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The City Of Life And Death. New Orleans With Laura And Dan Martone

New Orleans is one of those cities that has a special place in the imagination of a traveler, even if you haven’t been there. It’s famous for loving life — for Mardi Gras parades, a vibrant music scene, drinking and eating and gorgeous architecture in the French Quarter — but it’s also known as the City of the Dead, with cemeteries, Voodoo, ghost stories, vampires, and of course, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

In today’s episode, native New Orleanian Laura Martone and her husband, Dan, talk about the history of the French Quarter and some of the haunted buildings there, the best cemeteries to visit, vampires, voodoo and Creole cuisine.

Laura and Daniel Martone write fiction in multiple genres including space opera, post-apocalyptic and urban fantasy. They lived in the French Quarter of New Orleans for many years and produced several audio walking guides. Laura has also written a guidebook to the city and they now live in their RV, Serenity, and travel between New Orleans and Michigan, USA.

The various pronunciations of New Orleans
Why the French Quarter has mostly Spanish influenced architecture
Interesting cemeteries in the city
Why vampires are associated with New Orleans
How and why Catholicism and voodoo are so entwined
The importance of music and its influence on the culture in New Orleans
The different parades at Mardi Gras
Seafood boils as social occasions
The beautiful natural ecosystems that surround the city

You can find Dan and Laura Martone at TheMartones.com

A Walk Along The Las Vegas Strip, Nevada, USA

Unusual Places

I visited Las Vegas in late October 2019 for a conference Downtown, but while I was there, I had to walk The Strip. Infamous as the center of Sin City, it certainly delivered in terms of excess. It was bonkers … but fun bonkers! A homage to American decadence and a theme park of entertainment in all its forms. I enjoyed The Strip for what it was and then left for the quieter parts of town! Here are some of my pictures and thoughts as I walked.

You can get Ubers easily and quickly from any part of the city, so I got one to the MGM Grand as a starting point for my walk. I went up onto the overpass to take a picture of New York, New York. Apparently, there are a lot of traffic accidents along the Strip — a combination of drunken pedestrians and drivers looking at the sights, so make sure to use the overpasses to cross the road.

Thriller author Jo Frances Penn in Las Vegas New York New York

I love architecture and The Strip is like a theme park in terms of its brilliant — but fake — buildings. There are some gorgeous aspects — like the upmarket shops at City Center …

The Bellagio lake and dancing fountains …

Traveling By Train Across The USA With J Thorn

Unusual Places

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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_

13 Unusual Things To See In New York City

Unusual Places

New York might be most famous for Wall Street, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, and being a multi-cultural melting pot, but the city also has its stranger side.

Abandoned subway lines, marble cemeteries, mass graves, and a cheese house are just some of the weirdest examples. It seemed a logical place to set One Day in New York where ARKANE agent Jake Timber joins the hunt for a secret buried under the city.

If you’d like your trip to be a little darker, a little more ‘ARKANE’, then pay a visit to some of these weird and wonderful locations.

Wild And Beautiful Hawaii With Toby Neal

Travel Memoir

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Hawaii is more than just a paradise of beaches and blue sea. In this interview, mystery and memoir author, Toby Neal, brings the wild and beautiful islands to life.

Toby Neal is an award-winning ‘USA Today’ bestselling author of mysteries, thrillers, and romance with over 30 titles. She’s also a mental health therapist, and today we’re talking about Freckled: A Memoir of Growing up Wild in Hawaii.

In the interview, we discuss:

Why Hawaii is more than just white sand beaches and cocktails with umbrellas
A tip for the Hawaiian language
Recommended places to visit that take you in nature and away from the main tourist hotspots
The Hawaiian legend of Ohia and Lehua
How the volcanic environment impacts Hawaii
Embracing duality in finding home — the ocean of Hawaii and the redwoods of California
Writing about the darker side of the islands
Book recommendations

You can find Toby and her books at www.TobyNeal.net and on Instagram @tobyneal

7 Unusual Places To Visit In San Francisco

Unusual Places

In many ways, San Francisco is a high-tech city, with Silicon Valley just down the road, Twitter on Market Street and Ubers on every corner.

But it also has a rich religious history and some unusual places to visit if you want to venture further than the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here are some of the places that I found interesting when I visited on a book research trip for my thriller, Valley of Dry Bones.

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