The first post is really about...

The idea for The Bliss Tour started about seven years ago when I'd completed a yoga teacher training program and had this fantasy of traveling the world teaching yoga - mostly on beaches.

A couple of years ago, I decided to turn that fantasy into a novel. In it, Penny Marlowe is a superstar yoga teacher and the host of a show on the Travel Channel called, you guessed it, The Bliss Tour. She travels around the world interviewing people about their bliss, what brings meaning to their life. This novel is still a work in progress. But I suspect I will have more time soon.

About nine months ago, I sold my house and made a tidy sum in the booming Austin, TX real estate market. Not crazy enough to buy in sellers' market, I sat on the tidy sum which soon started to call to me. "Why don't you travel some," it said. "Maybe even quit your job and take a year off." The tidy sum was persistent. "Maybe you should do your own Bliss Tour?

I put in two weeks' notice Monday. My first stop on The Bliss Tour? Austin, TX, where I've lived for 12 years.