(This is an amendment to the “So you want to be a Lonely Planet author” piece that I originally posted here in April of 2006. Whereas that piece was filled with personal details of my first, grueling LP guidebook gig, this one focuses on the mechanics and general pros and…

Remember these blogs? How Conor is Spending All His Money (later called Conor’s Mildly Thrilling Tales) No Place As Home The Great Wallnut I remember them fondly. They were the first travel blogs I read, way back during travel blogging’s Bronze Age (2003-06). I started this blog in February 2006….

In the past few months, I’ve made two very serious attempts to learn how to type. Anyone that’s taken the time to read my alternately revealing and unsettling ‘About Me’ page will know that I type with exactly four fingers: the thumb, index and middle fingers on my right hand…

Hello from New York City. I’m having a fantastically productive and enjoyable time trying to make the word a better place through literary genius and drinking excessive quantities of wine. I’m about eight working hours away from being done with the Romania and Moldova guidebook project that I’ve been picking…

Sweet Jesus, do I ever hate research. I mean I really hate it. I like to do research about as much as the idiots setting United States foreign policy right now, meaning not at all – or occasionally allowing fantastically unqualified, arrogant f*ckwits to do it for me. It’s just…

On direct orders from my agent, publicist, personal chef and the Pope, I’ve been trying to up my writer profile lately by targeting big name publications. I started by short-listing several household name publications, then eliminating the sadistic jackasses that pay 25 cents a word despite an excess of two…

I discussed it here intermittently all summer and any poor bastard/bastardess that crossed my path in the terrene world couldn’t get me to shut up about it. I was suffering from writer burnout. I didn’t want to write about Italy. I didn’t want to write about Spain. I didn’t want…