Adrian Sturrock receives special commendation on Day 1 of travel anthology book tour.

Wish You Were Here, an anthology of short travel stories curated by writer and award-winning blogger, Alyson Sheldrake, is currently on a ten-day virtual book tour as part of a strategy to promote twenty established and up-and-coming writers to new audiences.

This collection, one of four releases within Alyson Sheldrake’s ‘Travel Stories’ series (available on Amazon), features a carefully selected group of writers who were tasked with contributing stories of travel experiences from a variety of locations across the planet.

Adrian Sturrock’s chosen location for this third book in the ‘Travel Stories’ series is Kenya, 2007, during the lead up to some of the worst civil unrest the country has known.

“I’ve travelled a lot over the last couple of decades,” he says. “Some trips have been purely for pleasure while others were reactions to dramatic circumstances. When I was asked to contribute to this collection, I was intrigued by its seemingly innocuous title, ‘Wish You Were Here’, and wondered whether I might sit a conflicting subject matter against it. What I’ve written here is darker matter; a more urgent theme. I wanted to offer something beyond merely a collection of holiday snaps.”

Initial reaction to the collection has been satisfying, with Adrian Sturrock’s contribution gaining particular praise:

Touring Tales – (Travel & Books Blog)

“When Alyson passed on to me that I had been specifically mentioned in the review, I was obviously very pleased but also quite nervous. I was aware that my contribution to the collection was a little left-of-centre. I was also worried when initially sending it over to Alyson for consideration in the first place, wondering whether the piece was perhaps too dark for what she had in mind. However, both she and her beta readers seemed to like it and now that the reviews appear to agree I feel I can relax about it. So, yep, I’m quite pleased.”

Adrian Sturrock was also invited to contribute to Alyson Sheldrake’s second book in the ‘Travel Stories’ series – ‘Itchy Feet’- in which he narrates his experiences of travelling across Egypt in the wake of the 1997/98 terrorist attacks.

He has also contributed a short travel story set in his home town in Wales, as part of a free 17 story supplement that accompanies the complete ‘Travel Stories’ boxset.