Books And Travel

Traveling by train is fantastic because you can watch the world go by from the carriage, sometimes for days on end, and you have somewhere to sleep and wash and eat while you travel.

You can catch glimpses of places you might never visit as the train passes through and you arrive in the heart of the biggest cities relaxed and ready to explore.

In this interview, J.Thorn gives some tips about the best routes to travel with Amtrak in the USA and what you can expect from the service, as well as some thoughts on why train travel is so romantic and some book recommendations, plus we talk about our experience co-writing Sacrifice en-route from Chicago to New Orleans.

J.Thorn is a dark fantasy, post-apocalyptic thriller, and horror writer as well as a musician, podcaster, editor, and coach at TheAuthorLife.com.

• Why J loves train travel and how it helps him write and see more of his own country
• The Amtrak train network, where it goes and some of the best routes
• The different classes of travel, amenities and what to expect, especially if you are used to train travel in Europe or other places where it’s more commercial as opposed to government-run
• J’s best memories of traveling by train, particularly on the California Zephyr which runs west and south from Chicago
• How we included aspects of our trip to New Orleans in our co-written supernatural thriller, American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice — it was a lot of fun!
• The mindset you need to adopt if you’re going to enjoy train travel — relax! Enjoy the slower pace.
• Recommended books about USA life and travel

You can find J Thorn at TheAuthorLife.com and on Twitter @jthorn_

Transcript of interview with J Thorn

Joanna: J. Thorn is a dark fantasy, post-apocalyptic thriller, and horror writer as well as a musician, podcaster, editor, and coach at TheAuthorLife.com.

We co-wrote American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice with two other authors based on our journey by train from Chicago to New Orleans. And today we’re talking about aspects of traveling by train in the USA. So welcome J.

J. Thorn: Thanks, Joanna. It’s so great to be on the podcast.

Joanna: It’s really good to have you on the show. So first up, tell us a bit more about your geographic history.

Where are you right now in the world and where do you call home?

J. Thorn: Currently I reside in Cleveland, Ohio, which is technically the midwest of the United States but I am not from here. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and I left there at age 23 and haven’t lived there since. And since that time, I’ve lived in five different states and I’m guessing 14 or 15 different addresses and that included New Jersey, the New York area, Tennessee and now Ohio.

JThorn on Amtrak train. Photo by JFPenn

I’ve been here in Cleveland for the past 15 years because my wife and I now have two teenage kids and we wanted to stay put for a little while, while they were going school to give them some stability.

Joanna: You’ve lived in all these different places in the US and you and I knew each other before we got on the train but you do get the train a lot.

What is it about train travel that you love?

J. Thorn: There’s this very romantic sense of adventure, there’s no question about it. I think it’s the romantic notion we all have in our heads before we step on the train for the first time. But for me, it’s been reinforced.

And just so there’s some context here, I was doing a little work in a spreadsheet and I do this for fun. There’s really no other point to it. But the Earth’s circumference is about 24,901 miles at the equator. And I’ve calculated since 2014, I’ve ridden about 31,946 miles on domestic rails here in the U.S. so I’m it’s something I really love.

I think what’s what makes it really exciting for me or more enjoyable is that it’s the pace. It’s a very low-stress environment, compared to air travel, for example. There’s not the same level of security. The security is more like stepping on a bus than it is a plane. And once you’re on the train there’s not much else for you to do. So you don’t have to worry about too much other than just occupying your own mind.

And because of that, I really like to ride the train alone and I know as a fellow introvert you can probably identify with that....

The north-east of England combines the ancient history of Viking raids and English castles, with the stark beauty of Lindisfarne island cut off by the tides, and the vibrant city of Newcastle linked by its seven bridges.

In today’s episode, mystery author, LJ Ross talks about love of home, why she sets her books in the area, and tips for visiting.

LJ Ross is the internationally bestselling author of the DCI Ryan mystery series set in the north east of England including UK number one bestseller, Holy Island.

• Why Louise feels that Northumberland will always be home, even as she and her family travel away and back again. The emotional resonance of where we have memory and family.
• Are there geographic personalities? On the possible differences between the north and south of England
• Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, and tips for visiting so you don’t get stranded by the tide as well as nearby Bamburgh Castle
• Cragside and Victorian history
• The city of Newcastle, seven bridges and the Victorian tunnels
• How Louise is entwining her international travels into the upcoming Dr Alexander Gregory series, whose work as a psychological profiler takes him around the world
• Recommended books set in Northumberland

You can find Louise at www.LJRossAuthor.com and on Twitter @ljross_author

Lindisfarne, Holy Island features in my travel memoir/solo walking book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.

My book, Pilgrimage, Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, is out now

Transcription of interview with LJ Ross

LJ Ross is the internationally bestselling author of the DCI Ryan mystery series set in the north east of England including UK number one bestseller Holy Island. Hello Louise. It’s so good to have you on the show.

First of all, tell us a bit more about you and your exciting geographic history because you’ve tried a lot of places, haven’t you?

[LJ Ross] I haven’t done too badly! I was born and grew up in Northumberland so I was there until I was 18 and then I went off to university in London and I was down in London on and off for about 12 years. I also did just under a year in Paris and then I did a few months in Florence as well so I hopped, skipped and jumped a little bit and throughout that time my family had actually relocated to Cornwall for about eight years as well so while I was in London I then got to vicariously explore Cornwall. I have a younger sister who’s twelve years younger as well so I would get back quite frequently and see them. So that was quite nice as well to get out of the city during that period. And we travel quite a lot.

My then partner, now husband, James and I, we traveled quite a bit during that time before we had a son. And then after London, after Ethan was born, I think both of us having been brought up in the country, we’d enjoyed our time in London, but we were coming to a point where we needed to smell the fresh air again.

So we moved outside and took a tentative step outside of London to Hertfordshire because at that time James still needed to get back into London for work. We were there for about a year and then we moved over to Bath, which is where we met actually. We loved our time in Bath, it’s a very beautiful city. We were there just under two years. Then we came back around full circle and we wound our way back up to Northumberland now which is where I’m speaking to you from.

JF Penn with LJ Ross, London 2018. Photo by Jonathan Bleier

[Jo Frances] I wanted to talk to you partly because of this idea of traveling out from home, and you’ve basically returned home after so long.

Do you now see Northumberland as home? The South is quite different. What does it feel like to be home?

[LJ Ross] Well I think I say this with the benefit of hindsight. I would generally say you know home is wherever you and your loved ones put your heart, as it were.

I think that is genuinely true, if you are happy within your own skin, you could probably make a home anywhere. I think that there’s a good level of truth to that but in terms of Northumberland, I think it’s also safe to say that I think Northumberland is always going to be home to me. Even when I wasn’t living there, I set my books there and I would get back as often as I could. I would just for my own pleasure be seeking out new plac...

Berlin is a modern city with vibrant street art, a growing tech scene and world-renowned museums and galleries — but it also has the dark history of the Nazi Third Reich and the Berlin Wall. In today’s episode, American thriller author Rebecca Cantrell talks about her love of the city and how it features in her historical mysteries.

In the intro, I mention my own trip to the city when I visited the murals on the ruins of the Berlin Wall, and the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum, once an entrance to the ancient city of Babylon, erected by King Nebuchadnezzar in 575 BCE, and now in full splendor in Berlin.

Rebecca Cantrell is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling and award-winning thriller and mystery author. Her books include the supernatural Sanguine series co-written with James Rollins, the Joe Tesla technothrillers, and the Malibu Mysteries co-written with Sean Black. Today we’re talking about Berlin, the setting for her Hannah Vogel historical crime thrillers.

• How Rebecca fell in love with Berlin as a young American from Alaska
• Where the past and present collide in modern Berlin — Nazi Germany and the Berlin Wall
• Street art, murals and modern, arty Berlin
• Fascinating museums
• Recommended food
• Books about the history of Berlin
• Why Becky loves to travel

Find Becky at www.RebeccaCantrell.com or on Twitter @rebeccacantrell

Transcription of interview with Rebecca Cantrell

Jo Frances: Welcome, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Jo Frances: Thanks so much for coming on the show. First up, you’re American.

Tell us why you decided to write about Berlin. What’s your history with the city?

Rebecca: Well, I had a random history with Berlin. I was an exchange student from a little town called Talkeetna, Alaska, and I went to Germany. When I filled up my application, the board said, ‘Where do you want to stay?’ I said, ‘I’d like to stay in a small town because that will be most similar to where I’m coming from and I feel like it will be a little bit more manageable.’

So they sent me to Berlin, which that’s how that works! At the time, it was a city of about two and a half million people surrounded by a wall in the middle of communist East Germany.

It was fantastic! I was blown away with how different things were and it was an amazing, artistic, wonderful place to be. History was right there and very, very real.

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin. Photo by JFPenn

When you went to East Berlin, you could see piles of rubble from when they had knocked it down to build the wall. When you went to look at the museums of East Berlin, they still had bullet holes on them from when they had been strafed by Russian artillery during the fall of Berlin in 1945.

That was just amazing. I went back again for a year in college. I went to the Freie Universität. Then I wanted my son to get a taste of Europe before he grew up, so we moved there when he was 12 and lived there for 4 years. We’re just back in the United States for almost three years now.

Jo France: Wow. I had no idea you moved from Alaska.

Rebecca: Very different weather-wise.

Jo France: Different in so many ways.

Is there a culture shock that you think Americans get when they hit Europe? Berlin is very European.

Rebecca: Part of it is just that everything is different. In Berlin, for example, I had public transportation, which, of course, I didn’t have in Alaska. That meant that as a teenager, I could go anywhere. I had a little bus pass and the subway and the S-Bahn, which is like an aboveground subway. The buses in Berlin go everywhere. For example, when my son went there at age 12, he could go to the movies by himself with his friends.

When you go on the subway, you’ll see little kids going to school, like six or seven-year-old kids will be on the subway going to school. They’ll have their big backpacks on their back and they’ll just get off at their stop and then go on to their class. For my son, it was a huge amount of freedom. When he came back here and he was 16 and he didn’t have a driver’s license yet, it was this reverse culture shock where he’s been used to having all this freedom and then he didn’t have it anymore.

Jo France: You talked about freedom there, and, of course, Berlin had its Wall and you write about Nazi history in your Hannah Vogel books.

In Nazi Germany, freedom was out of reach for so many. What remains of ...

Today I’m talking about The Myth and Reality Of Travel, and focusing on Venice in particular, as well as giving you some tips and book recommendations if you are going to visit.

There is a problem inherent in travel, especially in a world of filtered Instagram photos, social media bubbles and glossy travel magazines.

There are some places in the world that are so famous it can be difficult to know whether they live up to the hype or not. There is the myth and then there is the reality, so how do you manage the two? How do you decide to go in the first place in case it doesn’t live up to the myth, and how do you deal with the reality if you have to face up to it?

In this episode, I’m talking about Venice, which is definitely one of those places. I’ve been to Venice three times under very different circumstances and today, I’ll share some of my thoughts on the myth versus the reality.

The myth of Venice

What does the word Venice evoke for you, regardless of whether you’ve been there or not?

Arched bridges over deep blue canals, slender glossy gondolas passing underneath with handsome gondoliers and couples kissing while the sun dapples the water. The sweeping curves of the grand canal, the inspiring architecture of St Mark’s Basilica and art — so much art.

Perhaps you think of Casanova, Shakespeare, Tintoretto or Veronese? Or the famous movie scenes of James Bond in Casino Royale, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or The Tourist? You will certainly have some image in your mind because Venice is a mythical city.

“Venice, its temples and palaces did seem like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven.” Percy Bysshe ShelleyClick To Tweet

There’s no doubt that Venice is special, made up of over 100 small islands separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The lagoon and some of the city are marked as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It has been inhabited since the 10th century BC but became more well-known in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance when the Republic of Venice was a powerful city state, possibly the first real international financial centre with trade all over the Mediterranean.

That money built its grand churches and palaces, enabled patronage of the arts and made the city a magnet for the writers and painters who romanticised it over time.

“It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.” Erica JongClick To Tweet

But I’m a writer too. I know how to use language to embellish and obscure reality, to curate the aspects that capture the imagination. It’s human nature to make more of the places we visit even if they are disappointing. If we spend time and money visiting somewhere, we need evidence that it was worthwhile, that we had a fantastic time and that others should be jealous.

And in Venice, the myth is all about romance.

Venice — not quite the city of romance for me

I first visited Venice in 2004. I was going through a divorce and I entered La Serenissima, the city of love, with my Dad, my step-mum and my teenage sister. We walked the tourist-trodden paths from St Marks to L’Accademia, and drank overpriced prosecco. I wallowed in my grief and swore that I would go back someday with a man I loved. I wanted the myth in all its glory.

So, I returned to Venice in December 2009 with Jonathan (still my wonderful husband!). We’d been married just over a year and flew from Brisbane, Australia for Christmas with my family in the UK and then to Venice for New Year before heading south to Rome and then back down under.

Winter in flooded Venice by J.F.Penn

We left the sun of Australia for cold and wet winter in Europe. It didn’t stop raining for days and inevitably, Venice flooded. It’s not a secret that Venice floods but it’s less well-known that the flooding occurs a lot in winter and at other times of the year as well depending on weather conditions.

Acqua alta, high water, was mid-calf height while we were there which meant we could wade through the streets in the gumboots provided by the hotel. Venetians have to pump water from their houses and shops every morning as water rots away the foundations slowly. Th...

Adventure is a mindset. You can find it in a pocket of wilderness in your local area just by doing something different and seeking out the unusual — or you can find it by running Great Britain barefoot, cycling the Andes, and running the length of New Zealand!

In this interview, adventurer Anna McNuff talks about the definition of adventure, finding the element of the unknown, encouraging young people to explore, and the acceptance that change is the only constant.

Anna McNuff is a British adventurer, professional speaker, and author named by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the 50 most influential travelers of our time. And by The Guardian as one of the top modern female adventurers.

Show notes

• What is ‘adventure’?
• The changing motivations for adventure travel
• Cultivating a voice that supports adventure
• Stepping into the unknown
• Running from Scotland to London barefoot
• Change is a constant
• What travel might look like in the future
• How adventure travel is actually about storytelling
• How moments from our young lives shape us

You can find Anna McNuff at AnnaMcNuff.com and on Instagram @annamcnuff

Photos used with permission from Anna McNuff.

Transcript of the interview

Joanna: Anna McNuff is a British adventurer, professional speaker and author named by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the 50 most influential travelers of our time. And by The Guardian as one of the top modern female adventurers. Welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna: Oh, thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be on.

Joanna: I’m so excited to talk to you. I’ve been following you on Instagram, reading your books. And we’ve known each other for a while now. I really wanted to talk to you about adventure because the word adventurer can mean so many things.

What does adventurer mean to you and how does that definition shape how you choose to travel?

Anna: I think it’s changed over the years. Adventurer used to be a term that was kind of solely reserved for the Shackletons of the world and the people who went off and did brave and daring things in far-flung places.

But now I think the more adventures I do, and the more I adventure in between myself big ones and do little things around and close to home, I think I realized it really is a mindset.

Adventure is just about trying to see something, and it could even be something that you thought was familiar, but you see it through a new fresh set of eyes. So it is just about trying to experience something new and see how you feel in that landscape or experiencing that culture or eating that food.

That is what adventure is to me. And the beauty is that it’s a personal thing. So what is new and exciting and intriguing to one person might be completely different for someone else. And also, you don’t have to go very far to do it.

So yes, you can have an adventure on the other side of the world. But you can also have a great adventure across the road in your local hill, checking out bluebells and finding new trails there. So that is what adventure means to me, seeing something new.

Joanna: I go up the hill, our local Solsbury Hill, for example, and I don’t think that’s an adventure, but for example, going at night with a head torch, I would probably be quite afraid. You go sleep on hills a lot and that to me is slightly scary.

Anna McNuff running the length of New Zealand

Do you think there needs to be an element of fear or apprehension for it to be an adventure?

Anna: I think to call it an adventure when it’s going to be an adventure because you feel it, you feel that thing and it goes, ‘Let’s go on an adventure.’ Or ‘I’m going on an adventure,’ and there’s sort of a buzz in your veins.

I think there does have to be an element of the unknown in it. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be 100% fear. There’s probably a tiny bit of fear there because that’s what happens with the unknown, we are fearful of it. But there can also be a lot of excitement. And I think an adventure probably ranges on that scale.

Sometimes it’s a little bit too scary and sometimes it’s just 100% fun and excitement.

But yes, there’s definitely an element of fear, I think in some adventures, but it doesn’t have to be terrifyi...