‘You Slept Where?’ definitely a best ‘Sellers’
While her fourth great-grandfather owned property “all the way from Lenoir City to Farragut,” near Northshore, she grew up in Blount County.
Published by Simon & Schuster through Archway Publishing, the book was inspired by Sellers’ father.
“I could hear my daddy’s voice, ‘You slept where?’” she recalled when she told her father, Harold Prater, of the places she visited and unique sleep arrangements along the way.
“My daddy was a farmer, a (Great) Depression kid,” Sellers added. “He could not believe I slept in an underwater hotel, an ice hotel — I climbed Mount Everest — and slept in a silo.
“All the different places I stayed in are listed in the book.”
With a love for photography, Sellers traveled around the world to photograph adventures.
She explained the publishers wanted conflict in the book; so with “the Clumsy Business Woman” in every chapter, “either I’m tripping, I’m falling, losing the camera, dropping the camera.”
“You Slept Where?” is available through Amazon.
Mainly, Sellers said writing the book was a way to “laugh at myself and get others to laugh at me.
“I’m like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz,” she added “I go all over the world, stay in all these bizarre places — including this big potato in Idaho — I circle back and I find “there’s no place like home.’”
However, “really, the story is about my (late) dad (who had a brain tumor) and my (late) mother (Catherine Prater), who had dementia because it’s about their story,” Sellers said. “My book has raised over $50,000 for non-profits, including Alzheimer’s of Tennessee,” Sellers said.
“I was dealing with dad who had a brain tumor and mama with dementia and my husband (“Big” Ed Sellers) has (post-traumatic stress disorder) and I raised 15 kids” — her own son and 14 other children whom she mentored.
“(Ed) sometimes goes on the adventures and sometimes does not,” Sellers said. Her son, Dustin, also went on trips.
Every book is signed with a red Sharpie pen because they are made in Blount County. Unless it is signed at an Alzheimer’s event, then it is signed with a purple Sharpie.
