Just Announced: Travel with Dave Fox through Southern Vietnam on a Unique Writing Tour!

Coming in October, 2010: Join Dave Fox and a local Vietnamese guide for an exciting two-week writing tour through southern Vietnam! We'll visit bustling Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon), explore the rivers and jungles of the Mekong Delta, and splash in the South China Sea on the beaches of Mui Ne. The tour will include a series of writing classes, a Vietnamese cooking class, opportunities to chat with local residents, and lots more! A tentative itinerary is now available, and the final details will be available very soon. Writers of all skill levels are welcome! If you'd like to reserve a spot (with no deposit or obligation until the itinerary is finalized) simply drop Dave an e-mail. Or to be notified as soon as the itinerary is ready, subscribe to Dave's e-mail list.

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Haitian Earthquake Relief
For all books ordered from davesbook.com between now and January 31, Dave will donate half of the cover price to Haitian earthquake relief. Find out more....
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Humor Columns
Dave's online humor columns are back! Savor the weirdness below!

• Year! (The 2009 Procrastination Edition!)

• The Scariest Halloween Costume Ever!

• Jet Lag Wonder Drugs? On Long-Haul Flights, at Least the Hamsters are Having Fun.

• Back to Basics: How Social Networking Nearly Destroyed My Perfectly Mediocre Writing Career

Blogging from Botswana!
Dave's heading to Botswana during the last two weeks in January, where he'll be teaching a series of travel journaling and essay writing classes on a safari through the Okavango Delta and Kalahari Desert. His Internet access during the journey will be very limited, but stay tuned for bloggage as time and technology allow, and a full wrap-up in early February.

Dave on Twitter Follow Dave's quick and snappy quips and travel tips on Twitter at twitter.com/globejotter.

Travel with Dave to Botswana for a Unique Series of Journaling and Essay Writing Classes!

Looking for a unique adventure? In January, 2010, Dave Fox teams up with African Wildlife Expert Bill Given for a writing safari through rural Botswana. Say hi to the lions, elephants, and wildebeests; discover the culture of the Kalahari Bushmen; and learn how to write about your experiences in vivid detail!

On most mornings and late afternoons, Bill will lead game drives in the Kalarhari Bush and Okavango Delta regions in search of Botswana's diverse wildlife. During the heat of the day, when the animals are snoozing, Dave will teach journaling and essay writing classes to help you capture your adventures in personal travel diaries or essays you can publish. We'll sleep in environmentally-friendly, luxury camps, and travel between game reserves in small planes or land vehicles. This one-of-a-kind excursion is open to travel journalers and essayists of all skill levels. (Beginners are welcome!) Space is limited to 12 participants.

Find out more!

On Sale Now!
Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip!)

Dave's long-awaited book about how to write more vivid and exciting travel journals is finally available! Learn how to:

• Bring destinations to life with bold details
• Splash those details quickly onto your pages so journaling doesn't gobble up precious vacation time.
• Elude your "Inner Censor" and write with confidence
• Weave together your "outer" and "inner" journeys, using foreign cultures as backdrops for self-discovery.

Dave shares his favorite journaling techniques, helps you find time to write in the middle of an exciting trip, and infuses it all with a generous dose of his off-the-wall humor.

Find out more!

On Sale Now!
Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad
~ Winner of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Book Proposal Contest ~

"When you travel, things go wrong."

That might not sound like uplifting advice, but in this collection of stories about mishaps in faraway places, Dave Fox proves otherwise.

At age eight, he nearly starts a riot in Northern Africa. As a nerdy teenager, he smuggles illegal radio equipment into Finland. In his college days, he discovers it is not wise to seek inner peace inside an Icelandic volcano. As an adult, he does something exceptionally reckless; he becomes a professional tour guide.

The new second edition is now available! Order your autographed copy here! (A few copies of the now out-of-print first edition are still available too at a special discount.)

Read free sample chapters and order your autographed copies at davesbook.com.

How Can You Have Any Pudding if You Don't Eat Your Meat?

The Brits have contributed many great things to society: pub culture, Shakespeare, the Beatles, soccer hooligans. They are also known for their cuisine, but not in a good way.... School dinner and home dinner had two things in common: They were both the biggest meal of the day, and they both lacked pizza. At home it was the same ritual as before, back in America. Food was put before me. I resisted. Negotiations ensued. At school, it was much more violent. Read the full excerpt

Masculinity Saved!

Growing up in 1970s America, I had not been exposed to the allegedly perverted elf-and-toy duo that had won the hearts of British school children. When November rolled around, and it was time to rehearse for the school Christmas pantomime, I didn’t know what I was in for. Read the full excerpt

Confessions of a Teenaged Smuggler

In the 1980s, airport security went something like this: You'd check in for your flight, and they would say, "Mr. Fox, do you have anything in your possession that could be used to bring down an airplane? Knives, guns, cassettes by the J. Geils Band?" You, the hypothetical passenger and/or terrorist, would chuckle, "Nope, not me." Then the ticket agent would thank you for your honesty and send you to the security line, where uniformed high school drop-outs working for minimum wage would tell you to please proceed, if they had the necessary English skills to do so. Read the full excerpt

Tackling Lucy

The sheep was on a mission. She was trotting quickly, almost running, in the direction of downtown Dingle with a confident stride and a mischievous glint in her eyes. There were lots of sheep in Ireland. Too many to count. But I could tell this one was different. This sheep was a rebel. Read the full excerpt

Year! (The 2009 Procrastination Edition!)
Greetings Earthlings! 'Tis I, Dave Fox, here to bestow upon you yet another one of those self-absorbed year-end round-up thingies that people write at year's end. Read the full article

The Scariest Halloween Costume Ever!
I'm not sure what turned me into a Halloween Scrooge. When I was a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday. I'm still pro-candy, but dressing up as a ghost, or a monster, or the Dear Leader of North Korea, just doesn't have the same appeal today as it did when I was five. Read the full article

Jet Lag Wonder Drugs? On Long-Haul Flights, at Least the Hamsters are Having Fun.
I picked up my dirty underwear, stuffed it in a backpack, and headed off to SeaTac Airport. Next stop: Frankfurt, Germany, where, if Ted's product worked, I would arrive blissfully refreshed and ready to skip through meadows of edelweiss. Read the full article

Back to Basics: How Social Networking Nearly Ruined My Perfectly Mediocre Writing Career

"Ha!" I laughed. "What's a website going to do for me? Probably about the same as the hula hoop and the Rubik's Cube did, which was nothing! (Well, except for get me arrested a few times.)" Read the full article

Do Not Get Me a Hippopotamus for Christmas

I do not want a hippopotamus for Christmas. I seriously mean this. I live in a moderate-sized condominium, which does not have space for a hippopotamus. So do not buy me one unless you are also going to buy me a bigger home. Read the full article

Confessions of an Urban Nature Lover

I'm one-quarter Norwegian by ancestry, but apparently, my nature-loving genes are recessive. My idea of exploring the outdoors involves sitting by my fireplace as a program about Mount Everest flickers on TV. If other people want to attempt oxygen-deprived death marches, more power to them. I'll watch their video on the Discovery Channel if they make it home alive. Read the full article

Bah Humball!

There are several theories as to why American football is called "football," the two most common being that (1) the inventors of the sport were too lazy to come up with something original, or (2) the ball used in the American version of the game is shaped like a foot with a severe case of gout. Read the full article

Le Tour de Rants

The Tour de France is a thrilling event in which sporty men with names like Lance attempt to ride bicycles through French villages without getting hit by camera crews on motorbikes. Read the full article

Live and Let Diet: Dangerous Fun with Dr. Atkins

The Atkins Diet is a fun weight-loss plan that is sweeping the nation. You must avoid carbohydrates and sugar, but you can eat all the high-cholesterol foods you want, such as 32-ounce steaks, bacon and eggs, and, where legal, delicious whale-blubber-and-cheddar omelets. Eventually, your arteries clog. You then die of a heart attack and get very, very skinny. Read the full article

Double Tall Confusion: Remedial Italian for Caffeine Addicts

The problem with Seattle is nobody here speaks Italian. I don't speak Italian either, but there's a difference between me and the rest of Seattle. Everyone else in this city is running around with over-priced cups of caffeine, tossing around faux-Italian names for their beverages as if they were fluent. Read the full article

Driving Miss Crazy

The sun was shining brightly. I was in a happy mood. Unfortunately, my mood shifted when a woman who had apparently learned to drive from the bestselling book, "All I Really Need to Know About Driving, I Learned in Kindergarten," attempted to kill me. Read the full article

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