Book Sales and Brook's debut on TV at the Legos Display

The book is doing well.  Thank you so much for the great response!  It has been fun!

Over the course of deciding to give it a go and actually seeing it to completion, my main thought was, “Writing this book is a hobby -- let's not get too complicated.  Let’s see if we can actually get across the finish line.”

Having said that -- my goals are changing a little bit and you can help!
Its never too late to post a 5 star review on Amazon about the Wonder of RV Living! 😳
If you are inclined to do so, that would be great!!

Meanwhile, we are climbing up the ranks on the Amazon Bestseller List:

I didn’t really know what to look at but this is a quick snapshot.  I am pretty sure we were at 432,000 in Books, so we are climbing up the list!
Also - if you are considering writing a book, I highly recommend it.  It has been fun!  It took a long time but I find the whole process intriguing.

It reminds me of an earlier hobby I had -- making custom to fit golf clubs.

Back in the 1990’s I caught the bug and started putting them together and was shipping sets of clubs to England, Hawaii, California, Tennessee, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado.  It was a learning process too, and I loved the mystery of it all.  I learned about suppliers and marketing and a whole host of other things.

This book-writing reminds me of that in many ways.  Apparently one has to have a marketing plan with a Book Launch to propel sales at the start.  Maybe we’ll do that for Vol 2 "Full-timing-Our First 7 Months on the Road.’  I’m looking for a Spring release on that one.  Stay tuned.
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Now on to other fun stuff.  The boys have had a couple of up and down weeks.  Mostly up but with the winter season, there have been some colds and worse.  First the fun stuff.

The weather here in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area has been pretty mild.  It has had some 70+ degree days and now there is snow in the forecast.  Early last week the boys and Kelly, Pam and I went to the Botanical Gardens in Norfolk to see the Legos displays.

 The boys came well-prepared with their scooters to zip around the walkways.  After a few hundred yards, we came upon the 12 displays that were impressive.  Each display depicted gardening or animals and birds that one would find at he gardens.

 I really liked the fact that it also had information on how many Legos it took for the display and how many hours it took to build it.

 The boys accommodated the photographer from time to time.

 Near the end we saw the hummingbird and then went to another display.

While there, a videographer from a local TV station asked if they could film Brooks.  Just like that, he was added to the list of kids at the gardens who got to say a few words.

Brooks had a few words to start off the clip. There is a brief look at Pam and Kelly and Harry and Brooks walking.  Have to be quick to see it.

The last couple of weeks have flown by!  Hope you and yours are well and if you haven’t taken a look you can check out the book on Amazon here.

Thanks for joining us on this edition of the Roadrunner Chronicles!

Why Write a Book?

Year ago someone mentioned that I should write a book.  Really?  Why should I do that? What would I say?  How does one do that?

I dismissed the idea then, but now, I'm a few weeks away from completing "The Wonder of RV Living, Vol 1 in the Roadrunner Chronicles".  I thought "Roadrunner Chronicles" already has some familiarity with RV blog readers, so I'll continue here with it.  It has been 18 months in the making.  I've had some expected false starts, weeks of having the words flow, followed by the ups and downs of getting across the finish line.

I can't say for sure when it will be out on Amazon for purchase, but I'm working hard to make it happen before Thanksgiving.  We will see.

Why do that?
May main motivation was that it would be a nice Christmas present.  I thought it would be cool to send a copy to each of my three brothers.  It still may happen and I'm only one year off my original goal of Christmas 2017.

I also thought that it might be helpful to pull together some information and send it along to folks who are curious about "How We Became Full-time RVers".  For others, I thought actual "Stories From Our Adventures" might be interesting.  Those two ideas comprise Part 1 and Part 2 of the manuscript.

Now, I look at it as a way to remember these great years on the road.  Last winter when we were at Palm Creek Resort in Casa Grande, AZ to see friends Karen and Steve, I remember RV neighbors who showed us there hardcopy book of their book on the trip they took on a boat around the Great Loop.  It was amazing to have a copy of their adventures in my hand and be able to read about it.  More motivation to get the Roadrunner Chronicles (Vol 1 - the book) completed.

How I started:
Rewind back to almost three years ago when I learned a friend was writing a book.  Wow - that was interesting.  Wes has a very good command of words and a knack for painting pictures with his words.  His Little Book of Misadventures got me thinking, "Ugh - There is no way I could do that."  I know I don't have nearly as a creative mind or story-telling creativity.

On the other hand, we have stories.  We've been living the dream for over 9 years now, and I have my own approach.  It began here with the blog Roadrunner Chronicles.

Where We Are:
Over 70,000 words, thirteen chapters, I'm now almost done with the second edit and thinking I have one more to go.

I have a couple more changes to make before I am happy the book cover, but it will be some variation of this.

That all for this edition of the Roadrunner Chronicles -  next week, I'll share the titles of some of my chapters.  Thanks for taking a look today!

Roadrunner Reflections: Questions for Our Readers

I've been thinking a lot lately about how this whole adventure started.  Hitting the road in the Roadrunner and 'Living the Dream' one of the most exciting things that we've ever done!  We purchased the motorhome eight years ago.

Interestingly enough, we bought our 2007 Tiffin Allegro Bus right here in Virginia Beach from a private party.  We have never regretted that decision!  We would have never guessed we'd be spending six months at a campground five miles from where it all started.

But here we are and will be for a couple of more months.  Daughter Kelly came through surgery with flying colors and is recovering nicely.  But Grandma and Grandpa continue to provide some useful assistance with the two young grand kids.

Back to the beginning of the RV Adventure and how it all started.  There are many reasons why we decided to sell everything, downsize and get into this wonderful lifestyle.

I know there are hundreds of you out there that regularly or semi-regularly check in and read The Roadrunner Chronicles, so I have a couple (three to be exact) questions for you.  Will you give some input?  Here's Question #1

1.  What is the primary reason you decided to RV? What was your main incentive?

For us -- it ended up being related to the notion that we could not decide where we wanted to retire.  Florida?  New Mexico?  Tennessee? -- we had those thoughts rattling around in the background when we started looking at RV back in 2007.

So if you'd be kind enough to respond an give some feedback -- that would be great!

Questions #2 is directly related to #1 and is this:

2.  Did you have to convince your spouse to do this?  Or were you both on board from the start?

For Pam and me, we started out slowly and talked a lot about RVs and those people that were able to afford them.  We looked and learned for quite a few months before we decided, "This might be for us if we can figure out how to pay for something like that."

It took a good many months of talking about things and then coming up with a way to pay for an RV.
That leads me to Question #3 which is:

3.  How did you (or how are you paying) pay the RV?  

Did you purchase it outright?  Did you cash in savings?  Did you finance it over time?  Did you sell your house?

In our case, we nailed it down to two choices:
We were either going to rent our house out and finance the RV; or sell our house and pay off the RV and tow before we started out.

In retrospect, we are very glad we chose to sell our 'Stix and Bricks' home.  We had 15+ years of equity in it and had been paying double payments for a few years to get the principal down.  By the time we sold it for $450K we had only $80,000 left for the payoff.

(That introduced another set of questions as, "What if this doesn't work out?" and "Are we going to be out in the middle of nowhere a few months from now and ask ourselves, "What have we done!!?"-- we will save that for another time.)

I realize many people can not or chose not to sell their home.  Everyone has to make those decisions that they are most comfortable with.   Always there is a bit of risk involved in doing this but everyone has a comfort threshold and as I have said a hundred times, "There are many ways to do this lifestyle!"

So today I have three questions I am asking for your input on:
1.  How did you decide to start RVing?
2.  Did you have to convince or persuade your spouse to RV?
3.  How did you pay for (or are paying for the RV?

There will be more questions down the road for our readers, but I hope you'll take a minute and respond and let us and our other readers know what your answers are to these questions.

Thanks so much!  And thanks for joining us today on the Roadrunner Chronicles!