About Me
Whether I find myself at home in the beachy bliss of the Monterey Bay Area of California, or afar in some curious yet captivating place where escapades call, I am enamored of the people, pleasures and pursuits that propel my pen to remember the humorous and beautiful, the charming and disarming, the zany and amazing: All the stories I love to discover in our wondrous world.
My award-winning essays have appeared in a plethora of publications, notably the “Best Travel Writing” and humor anthologies curated by Travelers’ Tales.
Out now is my travel memoir, An Apartment in Paris, a book of love, family and fun set in the City of Light.
Stories
Featured in the Iron Horse Literary Review, Bruno in the Afternoon tells the tale of the quintessential French lover.
Included in this group of winning travel-writing essays, Submitting to Shasta describes how being one of four on a rope on a slope is hardly like enjoying the poetic adventure promised.
In this collection of the year’s best travel essays, Sun Valley With Dad highlights how an adoring daughter is shown just how it’s done, on the ski hill as well as in life.
How I Got My Oh-La-La joins this anthology of outstanding travel stories to reveal how to go from frump to fabulous in a few important French lingerie lessons.
The Camino Less Traveled, with Gato
When a three-week-old Spanish kitten – blind and sick – crossed our path on the Camino de Santiago, the Legendary Way my friend Gina and I were walking to honor our seventieth birthdays would take an astonishing and wildly unexpected direction. Read below the ongoing tale of how little orange Camino – true to the Santiago promise of surprise – would come to revamp our lives.
Part 12: Dog People
It was cashmere hats and gloves and scarves and wraps for all. With winter fast arriving, the Annecy street vendors catered to my weakness for loveliness with their gorgeous, affordable wares, but my need to take French gifts home for friends and family did not sit...
Part 11: Meanwhile, the Trekkers Tough it Out
What did kitten Camino mean, I am the friend of the oppressed? In driving rain, with the wind shoving me sideways, I trudged huffing and puffing up the medieval hill that lead to the medieval Château d’Annecy, which is a restored castle turned museum of Haute-Savoie...
Part 10: A Fancy for Annecy
On the banks of Lake Annecy – spectacular! – I tried to make like the Europeans who clearly enjoyed life. Here they were, lazing away a Monday by resting on lakeside benches or strolling oh-so-slowly (often arm-in-arm) along the lakeside path where the views were...
Coaching
The Latest
Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards
The Solas Awards are the Olympic Games of travel writing, where each year publishers of Travelers’ Tales, the prestigious and popular story anthologies, award medals to “the best travel writing today” in various competitive events. In the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards recently announced, three of my essays – set in Paris and included in my book, An Apartment in Paris: Stories of Love, Family, and Fun in the City of Light – were honored with medals. On the winners’ podium are:
Travel & Memoir: Bronze, for Best Travel Story
For the Best Travel Story in the Travel & Memoir event, Lunching with Renoir’s Boating Party won Bronze, a medal that “honors writers whose work inspires other to explore.” Set at the very Seine-side café where over eight…
Travel & Food: Gold, for Best Travel Story
In the Best Travel Story in the Travel & Food event, where food and friends and foreign culture are celebrated, Mastering the Art of (Liking) French Cooking won Gold. In this story, famous foodies and Francophiles Julia Child…
Grand Prize, Best Travel Story of the Year: Bronze
In the overall Grand Prize – Best Travel Story of the Year event, a competition that honors “extraordinary stories about travel and the human spirit,” Marriage, Dubois Style won Bronze for what judges called its “witty…