Bill Thorness's Blog

I'm proud to report that my book All Roads Lead to Rome: Searching for the End of My Father's War has been named an Independent Book Awards 2025 Finalist.
It's gratifying to have recognition for a project that was ten years in the making.
Thanks very much to my publisher, Potomac Books at the University of Nebraska Press, and the editors and readers who helped me craft my story.

I am grateful to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association for choosing my memoir All Roads Lead to Rome as a finalist in the category for unpublished works in their annual contest.

In "All Roads Lead to Rome," I cross continents and history to retrace my father’s steps on the battlefields of World War II and consider how learning from significant places, revisiting our history and reckoning with memory can restore a lost bond.

The book is a discovery of my father through his service as a US Army commando in the Italian campaigns in World War II. A North Dakota farmer, he became a member of the First Special Service Force, a storied unit and the first of its kind.

I revisit his battlefields, walking from the Anzio beachhead to the rocky hilltop village where he last fought before being cut down two days before the breakthrough into the Italian capital. And then I finish the trip for him, entering Rome through the ancient city gate and surveying the Tiber River bridges guarded by his unit on the fateful night when the Germans were pushed out of the Eternal City.

I am seeking an agent or a publisher for this memoir that blends battle and history with my modern-day discovery of the places where my father lived and where he fought.

I've been using a lot more exclamation points lately. That's because my new book is finally in my hands.

Cycling the Pacific Coast: The Complete Guide from Canada to Mexico was in my head and under my wheels for the last three years. I made countless (well, almost) trips down the coast from my home in Seattle to find the best route, coolest sights, richest coffee and craziest fellow cyclists. Done, done, done and done.

Now I'm gearing up for some presentations to show pictures of those sights and cyclists -- and I hope some of the people I rode with with make it out to the events! There I go with the !! again.

We're planning a Goodreads giveaway and I am writing some blog entries (with lots of pictures) on my website CyclingthePacificCoast.com (aka bikingpugetsound.com - I'm blending the two together for easier blogging).

Hope the book finds its audience (maybe you?), and many more people will be inspired to try out this adventure, which very possibly is the most beautiful cycling adventure in the country. wait..."in the country!"

I was excited and relieved to deliver the manuscript for Cycling the Pacific Coast: Canada to Mexico to my publisher. It's been my "3 R's" project for the last two years (research, riding and writing :-}).
And that middle R has been quite an odyssey.
I don't have exact mileage numbers, but have probably ridden about 3,500 miles in the research phase. The entire route from Vancouver B.C. to the Mexico border is 1,900 miles. Then there's alternate routes on Vancouver Island and around the Olympic Peninsula (another 400 miles), routes into and out of Portland, Oregon (another 200 miles), two wine country tours (50 miles) and city tours in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego (about 150 miles), not to mention all the re-riding of route sections.
Boy are my legs tired.
But my heart and mind are filled with experiences and warm feelings for the joys of bicycling down our amazing Pacific coast. It's an adventure like no other.
Look for the book to be released by the good folks at Mountaineers Books next fall, autumn 2017.

I'm very excited about the impending release of the 2nd Edition of Biking Puget Sound. This time around its subtitle will be "60 Rides From Olympia to the San Juans," because I've added 10 new rides! Well, 11 actually, because one of the 50 rides from the previous book got completely changed.

For this new edition, I re-rode and re-researched all the rides (along with adding the new ones). It was great fun and good exercise! And I found so many more paved trails and bike lanes, that the rides are safer than ever.

If you did all the rides in this book, it would amount to:
* Riding more than 1,700 miles, covering 130 miles of the I-5 corridor and more than 50 miles east to west, from the Cascade foothills to the Olympic Peninsula.
* More than 83,000 feet of elevation gained (climbing).
* Visiting 116 communities, large and small and scores of parks and recreation sites.
* Visiting 11 islands.
* Visiting 9 counties.
* Riding on all the region’s major paved trails, 37 of them… not to mention hundreds of miles of bike lanes and other paved bike facilities.
* Riding 7 Washington state ferry routes – all but one in the system.

But the good thing is… you don’t have to do them all at once!

Some new features: rides connecting all the ferries in the Washington State Ferry system; an "Historic Seattle" ride that traces the bike route from the pre-automobile days; transit connections; route connection suggestions so you can link rides for tralning or multi-day tours; and online cue sheets.

Look for the new book later this fall, and also look for a publishing party, a series of "publishing rides" and maybe even some great Goodreads giveaways!

I'm a Seattle-based non-fiction writer.

I like gardening and biking, and somehow have talked editors and publishers into letting me write regularly about these things.

Nice day? Time for some "research" in the garden or on the bike. Cool, huh?

So, I have websites and blogs for each of these topics:
www.coolseasongardener.com - about growing food year 'round in a mild maritime climate like we have here in Seattle.

www.bikingpugetsound.com - great rides, events, clubs, and cycling news from the 8 counties around Seattle.

Thanks for reading!