Dream achieved: My Yahoo Travel profile of a JetBlue superfan is up

A few years ago, I took a Mediabistro class on travel writing, and while the instructor was fascinating and wonderful, I left discouraged. I don't have what it takes, I concluded, and pretty much set that dream aside, even though I do love traveling and do it a fair amount for work-related events, and sometimes for fun. Today I achieved that dream by having my first article run at Yahoo Travel, about a JetBlue superfan who's taken more than 100 flights since April 2013 on a Ph.D. grad student budget. Travel has changed my life, so it was an honor to profile someone for whom the same can be said. It's also an interesting look at how a brand, in this case JetBlue, can best interact with its customers to make them loyal and also have fun with their Tweeting! I hope you'll check it out, and I hope that I continue to get to write about one of my favorite topics! Here's a snippet:

How did the airline win him over? The Boston College PhD student’s JetBlue obsession started by accident. He’d booked a trip to Hawaii with another airline, which bungled his reservation so badly he canceled it and rebooked on JetBlue. Then he took to Twitter. “I first discovered how different JetBlue was when I tweeted them and another airline due to some poor service I experienced,” Brown told Yahoo Travel. “The response was telling. The other airline’s tweet read like a machine-generated form letter. JetBlue’s tweet was personal, and they let me know they were ‘#superexcited’ to have me fly with them.”

And this right here is proof of what he is talking about, in response to my Tweet about the article:

Happiness is writing about Hello Kitty travel

This Hello Kitty travel article for The Frisky is one of my favorite things I've ever written. Hopefully someone will want my report on the Hello Kitty Cafe in South Korea I plan to check out this summer. A little bright spot amidst moving mania.

Photos and review of Dubai ice bar Chill Out Lounge

I wrote up my visit to ice bar Chill Out Lounge in Dubai for Huffington Post Travel (I meant 21.20 ºF not -21.20 ºF). I'd included all the photos below in my submission but I don't see them on the site, so here they are! I love travel and have my heart set on going to the Ice Hotel in December 2013, I want to learn about travel writing as best I can and someday I hope to get published by sites like Fathom (I actually submitted this piece there but didn't hear back), but who knows? I'm learning, every single day, how to be a freelance writer.