The Perceptive Travel blog is excited to introduce a new member. Liz Lewis, known to some as Kiwi Writer, is joining the team from her home in New Zealand and will be posting about twice a week.

Despite being originally an American, Liz says she’s practically a naturalized Kiwi (New Zealander). But that hasn’t prompted her to learn to surf, bungy jump, or turn into a hobbit. She also works as a registered nurse, and has earned my lifelong admiration by telling me she once spent a year working in a hospital in Saudi Arabia looking after the princes and princesses of Saudi royalty. “I was more a servant than a nurse,” she says. “Not something I plan on doing again.”

Travel writing, it seems, is more attractive than being a servant to royalty. Last year Liz decided she wanted to make a living as a travel writer, and started a blog called My Year of Getting Published, tracking her endeavors, successes, and thoughts about travel writing. The blog, now renamed Write to Travel, has become a go-to site for travelers and writers around the world. I particularly love her insightful interviews with travel writers and fresh ideas, like this week’s challenge to write a complete travel story in six words. Now Liz is bringing her innovation and energy — as well as some very cool worldwide travels — over to Perceptive Travel.

We’re very excited to have her, so welcome Liz!

Fellow blogger Steve Davey is in high demand for his writing and photos, and is swamped with a new book project. He will, however, continue to contribute guest blogs for Perceptive Travel. Good thing, too — I need someone in London to keep showing me where all the best hidden pubs are. Until then, we’ll keep up with Steve’s wanderings on his website.

Despite the image of the happy freelance travel writer jetting around the world and scampering through interesting exotic places, the reality is that we spend way too much time typing and gazing into a computer monitor. Otherwise we’d never get paid. We may communicate with 50 people a day by e-mail and phone, but real face-to-face communication like you have in an office environment is all too uncommon.

So as the editor of Perceptive Travel, I made it my goal to set up some real live socializing when I came to my old haunt of New York City last week for a conference. Fortunately I got some help from the generous folks at Hungary Tourism (including Maria pictured here) and Monarchia Winery. I stopped at Monarchia when I was in Hungary recently and got to sit down in their cellar with their award-winning winemaker Pok Tamas. They are one of the few that does a sizable export business, so we got them to educate a room full of travel and wine writers on what comes out of that country’s vineyards.

We had a mixed bag of writers representing a slew of different websites and magazines. In no particular order, we had bloggers Kelly Amabile from Gadling, Claire and Paul from Jaunted (pictured here), Nicole from Globorati, Tom Meyers from Eurocheapo, and others. Max and Kent from the fine site GoNomad were there as was fellow Imbibe writer Amy Zavatto and uncooked.tv director John Gottfried (with me up at the top). Despite all us alternative types there, we even got some people who write for Travel & Leisure to come by and sip some Tokaji Aszu.

It was a treasure trove of authors too: Bruce Northam (Globetrotter Dogma), Tony Perrottet (The Naked Olympics), Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey!), Marie Javins (Stalking the Wild Dik-dik), and Robert Reid (loads of Lonely Planet books). All of them have written/will write for Perceptive Travel, so sign up for the newsletter on the Perceptive Travel home page to keep updated with new stories.

Welcome to the brand spankin’ new Perceptive Travel Blog. This is meant to be an accompaniment to the award-winning Perceptive Travel site and a place where we can fill in the blanks between issues. We will review some more books and music, highlight new films and TV shows with a travel twist, and point you to some other fine independent travel writing on the Web.

Also, our three talented bloggers will bring you some peeks under the rocks from places they are visiting. Here are your hosts:

Steve Davey is a renowned travel photographer whose work has appeared in a variety of quality UK publications, including one of the best travel mags in the world–Wanderlust. He is author (and photographer) of the bestselling book Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die. Coming in April is his new book Unforgettable Islands to Escape to Before You Die.

Sheila Scarborough has seen her share of the world as both a traveler and in the Navy. She has written about a wide variety of topics for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, Transitions Abroad, and a variety of U.S. newspapers. She runs the family travel blog for BootsnAll.

Antonia Malchik has contributed travel stories to WorldHum, Pology, The Vancouver Courier, GoNomad, and the Walrus. She has lived abroad in Austria, Russia, and Australia. In the latter she worked as a copy editor at Conde Nast Traveler Australia.

I’ll occasionally pop in with a comment or two, but I’m mainly leaving it to these fine writers to keep you engaged and entertained. Use that subscriber feed button at the top right, then come along for the ride!

Tim Leffel
Editor, Perceptive Travel