Writing guidebooks is a challenging process that demands careful planning, hard work, and physically strenuous logistics. Jumping on and off buses, taxis, boats, single prop aircraft, and the occasional petulant mule, fact-checking and data-gathering in the research phase requires the exploration of thousands of square miles of territory at a breathless pace – all the while having the flexibility to address the diversions, delays, and electrifying moments of serendipity which are a part of the travel experience anywhere. Writing up research is no less intensive. Conducted at home (or in colourful hotel rooms converted to impromptu offices), it requires the sifting and sorting of voluminous information for distillation into prose and practical listings. As the coordinating author of Footprint’s bestselling Central America range, I have a solid track record of working under my own steam to deliver well-crafted, accurate, and innovative copy to tight publishing schedules. I have planned, researched, and written guidebooks books from scratch. I have overhauled, re-structured, and re-written many more. My years as a seasoned guidebook author mean I can offer prospective editors dogged research skills, discerning local knowledge, and a lucid sense of place.
In 2011, I cut my teeth as an environmental journalist with a series of investigative features about hydroelectric development in Panama. My reporting brought me into contact with Indigenous activists, environmental advocates, and wily frontier people as passionate as they were knowledgeable. From them I gained not only an appreciation of the land, but of the existential threats it faces. My research contributed to numerous articles and documentaries on the country’s evolving (and underreported) environmental and human rights situation, and was utilised by organisations such as Carbon Watch, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), and International Rivers. Building on those experiences, I subsequently attained an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies.
