I turned on my computer with the intention of sharing the cover of Rugged Access for All for the first time, but my homepage stole all my excitement. Right in the middle was the headline, "Rush drummer Neil Peart dies at 67".
Most people know Neil as possibly the greatest rock drummer of all time...definitely the most technical. What some don't know is Neil lost his only daughter (at the time) a couple of years before we lost Kirsten. He also lost his wife less than a year later and wrote a book about how he healed through traveling. He wrote several other books about touring and traveling.
I found his books around the same time Kellisa and I really started traveling for adventures. At some point, a light bulb went off in my head and I decided I wanted to write a book about our travels and model them after Neil's books. That was the start of what grew to be a full on obsession.
I spent thousands of hours over 10 years working on getting a book deal and writing the book. I'm not sure I'd be so close to releasing my debut book if it wasn't for Neil's travel books.
I went through thousands of pictures and selected the top 54 for the publisher. We then narrowed the list down to only 6 pictures. My publisher created 6 different covers with the pictures and different graphics. Everyone involved listed the 6 in order of preference. The final version was actually my 3rd pick, but it was Lisa's 1st choice. I can't even win with picking my own cover! Actually, I loved all 6 and it was incredibly difficult to rank them. I loved them all.
