Asian Trail Mix features 12 essays that have been called wonderfully descriptive, filled with vivid images and interesting characters.

WILMINGTON, NC, June 23, 2025 /24-7PressRelease/ — Travel essays offer readers an utterly unique reading experience. Most blend personal narratives with descriptive language and engaging storytelling. They can take us into the heart of a place in ways that no travel manual could. Unlike videos or mere picture books, essays can provide deep insights into culture, traditions and diversity. More than stories, they provide readers with an experience.

Eric Madeen’s bestselling book, ‘Asian Trail Mix: True Tales from Borneo to Japan,’ scales down the sprawl of Asia by focusing on the unique and revelatory in gemmy prose. See up close and personal the razzmatazz of novice monks at play in northern Laos, the bonding with hustling pedicab drivers in Ho Chi Minh City, the rainforests blazed on gutsy treks across Borneo and Thailand’s Elephant Island and novel things Japanese. Served up nice and spicy, Asian Trail Mix is slathered across 12 rocking-it essays plus a tall tale at its glorious ending, making for a baker’s dozen of sumptuousness.

In a review for ‘Asian Trail Mix’, one reader said, “The writing is lush and emotive. It contains images and turns of phrase that will stay with you.” Another said, “‘Mr. Madeen has a knack for taking one into the depths of a country and introducing the reader to fascinating customs and interesting characters. Five stars!”

Another stated, “The author focuses on subjects of local interest at each of the intervening destinations, or vignettes. An American based in Japan, he has a writer’s eye for details and is quite adept at capturing the local sights, sounds, weather, atmosphere, and such of each place as well as conveying his personal impressions as an experienced traveler with a literary background and sensibility, to the reader.”

The ebook version of ‘Asian Trail Mix’ will be available June 25 and 26 at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Eric-Madeen/author/B08VGRNJVW?

Eric Madeen writes cross-genre, and is the author of a number of other books:

‘Water Drumming In The Soul’ – a fiery tale set in steamy equatorial Africa, Peace Corps volunteer David Fields, is on mission: to build a medical dispensary in a village where spells are cast on enemies and fear of a geek-shaman reigns. David seldom has his bearings – cultural or geographical – and must fight a cocktail of tropical maladies as well as social taboos as he throws himself into work. Until… he meets Assam. Captivated by her water drumming, her playing the stream as a drum, David is drawn to her early on and becomes the hunter captured by the game. And what a rollicking game of love it is – with a tension or excitement between them that never dissipates, … until the haunting end.

‘Tokyo-ing!’ – This is an apt word for this trio of tales chiming with anyone even slightly interested in Asia’s most dynamic metropolis and its glazing of layers – be they cultural or taking-wing exuberant. Madeen does deep dives in three fascinating directions and voices, including the persona in first-person female. Then doesn’t let readers come up for air because they don’t want to — until the delicious end.

‘Tennis Clubbed, Snubbed and Rubbity-Dub Dubbed’ – In historically rich Yokohama, where Captain Perry and his Black Ships cracked open Japan, the wicked shiver of the tennis snub in the postmodern present pits David Adams against K: a puffed-up xenophobic tyrant who rules over the courts of a club that has as its anthem, ironically, the promotion of international friendship.

Eric Madeen is available for media interviews and can be reached at ericsan@gol.com. All of his books are available at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Eric-Madeen/author/B08VGRNJVW?. More information is available at his website at https://ericmadeen.com/.

About Eric Madeen:

Eric Madeen is an associate professor of modern literature at Tokyo City University and an adjunct professor at Keio University. He’s an award-winning author of six books. His writing has been published widely — in Time, Asia Week, The East, Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo Journal, Kyoto Journal, Metropolis, Mississippi Review, ANA’s inflight magazine Wingspan, Peace Corps Worldwide, Japanophile, Yomimono, The Pretentious Idea, Tombstone Epitaph, several anthologies, academic journals, therein his seminal essay “Under Western and Eastern Eyes” jointly published by the Ministry of Education of the Western Federation, Russia, and the Joseph Conrad Foundation, USA, and so on.

Madeen has been featured in several radio interviews (9 in the USA and 1 in Japan) and various print media. He once made his living copywriting for what was then the world’s largest ad agency Dentsu, for clients as diverse as Mazda, Subaru, Canon, Konica, Nikko Hotels International and Sony.

He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Francophone Gabon, Africa, where he built a primary school complex in an equatorial village surrounded by rainforest, a mind-blowing experience which inspired his first book.

—
For the original version of this press release, please visit 24-7PressRelease.com here