This Our Story

When we were still walking through Texas there was a journalist of national repute who wanted to help tell our story.  It would have been an auspicious opportunity but at a cost of thousands of dollars per month in consulting fees and with only a couple of hundred bucks in my pocket at the time, it wasn't tenable so I figured we'd just have to bide our time. 

Four years later, there have been countless other offers to tell this tale that in of themselves could justify a book alone.  

After the final mile I headed out to Colorado Springs to work with Ed on the book. It was supposed to be simple. Man loses dog to cancer. Man and 2 dogs defy odds and walk 2300 miles over 826 days.  That was the story. 

But I was soon to learn that that was only Chapter One.  

Even still, Ed and I worked tirelessy on a book proposal.  Christian publishing houses were all over the story because it was alot about my own personal struggle with faith and belief in God.  But they didn't like my, umm, use of descriptive language.  Like F*ck Cancer.  And Chapter titles like 'Arc Goddamnit' when I danced around a campfire naked outside of Hancock MD (oddly ironic, the town name, now that I think about it). Or my euphemism for when we were in a pickle. Pickle.   

It became clear the Christian market was no place for our saga as there was no way I was going to compromise it or sanitize it for them.    

So we presented the manuscript to other publishing houses with understandably mixed results.  Though their initial rejections were heartbreaking, I didn't need them to tell me something I already knew.  It was unfinished.  I knew that the moment Murphy was diagnosed.     

Even though our manuscript got turned down and 2011 saw multi-million dollar book deals for Snooki and Sarah Palin's kid and the sort, it's what had to happen.

The three act play is ingrained in human nature from Shakespeare to Puccini to Aaron Sorkin.  I could've gotten a ghost writer to tell this story but then it wouldn't have been ours.  It'd been reduced down to a simple formula, packaged, and sold off cheaply.  That is something I can never permit.

But I've bided my time and learned a few things along the way.  How you tell a story is as important as the story itself.  And I've learned that I can no longer tell it by myself.  

So in three weeks time, Tish is moving to Boston and giving up a year of her life to help me tell this, our story. And tell it right.