6, 2003, when I published a column in The Inquirer saying goodbye to my hopelessly hyperactive, incorrigible Labrador retriever Marley, who for 13 years filled our home and lives with riotous bedlam. I catch myself wondering: How did I get on this roller coaster, and how do I hold on? And part of me worries about what effect it will have on my family, particularly my three children, and on my lifestyle, my career, my friendships. Part of me is ecstatic at this startling success. It has been on the New York Times nonfiction hardcover bestseller list for 34 straight weeks, 16 of them at No. What began in my mind as a 'little book' - the simple story of the early years of my marriage and the joyously insane Labrador retriever that would change the family we became - is now in its 30th printing, with just under two million copies in print. I was the ordinary working schmo who won the lottery - in my case, the lottery being the infinitesimally tiny chance of writing a first book that, for whatever mysterious combination of factors, takes off. I felt a little like the ordinary working schmo who wins the lottery. For better or worse, my new status as 'bestselling author' would change everything even as I resisted change with every fiber of my being. He knew what I was just beginning to understand. The scene was surreal, and I was smack in the middle of it, about to go live in front of 2.7 million viewers.Īfter my interview, Smith leaned in close to me and, in an almost fatherly way, said, 'I don't think you fully realize it yet, but your life will never be the same.' 'Only on morning television,' host Harry Smith cracked to me moments before we went on the air. Waiting in the wings with me to appear in the same half hour of the morning talk show were rapper/actress Queen Latifah, movie mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, and two young women with hardly any clothes on who billed themselves as 'the world's only twin belly dancers.' I was there to talk about my book, Marley & Me, and its surprising vault from obscurity to the top of national bestseller lists. A makeup artist powdered my nose and fussed with my hair. 13 and I was sitting in the green room at the CBS studios in New York, waiting to go on The Early Show. I know exactly when and where it happened - the moment I finally figured out that my quiet, contented, boring little life had changed in powerful ways, and would not be changing back again anytime soon. Celebrity & Me Look what Marley has dragged in now.īestsellerdom is an unexpected and rich blessing, but at times the author has a bone to pick.

Marley and me book author