Bon Appetit

 

Another one of my articles posted today on TravelAwaits.Com. This one will cause a stir (pun intended).

Founded in 1702, Mobile, Alabama is the state's port city, and it only figures that dining in the city is centered around seafood. Click here to read more and take a short gastronomic tour of Mobile.

Bon Appetit.

The Titles are Backing Up

What a week it has been. I never thought I'd be offer the chance to re-write Hiking Alabama. No pun intended but recreational guides like that have a limited shelf life. So I was quite surprised to have a call from Falcon asking me if I wanted to revise it. Needless to say, I said YES!

And here we are, 20 years after the first edition, Hiking Alabama 5th Edition is officially in the works. But as they say, WAIT! There's more!

Prometheus Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield (another of their imprints is Falcon Guides), has made an offer on my book proposal, Space Oddities - Forgotten Stories of Mankind's Exploration of Space, and I have accepted.

I can't tell you how excited I am. This is the book that I've always wanted to write but never had the time because of other projects I had already contracted to do. It will be a Spring 2022 release.

I'll have plenty more to say on both books in the coming days. Time to get writing and hiking.

Here We Go Again

 

Wish me luck. I'm wrapping up yet another book proposal that will ship out to an "interested" publisher in the morning. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten my hiking roots and more hiking books and projects are on the way. I know, I promised a few this past year. They're coming. Really!

For this new title, I am once again heading down that history rabbit hole that I love to travel down. This time, I'm falling back on my love of the space program with a manuscript tentatively titled, "Space Oddities - Forgotten Stories of Mankind's Exploration of Space". I'm really loving the stories I've uncovered for the book. Trouble is, I keep digging up more (thank you to the NASA history team!).

Anyway, the proposal ships out today for this new book which means I won't hear anything for the next 3 months. In the meantime, I created a cover to help me keep the faith. 😊 (Trust me, this won't be the final cover if the project moves forward).

The Weird, Wacky, and Wild Side of Alabama

  

All states have them, weird roadside attractions that either bring joy to your heart or leave you scratching your head wonder what were they thinking? Traveling the backroads of Alabama as I do for my hiking guides, I've come across some weird, wacky, and wild roadside attractions. Here are a few of my favorites, my latest article for TravelAwaits.Com.

Latest TravelAwaits Article Has Posted

 

How about a little light reading? My latest article has just posted on TravelAwaits - a few of the best trails to hike with your dog in Alabama. There are literally hundreds of great trails to hike with you pup in the state, but these are eight of my favorites for an easy couple of hours, maybe a half day on the trail.

Click here to read more.

And Once Again...

 

And once again, I've kind of, sort of, put the work load on myself, but it's all good. I work much better under pressure. 

So, the new gig with TravelAwaits writing travel pieces is keeping me busy. I have 3 new articles due in just a few days. Work on a new historical book (details to come) is probably halfway finished and just now, the editor at Falcon sent me the edited manuscript for Hiking Waterfalls Alabama that I need to proof and correct by next Friday. The manuscript doesn't look too bad. Let me rephrase that - at least I don't have to answer a lot of questions. They did a great job correcting the grammatical errors I made from rushing it to completion, which I am prone to do when I rush something to completion. 

Needless to say, all of this has held up some other projects I promised to complete, but I'll get there. Right now, I need to put my nose to the old grindstone.

It Was 20 Years Ago Today...

It is hard to believe but 20 years ago today, my first book, Hike America Alabama, was released by a small publisher in Virginia, Beachway press. The book is now in its 4th edition thanks to all of you! The book has led to quite a nice little side-job in writing.

I'm constantly asked, how did it all begin? How did you get published? Well, that's an interesting story and one that had a roundabout trajectory and was a bit...odd.

I had been writing since high school with mixed success, penning articles and short stories submitting them to newspapers and magazines only to receive the dreaded, "Thanks, but..." rejection letter. Oh, and I amassed quite a few. They are all now neatly in binders filling my library. 

I also did plenty of writing during my radio career - copywriting, news copy, and my own comedy bits. How "Hike America Alabama" came to be actually started in the 90s when the Internet was still finding its footing and people would buy “CD ROMS” to get information. For example, you could get the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on a CD with articles, photos, audio, and video.

A friend of mine suggested that since my radio career had ended and I was now a software programmer that I should create my own CD ROM. He suggested doing one as a guide to collecting the Beatles since we were both fans of the band. It would be a combination price guide and how-to guide with audio, photos, videos, etc. So I did and “Beatlepedia” was born.

This was in October 1998. I marketed it myself and son-of-a-gun, it was a hit! With that success I began another project. I also enjoy listening to shortwave radio. I loved tuning the dial to pick up radio stations from the smallest countries in the world. 

I decided to create a new CD-ROM for SWL’ers (shortwave listeners) called “DXLog” that featured monthly station schedules, maps of transmitter locations, audio copies of interval signals, and lots of information on the stations themselves. It was also a hit winning rave reviews from several hobby magazines. 

So far, so good, right? I then decided to try one more CD-ROM. I would put my love of hiking and my experiences with the sport into a guide about section hiking the Appalachian Trail again with photos, videos, the works.  This time I wouldn’t publish it myself. I would submit it to publishers and let them get the word out.

Up to this time I had another hobby – rejection letter collecting. As is the case with many writers when it came to getting that first book published it was an uphill battle but I went ahead and submitted this new CD to publishers despite my track record.

 

I submitted the proposal to 20 publishers. Immediately my rejection letter collection grew by 19. The 20th publisher, a little company out of Virginia called Beachway Press, called me.

“Joe,” the voice crackled over the phone. “There is so much out there about the A.T. that we can’t use your project. But have you ever thought about writing a book about hiking in Alabama?”

“No,” was my answer. “But I am now.”

And with that the first edition of what was then called Hike America Alabama was born and was it ever an experience to write. GPS units were too expensive for me to buy so it was written the old fashioned way – measuring wheels, pedometers, compass, pencil, and topo maps. 

That first edition was released in October 2000 then re-released soon after when Falcon Books bought the small company. Falcon has a big audience for their titles and word got out to a gentlemen in California, I believe, who hand carved hiking sticks. He had a design for every state in the country and called them, "Hike America <insert state name here>". A law suit was threatened and the book was renamed "Hike Alabama".

The second edition of the book came out in 2003 and as I’ve said before, I wasn’t happy with it, and neither were many readers, for many reasons. Falcon soon after requested a 3rd edition which was released in 2007, giving me the chance to revamp the title. It was better but still not quite what I wanted it to be. 

 

Finally in 2014, I was offered the chance to write the 4th edition, which I did and it received nice reviews, back to where we started I hated that it was limited in how many trails could be included and that I had to do shorter hikes (by now, the knees had said, "What are you doing???"), but still, I like this edition as much as the first and from reading reviews, apparently many of you do.

Thank you again for purchasing Hiking Alabama all of these years. I hope you liked the latest edition and it serves you well. Cheers!