The Book in Brief
When people ask me how to get started at travel writing, I often tell them that running away from home at fifteen and hitchhiking alone around America is what worked for me. In Escape Clauses — Getting Away With a Travel Writing Life, I chronicle how I parlayed that first solo adventure into decades of world travel by seeking out strangers in far places and making their stories a part of my own.
Praise for Escape Clauses
The adventures he shares are funny, amazing, sometimes scary, always memorable — Joan Tapper, former editor Islands magazine
Travel writer has long been one of the world’s most enviable professions, and Bob Payne’s Escape Clauses demonstrates why. He brings to this charming far-flung memoir all the humor and surprise of travel itself. — Thomas Swick, author of The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illustrate Them
Escape Clauses is a rich account of a life well-traveled . Bob Payne, however, is no ordinary traveler, and his storytelling is dense with detail about trips that often go sideways. He strikes up conversations with people the rest of us might ignore or even sensibly run away from. In so doing, he gets his story, from pursuing the ghost of Alexander Selkirk on Robinson Crusoe’s Island to taking a leisurely swim at the North Pole. And if there are pickpockets, slow-moving, ferries, or clear-cut dangers, so much the better. — Everett Potter, contributor to National Geographic Traveler and creator of Everett Potter’s Travel Report
Bob Payne
I’m an award-winning travel writer who has visited more than 140 countries. My travel humor has appeared in publications that include Outside, Men‘s Journal, Islands, Bon Appétit, and Condé Nast Traveler, where I was a long-time contributing editor and think I remain their only editor ever to put the cost of a Polynesian tattoo on their expense report. My work has been called notable by the series The Best American Travel Writing.
Escape Clauses is a 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal Winner and an Award Finalist for the 2023 International Book Awards.
While waiting for your copy of Escape Clauses, check out my blog — The Overheard Bin — to catch up on the accurate travel news and advice I have been sharing since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock.
Escape Clauses was published by Bob Carries On Media, LLC
