This has been a record-breaking opening month for entries in our third annual Travel Story Competition. If you haven't read them all yet, please take a few minutes to catch up with the entries here.

It is a real pleasure to welcome our latest entrant, Alison Ripley Cubitt, who is another newcomer to our travel writing competitions. I'm sure you will really enjoy her story Snakes on a Plane, which you can read here. 

Alison Ripley Cubitt is a multi-genre author who co-writes thrillers (with Sean Cubitt) as Lambert Nagle. She loves walking and horsing around in Jane Austen country.  For fifteen years she worked in TV production. She wishes she'd heeded the advice about never working with children and animals. One of her jobs at Walt Disney was to chaperone Chip and Dale on a filming trip to Norway. The chipmunks behaved so badly on tour they ended up on the front page of every national newspaper.

Connect with her on Twitter at:
https://twitter.com/lambertnagle

Hop over to her website at:
http://www.lambertnagle.com

You can find her Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/alisonripleycubittwriter
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A warm welcome to Angie Clifford, who is a newcomer to our travel writing competitions. In fact, Angie tells me that she's never entered a competition before, so this is a real honour.  I hope you enjoy her story Miracle at Lourdes as much as I have. You can read it here.

Angie Clifford

​I married in 1970, aged 19, my only dream at the time was to own my own home, and be a perfect wife. I had not the first clue about life then, however, Jerry and I had some chemistry between us, and with the arrogance of youth I envisaged a wonderful future.
 
Together, we have four children and five grandchildren, so far! I’ve   tried my hand at many things, including starting my own catering company in my late 40’s. I’m a passionate reader, my favourite gender of book being, memoirs, biography, and autobiography. I love to cook, read, write, and swim.
 
Jerry and I retired to Spain in 2013, and we now spend our retirement gliding seamlessly between those two countries.

Welcome back to Philippa Hawley. You may remember her entry from last year's competition, ​ ‘God! Help me stay alive, among this deadly love’. If you missed it you can read it here, before enjoying Philippa's latest entry, Tocca il cielo.
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Philippa Hawley lives in north Essex with her husband. The couple have two grown up children.  Since retiring as a GP she loves to write and to travel. A sense of place is of utmost importance in her work, be it in her travel writing, short stories or the two novels she has published with Wivenbooks. She is currently working on her third novel, set in Suffolk. More can be found about Philippa’s work at:
www.wivenhoewriters.blogspot.co.uk

It is wonderful to be able to feature another great travel story entry from Nancy McBride. You may remember that Nancy came second overall in last year's competition with FAIRIES-Do they exist? If you haven't read it yet then you can catch up with her story here, before reading Nancy's new entry AIN'T LION.
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NANCY MCBRIDE’S HAPPENING BIO, SPRING 2017
 
Perception. Perspective. Twists. Humor. These, to me, are essences to storytelling. As Tim O’Brien revealed to me in The Things They Carried, stories are not what happened, they are what happened to you!
 
Things happen to me. Examples?  A man fell from the ceiling onto my head in a restaurant. A kangaroo in a pink shirt bounced across the road in front of me in the outback of Australia. I scored a bull’s eye rifle-shooting in The Urals.  I was struck by lightning. The Queen Mum was tattooed on my bum. I learned how to “be seen”, was “pregnant” with pop-corn, and put a sign on my car, “MASSACHUSETTS OR BUST”. Those sub-titles are just scraping the surface of the kind of ordinary-for-me experiences I inhabit. Doors suddenly open and I trip into the next dimension, illustrating to me that there are obviously an infinite number of dimensions. They don’t scare me. I’ve had a near death experience. I’m a walking happening. Perception. Perspective.
 
Being present to interpret my life and to allow it to “happen” is my shtick. I’ve travelled. I’ve fallen. I’m a disaster. I’m a survivor. I’ve ruminated. I’ve worked. I’ve loved. I’ve raised kids. I blurt art. Life’s a story happening.

There are just 7 days left to enter this month's Travel Story competition. 

We have already had ten fantastic entries from some amazing authors and writers.
If you want some inspiration read their stories here.

There is a cash prize of $50 for this month's best story. There will also be prizes for the Top 3 featured entries after the overall competition closes at the end of July 2017.

​For more details, check out the Competition page,

It's time for another treat. Welcome back to Robyn Boswell, whose entry last year Weathering the Storm was widely appreciated. You can catch up with it here.

Enjoy Robyn's new entry A Comedy of Errors in Kuranda here.

Robyn Boswell, New Zealand 

I live in the beautiful far north of New Zealand surrounded by beaches and forests. My family have lived here since the earliest days of settlement in New Zealand.
I recently retired and am enjoying a new lease of life. I wanted to travel since I was six and my great aunt worked as a stewardess on cruise ships around the world. I’ve been lucky enough to spend 13 months travelling in Europe and the UK, 17 trips to the USA, 3 months camping in the Australian Outback and various trips through the South Pacific and Asia. A last I have time to travel again and am enjoying having the time to rediscover my own beautiful country and am looking forward to once again venturing further afield. 30 years after this incident on our ‘Aussie Safari’, I am soon heading on a cruise which will take me to Cairns and I have pre-booked the train trip to Kuranda – at last!
I have chronicled my trips through scrapbooking and journal writing so my memories are always with me. 

A big welcome back to Mike Cavanagh, who was our June winner in last year's Travel Story competition. If you haven't read A Once Upon A Time True Story then check it out here.  I hope you enjoy Mike's new story In Control as much as I have. Read it here.

Mike Cavanagh is now in his sixties and has no idea how he got here. He lives with his wife, Julie, and two black cats in Bateman’s Bay, NSW. The house he and Julie live in is quirky and in need of regular maintenance, as are its owners. Mike's passions are writing, playing guitar, composing music, and, as Julie will only too readily tell you, playing too many role-playing games on PC.

Find out more about Mike's new book One of its Legs are Both the Same on his site:
http://oneofitslegs.org/
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It is an honour to be able to welcome Amy Bovaird, to the 2017 Travel Story Competition. You can read her entry Bedouin Hospitality here,

Amy Bovaird taught English as a Second Language (ESL) abroad and in the United States for many years.  She lives with a dual disability—progressive vision and hearing loss due to Usher Syndrome. Amy is an accomplished public speaker on a variety of topics based on her life experiences and continues to educate and inspire others through her writing and speaking.

Amy is the author of Mobility Matters and Cane Confessions: The Lighter Side to Mobility.

She blogs about the challenges she faces as she loses more vision and hearing and manages to find humor around almost every corner.

Follow these links to find out more about Amy Bovaird's books:
Mobility Matters
Cane Confessions
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A very warm welcome to Susan Mellsopp, another newcomer to our travel writing competitions. Thank you so much Susan for your very touching story In Flanders Fields. To read her entry, please click here.

Susan Mellsopp is a recently retired Archivist and accessible transport researcher. She has written all her life but is now able to indulge in her passion full time.

She lives in New Zealand with her retired guide dog Chocolat and working dog Jay. Susan also loves to travel, reads voraciously, enjoys cooking and classical music.

This story is a shorter version of one which was placed highly commended in the Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards in 2012.
  

It is a great pleasure to feature the latest entry in our 2017 Travel Story Competition. This story is from well-known author Patricia Steele, who is another newcomer to our travel writing competitions. Many thanks for taking part Patricia.

Patricia's entry is an excerpt from her memoir A Roundabout Passage to Venice and you can read it here.

Patricia Steele

Patricia says, I'm a west coast girl that moved to the east coast and back again.  Twice.   My imagination has always been etched in music, color and rose-colored glasses.  I've had crazy characters and stories banging and fluttering around in my head, dying to get out, since I was old enough to hold a pen.  I'm a fan of historical fiction filled with adventure and romance.  And I’m addicted to genealogy! My sense of humor runs a little rampant at times, I'm no stranger to laughter, and I love a good anticipation scene.  I am proud to state that The Girl Immigrant, the first novel in my Spanish Pearls Series, is being whisked off my shelves.   The second book in the series, Silván Leaves, is now available.  My next project is a memoir titled, Fairydust to Daffodils about my daughter and her fight with Cystic Fibrosis.

There is a lot more to find out about Patricia, so please check her author page:
www.patriciabbsteele.com