EVANSVILLE NATIVE CONNIE STAMBUSH SHARES HER STORY IN A “QUESTION AND ANSWER” INTERVIEW

Evansville native Connie Stambush shares her story in her new book “UNTETHERED” in a “Question and Answer” interview with The City-County Observer.  Attached below is the “Question and Answer” interview.

QUESTION AND ANSWERS 

QUESTION:  Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your book?

My book Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India—A Travel Memoir is based on my 5-month, nearly 7,000-mile solo, motorcycle journey around the edge of India on a Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle as well as a memoir of how I faced my fears to become someone I wanted to be and not the person I thought I was, which was too timid to live life fully.

As a girl, I found life pretty intimidating. In school I used to slide one shoulder along the hall wall at all times…even when I was alone in the hall. This image of myself as someone scared got stuck in my mind and that is how I came to think of myself. But, I didn’t like it. I wanted to be someone brave and adventurous.

I spent many years trying to overcome this image I had of who I was by challenging myself to do things that scared me. I started with small things, like watching spooky movies alone, and worked my way up to leaving the United States to travel abroad alone — Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East.

I’m a trained journalist and was living in Prague, Czech Republic, just after the Velvet Revolution, writing features for the Prague Post when I noticed I was surrounded by Westerners wearing black turtlenecks sitting in cafes writing the next Great Novel. (Prague was the Paris of the 90s.) I didn’t leave the U.S.A. to be surrounded by others like me, so I headed to India where I thought the Western population would be less. There I got a job working for the Women’s Feature Service (WFS) and was a stringer for the Houston Chronicle. Living and working in New Delhi, India, I was always hearing the thump, thump, thump of Royal Enfields. They became like a second heartbeat for me.

When my contract with WFS ended, I was ready to leave New Delhi but not India. I’d always traveled by train, bus, boat but never navigated my own vehicle. I decided to buy a Bullet and ride it solo around India. It scared me, making it the ultimate challenge in my life-long pursuit of overcoming things that scared me.

QUESTION: Being a woman alone on a motorcycle in India sounds scary. Were you scared?

If I’d stopped to really think about what I was doing, I’d have been plenty scared. I don’t think anyone thought the journey was a good idea or that I’d actually do it. But once I started telling people my plan, I could not back out. Everyone thought it was too dangerous. Some people suggested I carry a gun. I did not. I took my brain instead. It’s the best weapon I have.

QUESTION: What motorcycle riding experience did you have before setting out on this journey?

Before announcing my plans to buy and ride a Royal Enfield solo around India, I’d only ever been a passenger on a motorcycle once or twice. I had no idea how to ride. I took the ABATE of Indiana rider course, a week-long training course in preparation for the journey while home in Evansville visiting family. I popped a wheelie the first day we actually rode and crashed. But I got up and on the motorcycle again. I wasn’t a good rider. I was scared and lacked confidence, but I was determined to keep going.

QUESTION: Why did you write this book?

I always knew I’d write about this journey, weaving stories of what it was like for a woman to be on her own, on a “so-called” man’s machine, in a country where women didn’t travel alone alongside my story of wanting to be someone other than how I thought of myself. I wanted to write an honest account of both to inspire readers to feel empowered about their own abilities.

QUESTION: Tell us a little about writing and publishing this book?

It took a long time. I wrote the first draft of it in a cabin in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northern India a few weeks after completing the journey in December 1998. It was pretty pedestrian and not the shaped and crafted narrative it is now. It was more along the lines of “this happened and then that happened and then this happened” and so on and so on. I had to figure out what the “story” was and not just regurgitate the events.

After I understood the story I wanted to tell, about a woman growing into her “empowerment”, I had to figure out what parts of the journey served that story. Every writer has to decide what to include and what to leave out.

When I finished writing and editing it, I started contacting agents. Early on I had two agents interested and offer contracts. But neither felt like the right fit for me. After that, no one seemed to be interested. Publishing is a difficult industry to break into for an unknown writer.

In the end, I figured if I could ride a motorcycle solo around India, I could independently publish my own book.

QUESTION: What do you want readers to take away from your story?

It’s important for people to know we are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. I didn’t wake up one day and buy a motorcycle and head off around India on my own. I grew into it.  That is the story I’m telling in Untethered.

QUESTION: What was the most rewarding part of writing the book?

Releasing my story into the world was most rewarding. The second most rewarding aspect is hearing from readers that they can relate to many parts of my story, even though their circumstances were different. I believe that despite the setting being on a motorcycle in India, that people — especially women — can relate to the story because it is a human story.

QUESTION: What is your favorite part of the book?

My mom’s favorite is chapter 20 “Ladies of a Different Order”. In terms of writing, my favorite chapter is 36 “Ruined Program”. I also really like the beginning and end. They’re the hardest things to write and I feel like they both did what they were supposed to do: the beginning captures the reader’s attention and makes them want to find out what happens to the narrator and the ending brings all the threads in the story to a conclusion.

QUESTION: What was the scariest moment of your journey?

There were plenty of such moments, but you’ll have to read the book to learn about them.

QUESTION: OK, I’m hooked. Where can readers buy your book?

FOOTNOTE: For more information check out my website at wwww.clstambush.com and/or email me at hello@clstambush.com