Category: Books
-
Researching Armenia’s Most Comprehensive Travel Guidebook – By Bicycle
There’s another purpose to my in-depth bicycle tour of Armenia, which is also a nice development for my occasional career as an author: I’ve been greatly honoured with the task of researching and writing the next edition of the Bradt Travel Guide to Armenia. This British publication is the only dedicated English-language guidebook to Armenia currently in print. The original book was put together by a husband-and-wife team who first came to Armenia in 2001 and have been revising and updating it for three further editions since. But Bradt needed a new author for the 5th edition, and the commissioning… Continue reading →
-
How To Create A Gorgeous Travel Photobook That Engages & Inspires
Step 1: Do Something Inspirational I don’t mean inspirational for anyone else; I mean for yourself. Creative juices run swiftest when you’re truly inspired. Seek out what moves you most and allow the process to take you places you didn’t know existed, literally and figuratively. Continue reading →
-
Images From The Journey: Introducing the official #Janapar Photobook
Whenever I head out on an adventure, I constantly find myself wondering why it took so much thinking and dithering before actually doing it. This still happens after years of experience. “It’s so easy just to do this! Why didn’t I do it ages ago?” The same thing happened with the photobook that I’m launching this week. I could have created this at any point in the last couple of years. Instead, I dithered. But now I’ve got off my backside and created the definitive photo travelogue of Janapar, I’m wondering why it took so long to do it! About the book,… Continue reading →
-
The Weave Of The Ride (or, Janapar from Andy’s point of view)
In the summer of 2007, my best mate Andy Welch and I set off from my front door. We’d called our expedition ‘Ride Earth’, and were all set to cycle round the world. But the experiences that followed changed all we thought we knew about, travel, adventure and cycle-touring. Weave Of The Ride, Andy’s own account of that eight-month journey from England to Armenia, offers an alternative perspective on the story that ends with Ride Earth’s disbandment and the beginning of two new solo adventures. In this guest post, Andy goes into detail about his new book. Continue reading →
-
Are Book-Writing And Film-Making The Same Thing?
Subjects are nouns, their actions are verbs, their appearances adjectives. A sentence is a single shot, while a paragraph is a sequence of them. Paragraphs are built into chapters, and sequences are built into stories. Then chapters are assembled into books; stories into films. The viewfinder is my vocabulary. The focus ring and exposure dial are my spelling and grammar. These are basic things that I’d better get right. And I need a good mixture of context and detail, otherwise my tale will become muddled and hard to understand. Continue reading →
-
Writer’s Blog: On Adventure Travel Literature
Why write a book anyway? There seems to be a welter of expedition and adventure literature hitting the shelves at the moment, along with a growing surge in high-profile expeditioning. Continue reading →
-
Writer’s Blog: The End Of The Beginning
It took quite a bit longer than expected, but suddenly, yesterday, I felt that the end of the book had appeared on the horizon. The hope is to finish the first draft within the next few days. Without much idea of how it would turn out, I began writing three months ago, shortly after returning from a chilly Scandinavian bike trip. Continue reading →
-
Writer’s Blog: Searching In The Dark (Or, What Was It About Again?)
I’m making great progress, on the face of it. I’ve written 31,000 words — almost half the word-count of the average novel, according to some. I feel that I have made headway into the meat of the process — the ‘middle’ of the story, as it were. Continue reading →
-
Writer’s Blog: What’s On A Long-Distance Cyclist’s Bookshelf?
You generate a lot of free time on the road. To observe, to create images, to think. Often it’s nice to simply empty your head entirely and think of nothing at all. But I have been able to do a ton of reading in my tent at night, during lazy lunch-breaks, while waiting for friends to finish packing. Continue reading →
-
Writer’s Blog: With All The Enthusiasm Of A Beginner
I sat down a few days ago and began to write. I wrote and wrote and wrote. The words flew from my mind faster than I could get them down. Before I knew what had happened I’d committed six thousand words to manuscript. And I was happy with all of them. Continue reading →