Tag Archives: travel

book podcasts, book promotions, festivals, For the Love of Books Podcast, Shifting Sands Short Stories, Shifting Sands: Secrets, Uncategorized

Author’s events this summer

July 22, 2024 emmapalova Leave a comment

I am excited about my summer schedule at the following venues:

Saugatuck Village Square Art Fair, July 27 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Booth 402

I will be at the village art fair with my books and 80 other vendors in this beautiful resort on Lake Michigan. It was precisely this town that inspired my best-selling book Shifting Sands: The Lost Town more than 20 years ago. As I stood in front of the historical marker in downtown Saugatuck, I knew the nearby town of Singapore buried somewhere in the dunes would make for a great story.

The Holland Sentinel headlined the article about my book Town’s Tale ‘Just Stayed With Me.’ Sometimes it even haunted me, but it wasn’t until 2021 that I sat down and penned the manuscript during National Novel Writing Month.

The Lost Town

The historical fiction novel is set in Singapore on the shores of Lake Michigan at the foot of the sand dunes adorned with white pines. Beautiful Ida is torn between her hometown of Chicago and her new home on the other side of the lake and between two men. Developed by New York investors, the once-thriving settlement of Singapore nurtured the dreams of adventurers and pioneers like Oshea Wilder. Singapore would rival Chicago and Milwaukee. It almost did with its sawmills, hotels, boarding houses, stores, and a “wildcat bank.” Entrepreneurial Ida struggles to adjust to the rough environment but finds more than support from her boss who invited her to Singapore to be the “Mistress” of the Big House. A “wildcat bank” was established in Singapore in 1837.

Who will win Ida’s heart?

I will be in booth 402 on Butler Street, so come on down to the heart of the book’s action. This is my first time selling books in Saugatuck, so I am looking forward to meeting new fans.

Lake Odessa Art in the Park, Aug. 3 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Booth 122

This will be my first time selling books in Lak-O at Art in the Park. I’ve covered many stories here as a journalist for The Ionia Sentinel-Standard, and I absolutely love the lake, and looking forward to meeting new fans.

Wild Blueberry Festival, Paradise, Aug. 16-18. Booth 34

https://www.wildblueberryfestival.org/

Cross the Big Mac and head up to the UP for three days of the best festival. It’s three days of Pure Michigan fun UP style.

Fallasburg Village, Sept. 14 & 15

Cross the Covered Bridge and step into the historical village of Fallasburg to meet author Emma Palova at the one-room schoolhouse.

For the Love of Books Podcast

Listen in to win a copy of my book or other authors’ books on your favorite podcasting app.

https://emmapalova123.podbean.com/

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author events, beer, book signing, events, Uncategorized

Fall for Michigan

August 27, 2018 emmapalova 1 Comment

Plan your fall touring of Pure Michigan. Visit the 1850s Fallasburg Pioneer Village which is on the National Register of Historic Places in MIchigan. The village nestles in the northeast corner of Kent County.

Just cross the Covered Bridge into the village and step back in time.

One of the best times to visit this area is in its autumn glory with all the harvest festivals , farmers’ markets and local produce abundance.

Explore local history, sample local food and craft beers and breweries, chat with local authors. Learn how to can pickles or how to make salsa.

Step out of the ordinary.

via September message from FHS president

celebration, community, environment, events, hiking, nature, outdoors, trails, Uncategorized, wellness

Earth Day 2017

April 22, 2017 emmapalova Leave a comment

Celebrate Earth Day

By Emma Palova

EW Emma’s Writings

Lowell, MI – As the nature awakens, we celebrate Earth Day today. The first widely recognized Earth Day was held in 1970 when an environmental Teach-In group planned an event for April 22.

But every day is an Earth Day celebration to recognize the greatest resource of all, and that is our planet Earth.

To celebrate the Earth Week, I started my annual walk to the Franciscan Life Process Center (FLPC) on Monday. The 1.8 mile hike on a gravel road has been a staple of my mental and physical sanity since 1995 when we moved out into this northeast corner of Kent County in West Michigan.

I marveled at the untouched nature coming to life; plants vigorously emerging from the wet dirt from yesterday’s rains, robins hopping under the pine trees among the new ground cover.

Crisp morning air and dew covered the new grass and stems.

The area consists of preserved farmland thanks to late philanthropist Peter Wege, apple orchards, woods and streams. Wild flowers are now popping out in the woods, and morel mushrooms are around the corner, or should I say around the stumps.

I love the farm markets with the local produce starting soon with local asparagus.

Different trail systems like the Fred Meijer River Valley trails and Lowell Area trials meet here at the confluence of Grand River and Flat River. We’ve been blessed with an abundance of natural resources from the Bradford Dickinson White Nature Preserve in Lowell Township, Wege Wittenbach AgriScience center, Sessions Lake and Fallasburg Park. Hundreds of inland lakes dot the picturesque region.

The Midwest entices with its variety of seasons, landscapes, Great Lakes and diverse communities.

For more info on the trails go to:

www.traillink.com

Land Conservancy of West Michigan

www.naturenearby.org

Wittenbach/Wege Center

http://www.lowellschools.com

Franciscan Life Process Center

http://www.lifeprocesscenter.org

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Uncategorized

A love to travel

June 22, 2013 emmapalova Leave a comment

Czechs love to travel

Burgas boasts beaches like Sunny Coast on the Black Sea.

As I write in my memoir “Greenwich Meridian,” Czechs have an obsession with travel; partially due to the fact that during communism, travel was only allowed to the countries in the Eastern Block. And just like with anything else, what is prohibited attracts the most.

The only semi-capitalist country that the government allowed people to go to was Yugoslavia, and even that one required exit visa. For a Czech person, Yugoslavia was expensive. So, they canned their food and bought potatoes to bring with them. Usually, they slept in tents there.

But, it was a yuppie thing to do. Because of my immigration past to the USA, I was not allowed to go to any Western country, and not even to the coveted Yugoslavia. I just heard about it from a friend at school who went there the year Elvis died.

On the other hand, I’ve been to two Eastern European countries, and that was Bulgaria in the summer of 1982, and Hungary in 1987.

My husband Ludek and I took a train from Prague to Burgas on the Sunny Coast of the Black Sea. We travelled the distance of 811 miles for two days and one night.

The train became very local in Rumania. It stopped in every village, where people were either begging for food or selling some. You could see gypsies on their wagons, and we did travel through the Transylvanian Alps, home of the famous count Dracula. The train had trouble climbing up the hills and the curves. You could see both locomotives chugging the long train from the back cars.

Somewhere along the way in Rumania we stopped for a break. We walked into a store to buy some food for the road, and it was completely empty. I wondered why it was opened.

Sunny Burgas welcomed us with a surprise. The vacation was advertised with a stay in a hotel in a Czech travel catalogue. The reality was a trailer camp. I remember crying.

Bulgaria also had so called Russian toilets which were just holes in the ground with two sidesteps to put your feet on. Much like in the rest of Europe, all the restaurants were directly on the beach.

My favorite food was chorba, a hearty stew with home made bread. I’ve been making it ever since. I bought some Bulgarian ceramic souvenirs that I brought with me to the USA.

People were friendly and we spoke Russian, which we all had to learn in schools of the Eastern Block. It came in handy. After many years, when I returned back to the USA with my family, and met a Russian man in a store, I could not remember anything except for “Zdravstvuj tovariscz” which means hello comrade.

…….. to be continued