Who wouldn’t want to stay in hotels for free and write about it? In my four years of travel writing, I’ve managed to have 100 hotel feature articles published on two websites, and one magazine. Most of those hotel stays were comps, many of which I found by contacting the hotel directly. Some of the […]
Imagine warm sun-splashed beaches, world-class vineyards in Tuscany, vibrant cities bursting with culture, or snowy slopes just waiting for your skis to glide through the powder. These are examples of days in my travel writer’s life. But it all had to start somewhere… At the 2015 Ultimate Travel Writer’s Workshop in Denver, three eager newbies […]
Back in the 1990s, I was spoiled with luxury. You see, I was a real estate investor, and I got hooked on going to places like New Zealand, Europe, Central America, and South America looking for—and sometimes buying—investment real estate. But then the real estate bubble popped and skimmed the cream off the top of […]
Recently, my wife and I were guests of a country inn located in Leola, Pennsylvania. We dined at the inn’s five-star restaurant and stayed in a luxury suite, all on the house. Staying in boutique hotels and sipping fine wine may be your motivation for becoming a travel writer. Heck, that’s why I decided to […]
As I sit in a comfy chair that faces a picture window framing a pyramid-shaped mountain and a calm lake, two loons break the silence. They paddle up to my little slice of Alaskan lakefront and serenade me for 10 minutes before moving on. Every summer I travel to Alaska for fishing—that’s when the fishing […]
My fishing was interrupted by my sister and brother shouting a loud, “Whoa, look.” I did, just in time to see a school bus-sized humpback whale fall from the sky and hit the water with the largest splash I’d ever seen. He was just one of several whales we saw that day under the gaze […]
As I skied down the slopes of Aspen Snowmass to our ski-in-ski-out hotel, it seemed like a dream. My wife and I were on a trip where we stayed at two different slope-side hotels free of charge because I’m a travel writer. Just two months earlier, we stayed at a private wine-country cottage in the […]
As I enter my second full year of travel writing, it never ceases to amaze me what sells. I found I can dig way back into my past and write stories of my time in Alaska – in the 1970s, I spent nearly a year on Kodiak Island and one year in the Bering Strait […]
As I sat in the seats of the 2015 Ultimate Travel Writer’s Workshop in Denver, I had doubts of my success. That little voice of “You can’t be a travel writer because you have no training” kept rearing its ugly little head. The article queries I’d sent out over the preceding nine months had mostly […]
It can be hard to find ways to generate article topic ideas, so here’s a graphic to help you… Ways to generate article topic ideas: The biggest tip? Just go for it. Yes, you’ve heard it before…but, really, I can’t emphasize it enough. You’ve got to bite the bullet. And, the sooner the better. To […]
