Category: Books
A Man In Love With His Wife.
Sicily, near Palermo. 1972 We met Albert and Rosalia fifty years ago, and our few minutes of friendship shine in my memory. Tom and I were on the honeymoon of a lifetime, living in a Volkswagen van and traveling from one continent to another, from one country to another. Twenty-four hours before, we had endured…
Inside a Book
Book design is the graphic art of determining the visual and physical characteristics of a book. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_design) Open a book, and what do you see? Words. There may be illustrations or a map, but most of all there are pages and pages of those wonderful words and sentences we writers labor to place in ways…
Finding the right Label
AS AN AUTHOR, I WRESTLE with many decisions when I prepare a book for publication. This is especially true because I choose to self-publish. Besides working with my editor to fine-tune the manuscript, I must write a description, nail down a title, work with a designer to create a book cover, and decide how to…
Origins of a Novel
EVERY TIME I HOLD one of the silver spoons in my hand, I remember. My thumb strokes the simple design on the handle, the capital L and the flat, crossed ribbons. I admire the elegant shape of the spoon, and I remember. It is not even my memory. It is my grandmother’s. I grew up…
Balanced Memoirs of the Un-famous
Celebrity memoirs frequently appear on best seller lists, but what of the memoirs of the unfamous? If your name is well-known in the arts or politics, publishers will clamor for anything you might write. But, when a regular person with an interesting story writes a memoir, one of the first dilemmas they encounter is how…
Four Books about the Silk Road
For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the Silk Road. Before adoption of the magnetic compass and advances in ship design in the early 1500s, this overland journey, also known as the Spice Road, served as the main trade route between China and Europe. Visions of camel caravans crossing the…
The Ultimate Road Trip Memoir
In 2007, Dina and Bernard joined the Centennial Beijing to Paris Motor Challenge, a 36-day car rally that would stretch for 9316 miles across the Gobi desert, Siberia, Russia, and eastern Europe. Married for twenty years, the couple had owned and operated a successful business together. In 2005 they were living on a ranch in…
Hippie Trail Adventures
According to Wikipedia, the Hippie Trail is the name given to the overland journey from Europe to India and Nepal taken by travelers between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s.
A Reading Challenge for Travel Lovers
I have been aware of book-reading challenges for some time but I never thought I would join one. My own bookshelves offer enough of a challenge. I am a book buying addict and my shelves overflow with books waiting to be read. I love used book stores, Friends of the Library shops, and most of…
Books for the Armchair Traveler
In early January of 2017, when I sat down at my computer to begin my memoir, I knew it would be of interest to armchair travelers. But I never imagined, as I typed the first words of the first chapter, that the book would be released in the middle of a pandemic when travel was…