Some stories just need to be told, including this one about
Jean Ellen Whatley and her book, Off the Leash. It’s a great
story with a great message. Because I had so many questions for her, I’m breaking
this interview into two posts because I don’t want to leave out anything.
Thanks, Jean, for being so generous with your time and information!
1) Tell us about your book “Off the
Leash”
On the surface, Off the Leash
is a story about a summer-long road trip I did with my rescue dog Libby, a
Great Pyrenees mix, but really it's about freedom. Off the Leash is about
freeing ourselves from thinking that our lives are destined to be hard, or sad,
or screwed up and the power of letting that all go. Off the Leash is
about being quiet enough to hear your inner voice, and sometimes watching your
dog send you messages too important to ignore. It's about taking action in
spite of the risk.
I quit my job with no more than
$3,800 dollars to my name. Because I knew too painfully well that time runs
out, I loaded my car and took off to revisit every significant purpose and
place that had influenced my life. I had lost two brothers and my mother in a
few short years, and there was a half-brother who I had never seen, and didn't
really know if he existed. So I set out to find him. What I found in the course
of eight weeks and 8,600 miles was myself -- seen from deep within me and the
eyes of long lost family, friends and wonderful people I met on this
life-changing journey. All this inspired by my dog.
2) Where
did the original idea of a cross-country road trip with your dog come from?
Off the Leash was borne out
of regret and a message from the universe channeled through my dog, Libby. In
August 2010, on a sunny, early Sunday morning, I was sitting on my front porch
drinking coffee. Libby was laying on the porch, her pays hanging over the top
step. I was thinking about my brother Don, who was in his final days,
pancreatic cancer was about to take his life. I'd been to visit him several
times in Albuquerque during his eleven-month illness, and had just arrived back
in St. Louis after saying goodbye to him. I was crying, knowing that he had
little time left.
I was steeped with regret that I
had not been able to take my big brother on a goodbye tour of all the places
we'd lived as kids -- in Texas and California. I had meant to, but jobs and
obligation and his rapidly declining health prevented it.
All of a sudden, Libby jumped up
off the porch and raced to the edge of the yard, barking like mad, but she
stopped short, where my lawn meets the neighbor’s, barking and yelping and
writhing in doggie torment. She wanted to chase the neighbor cat, the black and
white kitty sandwich not twenty feet away from her. But she dared not go after
that cat, because of the Invisible Fence around our yard. I sat there staring
at her, thinking, "Damn silly dog ... she doesn't even know the batteries
in her collar are dead."
That was my epiphany. What was
the chokehold around my neck? What would prevent me from going after the
writer's life I so desperately wanted to engage in? What really held me back
from going back to all my childhood haunts? It was time and money -- of which I
realized far too well I'd never have a surplus. I called the dog back to the
porch and laid my head of her shoulder and said, "Thank you, my darling
mutt, for showing me to myself." It was at that moment, the idea of
hitting the road and taking the dog took hold like a low-grade fever that never
subsided until I backed out the drive a few months later.
3) What makes this book
different from other travel books?
I wouldn't want folks to
think of Off the Leash as a travel book, it's not. Off the Leash is the story
of a lifetime, a lifetime that I've come to discover contains many of the same
hopes and fears that so many of us share -- it's about family secrets, loves
gained and lost, it's about enduring what feels like unbearable hardship at
times and the joy of getting to a place in our lives where all that pain ceases
to matter because of the glory of simply being alive. It's about our human
condition - and how we're connected as the family of man in ways that don't
seem obvious until you leave yourself open to the discovery.
For example, the book begins and
ends with a fateful meeting between me, a middle-aged woman who's driving
across America with her dog, and a young man who is walking across America! We
meet out in the middle of nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE, on U.S. Highway 50,
called The Loneliest Road in America. I pass him as he's walking along the
highway pushing a baby jogger full of provisions. My curiosity gets the best of
me. I turn around to investigate this stranger on the highway. It was profound,
this meeting.
4) What lessons do you want
readers to take away from this book?
As for lessons, I tend to
give my dog Libby a lot of the credit for what Off
the Leash taught
me. She taught me five things that become some of the central themes of this
book: to go along for the ride, to live in the moment, to not hold a
grudge, to love with abandon and at the end of the day, or the ride, or
your life, and to ease someone's fear. Sometimes the fear you ease ends up
being your own.
One could argue that my life has
been a bit challenging at times. A divorced mother of four, after my "we
had it all" marriage and picket fence (yes, we had a picket fence) life
collapsed like a house of cards, insult was added to injury when my former husband
was sentenced to seven years in prison for sex crimes. My children were in
mid-school up to college at that point, I was living a thousand miles from any
family, the instant reaction was to pack up and get the hell out of town (STL)
but we toughed it out, through a lot of media, what I thought were endless
tears, turned to rage, turned to resolve to protect my children and not have
them pay the price for his shame -- which all eventually got sorted out and
settled, as I dripped tears like an oil leak across America on this solitary
journey of healing and peace.
Even though people have not
experienced precisely what I may have gone through, most people have wounds.
Most people have unattended longing to do that one thing they've always wanted
to do, to see that one person they've been longing to see, to rise to their own
definition of personal greatness. My message is this: do it today. Do it as
soon as possible. Call people you love today, tell them you love them. Book the
trip, make the call. Do it now.
5) I understand the publishing
process for this book is two-fold – traditional and ebook. Tell us how this
works, and the benefits and drawbacks of combining the two.
I self-published the ebook and was picked up by an
indy publisher for the print edition. Having an imprint on the spine of your
book helps get you distribution and some degree of credibility. But even with a
publisher, the heavy lifting on marketing and promotion is left to the author.
Readers can get Off the Leash at any book store, if they don't have it in
stock, they can order it and have it sent to your house. You can also order if from my publisher, Blank
Slate Press and
you can get it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
To be continued Thursday –
Write soon,
Mary
