Book Description:
Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer promises the kind of travel stories magazines don’t publish, as well as insider dirt on the travel industry (and travel writing) itself. Author Chuck Thompson does deliver the kind of travel stories you don’t see in Travel + Leisure, although you might see them in Maxim or a collection of travel essays.
Smile While You’re Lying offers a variety of things to the reader — whether the same reader will want all of them equally is less certain. But Smile While You’re Lying is definitely a lot more fun than a book about spa vacations.
Travel writer, editor, and photographer Chuck Thompson has spent more than a decade traipsing through thirty-five (and counting) countries across the globe, and he’s had enough. Enough of the half-truths demanded by magazine editors, enough of the endlessly recycled clichés regarded as good travel writing, and enough of the ugly secrets fiercely guarded by the travel industry. But mostly, he’s had enough of returning home from assignments and leaving the most interesting stories and the most provocative insights on the editing-room floor. From getting swindled in Thailand to running afoul of customs inspectors in Belarus, from defusing hostile Swedish rockers backstage in Germany to a closed-door meeting with travel execs telling him why he’s about to be fired once again, Thompson’s no-holds-barred style is refreshing, invigorating, and all those other adjectives travel writers use to describe spa vacations where the main attraction is a daily colonic.
Smile When You’re Lying takes readers on an irresistible series of adventures in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and beyond; details the effects of globalization on the casual traveler and ponders the future of travel as we know it; and offers up a treasure trove of travel-industry secrets collected throughout a decidedly speckled career.