It’s almost Halloween and you know what that means; a new round of manufactured urban legends to distract and scare simpleminded people into ignoring that their Republican elected officials probably wouldn’t stop to pee on them if they were on fire. But! It also means a reliable uptick in interest…

Though it feels like a lifetime ago, it’s been five years since I recorded this interview with Rick Steves, talking about Vlad “The Impaler” Dracula. It was one of the maybe three or five instances in my whole life where I benefited from exquisite timing. Steves had recently returned from…

Since its release in late-2016, it’s become a welcome tradition that I do an in-bookstore reading from Backpacking with Dracula each year around Halloween. That’s not happening this year, due to the U.S. transforming into a belligerent, failed, plague state, so I decided to do a reading via my very…

I’ll just leave this here. BUY THE BOOK!

It is with enormous satisfaction and pride that I announce the publication of my first solo, book-length project, a Romania travel memoir called Backpacking with Dracula. Honestly, so many nights and weekends have been dedicated to working on this project for the past year and a half, I guess the prevailing…

A travel book investigating Vlad “The Impaler” Dracula and the vampire monster he inspired   The book is out now!   The undisputed A-lister among Transylvania’s cabaret of supernatural blood-drainers and face-eaters, Count Dracula is both a publicist’s dream and nightmare. Like Justin Bieber, despite unremitting horrifying behavior, the public…

Disclosure: That even on my best day, my book reviewing skills are amateurish notwithstanding, I am good friends with Doug and have therefore opted to skip doing a book review in favor of an only sporadically serious interview on his travels and scoring his first book, Europe on 5 Wrong…

On a theoretical list of Thompson’s top fans, I’m just below his agent, editor and mom, jockeying for position with his wife and oldest friend. I read Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer three times. Partly because of his excellent storytelling, humor and how strongly I…