Prion Island is a small island just off the coast of South Georgia, a much-larger island probably best known as the resting place of Ernest Shackleton.

It’s not easy to get to Prion Island, nor cheap. You need a boat to get you there, typically an Antarctic tourism vessel.

I hope to visit these parts one day and not just because they’re home to many thousands of King Penguins.

They are also home to the Wandering Albatross. No other bird has a wider wingspan and no other bird is as captivating to watch as it soars on the Antarctic air currents.

You can get a taste for Prion Island (and the Albatross) in this video:

You should read this travel article about Bahia Bustamante.

Bahia Bustamante is a sprawling private ranch south of Punta Tombo, the site of the world’s largest Magellanic penguin colony. The article nicely captures the environment and its rich diversity of animal life — armadillos, guanacos and even steamer ducks.

Here’s a picture of a pair of steamer ducks that I took when I was at Punta Tombo years ago:

Steamer ducks can’t fly but they can sure zip across the water when provoked.

And here’s a picture of Punta Tombo. Reading that article sent me back through all the photos I had taken.

The highlight of the article was when the author came across some of the local penguins:

We walked into the bushes, slowly and quietly, as inconspicuous as three giants in bright windbreakers could be. Under almost every bush was a penguin nest; in each, two penguins rested on their egg, a portrait of monogamy (they mate for life), looking up as we passed, curious but not afraid. These were Magellanic penguins, each about two feet tall; they are indigenous only to southern Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands. (The penguins are classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a near-threatened species because of oil spills and overfishing.) When the water gets too frigid, they’ll swim north to the warmer waters of Brazil for a few months before heading back next fall, to this exact island, these exact nests.

I hope to visit Bahia Bustamante some day, though I’d be happy enough just making it back to Punta Tombo.

By the way, there is a small guest ranch, further north, that I was fortunate enough to stay at and I highly recommend it: Rincón Chico. Here’s a nice video of some of the wildlife you can see there.

In The Tourist Trail, I briefly touched on the cape seals of Namibia and how they are slaughtered each year.

While much of the world’s attention has been focused on the Canadian seal cull — and for good reason — attention must also be paid to the beaches of Namibia.

If you want to learn more, I recommend reading the blog of Seal Alert, an organization founded by Francois Hugo.

Francois has devoted his life to rescuing the seals that escape the cull — and fighting to end the cull altogether. The seal cull occurs annually and the quota is set at 85,000 seal pups and 6,000 bulls. There are videos of the cull on the web site and they are hard to stomach.

What troubles me most about Namibia is that it is squandering a natural resource rather than investing in tourists who would come to view the colonies (and bring in far greater money over the long run). Just as the whale watching industry has ensured protection of whales in many parts of the world, I cannot fathom why the Ministry of Tourism in Namibia can’t put a little more pressure on its Ministry of Fisheries to follow a similar, sustainable path. Francois has done his best to pressure them.

I’ve sent emails to both ministries and I’ve received polite (though ambiguous replies). But it can’t hurt if more people from around the world start making some noise.  If you have a few free minutes to shoot out a few emails, here are the two web sites:

• Namibia Ministry of Fisheries
• Namibia Ministory of Environment and Tourism (an ironic name, I realize)

Fortunately, a number of celebrities in South Africa are now mobilizing to raise awareness as well, boycott Namibian products, and disrupt tourism. To learn more, visit Seals of Nam on Facebook.

Five years ago, I could not have imagined a life without the almighty hamburger. Or chicken. Or steak. I was raised a meat-and-potatoes guy, and that’s how I viewed myself. I also believed that to be a successful athlete you had no choice but to be a carnivore.

I was wrong.

Today, in honor of Meatout, I want to share how I ended up living this very different life.

My road to veganism began with a flight to Patagonia.

My wife and I visited a penguin colony down in Patagonia. We were volunteers as part of a penguin census and it was here that I began to see firsthand the dangers of overfishing. Just off the coast were fishing trawlers and miles of nets, and these penguins were running the gantlet every time they left shore. Much worse, the fishing trawlers were now going after the same food that the penguins needed to survive, in some cases using large vacuums to suck up hundreds of tons of krill.

When I returned home I gave up seafood. This was no major sacrifice as I never much liked seafood. It was something I ate only because it was supposed to be good for me (another misconception). It was actually freeing in a way. When I was a kid I remember the time my parents splurged and brought home live lobsters. And I remember the horrible guilt I felt when I saw them dropped into the boiling water. I didn’t want to eat them, but I did. That’s what you did as a child who was just figuring out how the world worked. Well, I now know how the world works and I know that too many people live their lives out of habit. I know now you have to listen to your gut. Giving up seafood was easy because I never liked killing creatures from the sea.

But here’s the rub. The minute you eliminate one species from your diet you may find yourself staring down a slippery slope.

I traveled to the FARM Animal Rights conference in 2007 because I had begun writing a novel about the oceans and animal activism (The Tourist Trail) and it was at this conference that I saw how farm animals were treated. After just a few hours there I realized I would never eat meat again. It was a scary feeling. I’m not all that good at change. And I never viewed myself as an animal activist, as one of “those people.”

And yet I couldn’t continue going through life with blinders on. I could no longer compartmentalize how some animals deserve to live healthy lives (as pets) while other deserve lives of confinement and death (as food). Once you empathize with animals it is impossible to rationalize away their destruction.

Today, I can say that a life without animal products is not as difficult as I thought it would be. I’ve run a half-marathon since then, and there are many wildly successful vegan athletes out there. I still get the protein I need. The lifestyle is getting easier all the time thanks to all the new vegan products out there and restaurants that are listening to their customers.

And I’ve even found great vegan junk food options. I used to snack on nachos. Now, I eat Triscuits with WayFare “cheese.” It’s not only vegan, but it actually tastes better than nachos. I now make vegan chocolate chip cookies that taste far better than the old-fashioned kind; instead of butter I use coconut oil.

Being vegan is not about being perfect. I’m not perfect. And I worry sometimes that people are easily dissuaded from this way of life because they view it as an all-or-nothing way of life.

That’s why we have Meatout Mondays. FARM promotes Meatout Mondays as way of changing your diet one day a week. If everyone cuts back a bit on meat, we collectively save millions of lives. We also have a positive impact on the environment. And we generally end up being a lot healthier.

Getting from there to here was not always easy. I had to rethink my diet. I had to break old habits. And I now have to live with the stigma of being one of “those people.” But I would have it no other way. And if you’re considering a similar journey, I can tell you now that it’s worth the effort.

We all have our journeys. Sometimes we choose our journeys and sometimes they choose us.

So now the questions begin: What caused the death of the celebrity polar bear Knut?

Early indications point to some form of brain disease.

Environmentalists say Knut was overly stressed.

Zoo officials deny this, of course.

But when I look at the photo of the polar bear above, I think the question should be: Why don’t more polar bears die in captivity each year?

In the Arctic, polar bears roam hundreds of miles as virtual loners. This is in their DNA, this life of freedom and solitude. So when one is raised in a confined cell and subjected to hundreds of thousands of people taking pictures and shouting, how does any polar bear survive this? Just the smells must be overwhelming. A polar bear can pick up the scent of food a dozen miles away; how does it cope in an environment in which it is surrounded by smells, overstimulated to such a degree?

When I was a child I was always bothered by watching the large animals at the zoo. The way they paced back and forth. Even then I suspected something wasn’t right. Now I know something isn’t right.

Zoos shouldn’t be in the business of keeping large animals in small containers. From lions to whales to polar bears, zoos don’t give them the room they need. Perhaps no container is large enough.

Perhaps we don’t need zoos any longer. I wouldn’t miss them.

The major argument I hear in support of zoos is the educational value they offer to young children. If Billy doesn’t get to see a polar bear up close, the argument goes, how will he come to appreciate nature? And yet this argument fails to account for the fact that Billy isn’t witnessing nature, just some watered down version of it. A video of a polar bear in its element is of far more educational value, as it shows the polar bear doing what it does naturally. And it shows the importance of seals and ice and ecosystem, lessons that are going to be critical to ensuring we protect this planet for generations to come.

There is another argument in support of zoos that points to all the good things they do for animals — for helping species bounce back from near extinction. For breeding animals that had failed to breed successfully in the wild. These are far stronger arguments in support of zoological programs, but not necessarily zoos.

I’ve been reading Fear of the Animal Planet — a book that details countless abuses of animals by zoos and circuses alike, so maybe I’m too jaded.

But today I read that Berlin zoo officials plan to have Knut stuffed, adding insult to injury. Even in death he is not given a moment of peace.

Despite the success of the Kindle and the iPad, many people still prefer the old-fashioned print book.

Like me. I have a Kindle and yet I still buy print books. Partly out of habit. Partly because many of the books I buy are reference and tutorial books. I have a book on programming (don’t ask) and I’m constantly paging through it as I sit at the computer, yanking out what’s left of my hair. Kindles just aren’t conducive to scanning large chunks of code.

But I digress.

I published The Tourist Trail in print not just because I knew readers wanted a print version, but because reviewers wanted a print version.

And whatever reviewers want reviewers will get.

So I wanted to briefly share a little about the printer I selected. It wasn’t an easy decision because it’s easy to find fellow authors who love or hate whichever printer you ultimately select.

Out of more than a dozen printers, I narrowed my list down the following:

• Lightning Source
• CreateSpace
• Lulu

I selected Lightning Source. It was a good decision. The quality of the book is quite good (and Lightning Source just announced support for matte covers, which I am now testing out — a topic for a later post).

I primarily selected Lightning Source was because it is owned by Ingram, the world’s largest book distributor. So by going with Lightning Source I was confident that bookstores would have no trouble getting my book. And, of course, Lightning Source also works with Amazon and other online vendors. Lightning Source also does printing work for

Some people have said that Lightning Source is more expensive than CreateSpace, but I didn’t find this to be the case. I found Lightning Source to be the best overall value of the three. Lightning Source does charge more in set-up costs but the per-unit printing costs were better.

But there is a huge caveat with Lightning Source — you need to know a lot about book production. There is not much in the way of hand holding. Lightning Source expects you to provide a print-ready PDF, preferably output from Adobe InDesign. If all this sounds like a foreign language to you, then you might want to use Lulu or CreateSpace — or hire a book designer who can do this for you.

I recommend working with a professional designer. My feeling here is that a self-published book shouldn’t look self-published. I can tell when a book has been more or less just exported out of Word. The fonts sometimes look blurry, the page alignments are off, the columns are too wide (or too narrow). I could go on.

My best advice is not to rush into it. Spend some time on user forums such as this one on Lulu. Ask questions. Ask other self-published authors what they’ve learned along the way. And be prepared to do a bit of learning yourself.

I came across a live video stream today of a pair of bald eagles and their three chicks living in a tree in Decorah, Iowa.

You can check it out here. Warning: It’s highly addictive.

And here is a screen grab…

Perhaps Midge and I took Earth Day a bit seriously this year.

We visited Oregon Caves Nationals Monument and spent the afternoon underground getting dripped on (euphemistically called ‘cave kisses’).

I really recommend the tour. Ranger Joe was excellent (and great with the kids) and his passion for the caves was evident. This cave is rather unique in that it is carved out of marble (only about 5% of caves are marble). They also found the oldest grizzly bear on record deep within — more than 50,000 years old.

Here are a few pics. First, the old wood lodge near the entrance.

And the entrance (a bit narrower than I expected):

And during the course of the tour I got a refresher on stalactites, mites, columns (everything I forgot long ago).

Answer: Probably never.

The Tourist Trail has been out for eight months now and I’m still sending out review copies. Granted, I’m only sending out one or two a week at most, but if I find someone who has an audience and might be willing to devote time to reading the book, I’m more than happy to send a copy along.

Of course, not everyone who promises to write a review actually follows through. And I don’t like to nag so I just let it go. That’s part of the process — letting things go, particularly if the reviews aren’t what you expect. Fortunately, I’ve received mostly great reviews so far.

And I’m always looking for more.

I have found that reviews are the most important way to get this book noticed. If you’re a blogger with an audience and you think you might want to review The Tourist Trail, let me know. I’ve got copies…

I read yesterday that Brian Gordon, Major League Baseball pitcher for the Yankees, became the first player to use a 100% non-leather glove.

This may seem like a trivial detail, but it’s not. Leather has long been viewed as the best material for many sports-related products — from shoes to gloves to the balls themselves. And this is still largely the case, but Brian’s glove is a significant change. Sports stars influence millions of young people around the world. And you can bet that future pitchers who want to follow in Brian’s footsteps are going to take a close look at a synthetic glove.

The maker of the glove Carpenter Trade Company writes:

Leather in gloves 50 years ago held up better and longer than leather used today. The reason is that cattle raised for slaughter 50 years ago were usually raised naturally—meaning they roamed in open fields, ate grass, and were slaughtered at a mature age (about 5 years). Today’s leather usually comes from factory-farmed cattle. These animals are confined to feed lots where they don’t build muscle or thick hides. They are fed unnatural, fattening diets of grains supplemented with growth hormones. They go to slaughter at a young age (about 14 months). The resulting leather is inferior. While animal leathers have gotten worse, man-made leathers are always advancing.

The time for synthetics in professional baseball gloves has come. Each year more synthetics are being used in parts of Major League gloves. Star players such as Roy Halladay and Alex Rodriguez are opting for synthetic backs. Welting, lining, and padding are increasingly made with synthetics by most brands. The newest synthetics are out-performing leather. Completely synthetic gloves will be an industry standard in the future.

The case for avoiding leather — saving animals — often falls on deaf ears. But when you add the fact that synthetic materials can be more effective than leather — you will quickly find an audience among athletes.

Personally, I can attest that running shoes have followed a similar path of evolution. When I took up running back in the dark ages, leather running shoes were the norm. But leather shoes are heavier. And weight is not a good thing when it comes to running.

Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a leather running shoe. They exist, but mostly as “retro” shoes, not as something a professional would use.

I recommend Brooks shoes — in which every one of their shoes but one (the Addiction walker — a rather ironic name) is vegan.

But Brooks has gone beyond simply avoiding leather. Their Green Silence model, shown here, uses 70% recycled materials.

It’s an amazing shoe, and a sign of things to come.

As pro athletes embrace faux alternatives to leather, they influence millions of us civilians to do the same. And, more important, they influence their suppliers (the Nikes of the world) to embrace faux products.

Yes, we’re still in the early days. I realize that leather is everywhere and still tightly associated with luxury products and “manly” products.

But small changes are happening all around us.

And that’s how major changes happen. In small steps, repeated by hundreds, thousands, and, eventually, millions of people.

Hot off the presses! These 1-inch “FAUX” buttons are a positive way of showing your support for non-leather and fur products.

And for anyone who purchases a copy of The Tourist Trail, I’ll include a free button (or more if you buy more).

Purchase here.

So what I have been up to these past few months?

Well, I went and co-founded a publishing house: Ashland Creek Press.

As you know, I’m passionate about animal rights and the environment.That’s why I wrote The Tourist Trail.

But one of the reasons I struggled to find a mainstream publisher for this novel was that mainstream publishers didn’t know how to market the book.

Publishers want to publish books that address well-established markets. Like mystery novels or thrillers or chick-lit.

Publishers are not very good at identifying new markets.

Like eco-literature.

The eco-lit label has been traditionally used to describe nonfiction environmental works. But there is no reason why a novel can’t he labeled eco-lit. For example, we recently published a young adult paranormal romance novel, which also happens to be the world’s first “vegan vampire” novel. I would consider this book to be eco-lit, but also one that fits more established categories as well.

Amazon does not yet offer an eco-lit category for publishers. For now, we will build upon existing categories. Next year, we’ve got an eco-mystery planned, as well as two novels that both fall under the eco-lit theme.

The best thing about starting this press is that I’ve realized how many other writers out there who share our passion for eco-literature. I believe the readers are out there as well, and that their numbers will continue to grow.

Every genre has got to start somewhere.

Awhile back I started a “best eco-fiction” list on GoodReads.

While there is plenty of excellent non-fiction out there about animal rights and activism, I wanted to focus on fiction.

Since then, the list has grown as others have suggested books I wasn’t aware of or had completely overlooked.

Here are a few titles from the list that are specific to animal rights:

Elizabeth Costello
J.M. Coetzee

I could have just as easily highlighted two other novels by Coetzee: Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. Animal rights is a recurring theme in Coetzee’s work and a few of his protagonists are vegetarians. Elizabeth Costello is a vegetarian (or vegan) and her speech in a chapter of the book called The Lives of Animals has become a popular work on its own. What’s I most like about this book is the dynamic between Elizabeth and her son’s family (who are not vegetarians). It’s a tense relationship to be sure and one that I think many vegetarians can relate to.

A Report to An Academy
Franz Kafka

Though this story is only a few thousand words long, it left a mark on me. It is a speech given by an ape that was once wild but is now “civilized.”

Here is an excerpt:

I could never have achieved what I have done had I been stubbornly set on clinging to my origins, to the remembrances of my youth. In fact, to give up being stubborn was the supreme commandment I laid upon myself; free ape as I was, I submitted myself to that yoke. In revenge, however, my memory of the past has closed the door against me more and more. I could have returned at first, had human beings allowed it, through an archway as wide as the span of heaven over the earth, but as I spurred myself on in my forced career, the opening narrowed and shrank behind me; I felt more comfortable in the world of men and fitted it better; the strong wind that blew after me out of my past began to slacken; today it is only a gentle puff of air that plays around my heels; and the opening in the distance, through which it comes and through which I once came myself, has grown so small that, even if my strength and my willpower sufficed to get me back to it, I should have to scrape the very skin from my body to crawl through.

A Mother’s Tale
James Agee

A Mother’s Tale is a short story that deals head-on with animal slaughter. The story can be read in many ways; it is surely as much about humans as it is about animals.

For children, there is quite a lot of literature out there, from Black Beauty to Mrs. Frisby and The Nats of NIMH. And I must mention that our press has recently published a young adult “vegan vampire” novel: Out of Breath.

I remember as a child being struck by the violence that animals often endured (or were forced to escape from) in these books. Looking back, I wonder how I was able to reconcile reading books that took the points of view of animals with the fact that I was also eating animals. But I quickly learned, as did others, to reserve empathy for those animals we consider pets.

As Coetzee writes in Foe: We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

It is clear to me that we as a society are just beginning to remove the blinders regarding animal welfare.

I’m looking forward to publishing several books in 2012 that will further the cause. Stay tuned.

If you have any books to add to this list, login to Goodreads and please do so. Or add a comment below.

A lot, actually. Which is largely why this blog has remained untouched for so long.

That small press that Midge and I founded about a year ago is humming along nicely. We’ve got about 10 books in various stages of production.

Most of these books have strong environmental themes. Like Falling Into Green and The Dragon Keeper and Balance of Fragile Things.

And those are just the books publishing this year.

It’s comforting to come across other writers who see the need for eco-literature — and are creating it.

And it’s especially gratifying to play a role in bringing this literature to the world.

I’ve also begun writing again. For the longest time I was stuck. Many people had told me to write a sequel and I did (and do) feel the urge to keep up with Robert and Angela and Aeneas.  I’ve got so many notes already. But I’m not sure I want to write a sequel, at least not in the conventional sense. Perhaps the characters reappear in a connected novel. I honestly don’t know at this point. All I do know is that I’m writing again and at least one novel is going to emerge from it.

So that’s it for now.

Every year, the Farm Animal Rights Movement sponsors a Meatout day to, well, urge people to give up meat.

At least for a day.

Or, better yet, one day a week, a very popular trend known as “Meatout Mondays.”

There is ample evidence that cutting back on meat will improve your health.

As readers of this blog know, my focus at Ashland Creek Press has been to publish books that raise awareness of animals and the environment.

And, after our first year, we are proud to have published three novels so far that include strong vegan characters:

• Falling Into Green
• Out of Breath
• The Tourist Trail (okay, technically this book was published two years ago)

There are more books on the way.

What’s important to us about these books is that they’re character-driven stories, with characters that happen to be vegan. It’s time that veganism no longer be viewed as a fringe lifestyle but a normal lifestyle — and it’s time that our literature reflects this growing trend.

Which is a large part of why we’re here today.

PS: If you’re a writer that is working on an “ecolit” novel, we welcome submissions.