Shameless Self-Promotion

I was a little hesitant about the overt self-promotion inherent in mentioning the latest 5th edition of Frommers New Zealand but as a friend commented, the guide is such a major part of my life it would be odd not to mention it here. Certainly, receiving my pristine new copies in the post is always an event laced with disbelief, satisfaction, wonderment and relief – relief and amazement that I have somehow achieved such a massive task again. In conversation with another Frommers’ writer recently - American-based Bill Goodwin, author of at least three Frommers guides (the man deserves a medal) – it was heartening to know that I’m not the only one to look upon my travel guide life with a degree of astonishment – the endless hours of travel, the constant bombardment of people, the endless eating and hotel-hopping followed immediately by the total opposite: months of total seclusion and removal from ‘real life’ as you write and write and write and wade through a mind-boggling array of facts and figures - all 532 pages of them (this year for the first time, complete with a photographic section) to meet what always seems like an impossible deadline. Sometimes I think it is a wonder I emerge sane. Perhaps I haven’t. http://www.frommers.com/