Back in the Air
One of my favorite things about my unexpected late-life literary career has always been the travel.
I didn’t have a lot of stamps on my passport for the first 35 years of my life. A high school trip to Canada. 3 weeks with my grandmother in Ireland when I was 15, where I was mostly just there to carry the bags while she visited her sisters and they all attempted to stuff me with meat and potatoes while telling me about my 2nd cousin, once removed who is dead now, by the way. In my 20s I took a few Caribbean vacations that were amazing, but nothing that left me feeling at all worldly.
But then, when I was 35, my first book published in the UK. I went there for the launch, and it feels like I never stopped traveling after that. Book tours, literary festivals, pop culture conventions, the list goes on. Any time I was invited someplace I’d never been before (or had been and loved), I said yes without hesitation. The Demon Cycle is published in 27 languages and I can’t even say how many countries worldwide, and I’ve tried to visit as many of them as I can.
I started feeling like an international man of mystery. I’d amassed a travel wallet with “walking around money” in close to a dozen currencies, and my passport had so many stamps and stickers they started to overlap. I took time on every trip to be in the moment and walk or tour the cities and take local sights, and was beginning to feel like I had a better understanding of the world and my place in it.
Then came the plague. Covid put the kibosh on my planned 2020 travel completely. I did a couple of eastern seaboard events after the vaccine rollout in 2021, and actually got on a plane a few times in 2022, but it was all still US travel.
But at last, the fog has lifted! I’m headed back to Europe TWICE in the coming months and I couldn’t be more excited. I hope this is a sign of a return to normal in the years to come. Fingers crossed for a proper book tour in 2024.
LuxCon / Eurocon
15-16 April, 2023
My first European trip since 2019! I am super excited to visit beautiful Luxembourg, where I will be doing talks, panels, signings, and possibly a drunken D&D livestream.
Fantasy Festival in Niš, Serbia
May 11-15, 2023
My last trip to Serbia for the Belgrade Book Fair was amazing, so I am thrilled to be able to visit again and see a bit more of the country at the Fantasy Festival in Niš.
