Now Available: Inn Sweet Inn: The Short Term Rental GUEST Survival Guide
The innkeepers at the Firefly are explorers too. In their travels, they’ve learned a lot about the Bed and Breakfast and Short Term Rental experience. They’ve light-heartedly captured some interesting and helpful ideas for prospective Airbnb, VRBO and other Short Term Rental guests to make their stay better.
This book is written for the 80 percent of the traveling public who have never done an Airbnb or VRBO, as an aid to surviving the experience and maybe even enjoying it. They’re working on a book for hosts too.
“Inn Sweet Inn: The Short Term Rental Guest Survival Guide” will help you navigate your Short Term Rental options and help address some of these important topics:What, and why, is Airbnb?
How does host motivation play into the Airbnb or STR experience?
What are “pain points” and how can you avoid them?
What is “Trust Capital?”
What’s an “Adventure Stay” and when is an outhouse considered an amenity?
What is “Urban Glamping” and why is it good to read the reviews?
Why keyless entries have their limitations during thunderstorms.
What to do to avoid a “Norman Bates Moment”
What happened that time an Alien checked into the room down the hall?
Should you book, or should you “Chicken Out?”
With the help of Weezy, the very literate B&B Chicken that lives at the Firefly, they have stores to tell and experiences to share about the great and not so great Short Term Rentals they’ve been in.
The Firefly at Madison is a pretty bed and breakfast not far from Atlanta. The Southern Firefly Series is a collection of their stories about the guest experience, and traveling all over the US Southeast. They’re using their vantage point as hosts and guests, to try to give readers some idea of what to expect, and how to appreciate, their next Airbnb, VRBO or B&B stay.
Big Southern Towns The Dime Tour
If you take this dime tour of big Southern towns, you’ll be sure to get your money’s worth!
The B&B innkeepers of The Firefly at Madison are explorers too. In LITTLE SOUTHERN TOWNS: THE NICKEL TOUR, they ferreted out some delightfully odd towns for your reading pleasure. Now, they’ve expanded their cruising radius and the size of the cities they’ve targeted. In this installment of their travel adventures, you’ll get the answers to these important questions:
- What is Appetizer Hopping, and how should you go about it in Huntsville?
- Where can you find a movie zombie in Y’allywood?
- What is a “Norman Bates Moment,” and how can it be avoided at a truck stop?
- Why does the planter class dislike beer gardens?
- How should you interpret the secret coded messages in college football merch?
- What is a “Downtown Bubble,” and what lies beyond it in Macon?
- Can you still buy Alligator Liniment in South Carolina?
- What are some ways to avoid Party Central in New Orleans and still have a good time?
- How can you take a parking meter tour of Asheville?
- What is Kentucky Common, and why is it so hard to find in Kentucky?
Big southern towns are about attitudes rooted in history. In this book, we look at some of the origins of these attitudes from the point of view of a curious explorer. The modern-day version is full of delightful food, music, and some intriguing contradictions.
Take the deluxe dime tour of big towns in the Southeast, and let us guide you through the quirks and curiosities that the travel guides leave out. We guarantee you’ll see something new!
Now Available on Amazon: Little Southern Towns: The Nickel Tour
Whatever you think you know about little Southern towns is probably wrong…
The same people who brought you GOES WELL WITH GRITS and THE ULTIMATE SOUTHERN MUSIC ROAD TRIP GUIDE have hit the road again to find you some fascinating new sights to see. These are the places that most tourists miss during their broad-brush attempts to “see America first.”
The innkeepers of The Firefly B&B in Georgia love to travel, and they love little Southern towns. Using north-central Georgia as their base camp, they’ve gone exploring in every direction to bring you the quaintness and the quirks of small-town Dixie life. Each of the trips in this book can be completed in a single day. A must read for micro-tourists who prefer to immerse themselves in a region instead of rushing from one end of the country to the other. If you take the time to visit these out-of-the-way places, you’ll learn:
- How to go on an archaeological dig in your own backyard
- Where you will be most likely to find a jerkwater ghost town
- Who started rural mail delivery service decades before the post office got around to it
- Where to buy discount items to enhance your Southern manliness quotient
- Why some people think that Ted Turner built the Georgia Guidestones
- What to do with an old cotton mill
- How to use plastic livestock to complement your yard décor
- Where to find the best barbecue spots in Georgia.
Whether you want to hit the road and follow in the author’s tire tracks or simply immerse yourself in small-town Americana via the printed page, you’re sure to discover something unexpected about little Southern towns. They aren’t all the same, and what you find out about them is bound to surprise you.
Already Out on Amazon
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Now Available on Amazon. Click image to order
Aside from running a cozy little B&B in Georgia, the owners of The Firefly love two things: music and travel. They combined those two interests into a series of road trips that explore the roots of Southern music and all the unlikely places where that music sprang up. Whether you’re an armchair traveler or a road warrior, you can follow along in their tire tracks and learn all about Southern music in its varied forms: rock and roll, R&B, pop, the Delta blues, Dixieland jazz, bluegrass, folk, salsa, and country.
The trips mapped out in this book cover all the music capitals you’d expect, like Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans, but many of the destinations will take you far off the beaten path. Along the way, you’ll learn some surprising facts, such as:
- How 38 Special got its name
- Why it’s a good idea to avoid Myrtle Beach in the springtime
- Who has the world’s biggest collection of Carter Family albums
- What makes Muscle Shoals the recording capital of America
- Whether or not Jerry Lee Lewis really tried to shoot Elvis
- How to find the apartment building where R.E.M. practiced and annoyed the neighbors
- Where to listen to jazz in New Orleans while avoiding the French Quarter
- How yodeler Slim Whitman got his start and became a sensation in Europe
- Where to find the last surviving venues on the Chitlin’ Circuit
- Why Britney Spears has a cultural museum exhibit named in her honor.
If you’re a music buff, you owe it to yourself to read what the authors have to say about Southern music. After that, pack your bags and hit the road to make yourself part of the story.
Now Available on Amazon: Click Image to Order
When a traveler books a room at a bed & breakfast, half the experience is lodging, and the other half is breakfast. In these pages, a seasoned innkeeper takes a philosophical and lighthearted look at the fine art of breakfast at a cozy Georgia B&B. Readers can share a virtual B&B breakfast experience and ponder the following interesting topics.
- Debate whether or not permaculture bacon (and sausage) really is better.
- Learn the shocking reason why Dr. John Kellogg invented corn flakes.
- Discover the human emotional attachment to chickens and their eggs.
- Contemplate the subject of pancakes versus waffles: the controversies, the contests, and why you shouldn’t throw them out or at somebody else.
- Consider alternative ways to make toast interestingly (as opposed to boringly).
- Get schooled in the only right way to cook grits—Georgia’s official prepared food.
- Find out how to make the best brandied figs courtesy of the crazy cat lady who lives across the tracks.
These subjects and many more are interwoven with stories about nature, the animals, the chickens, and the people who share their home with the world at The Firefly. You’re welcome to join them for breakfast.
