Best Travel Columns Ever Written
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We really love writing our column. Oh--writing for tourist books is--OK but, good, better, best format of writing travel guides is sort of limiting. We appreciate the less structured column layout where we can say "gooder," "betterer," and "bestest" if we want. We like telling that at Thanksgiving time the 2 STAR motel one-half mile from Grandma's house is a far superior choice than the 5 STAR hotel in the big city 50 miles away. In our column, we can do that. With guidebooks, ignoring the home-office editor’s rigid rating guidelines is a no-no. This stricture severely limits an author’s ability to tailor a subjective response to fit a particular circumstance Of course, collecting information for the broad-based audience of travel guides did provide us with a wealth of hands-on practical knowledge regarding the trips and traps of the professional travel scene. We will be forever grateful for the experience. Grateful because often it provides us an insight the leisure traveler won’t get from the storybook style of travel writing That aside, answering readers’ questions gives us a chance to add a personal touch to our writing. There is a warm feeling that comes from knowing at least one individual, hopefully thousands, are interested in our answer. In our answers, we stay away from the old saws. No one needs to hear again; Know before you go--If it is too good to be true, it is--Don't deal with the black market--Use a credit card to pay for purchases--Leave serious shopping for when you get home. Instead of cliches, we try to provide readers with the individual nuances particular to each destination we have visited. The Best Travel Columns Ever Written by Leo & Betty Walsh should be taken literally. Sometime, somewhere, somebody has probably written a better column or two. But, it wasn’t we. We honestly read every column at least six times. Then carefully checked the spelling of all proper nouns, attempted to insure all sentences were complete and, tried to make it very clear which noun the adjective was intended to modify.
We did the best we could. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did writing them.
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About the Book
For this book, North East Writing Service (NEWS) has compiled a compendium of newspaper columns written by travel writers Leo and Betty Walsh. This edition uses mainly Canadian columns and covers the Dominion from coast-to-coast. The title of the book--The Best Travel Columns Ever Written by Leo & Betty Walsh is intended to be taken literally. While NEWS readily admits a better column or two may have been written--there are not many, and... the Walshes didn’t write them. The authors were chosen because of their broad-based knowledge of the travel scene. An insight gained from years of experience writing for major travel guides. Readers of the book will take delight to find the writing is not the storybook style of a travelogue nor does it contain the canned PR release pap that fill today’s newspaper travel sections. Instead, the theme demonstrates a sense of ‘being there’ quality that can only come from a couple who have walked the path before and are now cordially inviting you to follow.
About the Author
Leo & Betty Walsh are a full-time husband and wife travel writing team. Their 30-year career includes experience gained from four years of compiling a major portion of the Mobil Travel Guide, plus firsthand knowledge derived from writing sections of guidebooks published by Rand-McNally, Ziff-Davis, Reed Publishing, Simon & Schuster, Prentice Hall, and others. Assignments have taken the Walshes to every state in the Union, all the provinces of Canada, each of the countries of Western Europe, parts of the Caribbean and Central America, Australia, and New Zealand. These experiences have provided them with a wealth of travel insight they are delighted to impart. In recent years they have written Travel Talk. Travel Talk is an 850 word syndicated travel column that for the past seven years has been published every Sunday reaching an audience of over a half-million readers. Through the column, Leo & Betty have personally answered thousands of travel related questions for their readers . . .