"Let's write a book."
That’s how it started.
We were sitting on Sunset Beach in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Steep hills on both sides, small rocks under our feet (Europe doesn’t have many sandy beaches), tiny restaurants and cafes dotted around the perimeter, and light-colored houses with orange rooftops watching over it all. Beautiful.
Take a 360 spin around Sunset Beach below:
It’s even better at sunset. This was the night we first talked about the book (click to enlarge):
We had just crossed the one-year mark of traveling around the world, and everything felt right. We were thrilled we’d made it this far and we were starting to realize we were living through a once-in-a-hundred-year moment. COVID. Yeah, that one.
What started as “we should probably document this” slowly turned into a four-year creative project built together as husband and wife.
No Ticket Home is a travel memoir of our first year of international slow travel. It’s packed with the behind-the-scenes reality of what remote work freedom actually looked like during one of the strangest periods in modern history.
Spoiler alert: all the glossy Instagram photos don’t tell the real story.
You’ll be shocked at how many things went wrong, and how many times it almost all came crashing down.
The book covers the whole truth about renting out your house and traveling the world during a pandemic: the financial side, the COVID uncertainty, the logistics, the unexpected challenges, and the moments that made us stop and think, “Are we really doing this right now?” The book is available on Amazon in paperback and hardcover.
But wait there's more!
You can only fit so much into a black-and-white book, so we built a companion website with free bonus material to bring the entire story to life:
- Location Map: See exactly where we stayed, where some of the wild things happened, where the best food is, and more
- 360 Videos: We shot 360 videos of the first few Airbnbs so you can actually step inside the private plunge pool in Aruba, see the view from the balcony in Croatia, and more
- Full-color photos: Every black-and-white photo in the book, in color, organized by category
- Sources and References: Links to things we mentioned so you can go explore them yourself
- Artwork, wallpapers, and promo material
What I learned
- Publishing a book in multiple formats (Kindle, hardcover, softcover) means creating three completely different files. We used Reedsy Studio for typesetting.
- Writing a book with another person takes patience and a clear plan before you start. Who’s writing what? Who reviews whose work? Who has final say? When is your chapter due, and what happens if it isn’t? What are we each willing to sacrifice to get this done?
What feels really good
- Taking a creative idea from a conversation on a beach all the way to a finished product someone can hold in their hands (even if it takes four years)!
- Getting to call myself a published author.
- Looking at my bookshelf and knowing one of those books is mine.
What I’ll always remember
My mom’s face when she opened her Christmas gift.
We hadn’t told her we’d published the book. We sent her a copy as a Christmas present, and when she opened it, she wasn’t just shocked that we’d finished it, she was shocked to find it was dedicated to her.
If you ever get the chance to make your mom proud and bring her to tears of joy, take it. Start now.