https://www.walkonfine.com/writing daily 1.0 2023-12-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1589901176076-0AI2KT3R2HGSYW6GYRYA/Alaska1.jpg Nonfiction Writing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1593637190858-A5TVXAK258Z55WPTWDJY/exiled5.jpg Nonfiction Writing - Exiled to America On finding the joy of travel in your backyard. Original story in Worldhum. Home is a difficult concept for any professional who moves for a living. I am that, and more so, I am obsessed with place. Lately my mind has retreated into its darkest corners, partly because it has tried to reconcile my love of the world and the road—the me who never wanted to stop moving—and my love of this place, my home, which gave me the eyes and curiosity that first got me out the door. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1590443478622-5UC8DXPZ7DARYTBXSHSQ/Alaska1.jpg Nonfiction Writing - Welcome to the Land A road trip to the Alaskan Arctic. Original story at The Statesider. Two tourists had gotten their Ford Explorer mired about 20 meters north of a patch of mud — frozen, even in August. I parked on the mud and walked on the sand, which sloughed up to my ankles, and came up on two men in their mid-twenties. One was wearing a winter jacket. One was wearing a windbreaker and shorts. They were from China, graduate students at Indiana University Bloomington. The sand had climbed halfway up their tires. It was past midnight and 38 degrees, although it wasn’t dark, because this was summer in Utqiagvik, and during that season in the far north, the sun doesn’t set but shifts into a nightly greyscale that deepens what feels like an already perpetual gloom. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1590540686362-2TGBQW86UVKJTL7NWBB8/nola5.jpg Nonfiction Writing - Our Social Distance & Sheltering Club Socially isolated in the South’s least isolated city. Original story at The Bitter Southerner. More than good food or drinks, we treasure the ability to partake of such pleasures with our friends. And that’s been robbed of us. The Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs that conduct our second lines, neighborhood parades that kick off every weekend outside of summer, are now practicing social distancing. It is getting into crawfish season, and it feels wholly unnatural to eat these crustaceans outside of a well-attended boil. I’ll eat a bottom dwelling river insect anytime, but it really helps the experience when there’s newspaper on the table, friends and family milling about, a keg on ice, and music blasting out of a speaker. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1590522326321-XZERQ6T6TI4R79J1UOJS/popo1.jpg Nonfiction Writing When the Moon Met the Tiger Bringing my daughter around the world to meet her grandfather on his deathbed. Original story at Catapult. In his youth, my grandfather was a tiger. Tall, broad-shouldered, full-faced, he had led soldiers into the mountains of the Golden Triangle to set ambushes for drug runners and bandits. Later in life, he wore bespoke tailored suits, drank scotch in one hand, and smoked a cigarette in the other while talking military tactics with Moshe Dayan and negotiating treaties with Josip Broz Tito. He could not smile now; there was a feeding tube in his throat. He could not run at me screaming, “sumo!” because his groin was attached to a catheter. His hair was white and thin. His hands, which had held machetes and assault rifles and scotch, were liver-spotted and paralyzed. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1590523758360-WYZ2KTQ867S3YKBL4OLM/indonesia8.jpg Nonfiction Writing - A Writer's Port of Call A nighttime adventure on the Jakarta docks. Original story at Worldhum. Call him Ishmael. He was handsome in the Javanese way: slight and slender, his walnut-brown skin, soot-darkened in the Jakarta night, breaking into a flash of white as he smiled at me. “Are you a tourist?” He was the first Indonesian sailor to address me as such on the docks of Sunda Kelapa, the old port of Jakarta, where I had gone at night to see the creaking sails of old Makassar schooners. The combination of being half-Asian, cloaked by darkness, and filthy from two weeks of Indonesian travel meant I was rarely mistaken for a Westerner at night.I looked at the Javanese who had called out to me. He was surrounded by other sailors, dark-skinned and short-shadowed at night, illuminated in flecks of blood-orange by the cherries of their clove cigarettes. Their eyes flashed with the casual wariness of wharfmen. It seemed silly to approach a group like that at night on the docks, so I did. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1590524693895-S0UUQCG05VHPF2DW7FJV/nola7.jpg Nonfiction Writing - When Jesters Have Their Day Why Mardi Gras matters. Original story at NPR. I'm with a bunch of misfits, poets, lunatics, artists and general quirks. Some of us run non-profits, some are professional musicians. One is a bartender, one is a lawyer, and one is working his way through law school as a bartender. There are about two dozen boats, paddling away, accompanied by a brass band that's desperately trying not to sink under the muck. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1593637540462-VOAYO3CYWI7VCLGB9ENV/myanmar%25252B6.jpg Nonfiction Writing - Under the Banyan Tree Dispatches from a Buddhist revolution. Original story at Worldhum. The next morning I was reminded of how, for a stagnant city, Yangon is still pregnant with images that are vibrantly alive. The huge durian and jackfruits, the ruby red bananas in the markets. And the animals, the ones who truly rule Yangon, are everywhere. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1593635093878-9AM87WVZV5OM8U9BT8D1/civil%2Brights.jpg Nonfiction Writing - The Southern Civil Rights Trail A road trip through sites that were seminal to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950-60s, and an acknowledgement that the work of that struggle is far from complete. Original story at Lonely Planet. No movement has challenged the United States to live up to its highest ideals, while tempting its worst demons, like the battle for civil rights. The fight is not one contained narrative, but a series of episodes, the latest of which is unfolding today. From the beautiful (marchers hand in hand in Selma, Alabama) to the nightmarish (those same marchers set on by police dogs), many of the events and images from this struggle are writ into Southern soil and soul. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1594047168711-4LJJZXCSIJ0CIET8I2MS/cameroonfarnorth1.jpg Nonfiction Writing - An excerpt from Walk On Fine, a short story featured in Winning Writers You can take the Camrail train from Yaoundé but only foreigners and big men can afford first class and second class isn't worth the extra francs. If a man comes on board between stations telling you the potions he sells will cure gout and rheumatism, ignore him, because our cousin Philémon bought a bottle once and it was just cologne and water. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1590522731301-A6SGXZSYM340HB23KTUY/gnarleans2.jpg Nonfiction Writing - How New Orleans’ skate scene became a home for outsiders Original story at Huck. All photography on this page by Henry Hung …everyone seems to let everyone else do their thing – a foundational corollary to the chaos of New Orleans. A husband might move a little closer to his wife as they walk through the skating corridor, but the guys are always careful to give pedestrians a wide berth, especially children. One woman smiles and yells at the guys, “It smells like weed,” and one of the skaters yells back, “It smells you too,” which gets a big laugh. As Jarred says, “It’s pretty much One Love out here.” https://www.walkonfine.com/writing1 daily 0.75 2020-05-19 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1589930172386-BW6OW7P3COM2018K52QD/Mongolia+house+moving.jpg Writing https://www.walkonfine.com/portfolio daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56cddecb2b8ddeef8fbf9088/1457024162806-XH03IVFMI26S05KB074J/31.jpg portfolio - Caravan In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Fusce eu erat tincidunt, dapibus sem scelerisque, dapibus nibh. Proin fringilla, est non fermentum cursus, elit nibh hendrerit velit, vitae congue neque augue sed odio. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56cddecb2b8ddeef8fbf9088/1457024162806-XH03IVFMI26S05KB074J/31.jpg portfolio - Caravan In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Fusce eu erat tincidunt, dapibus sem scelerisque, dapibus nibh. 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Honestly, I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve contributed to, or how many places I’ve been, while working for LP. This picture is a sample of some of the guidebooks I’ve collaborated on. I’ve also contributed to a few travel anthologies. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1595616108386-KE7S3LB9NJZDS8DZASUD/LP%2Bbooks%2B7-24-2020.jpg Lonely Planet I’ve been writing for Lonely Planet, the world’s largest travel publisher, since 2008. Honestly, I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve contributed to, or how many places I’ve been, while working for LP. This picture is a sample of some of the guidebooks I’ve collaborated on. I’ve also contributed to a few travel anthologies. https://www.walkonfine.com/luna daily 0.75 2024-02-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1708025351959-9TJTGWMH8Z1TDVXS6ZC3/lunacover.jpg Luna & the Heart of the Forest - Out on March 12, 2024! As you can tell from this website, I have been to a lot of places. Every now and then one of them lodges itself deep in me like I’ve found a piece of myself I didn’t know was missing. The rugged island of Newfoundland, situated at the eastern edge of Canada, is one of them. I explored that province with my daughter in the summer of 2019, and an image I have of her running into the woods inspired a middle grade dark fantasy novel that, I am thrilled to announce, will be published in March of 2024. Luna & the Heart of the Forest is forthcoming from Breakwater Books Ltd. in Canada. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1708025351959-9TJTGWMH8Z1TDVXS6ZC3/lunacover.jpg Luna & the Heart of the Forest - Out on March 12, 2024! As you can tell from this website, I have been to a lot of places. Every now and then one of them lodges itself deep in me like I’ve found a piece of myself I didn’t know was missing. The rugged island of Newfoundland, situated at the eastern edge of Canada, is one of them. I explored that province with my daughter in the summer of 2019, and an image I have of her running into the woods inspired a middle grade dark fantasy novel that, I am thrilled to announce, will be published in March of 2024. Luna & the Heart of the Forest is forthcoming from Breakwater Books Ltd. in Canada. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1703266864466-LAM6H35UJLYKIY8CC2MX/IMG_20190601_112021.jpg Luna & the Heart of the Forest Pre-order here! This book won a Walter Grant from We Need Diverse Books — one of 10 grants awarded every year for an in-progress children’s book — and it wouldn’t have happened without that support. Anyways, this tale taps into the deepest parts of me that engage with words and place and parenting and imagination. Newfoundland is an extraordinary place, and I feel not only happy, but incredibly honored and humbled that I get to, in some small way, tell a story about it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1703266711231-7T3HSXXWDYQRDVSJ90BD/IMG_20190602_182632.jpg Luna & the Heart of the Forest If I were to write the book jacket, here’s my description: Eleven-year-old Luna has spent her whole life following her dad around the world, but what she really wants is an adventure all her own. Newfoundland, an island of blue icebergs and whispering woods, might be the setting that’s as big as her imagination. But when Luna enters an otherworldly forest and faces a monster in a battle of wits, she also unleashes a darkness that threatens to devour everything she loves. Now this would-be explorer finds herself on a real quest: to seal the wound she opened, bring rest to the ghosts of the island, and save the people she cares for most. In Luna & the Heart of the Forest, readers will meet Viking ghosts, ships of the dead, talking whales, bog demons, forest spirits, and banshees, set against a backdrop of storms, saltwater, and pine forests, and a girl who discovers the place where the above, plus courage, family, and home, come together. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1703266706703-6S05TVSFO6L6VVWNL7YV/IMG_20190605_180912.jpg Luna & the Heart of the Forest Very loud and enthusiastic shout outs to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where I wrote the first draft of this novel; my wife, Rachel, for her support and patience; my parents, for their presence and legacy and love; and my kids, for being the laughter and love of my life. https://www.walkonfine.com/new-page-2 daily 0.75 2020-05-25 https://www.walkonfine.com/about daily 0.75 2020-07-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec3f50cc1b91763181aca22/1593637721500-GTQ96YVDE5TIM4T65YGS/Alaska+headshot.jpg About/Contact