20-Feb-2004
Please don't respond to this e-mail. If you have something to say, write to me at my e-mail address. Go to http://www.wendydale.com. Then click on the Contact page.
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HIRE WENDY AS YOUR PERSONAL TOUR GUIDE. REALLY! – KEEP READING
Hi guys,
This is a long overdue thank you, first of all to everyone for buying my book and secondly for liking the book enough to add yourself to my e-mail mailing list. This list started with the names of several of my friends in the hopes that they’d feel sorry for me and buy my book. Well, now this has grown into a healthy list of people who don’t know me personally yet still feel sorry enough for me to buy my books. So thanks for the pity, guys. I need it!
Getting a book published brings out all kinds of intense emotions ranging from elation to disappointment (elation when a reviewer loves your book; disappointment when you look at your checking account balance) and the past year has been pretty insane. I haven’t sent out as many of these e-mail "newsletters" as I would have liked, but at least I’ve managed to answer everyone who sent me an e-mail.
A lot of weird things have happened since the book came out. My parents have gotten recognized walking down the street, at the hair salon and at Wal-Mart (they appeared on TV with me in Arizona). After several of these occurrences, my mother started to complain, "You know, Wendy. I really think fame is overrated." I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
And there have been a few strange small-world stories. My friend Erin was at school talking about my book when a classmate of hers overheard and came running up to her. "Are you talking about Wendy Dale? The Wendy Dale? The author of Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals? You know HER?" That managed to swell my head for a little while. And then there was the story of how my dad was at a mineral show and a fellow mineral dealer came up to him and said, "I was halfway through this book when I suddenly realized that the person the author was writing about was you. I had no idea someone had written about you in a book. Why didn’t you tell me your daughter was an author?"
After reading the book, a lot of my friends have said that they’d love to travel with me, which seems like kind of a strange comment to make after reading a book about illegal trips and Costa Rican prisons. But I’ve gotten this comment so often that I got to thinking – maybe I should offer a wacky, totally original tour of South America.
This is all very preliminary, but I wanted to put out some feelers to try and gauge how much interest there would be. I hope to offer several weeklong tours that start at around $1400 plus the cost of airfare and travel insurance. The idea is not to see a bunch of landmarks but basically to have two to four people hang out with me and see what adventures come our way. I’m going to be in Bolivia in January 2005 so it would be easy for me to escort some people around then; however, if there was enough interest I’d be open to doing some tours this summer too.
The whole point of my tours is that we don’t have a structured itinerary and nothing is planned. If we decide to go to the jungle, we take public transportation to the nearest town and then start asking around to find a local with a truck who will drive us into the jungle. I don’t set any of this up in advance because most of what makes a trip great for me are the unexpected adventures that happen along the way. Every tour is completely unique which is why I’ll limit the number of people to four (maybe only three). And since there will be so few of us, I can customize trips. I’d also like to set up one trip that is a writing workshop on the road for people who want to publish an account of their travels.
If this sounds like fun to you, send a blank e-mail to wendy@wendydale.com with the words "trip info" in the subject line. I’ll send you a questionnaire to fill out and return to me and we’ll take it from there.
Thanks again to everyone for all you’ve done to support my book. Happy travels!
Wendy
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