Ask the Author: Tracey Carisch
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Tracey Carisch
While our family was on this nomadic adventure of ours, I wrote a travel blog. It had my stories and my husband's photography. It wound up gathering a significant following. I felt a real connection those readers, and I would think of them as I came up with new ideas for posts. In my heart, I knew I was going to really miss writing when our journey ended.
We were in Nicaragua, the last country of our travels, when some friends of ours came to stay with us for a couple weeks. It was my friend, Em, who planted the book idea in my head. She was convinced I needed to write a woman's travel memoir about my perspective on our travels. I wasn’t sure, though. I mean, who would be interested in reading a memoir about a woman who goes through a midlife crisis and then travels the world with her family to find herself, right?
Shortly after this conversation, I happened to notice the book Eat, Pray, Love on a bookshelf in our rental house. Every other book was in Spanish, but this was the only one in English. I’d read it years before when it was first released and loved it, so I picked it up and reread it that last week before our return to the United States. By the time I finished, I’d decided that continuing to grow that creative side of me with a memoir was something I should do. I’m no Elizabeth Gilbert, but there’s definitely a place for women to share their journeys to authenticity with one another, and I wanted to be a part of that.
That's how Excess Baggage was born. When we got back to the United States, I immediately starte working on it.
We were in Nicaragua, the last country of our travels, when some friends of ours came to stay with us for a couple weeks. It was my friend, Em, who planted the book idea in my head. She was convinced I needed to write a woman's travel memoir about my perspective on our travels. I wasn’t sure, though. I mean, who would be interested in reading a memoir about a woman who goes through a midlife crisis and then travels the world with her family to find herself, right?
Shortly after this conversation, I happened to notice the book Eat, Pray, Love on a bookshelf in our rental house. Every other book was in Spanish, but this was the only one in English. I’d read it years before when it was first released and loved it, so I picked it up and reread it that last week before our return to the United States. By the time I finished, I’d decided that continuing to grow that creative side of me with a memoir was something I should do. I’m no Elizabeth Gilbert, but there’s definitely a place for women to share their journeys to authenticity with one another, and I wanted to be a part of that.
That's how Excess Baggage was born. When we got back to the United States, I immediately starte working on it.
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