1. Selling novels is like pushing wet cement up a slide.

2. Truckers are avid readers.

3. The best carrot cake in the Intermountain West is at the TA Travel Center truck stop restaurant in Boise, Idaho. Ask for Mike.

4. Love is patient and kind.

5. You can simultaneously not care at all about the ultimate outcome of your crazy tour, and crave big results. Being a writer, I am used to such dichotomies.

6. The trunk of your car is not a bad place to sell books.

7. There are truckers who only manage to get home one day per month.

8. Trucker couples rock. I met a dog trucker who’d been on the road nearly a decade with his driver partner. Woof!

9. We all love listening to someone read aloud.

10. Wet cement continues to interest me.