We are about to announce the winners at our On The Cheap websites. We had several contests — 14 in all — to celebrate our big launch. Did you enter?
Andy Bumatai is choosing names out of a hat for the Honolulu On The Cheap contests, and he’s doing it live and on the air today. Watch it at 1 p.m. HST; it will also be posted on The Andy Bumatai Show’s website after it airs.
Tomorrow our good friends at Hilo’s ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center are going to pick winners for our Big …

Have you had a look at Big Island On The Cheap and Honolulu On The Cheap? These are my new ventures, with my partner and fellow freelance writer Kris Bordessa, and we are really having a lot of fun with them.
We’ve had free giveaways every day for a week, and are just about at the end. There are still two contests open:
Click here and enter to win a signed copy of my book Exploring Historic Hawai‘i.
Click here and enter a signed copy of Mauna Kea. Also (co-written, this one) by …

Leslie: “Oh, nothing much; what’s new with you?”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACTS:
Leslie Lang
hawaiionthecheap@gmail.com
808 964-1494
Twitter: @LeslieLang  
Kris Bordessa
hawaiionthecheap@gmail.com
530 295-0887
Twitter: @KBordessa
“On The Cheap” Websites Highlight Best Bargains on the Big Island and in Honolulu
Hilo, HI – March 6, 2009 – Tuesday, March 10th is the official launch of two new online sites – Big Island On The Cheap and Honolulu On The Cheap – which are dedicated to bringing Big Island and O‘ahu residents and visitors up-to-the-minute information on free, discount and cheap things to do and other local deals.
Motivated by the current coupon-clipping climate, Big Island …

Here goes: A “soft launch” of my new project!
I’ll bring out the balloons and party streamers later soon, but for now, I’ll just tell you: 
I’ve launched a new website. It’s called Honolulu On The Cheap, and it’s all about cheap, discounted and free things to do in Honolulu and on O‘ahu in general. It will be useful, I think, to both visitors and residents; I keep both groups in mind as I select what to post about.
I’ve just started putting up copy there, and here’s a sampling of what I’ve got …

One of my favorite jobs is managing the blog Ha Ha Ha! over at Hamakua Springs Country Farms, and this week I got to write a couple posts that I especially enjoying delving into.
The first was about Brudda Skibs, who recently participated in a sustainability festival Hamakua Springs owner Richard Ha helped coordinate. What an incredible person. Skibs and the crew he’s attracted over the years volunteer their time and labor to clean up Big Island lands near the ocean and turn them into beautiful parks. There is so much more to …

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article Diary of a Self-Help Dropout: Flirting With the 4-Hour Workweek by Chris Hardwick, which is posted at wired.com. 
It’s about a busy freelancer who checks out three popular time-management systems and tries to apply them to his life. It’s a well-written and fun read, especially if you’re a busy freelancer yourself.
He writes:
…My days are like eBay shipments: a few tangible things and a whole lot of packing peanuts. I obviously need help being the boss of me. So I decided to try an experiment: I’d spend two weeks …

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, which usually just end up being rather disappointing.
But like many people, I do tend to get reflective at the end of the year. Doesn’t it seem like a perfect time to pull one’s thoughts together and plan for a fresh new year coming up? While our bodies are relaxed and full of hot cider and snowball cookies, the new year always seems full of delicious possibilities.
This year, in my reflections, I knew that I’m ready to have a Power Year in terms of my …

Procrastination is not the freelance writer’s friend. 
Of all the suggestions I’ve heard over the years regarding being an efficient freelance writer, one of the best has been to start on an assignment as soon as you get it.
I try to do this and it really works. Sometimes it’s just getting started that’s the hardest part of writing something. So even if I just jot down some notes regarding how I plan to approach the story, gather up background research and set it aside in a folder, or make a list of possible interview subjects …

How do you keep papers organized when you’re working on 10 or 15 freelance jobs at the same time, or more, all at various stages?
I do it with file folders. That title above is tongue-in-cheek, of course. My system is pretty basic, but it truly helps me keep my head well above water.
Whether it’s a client I’ve just met with once, and the file merely holds some handwritten notes and a fee quote, or it’s someone I’ve worked for years and a specific folder holds their October newsletter notes and …

I have an essay on the last page of Hawaii magazine’s August issue. It’s about living here in this beautiful place.
My husband Macario is a professional photographer who, among other jobs, shoots a lot of Big Island photos for the PacificBasin Communications magazines. So they called him to photograph me for the article. (How convenient is that?!)
And so we went down to a nearby river and we both stood in it, pretty much. And here’s the side of the photo shoot you don’t usually see — because the set-up for a …