An Interview with Carolyn Heller

Carolyn Heller has written four travel guidebooks, co-authored several others, and contributed to an additional 50+ travel titles. She also freelances for publications ranging from Travel + Leisure to Lonely Planet to the Forbes Travel Guide, among many others. Since moving to Canada from the US in 2003, she has written extensively about her adopted country. Today, we talk about what “not” to do when you’re starting a freelance career, what it’s like to put together a guidebook, and some of her favourite spots in Canada. Check out her portfolio here and enjoy!

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with travel writing. How did you turn freelancing into your full-time profession back in 1996?

When I started freelancing, I did exactly what everyone tells you not to do. I quit my day job. I’d been working in marketing for a small software company near Boston, where my job involved writing and lots of traveling, and I gradually realized that while I didn’t care much about the software business, I loved to travel and write.

To get started, I took two classes at my local adult education center—one was a general introduction to travel writing, and the second was called “The Business of Freelancing.” Led by an editor at a local high-tech publication, the freelancing class taught me about developing story ideas, writing query letters, and basically how to treat your freelancing business as just that—a business.

During the freelancing class, I wrote a travel article that I sold to several major U.S. newspapers, including the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Miami Herald. So I thought, “Hey, I can do this!”

I knew, though, that I’d never be able to devote any time to freelancing if I still had a regular job, particularly since I had toddler twins at home. Fortunately, we’d been pretty good about setting aside savings, we had a part-time nanny, and my supportive spouse said, “Go for it!”

After I gave notice at my job, I kept in touch with the instructor of the freelancing class, who moonlighted as a travel writer. Not long afterwards, she told me that Fodor’s was looking for someone to help update a local guide and passed along the editor’s name. That turned into my first guidebook commission, and my freelance business was launched. And since a colleague’s generosity helped me get started, I try to remember to “pay it forward,” sharing contacts and job leads whenever I can.

How many guidebooks have you been the main author or contributor on now and what’s the latest you’re working on?

Since relocating to Vancouver with my family in 2003, I’ve written four of my own books for the Moon guides, all of them about Canada or Canadian destinations. I’m currently working on the 4th edition of a book that I especially enjoy, Moon Vancouver + Canadian Rockies Road Trip. In that guide to road tripping across Western Canada, I can highlight things I love in my own city and around the region, including some of the most beautiful outdoor destinations in the country.

I love telling readers about quirky mountain towns like Nelson or Fernie or about the four national parks on the British Columbia side of the Rockies—Yoho, Kootenay, Glacier, and Mount Revelstoke—which have scenery as dramatic as Banff, but where it’s a little easier to get away from the crowds. And I enjoy sharing trip ideas from a Chinese food crawl in Vancouver to winery experiences in the Okanagan to ways to learn more about the Indigenous cultures across the region.

This past year, I co-authored two books for Lonely Planet, the 2024 Atlantic Canada guide (where I covered Prince Edward Island) and the 2025 Boston city guide. I contributed to Lonely Planet’s 2024 Canada guide and an updated New England guide as well.

I’ve also contributed to dozens of Lonely Planet books that aren’t traditional travel guidebooks but instead are more for travel inspiration. For example, I wrote about my first fat-tire biking experience in Banff for Epic Snow Adventures of the World, contributed several suggested EV itineraries to Electric Vehicle Road Trips USA & Canada, and authored short features about a community tourism project in Ecuador, polar bear viewing in northern Manitoba, and Canada’s first Indigenous arts and culture hotel, for Lonely Planet’s Sustainable Escapes.

Guidebook work sounds a lot more glamorous than it usually is. What are your days like when you’re doing research on a book?

Guidebook writing is hard work! You’re moving from place to place, often every day, and your days are packed. My husband refuses to travel with me when I’m working on a guidebook.

When you’re researching an article, you’re often focusing on one or two things or types of things. In a book, you need to research everything about an area and figure out what’s most important to highlight for your book’s audience.

Every day is a little different during a guidebook research trip. Sometimes I’m starting with coffee in a local cafe, going for a hike, and returning to town to try a new Korean pub or a classic lobster shack. I might check out the community’s history museum or take a guided walking tour. In a bigger city, I might speed-visit several museums, see what’s cool to do in different neighborhoods, and leave plenty of time for eating.

Are you able to parlay that research into freelance articles as well? Give us some examples of how that has played out.

The fees for guidebook projects alone never make the project financially lucrative. But the knowledge you develop about the region your book or chapter covers can often lead to many different articles. An experience that may get 50 words in a guidebook can become the basis for a longer story.

I’ve been able to draw on my Western Canada road trip guide research to write about a unique Calgary hotel where you can confess your sins for Travel + Leisure, unusual sculptures hidden in a British Columbia forest for Montecristo Magazine, the new generation of Canadian winemakers with South Asian roots for Seven Fifty Daily, and many different stories for the Forbes Travel Guide.

Sometimes it works the opposite way, too. A couple of years ago, I traveled to Canada’s Prince Edward Island to research and write a feature for BBC Travel about the Island Walk, a recently launched walking and cycling route that circles the province. The following year, based in part on my PEI experiences working on this story, I was able to get an assignment to return to the island to cover PEI for Lonely Planet’s Atlantic Canada and Canada guides.

I was also able to write PEI articles for LonelyPlanet.com and for Going.com, as well as two sponsored content pieces for National Geographic, one about food experiences around the island and the other about exploring PEI on foot, by bike, or by car.

What are your keys to success and what advice would you have for travel writers who are in the early stages now, without a lot of credits to show?

For me, it’s always been important to look for ideas and projects that are fun. The work can be hard, but if you’re doing a project you enjoy, it’s worth it.

The publishing world has changed so much since I first started writing, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of personal relationships. As you begin working with editors, stay in touch, even if you’re not doing anything for them at the moment. Often those connections can translate into new assignments.

It’s still important, too, to continually try to improve your writing. Read widely, especially work by colleagues who you admire, and stay organized. I keep a massive log of possible story ideas, since I’ve found that a spark of an idea can turn into an assignment even several years later.

You’ve been all over Canada and have written about the country far more than most. What are a couple of places that have surprised you or that you are longing to return to?

Canada is such an enormous and diverse country, and it’s that diversity, both in its landscapes and its people, that I’ve found fascinating to explore in the 20+ years I’ve lived here. I had the chance to spend a week in Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic, and I’d love to go back to learn more about life in this remote region—no roads connect this territory to the rest of Canada—and about its Inuit culture.

Quebec is intriguing to me for its francophone culture and amazing food, but it’s also an excellent destination for outdoor adventures. I’d love to return to the Gaspé peninsula on the Atlantic Coast, spend more time on the remote Côte Nord (the north shore of the St Lawrence River), and do more hiking and paddling in the Saguenay-Lac St. Jean region.

I have to give some love to my home province of British Columbia, too. Less than an hour by ferry from Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast has secluded beaches and fantastic hiking; the Sunshine Coast Trail extends 180 km (112 miles) through the area. The warm, dry Okanagan Valley is BC’s wine country, with great restaurants, and I love visiting the mountain towns in the Kootenay-Rockies region and the beachfront communities of Tofino and Ucluelet on Vancouver Island’s west coast.

I’m keen to try some new adventures, especially experiences that the Indigenous communities are now offering, on Vancouver Island’s more remote north end. And one of these days, I want to road trip—in an electric car—to the province’s far north. The EV infrastructure is almost there.

The one Canadian province I haven’t visited yet is Newfoundland and Labrador. Maybe in 2025?

Carolyn B. Heller writes about cultural experiences, local food, interesting people, road trips, long-distance walking, and other offbeat adventures from her travels to more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Her articles have appeared in Travel + Leisure, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s Travel, Wanderlust (UK), Hotel Scoop, and many other publications. She’s authored several Canada guidebooks and contributed to dozens of other travel titles. Based in Vancouver since 2003, she can frequently be found running along the seawall, snacking in one of the city’s Asian noodle shops, or planning her next adventure.