A big welcome back to Susan Joyce, who has been a regular contributor to our travel writing competitions over the past two years. Her latest entry is entitled Sandalwood Smudges and you can read it here.
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Susan Joyce

Born in Los Angeles California, Susan Joyce spent most of her childhood in Tucson, Arizona and returned to LA as a young working woman. Inspired as a child by postcards from her globe-trotting great aunt, Susan left the United States at age 20 to see the world. She planned on being gone for a year, but ended up living her 20s and 30s in Europe and the Middle East. 

We have another fabulous entry for you, this time from Peggy Wolf, who is a very welcome newcomer to our travel writing competitions. I am sure you will enjoy reading Peggy's inspiring story as much as I have. Enjoy Solo Flight here.

​Solo Flight was first published in the spring 2015 issue of the Moonshine Review literary magazine. This piece of creative non-fiction, written by Peggy Wolf, is also an excerpt from her memoir of the same title, which is a work in progress. Since doing a sports column for her hometown newspaper, Peggy has edited a trade magazine, been a guest columnist, and written feature articles for two major city US newspapers, and the AARP Bulletin. Peggy now lives in a tiny log cabin on the side of a mountain in the US state of North Carolina with her husband. An assortment of farm animals occupy the barn which is twice as large as her cabin. Look for Peggy Wolf's memoirs Mother of Sons and Take Heart due to be published later this year.
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It is wonderful to be able to feature this entry from Sine Thieme, who is a very welcome newcomer to the Fred's Blog travel writing competitions. You can read Sine's great story A New Dawn at the Bottom of the Globe here.

Have you got a 500-1000 word travel story that you'd like to share?
For more details on how to enter the 2017 Travel Story Competition please click  here.
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It is with great pleasure that we are able to feature a poetic Travel Story as the second entry in this year's competition. You may remember that Syd Blackwell livened up the 2016 Travel Highlights competition with three poems. I hope that you enjoy his latest contribution as much as  I have. To read it please click here.
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​Syd Blackwell

​I lived in British Columbia, Canada´s western province, for most of my life. I was a teacher, and a college employee (various roles - instruction, recruitment, promotion, counselling, research), before re-inventing myself as an innkeeper. I designed and had built my B&B inn in Revelstoke, which I operated for nine years. At age 60, my wife and I retired to Uruguay, where we have lived for more than a decade. Innside Stories is my first published book. I have extensive writing experience in Canada, and in Uruguay, I wrote 75 articles for a now defunct online magazine called Ola Uruguay. We live in Villa Argentina, a suburb of Atlántida, on the coast of Uruguay. We have five dogs.
Link: Innside Stories: Anecdotes from Wintergreen Inn 1995-2004

It is a great honour to welcome back Frank Kusy with the first entry in this year's Travel Story competition. The story is out of his forthcoming book 'The Reckless Years', so this is something of an exclusive. Thanks for sharing it with us Frank.

To read this great piece of travel writing please click here.

For details of how you can enter your story click here.

Frank Kusy

Born and raised in the fog-shrouded streets of 1960s London, and with more than 30 years of travel writing experience under his belt, aspiring Buddhist and incorrigible cat-lover Frank Kusy is a SUNDAY TRIBUNE RECOMMENDED AUTHOR and a four-time Gold Medal Winner on the Harper Collins Authonomy site. He has been awarded the AIA Awesome Indies Seal of Excellence for his flagship book 'Rupee Millionaires', and has been a featured author on several promotional sites, including BookBub, Pixel of Ink, Indie Book Bargains and FreeBooksy. His books have received international press acclaim, and have made the Kindle Top 100 List several times, his first published book, 'Kevin and I in India', climbing as high as #5. In April 2015 his children's book 'Ginger the Gangster Cat' won a Gold medal on the prestigious Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards for 6 to 8 year olds, though this and the sequel 'Ginger the Buddha Cat' appeal as much to adults as to children.

**Check out Frank's book store at http://frankkusybooks.weebly.com/

Our third annual Travel Story Competition is now open for entries and will run until July 31st 2017.

There will be five monthly prizes of $50 (£40) for the best stories entered in February/March, April, May, June and July.

In addition there will be overall prizes awarded to the Top 3 stories as decided by a panel of independent judges. Prizes will be: 1st - $150 (£120), 2nd - $100 (£80) and 3rd - $50 (£40).

Entering is straight forward and free of charge:

Send your entry of 500-1000 words along with a short bio and photo to [email protected]. Entrants are restricted to one entry for each monthly competition.

If selected, your story will also appear in the 2018 Edition of Travel Stories and Highlights.
 
FREE OFFER: TO CELEBRATE THE 2ND BLOGIVERSARY OF FRED’S BLOG (AND FOR A LIMITED PERIOD ONLY) YOU CAN GET A SMASHWORDS COPY OF THE 2017 EDITION OF TRAVEL STORIES AND HIGHLIGHTS (NORMALLY $2.99). ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER FOR COMPETITION UPDATES AND NEWS ABOUT UPCOMING RELEASES. SIGN UP ON OUR CONTACT US PAGE.

2 years ago, on February 7th, I posted my first post on this blog. Since then I have been on a fascinating journey and hopefully you’ve enjoyed travelling along with me. Here are some of the highlights so far:

• Daily serialisation of Fred’s Diary 1981
• 2 Travel Story competitions (2015/16)
• 2 Travel Highlight competitions (2015/16)
• Behind the Scenes of Fred’s Diary 1981
• Guest Blogs, Author Interviews & Reviews
• Launch of 3rd Travel Story competition (2017)
• 480K page views and 85K unique views

During this time we have also self-published the following:

• October 2015 - Fred’s Diary 1981: Travels in Asia - 2nd Edition
• December 2015 - Travel Stories and Highlights
• September 2016 - Exclusive Pedigree: My life in and out of the Brethren
• December 2016 - Travel Stories and Highlights: 2017 Edition

 
FREE OFFER: TO CELEBRATE THE 2ND BLOGIVERSARY OF FRED’S BLOG (AND FOR A LIMITED PERIOD ONLY) YOU CAN GET A SMASHWORDS COPY OF THE 2017 EDITION OF TRAVEL STORIES AND HIGHLIGHTS (NORMALLY $2.99). ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER FOR TRAVEL STORY COMPETITION UPDATES AND NEWS ABOUT UPCOMING RELEASES. SIGN UP ON OUR CONTACT US PAGE.

SEE BELOW FOR FURTHER DETAILS OF THE 2017 TRAVEL STORY COMPETITION. 

This year we are running our third annual Travel Story Competition and it will be open for entries from February 15th until July 31st.

There will be five monthly prizes of $50 (£40) for the best stories entered in February/March, April, May, June and July. In addition there will be overall prizes awarded to the Top 3 stories as decided by a panel of independent judges. Prizes will be: 1st - $150 (£120), 2nd - $100 (£80) and 3rd - $50 (£40).

Entering is straight forward and free of charge:

Send your entry of 500-1000 words along with a short bio and photo to [email protected]. Entrants are restricted to one entry for each monthly competition.

If selected, your story will also appear in the 2018 Edition of Travel Stories and Highlights.