Where are you based?

I've lived all over the world (France, New Zealand, Australia, Germany) while always keeping at least a P.O. Box in Florida. These days, South Tampa is home. 

What topics and places do you cover?

All things travel, from adventure topics, scuba diving, skiing, boating/yachting, and cultural and luxury travel, to my current favorite these days–family travel (I have a young girl and boy I love getting out into the world with). I also cover health and science topics and profile interesting people doing interesting things, so feel free to pitch newsy ideas there, too. 

What outlets do you usually pitch and write for?

I always get asked this, and I always say, “anyone who pays me.” The longer answer is that my outlets have changed over my nearly 25-year travel writing career. As a freelancer, things are always in flux. Editors leave one place and pop up in another. Who I'm writing for today could change tomorrow. But currently, I'm writing for CNN Travel, CNN Health,  Afar, National Geographic, BOAT International, Travel+Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Fodor's, Lonely Planet, AARP, Scuba Diving Magazine, TIME, Thrillist, Tampa Magazine, and several other custom and trade publications. In other words, anyone who pays me to write about the things I like to write about.  

Are you in-house or freelance (or both)?

Since quitting my first and only office job as a copywriter in an ad agency in 2000 to work the Sydney Olympics in Australia and set off on a round-the-world trip, I've always and forever been freelance. My freelance friends and I talk about this quite a bit–the price of going on staff is more or less the price of my freedom, and I've never been offered it. So I remain happily freelance. 

What are your professional pet peeves? 

Being a travel writer brings with it such awesome opportunities, as we all know. I move right past people who are entitled and demanding.

In your past professional life, you were …

A cultural anthropologist and living somewhere in Europe, the continent where I feel most grounded. I took a cultural anthropology elective my very last semester at the University of Florida and was gutted from the first lecture–I just knew that was what I should have been studying all along. 

Where would you like to return to?

I'm a huge fan of returning to places I love to peel back another layer and revisit the people I've met. And there are many I'll always go back to, among them Northern Norway, Southwest France, Fiji, French Polynesia, Morocco, and Indonesia. 

What's on your bucket list?

I've been scuba diving for 30 years and love it. I've been lucky to explore underwater on fabulous coral reefs, atolls, shipwrecks, and rivers all over the planet. Two places top my bucket list for a dream dive trip–Raja Ampat and Mexico's Revillagigedo Islands. 

Where do you travel for fun?

I love to go on adventures with my kids. We spent a month in Bali this summer, a place I first visited in 2001 in my burgeoning backpacker days. It was incredible to be back with them and–despite all you hear about Bali these days–find that I was just in love with the island as I was way back then. The Balinese are among the kindest people in the world, and Bali is still like no place on Earth, especially when you know where to go.

Your funniest (or most harrowing) travel story is …

I was just telling this one the other day when someone asked if it's okay to go in the sauna while pregnant. I visited friends in Finland when I was six months pregnant with my son. They were sauna-hopping and lake-plunging nonstop, and I asked them if Finns go in the sauna when they're pregnant (the U.S. advice, naturally, is not to). My friend Antti looked me straight in the eyes in that deadpan way of the Finns and said, “Terry, I was born in a sauna.” Needless to say, I went in. And my son and I lived to tell the tale. 

What advice would you give your younger professional self?

I'd probably tell her to go on staff early on in her career in a big city like New York for at least a year or two (I was too busy traveling the world throughout my 20s and much of my 30s to even dream of settling down for a minute). My travel writer friends who did the magazine editor thing at some point in New York City early in their careers seem to get some great opportunities that come from that experience and those connections. Advice I'd give others starting out is to really lean into your specialty area to become the expert editors go to for stories about it. For me, that's always been Florida. I know the state inside out and upside down, and love to share all the surprises to be found here that most people might overlook. 

What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?

Inspired by some great Substacks by my travel writer besties (hi, Blane Bachelor!), I'm happily jumping on the newsletter bandwagon. Mine is free for now and called Window Seat Always, and I'd love it if you sign up (that might also motivate me to write the first one).

How best should people contact you?

Through my TravMedia profile here.