Here’s an interview with author Wendy Hinman about her amusing, award-winning book Tightwads on the Loose on KSER FM Sound Living.

This interview shares her signature humor that helped her navigate over 34,000 miles around the Pacific Ocean with her husband over their seven-year voyage. Hear the stories behind the person who wrote the best-selling book.

Tightwads on the Loose tells the story of Wendy and Garth, lured to sea by the promise of adventure. They buy a 31-foot boat that fits their budget better than it fits Garth’s large frame and set sail for an open-ended voyage, never imagining they’d be gone seven years, or cover 34,000 miles at the pace of a fast walk. They live without most “necessities” and learn that teamwork and a sense of humor matter most as they face endless “character-building opportunities.” They make a long-anticipated visit to the island where Garth had been shipwrecked as a teenager, only to find it had become a penal colony. An electronic catastrophe in the Solomon Islands leaves them without navigation equipment, which forces them to trade their free-wheeling lifestyle for one that seems straight out of a ’60s sitcom: jobs at a U.S. Army base in the Marshall Islands. In Asia, they dodge typhoons and ships that threaten to turn their home into kindling. Finally they endure a grueling 49-day nonstop ocean crossing. None of this prepares them for their arrival “home” to a post-9/11 America which leaves them wondering what had changed more, them or the world. Tightwads on the Loose offers a fun read to the armchair adventurer — or anyone afflicted with wanderlust.

Wendy and Garth with Kastam villagers in Vanuatu

Listen to this lighthearted interview with thoughtful questions about living differently by host Ed Bremer.

Interview with KSER’s Ed Bremer on Sound Living about the adventurous woman behind the book Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-year Pacific Odyssey.

Read Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-year Pacific Odyssey today.

Enjoy a great adventure together.
Check out these two adventure stories by @wendy_hinman

Wendy Hinman’s hit book, Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-Year Pacific Odyssey, details her seven year adventure afloat. You can find it in paperback, eBook and audio, too!

Her second book, Sea Trials tells the gripping story of her husband Garth’s family in a tireless quest to sail around the world despite daunting challenges including a shipwreck, rebuilding a boat on a remote island, and threats from wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines and thieves, a broken rig, scurvy and starvation. It is a story of grit and determination. Sea Trials has been named a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. And a Foreword Reviews Best Book! And a Readers Favorite! Available in paperback, eBook and audiobook. You can order it here.

As the Seattle Review of Books once said, “Both books are a blast to read.”

Now on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/search/Wendy%20Hinman/audiobooks

“Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey by award-winning author Wendy Hinman is extremely amusing, written brilliantly with a sense of humor and from the author’s heart.” Audiobookblog

Download your gifts in minutes:
https://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Hinman/e/B007Z6TRRO

https://libro.fm/search?q=Wendy+Hinman&searchby=authors And support your local bookstore. in the process.

Welcome to BOOKS BY MY FRIENDS, Wendy! Let’s set sail and chat about Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-Year Pacific Odyssey.

JH: What’s the blurb for your book?

WH: Imagine spending 24 hours a day with your spouse in 31 not-so-square feet . . . for years; crossing the Pacific Ocean on two gallons of fuel; and tossing spaghetti marinara around your living room, then cleaning it up while bouncing like ice in a martini shaker. Tightwads on the Loose tells the story of Wendy and Garth, lured to sea by the promise of adventure. They buy a 31-foot boat that fits their budget better than it fits Garth’s large frame and set sail for an open-ended voyage, never imagining they’d be gone seven years, or cover 34,000 miles at the pace of a fast walk. They live without most “necessities” and learn that teamwork and a sense of humor matter most as they face endless “character-building opportunities.” “Tightwads on the Loose offers a fun read to the armchair adventurer — or anyone afflicted with wanderlust.” A readers favorite.

JH: What inspired you to write this book?

WH: I grew up a voracious reader. I devoured books and immersed myself in stories to explore and understand the world and to soothe me when I didn’t. A school project in which we assembled our writing into a book left a strong impression on me at a young age. I always enjoyed writing and secretly yearned to be an author of a story that moved people as books have moved me. Before I wrote my first book, I was a magazine editor, but our voyage gave me a clearly defined story with broad appeal and provided a perfect springboard for my writing career. During our voyage, I shared our adventures with friends and family and discovered the audience kept growing as people shared my posts and updates with friends and family. Upon our return from our voyage, I kept getting invitations to do presentations. Many people who’d read my updates urged me to write a book about our voyage. As I wrote it, I imagined bringing joy, laughter, and insight to people as they read my stories. I initially wrote my book for fans of my blog and my email updates not knowing whether it had a broader appeal. People have fallen in love with the narrative voice, which is full of humor. It has been described as a “cult classic” among sailors but reaches far beyond that audience to dreamers of all sorts, to those in need of a little escapism.

Read the rest here:
Joy E. Held Interview with Wendy Hinman, Author of Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-Year Pacific Odyssey

https://joyeheld.substack.com/p/books-by-my-friends-wendy-hinman

Enjoy a great adventure together.
Check out these two adventure stories by @wendy_hinman

Wendy Hinman’s hit book, Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-Year Pacific Odyssey, details her seven year adventure afloat. You can find it in paperback, eBook and audio, too!

Her second book, Sea Trials tells the gripping story of her husband Garth’s family in a tireless quest to sail around the world despite daunting challenges including a shipwreck, rebuilding a boat on a remote island, and threats from wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines and thieves, a broken rig, scurvy and starvation. It is a story of grit and determination. Sea Trials has been named a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. And a Foreword Reviews Best Book! And a Readers Favorite! Available in paperback, eBook and audiobook. You can order it here.

As the Seattle Review of Books once said, “Both books are a blast to read.”

Now on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/search/Wendy%20Hinman/audiobooks

#sailing #audiobooks #greatreads
#weekendreading #Romance #vacation #ValentinesDay

I’m very pleased to announce that the January 2023 issue of our online book review magazine “Small Press Bookwatch” features a review of “Sea Trials”.

Here is the review:

Small Press Bookwatch: January 2023
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
278 Orchard Drive, Oregon, WI 53575

https://midwestbookreview.com/sbw/jan_23.htm#travel

The Travel Shelf

Sea Trials
Wendy Hinman
Salsa Press
http://wendyhinman.com/salsa-press
9780984835034, $20.00, PB, 442pp

https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Trials-Around-World-Bailing/dp/0984835032

Synopsis: A shipwreck might end a dream of circumnavigating the globe. In 1973, the Wilcox family sets off to sail around the world aboard the 40-foot sailboat, Vela. Thirteen months later, they are shipwrecked on a coral reef, with surf tearing a huge hole into the side of their boat.

With years invested in saving money, preparing the boat, and learning to navigate by the stars, parents Chuck and Dawn refuse to give up. Fourteen-year-old Garth is determined to continue, while eleven-year-old Linda never wanted to go in the first place. Can they overcome the emotional, physical and financial challenges to transform from castaways into circumnavigators?

To triumph, they must rebuild their boat on a remote Pacific island. Damage sustained on the reef and a lack of resources haunt them the rest of the way around the world as they face daunting obstacles, including wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines and thieves, plus pesky bureaucrats and cockroaches as stubborn as the family. Without a working engine and no way to communicate with the outside world, they struggle to reach home before their broken rig comes crashing down and they run out of food in a trial that tests them to their limits.

Critique: A true life story that reads with all the drama of a deftly crafted novel, “Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire” by Wendy Hinman is an inherently fascinating read from cover to cover and will prove to be of special appeal to readers with an interest in real life adventure stories of the sea. While especially and unreservedly recommended for community library travelogue collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that “Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire” is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $5.99).

Editorial Note: Wendy Hinman (www.wendyhinman.com) is an adventurer, speaker and the author of “Tightwads on the Loose” — a popular travel adventure book about the 7-year, 34,000-mile voyage she took with her husband aboard a small violently rocking sailboat during which she alternated between feats worthy of Wonder Woman and Suzy Homemaker. Full of humor and armchair thrills, “Tightwads on the Loose” was selected for the literature program for Western Washington University, won the Journey Award for best true life adventure story and was selected as a top travel book for women.

Wendy Hinman is the author of two books: Sea Trials: Around the World with Duct Tape and Bailing Wire and Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey. Sea Trials focuses on her husband’s family’s experiences, while Tightwads on the Loose looks at her and her husband’s travels. Both are now available as audiobooks. Hinman reviews books for Foreword Reviews.

Q: How did writing Sea Trials, about your husband’s family, differ from writing Tightwads on the Loose, a memoir about the adventures you and your husband had in the Pacific?

A: I wrote Tightwads on the Loose first. In some ways it was easier because I was there and didn’t have to do any research.

Initially I started writing scenes that I most wanted to capture—events that stood out during our seven-year journey around the Pacific. I wrote each scene as a stand-alone and in no particular order.

Once I had crafted scenes that highlighted the journey I shaped them as a whole into a cohesive story arc that linked everything together. I think my lighthearted style built on scenes let the reader feel as though they were experiencing the journey for themselves.

One key thing I realized when I began writing was that for any series of events, it’s possible to shape them into various different stories. With an extended adventure such as this, I had to make a lot of decisions about what to include and what not to include.

There were many places where we had encounters with ships or storms that threatened to turn our floating home into kindling and thrilling experiences with nature or foreign cultures.

I kept asking myself “What is the story am I trying to tell?” From there I made choices that supported my themes and the pace of the story. I also figured if it was fun to write, then it’d be fun to read.

The writing of Sea Trials went faster, probably because I had more experience by then and it had a dramatic, clearly defined story arc. While there’s humor in the story, I didn’t feel as free to joke about someone else’s hardships as I was about my own as I did in Tightwads on the Loose so the voice is more serious.

Q: Of the various experiences you’ve written about, do any of them particularly stand out in your mind?

A: The many intimate moments in nature—frolicking in waterfalls, playing in the rain, enjoying a sunset—remind me that nature puts on an amazing show every day if only we stop to appreciate it.

We visited islands so tiny that maps rarely featured them and met native people who live much as they did thousands of years ago—people content with a simple way of life surrounded by family and community. That left a strong impression on me and changed the way I approach life.

I am glad that I wrote Tightwads on the Loose first because the events in Sea Trials were so dramatic, I might otherwise have considered my own sailing adventure less worthy of sharing.

In hindsight, what I realize both books show is how important one’s attitude is in defining one’s experiences and the outcome. That’s a life lesson that sticks with me.

A couple of events come to mind that demonstrate that attitude is key are an incident when I spilled spaghetti marinara all over the interior of our boat; and then a miserable, wet passage from New Zealand to Fiji during a storm. In both circumstances, when I stopped to consider the absurdity of the situations and saw the humor in them, it made everything more bearable and enjoyable.

Likewise, I think it was humor and optimism among the family members that pulled them through challenging times when they were shipwrecked, sinking, or suffering from scurvy. I don’t think any of us realize what we are capable of achieving until we push ourselves and that’s what makes life exciting.

Whenever I feel dissatisfied with life, I find I need to ask myself whether I just need to readjust my attitude to embrace a challenge. I think of a friend and fellow writer who jokes “Plot twist!” whenever life gets hard.

Read more about Wendy’s inpiration and writing process here as well as discover other great books and authors:
https://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/2022/09/q-with-wendy-hinman.html

Enjoy a great adventure together.
Check out these two adventure stories by @wendy_hinman

Wendy Hinman’s hit book, Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-Year Pacific Odyssey, details her seven year adventure afloat. You can find it in paperback, eBook and audio, too!

Her second book, Sea Trials tells the gripping story of her husband Garth’s family in a tireless quest to sail around the world despite daunting challenges including a shipwreck, rebuilding a boat on a remote island, and threats from wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines and thieves, a broken rig, scurvy and starvation. It is a story of grit and determination. Sea Trials has been named a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. And a Foreword Reviews Best Book! And a Readers Favorite! Available in paperback, eBook and audiobook. You can order it here.

As the Seattle Review of Books once said, “Both books are a blast to read.”

Now on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/search/Wendy%20Hinman/audiobooks

#sailing #audiobooks #greatreads
#weekendreading #Romance #vacation

“Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven Year Pacific Odyssey by award-winning author Wendy Hinman is extremely amusing, written brilliantly with a sense of humor and from the author’s heart.” Audiobookblog

Download your gifts in minutes:
https://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Hinman/e/B007Z6TRRO

https://libro.fm/search?q=Wendy+Hinman&searchby=authors And support your local bookstore. in the process.

You can download ebooks and audiobooks in seconds. Here are two good ones.

Wendy Hinman’s hit book, Tightwads on the Loose: A Seven-Year Pacific Odyssey, details her seven year adventure afloat. You can find it in paperback, eBook and audio, too!

Her second book, Sea Trials tells the gripping story of her husband Garth’s family in a tireless quest to sail around the world despite daunting challenges including a shipwreck, rebuilding a boat on a remote island, and threats from wild weather, pirates, gun boats, mines and thieves, a broken rig, scurvy and starvation. It is a story of grit and determination. Sea Trials has been named a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. And a Foreword Reviews Best Book! And a Readers Favorite! Available in paperback, eBook and audiobook. You can order it here.

As the Seattle Review of Books once said, “Both books are a blast to read.”

Here’s the full quote: “Hinman’s award-winning books, Tightwads on the Loose and Sea Trials, document both adventures with honesty, humor, and spirit. Both books are a blast to read.” –Seattle Review of Books

Or you can order here:

https://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Hinman/e/B007Z6TRRO

#giftideas #giftsforher #giftsforhim #giftsfordad #giftsformom #giftsforthem #giftsforbookworms #giftsforbooklovers #holidayreading #holidaygifts