Kim Kavin's Blog, page 5

Now Open for Pre-Order: My New Book, The Dog Merchants

I’m about as psyched as any author can be this week, because I’m finally able to release the cover art for my forthcoming book! The Dog Merchants: Inside the Big Business of Breeders, Pet Stores, and Rescuers will be published May 2, 2016—and is available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.

The Dog Merchants will be the lead spring hardcover title for Pegasus Books, with North America distribution by W.W. Norton.

In just the three days that the pre-order link has been online this week, and following a keynote speech I made at a Penguin Random House librarians’ event two weeks ago, The Dog Merchants has already become the No. 1 new release in one of Amazon’s top animal-book categories.

I’m so thankful for the early reader response, and I look forward to sharing all kinds of great information with you as we bring The Dog Merchants marketing campaign fully online during the next few months.

Stay tuned here, and please add my new website dogmerchants.com to your bookmarked favorites. There is much, much more to come.

A Visionary’s Playground

Buddy Darby aboard the 154-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht Andromeda la Dea, courtesy of Yachting magazine.

The September issue of Yachting magazine is one of my biggest efforts each year. I’m the charter editor, and for this issue I had to select and organize somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 of the world’s most interesting charter yachts while writing 29 pages of columns and features about what’s happening with these boats everywhere from New Zealand to the Florida Keys.

One of my favorite articles in the issue is about the new Christophe Harbour marina development on St. Kitts. It’s the vision of the man at right, Buddy Darby, who is also an owner of the 154-foot Perini Navi sailing yacht Andromeda la Dea, which charters through Churchill Yacht Partners. Suffice it to say that Darby knows a thing or two about all the tiny nuisances that can add up when you bring one of today’s big, modern yachts into marinas built 50 years ago or longer. It was fascinating to interview him and to learn about all the small details he’s tying together at this Caribbean property, which will cater to superyachts that are getting bigger and bigger with every season.

You can read my article about Darby and Christophe Harbour here at the Yachting site, or pick up the September issue on newsstands to see it along with all the other great charter content in the magazine.

Amazing Encounters

Yes, I know, normal people drive a few hours to relax at a beach house for vacation. I simply don’t fit that mold, which is why I just returned from a stay halfway around the world in the Timbavati private reserve section of Kruger National Park in South Africa, near the border with Mozambique. This is deep in “the bush,” animals roaming freely without fences across an area that totals about 7,500 square miles (bigger than Connecticut, smaller than New Jersey). My base camp didn’t even have fences. Monkeys stole bananas at breakfast, and guides walked me to my tent each night in case hyenas or leopards were lurking. It was exhilarating, and I can’t wait to go back. Here’s a look at just a few of the amazing encounters I was privileged to experience. All photographs Copyright 2015, Imagine Media LLC

Into the Wild

The new issue of Yachts International magazine includes my article about the increasing popularity of crewed yacht charter in Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Above is my favorite underwater photo from the trip, and below are two from among many on-land favorites I was able to snap.

Getting to Raja Ampat, by the way, was the longest travel experience I’ve endured in 15 years of covering yachts worldwide. It took five flights from New York (JFK to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Singapore, Singapore to Bali, Bali to Makassar, and Makassar to Sorong) and then, from Sorong, a 16-hour cruise on a boat to reach Raja Ampat. Yacht owners are going there because it is unspoiled territory. Given the distance from everything else, I’m pretty sure that will remain true for quite a few years to come.

I’m most proud of the underwater image above, which I captured during my first time out with a GoPro Hero4 Silver camera attached to my wrist while hovering less than a foot above a reef in a current. It didn’t hurt that the snorkeling site was filled with more fish than I’ve seen anywhere else, including yacht assignments in the Caribbean, Central America, South Pacific, Indian Ocean and Galapagos Islands. Raja Ampat really is an incredible travel destination for anyone interested in untouched nature.

My First Coffee-Table Book

Amazon.com has just made my first coffee-table book available for pre-order. It’s from “The Stylish Life” series by TeNeues, with a focus on yachts.

Though I do often take the photographs that run with my articles in yachting magazines, for this book I contributed the words only. TeNeues selected all the imagery, and I think they did a beautiful job.

 

 

New Dog Book Coming in 2016 from Little Boy Blue Author

We’re pausing in promotions for Little Boy Blue because author Kim Kavin has a new dog book coming out in early 2016 with Pegasus Books. To see what Blue is up to lately, and to see early promotions for the new title, please visit the Little Boy Blue Facebook page.

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New Dog Book Coming in 2015 from Little Boy Blue Author

We’re pausing in promotions for Little Boy Blue because author Kim Kavin has a new dog book coming out in late 2015 with Lyons Press. To see what Blue is up to lately, please��visit the Little Boy Blue Facebook page.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Join Me at the 2015 ASJA Writers’ Conference

I have been asked to serve as a panelist at the 2015 conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. I’ll be alongside ASJA Vice President Sherry Beck Paprocki and authors’ attorney Sallie Randolph for the panel “Business Matters: Proposals, Contracts and More.” My role will be to represent the ASJA Contracts & Conflicts Committee, which I chair, and to explain some common contract terms and options for negotiating them.

Please join us for this panel at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 2. Full conference details are at the 2015 ASJA conference website.

Booking Yachts with Bitcon

This special report for Yachting magazine about the growing use of bitcoin in the yacht marketplace is one of the most interesting topics I’ve had the opportunity to write about in a long time. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed reporting and writing it. Truly fascinating stuff.

The New Me, Better than the Real Me

I have a new dog book coming out at the end of this year, and I’m getting ready to start the advance marketing—which means I had to endure every author’s worst nightmare of sitting for a new book-jacket photo. (There’s a reason we journalists choose a life behind the cameras and notebooks!)

The result of last week’s photo session is at right. I like it well enough, but it also leaves me uneasy. That is, indeed, my 42-year-old face almost completely airbrushed of freckles, wrinkles and sunspots. Apparently, this is the new normal in the taking of author photographs. I feel like a character in an augmented-reality experience.

I’m pretty sure my skin didn’t even look that good back when I was 3 years old. Also note the brightened whites of my eyes and the sparkling choppers between my lips, all of which now appear never to have encountered a single glass of iced tea or a few too many glasses of red wine. Apparently, a woman of my vintage with a full-time job, a house to take care of and a face that shows hints of hard-earned wisdom needs some Photoshop-style help simply to look perky enough for prime time.

It’s amazing what these photo software programs can do nowadays. It all makes me wonder whether anything at all in photographs is real anymore. Maybe by the time my next book comes out in two or three more years, they’ll have me looking like Brazilian fashion model Gisele Bundchen. Hey, an author can dream…