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Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer— Chuck Thompson

After years of being told by his editors that his most interesting stories were "too negative," "too graphic," and "too over the heads of our readers," veteran travel writer Chuck Thompson finally gets the chance to "write about travel the way [he] experienced it, not the way the travel business wants readers…to imagine it is" in his new book, Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer. And, in the process, he reveals what is so very wrong with the travel industry.

Thompson doesn't deal in clichés about white sand beaches. His stories tend to revolve around more interesting, if less conventional topics, from nonchalant Bangkok sex workers and being broke and stranded on a Thai beach to playing a rock concert in a former Stasi prison and attempting a rather abortive conversation with a Japanese student named Larry.

He is also on a crusade to stamp out mediocrity from the field of travel writing and has a few simple rules for the aspiring writers out there. They include: never applying the adjective 'tasty' to anything other than food, resisting the temptation to describe local diversity using a metaphor involving stew, avoiding all sentences in the form of imperatives, and banning the following words from all future discussion of travel: hip, luxuriate, magical, happening, exclusive, savvy traveler, sun-drenched, and undiscovered.

But lest you think the book is all outrageous stories (and there are plenty of those), it is far more, a meditation on the lures of the expat life, the dangers of global homogenization, and the deep ignorance of most travel writers when it comes to really understanding the places and societies they write about. Thompson takes on the sacred cows of the travel industry and travelers themselves. He stands up for Latin America, condemns politically correct preaching in travel guides, castigates Americans "who act as though leaving U.S. soil gives them license to behave like the First Marine Division in Fallujah" but tries to refute the truism of the Ugly American, and explains why travel magazines do not really want to be new or innovative, even when they claim they do. In the process, he taps into the heart of what being a traveler is about with wit, wisdom, and insight that keeps you reading until the last page.

Publisher's Weekly finds Thompson's book "too damning-and too funny-an indictment of the tired clichés, corporate tie-ins and persistent closed-mindedness that plague travel writing." "Consistently irreverent, Thompson is wickedly entertaining," raves the San Francisco Chronicle. "The world Thompson presents is stranger, richer and more compelling than you'll find in most travel magazines."

Chuck Thompson has been features editor for Maxim and editor-in-chief of Travelocity magazine. He has written for dozens of publications from Esquire to National Geographic to Escape and has traveled on assignment to over 35 countries. When not traveling, Thompson lives in the Pacific Northwest.

--Caroline Patton