A real trip could be anywhere, even in our heads.
That’s me. I’m sitting in a cafe in Valparaiso, the romantic, higgeldy-piggeldy coastal city in Chile where Pablo Neruda once lived. I’m doing what I most often do on my travels - finding a spot where I can observe the world. All my observations go into one of the notebooks that fill a bookcase at home. I like actual books. I’d never type my thoughts into a phone.
Most often I’m travelling alone but sometimes I’m accompanied by my husband, Tony Amos, who took this photograph. You can see our work together across at mrandmrsamos.com
I live in Sydney now but I spent about ten years in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s and, in between, two in Paris. Before the pandemic I was travelling several times a year, which put me on long-haul flights three or four times each year. (I’m trying to be a better traveller and reduce/offset my carbon footprint.) I know a bit about world travel and want to share it here.
My travels have always fuelled my fiction writing. I’m the author of five novels - Fabulous Nobodies, Wraith, Two Shanes, The Cutting, and The Woman in the Lobby. I’m working on two more. I’ve also published a collection of essays, Perfect Pink Polish, and contributed stories to various collections. I’ve written a screenplay, Girls in Hotels (natch.)
I contribute travel features to a number of publications and write a regular column on sustainable travel for Traveller in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age and online. Some of you might know Luxe Nomad, which I wrote for several years. My recent magazine and newspaper writing is collected on Authory.
There’s so much about my personal experience of travel that doesn’t make it into these mainstream publications - observations, recommendations, conversations, wacky experiences, logistical dramas, and lovely (or fraught) human interactions. As a curious person and a writer of fiction, I collect ten times more ideas in those notebooks than ever see it into print. This is why I’m excited to have a platform on Substack.
Subscribers can follow my travels as I kick-start the adventures after two years of staying put. As I’m also writing books, I might share some of that as well. Every month, I’ll answer a few questions from subscribers about travel and writing. I don’t know everything but I can find out.
Why subscribe?
I’ll be your travel companion and concierge, but you’ll also be supporting my work and independent journalism, for which I’m very grateful.
This newsletter is free.
If you’d like to tell your friends you’ve found me…
