Category Archives: travel writing

Summer reads – great book deals for July!

I’ve got two great deals if you’re stocking up your Kindle for your summer reads – and between them, you’ll be able to read every word I’ve ever written at a huge discount! Not Cool – a Kindle Monthly Deal I’m thrilled that Amazon selected Not Cool: Europe by Train in a Heatwave as aContinue reading “Summer reads – great book deals for July!”

Watch Out for Pirates

It’s Publication Day for my new brand new travel memoir! Watch Out for Pirates: Tales From a Travel Writer’s Life is the third book in my ‘Born to Travel’ series and it’s the wildest ride yet. Read about my epic drive across Australia battling giant lizards, the time I was Santa in a Portuguese villageContinue reading “Watch Out for Pirates”

The world’s best rail journeys

I’ve always been a fan of rail travel – ever since I took my first InterRail trip back in – *checks notes* – the 1880s. I’m sure I remember the steam engines and bonnets. Anyway, I was delighted to be asked to write about my favourite books about rail journeys for Shepherd, the new onlineContinue reading “The world’s best rail journeys”

Never Pack an Ice-Axe

My latest travel memoir is available now for pre-order! Never Pack an Ice-Axe: Tales From a Travel Writer’s Life publishes on 10 June, but if you pre-order now you can be among the first to read it. Here’s where you go to do that: Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B095XJXZMV Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095XJXZMV And to whetContinue reading “Never Pack an Ice-Axe”

Don’t eat the puffin – and other travel advice

If I only had one piece of advice for you, after all these years of travel, it would simply be this – don’t eat the oily seabird, however drunk you are. They’ll tell you it’s just like pigeon. They’ll say it’s a speciality that you simply must try. They are wrong, so very wrong, onContinue reading “Don’t eat the puffin – and other travel advice”

In Finn’s footsteps on the Giant’s Causeway

Stick a geologist in front of the Giant’s Causeway and this is what they’ll say. Sixty million years ago, give or take a week or two, molten lava erupted through the chalk beds of the Irish Channel and formed a huge, bubbling lava field, hundreds of thousands of square kilometres in size.

How to get your new book noticed and reviewed

It’s easier than it’s ever been to write a book and get it published. First, you write a book. And then second, you publish it on Amazon or another platform of your choice, with a minimal amount of formatting work and couple of clicks. It’s that easy. Even I did it, with Takoradi to the stars (via Huddersfield).

Travel writers – scourge of the planet?

On Friday 24 May, a record number of flights took to the skies over the UK – more than 9,000 planes in the air in 24 hours (the same day, incidentally, that schoolchildren around the world staged their latest climate strike). That won’t be the last record broken. But it might be the one that forces you to have a serious conversation with yourself as a traveller or, like me, a travel writer.

How to launch an e-book – we’re going to need a lot more white wine

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I got roped in by my publisher to help with launching Rough Guides as a travel guidebook series in America. I say ‘roped in’. I mean ‘flown to New York, put up in a swanky hotel and asked to drink white wine with beautiful people’.

More puppies, less explicit content – or how to take your book straight to #1

Search on Amazon – All Departments for ‘Takoradi’ and I sit proudly at #1, there not being a lot of products in the world with Takoradi in the title (though, at 381, probably more than you think).

How to sell more books than Bill Bryson

You have to jump through all sorts of hoops to publish a book with Kindle Direct Publishing, but in the end it’s fairly straightforward and there are lots of tools to help you promote your book and keep track of its progress. But with a brand new book, there’s not a whole lot they can tell you straight away.