…well I didn’t exactly get a starred review, but my book did. No one evaluated me as a person (…and I’m sure if they did, they’d expel me as a bad influence…). Although they did refer to me as “a powerful new voice in creative nonfiction.” Which I thought was kinda nice. But yeah, Vagabond Dreams got the red star. According to their website, “Starred reviews are given to books...
I promised to give you an update on the signing I did at Leeds County Books this past week… Despite a blizzard that smothered the region in several inches of snow, the turnout was excellent. It was supposed to be 2 hours long but I was there for a full 3 hours, with a nonstop stream of people lined up to the door the entire time. According to the guy at the bookstore, the average number of...
I’m doing a book signing for Vagabond Dreams on December 29th, 2012 in Brockville, Ontario. This will be my only visit to North America in 2012 / 2013, so I hope you can make it. Want to get your copy signed, share a travel story — or even give me a piece of your mind? Don’t miss this opportunity! I will sign copies of the book, household items, high school memorabilia, and selected parts of the...
I was in Barbados for work a couple weeks ago. We had meetings of course, but most of the time we sat on the terrance of our rented villa, with laptops open next to a windswept view of the sea. I didn’t have much opportunity to check out the island. But I did make time to taste some rum. It could be said that rum is Barbados’s legacy to the world. Barbados saw some of the earliest development of...
My proudest high school moment wasn’t an academic or sporting achievement. I failed several classes and I was never part of a team. No, my proudest achievement was a food fight. The biggest food fight in the history of my school. I wonder how many of my friends knew that me and Jim started the whole thing? There were a lot of small skirmishes leading up to it, of course. Low level food fights...
I promised to update you on this year’s olive harvest. If you read my earlier blog — Time to Harvest the Olives — you’ll know that I have 12 olive trees on the roof of my house. Each tree is a different variety; some are table olives and some are used for oil. The sun dissolved the paper tags long ago, so we can no longer identify which is which. We carefully fertilized each tree last spring. And...
I was in Belgium recently for a bit of an escape. That’s the thing about living on a small island. You’ve gotta get away on a regular basis or the walls start to feel like they’re closing in. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy living here. The weather’s perfect, and things are easy. But an island is always a self-contained world. An extreme micro-universe. It’s necessary to get out of that setting every...
All sorts of happy readers have been posting their Vagabond Dreams photos on my Facebook page. I asked them to take a picture with the book, and they answered in spades. I thought you might enjoy seeing them, so I pasted a bunch here. We’ve got readers posting from all over Canada and the US, from Australia, the Himalayas, the jungles of Brazil and even the deck of the Titanic. Two of the photos...
My latest magazine feature just hit newsstands. You can find it in Chapters, Coles and other bookstores across Canada, and in select international magazine stores in the United States. Congrats to Tomoko Goto for landing the cover photo on her first feature assignment. It’s a story of adventure, exploration, close animal encounters and more. I don’t remember where I first heard about Namibia...
It still feels like summer on my island—30C and sunny every day, with no sign of letting up. But it’s autumn back in North America. My favourite time of year. Fall is nostalgia distilled into the tangible caress of cool air tinted with the smell of decaying leaves. The comforting pressure of jeans against your skin. A light jacket with many pockets. And a slice of delicately spiced pumpkin pie...