure it. I had neither. But I did have a clear idea of how self-publishing works, having published a book on a whim — essentially because I had a captive audience in my blog readers who I knew would support it — in 2008. I made a lot of mistakes with “Ghost Trails,” but I was confident I could correct these and do a lot better than $1,000 if I went this route.
Returning to revise my manuscript after several months away was an interesting experience. I had burned a lot of anger into my story — I didn’t even remember feeling so angry during the race or while I wrote it. Perhaps Swine Flu and mild depression were not conducive to writing an adventure story. I revised a few chapters and soon found an editor who helped revise the tone. She did a lot of helpful chopping. Although the book still ended up being fairly long, it at least is no longer a manifesto for the righteous anger of the dumped (at least that’s not its main theme.)
Once I had a story I was happy with, I moved forward quickly. I did my own cover design and layout, formatted an eBook, and released “Be Brave, Be Strong” to the world on May 25, 2011. I didn’t start telling people it was officially out until July of that year because I was still on the fence about whether I really wanted this out in the world. This is the opposite of what most new authors do, which is touting an official publication date for months beforehand and then holding a number of events to celebrate the book’s release. I had no interest in book tours or readings, which seem to me to be a terrible fate for introverted writers. I had a story I wanted to tell. I was okay if only a handful of people read it. I had other sources of income and other interests (bikes!) So I quietly published the book on Amazon and enjoyed the handful of sales that quietly trickled in.
Sales soon became reasonably robust. My marketing was almost entirely by word of mouth. I made a few shameless drop-ins on bookish websites and bike forums. But I wasn’t motivated to cold-call bookshops or media sources. Back in 2011, blogs were still a meaningful avenue for marketing and I managed to snag the interest of several book and bike bloggers. Word spread, the book sold, and by the end of 2012, I guessed I had sold nearly 20,000 books across sources that I admittedly hadn’t taken the time to track — mainly Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes, nearly a thousand signed books out of my living room, and a few other independent sources.
By that point, I grabbed a large portion of my available market and figured that was that. I concentrated on making new books and dabbling in personal projects. In the next few years, Tour Divide books burst onto the market. The genre proved to be surprisingly popular and robust. Like other long-distance trail narratives, there’s a sense that once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. But everyone has a unique story to tell, and a 2,750-mile-long ribbon of dirt and pavement through the Rocky Mountains is a compelling venue for these stories. I’ve read at least a dozen books about journeys on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route — there are probably even more than this out there — and enjoyed them all. Most of these books — like mine — are unpolished, which I appreciate. All of the best adventure stories come with a hefty dose of grit and grime.
The best thing about publishing books is that they act like a fish wheel, collecting bits of income even when left alone for many years. I figured book sales would fade after the first year, but the numbers have remained reasonably strong for a self-published book about an unknown person participating in an esoteric athletic event. I was surprised to learn the other day that the title is nearing 50,000 sales on Amazon alone. I’m grateful to everyone who purchased this book, even more to those who reached out to let me know their thoughts about it, those who reviewed it online (even the one-star reviews), and most of all to those who sent photos of themselves reading the book in relaxing locales:
In recent years, writing has again fallen into the background of my day-to-day life. I’d like to start writing again, which is why I started this Substack — if nothing else, it’s an avenue to write more regularly once more. I don’t know if I have any more books in me. The media and entertainment landscape seems increasingly fractured, and books that are merely written words and nothing else seem increasingly antiquated. Do people read anymore? I’m not interested in creating YouTube videos or TikTok podcasts. I have other sources of income and interests (bikes!) Still, putting books out into the world was a worthy adventure in itself, full of twists and turns I hadn’t expected. I hope to keep it up regardless of what the finish line looks like. (And we all know what the ultimate finish line is, all the same.)
Writing these Tour Divide posts has been a nice distraction during a difficult week. I plan to continue with posts about how the race and community have evolved since 2009, and thoughts about future possibilities for competitive multi-day cycling.
Almost 50,000 books. That's awesome. And I love that one star review!
A 5 star book IMO and a title that is my mantra and inspiration on my own endurance events! X