Okay–put up my first Vella (American college student in Tangier)–three short episodes(700wds each average)–more to come.
FREE episodes
But that is not the whole story.
I self-published Tangier Gardens(120,000wds) via KDP select in March and after the 5 day free offer launch (50 downloads) everything has gone to sleep–deep sleep.
I had a bunch of background stories that didn’t make it into the final Tangier Gardens, so I figured to put them together on Vella.
I need some feedback from the Vella episodes. What is missing? What is disappointing? What is good?
At 2,000 meters above sea level, in the northern range of the Swiss Alps, I rediscovered the spring joy I had experienced three weeks ago, albeit at 500 meters above sea level. The glory of walking mountainous landscapes.
This joy can be discovered anytime, anywhere.
This is a similar joy to that Christopher Janus experiences in the Mediterranean gardens and landscape of Tangier, Morocco. For CJ it was both muse and adversary.
Every farm, every pasture, often on the edge of town, in this Jungfrau region has a walnut tree, almost as ubiquitous as apple trees. That should tell you something about regional climate and history of local scale life and agriculture.
…spring frolic…a young light yellow mustard swaying in the breeze and an airy, sweet walnut green…together they dance and sing. Can you feel it? If not, go out in your own neighborhood and discover it.
I can’t deny how much this scene enlivened me. And I can’t deny that I share that enlivenment with my character, CJ, in Tangier Gardens.
In Tangier Gardens, CJ discovers for the first time, the enlivenment emanating from plants. Unfortunately, the landscape about him, assaults him, challenges him. How do these opposing forces re-align CJ and his goals?
New fresh spring green blades of grass and then common primroses. We are past the beginning of spring into the warm Easter colors of spring.
Let me see–how many years have I been alive?
Has there ever been a year without a glorious spring?
Of course not.
Spring inspires me to write about that existential wonder we all share. Spring is medicine that soothes the political and media attempts to agitate us all.
I just go outside and take a walk.
The best of my spring inspirations has been my first book, Tangier Gardens.
In Tangier Gardens, I explore the curative effects that plants provide to ease human existential anxieties.
Every spring is a joy! So let’s cheer the warmer sunny days, fresh spring greens, dancing flowers, sweet scents–everyone of those entrancing joys.
Celebrate the first day of spring with an additional joyful special–a FREE OFFER.
For five days only around the first day of spring, I offer for FREE my debut eBook novel, Tangier Gardens. On the mesmerizing Mediterranean coast, the story revels in the discoveries of Med landscapes, gardens and plants.
aficionados of landscape architecture, the Med and Morocco.
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In this bildungsroman, Christopher Janus, his friends call him CJ, needs a break. He has been busting his hump full time six years at university with one more class till graduation.
CJ’s studying landscape architecture, into pedestrian towns and warm sandy beaches. For his last class, a term abroad design study, he’s on his way to Tangier, a town coincidently with sandy beaches on the Med and a historical pedestrian district, the medina.
In Tangier Gardens, the author draws upon his years of extensive experiences in the Middle East and North Africa to weave a fascinating tale of intrigue.
Just released, this fast moving novel is on a ‘Spring Joy Special’, the eBook is regularly $3.99 but to celebrate the coming of spring 19-23 March, I offer it for FREE.
What about the Berbers? Where did they come from? And how many Berber differences between the Mediterranean and the Sahara?
CJ was looking in the landscape for cultural roots.
Morocco–where cultures of the Berbers, Africa, Arabia and Europe collide.
Where do cultures originate? As CJ, Christopher Janus, encountered the diverse variety of north west Africa cultures woven through Morocco, he was mystified. He was uncertain. He lost all clarity.
What had seemed to CJ to be a simple check-the-box term-abroad design study in Morocco became dark and darker. CJ did not know where to turn. The labyrinthine medinas became his metaphoric state of mind.
A fog of failure overwhelmed him. His life was in danger. His project was down the tubes. And his graduation was in question. CJ’s dreams of the future had gone down in flames.
Then he discovered portals–plant portals. What are plant portals?
Let CJ describe them in his fictional autobiography, Tangier Gardens, set at the outset of the 21st century. His is the story of fascination and intrigue. It asks more questions than it answers. Get into it. CJ did.
In a limited time Spring Joy offer on Amazon, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 March 2022, the Tangier Gardens eBook, normally $3.99 is FREE. Buy it on the first day of spring! Grab Spring Joy while you can.
If you would like to be kept up to date about discounts on CJ’s portal adventures in the Middle East and North Africa as he becomes an expatriate landscape architect, sign up here on CJ’s mailing list.
Not too long ago I wrote, ‘Becoming a landscape architect is like walking an unknown path in a strange forest. You know someone has walked it before, so you have some confidence. Then the path disappears. You have to make your own path and you don’t really know where you are going. You must decide—forge ahead or go back.’
In one way or another, it is something we all face…
…a real life mystery that can be solved only with the passage of time and the taking of hard decisions.
We all have to take hard decisions in our lifetime.
1943 or 2001?
Sixty years later, not in the Casablanca of French Morocco–but in Tangier, the international heart of Morocco–we are in Tangier Gardens.
In Tangier Gardens, CJ is immersed in an enthralling saga. He is lost in a place non-different from the haunts of Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart; and he is disoriented. To keep his appointment with destiny, he has to take some hard decisions.
That’s just one of his many challenges. In this foreign landscape, CJ finds a culture whose roots run deep into West Africa, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
He wants to become a landscape architect. He has to make his own path. And the medinas? CJ, trapped in the Tangier medina, finds those labyrinthine paths full of adventure…and despair. The excitement and danger confuse what CJ had thought was a certain destiny.
Who would have thought that the only existential clarity that CJ finds in Tangier would come from the plants and gardens of eccentric British and Russian horticulturists?
The inspiration that enables us to reach our goals and higher?
Tolkien started a walk that changed his life and our lives.
In 1911, when John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was 19, he travelled on foot from Interlaken to Zermatt with a group of 11 companions, and saw the Lauterbrunnen waterfalls, the Swiss Alpine peaks and the Aletsch glacier, all of which were reproduced in his own drawings in his books.
But what really started his creative fire? And what could start your creative fire?
It can’t be a package tour itinerary, can it?
It can’t be a must see bucket list can it?
If it isn’t the overwhelming beauty of the landscape.
If it isn’t the peaceful quiet of the landscape.
If it isn’t the rich bounty of the landscape.
Then what is it?
All the senses at once consumed—the path to the pineal—and then what? Inspired? How did that happen? not photos, not movies, not virtual reality—but in real life something happened to Tolkien and something can happen to any of us.
Then what was, what is it? Not only was it what he saw. But he felt something—something that inspired him to a masterful effort. We can all see it; but just seeing is not enough.
We can access that spark—but the process is mysterious. How to find that door of inspiration in the landscape—that portal to exceptional effort, exceptional achievement.
Some say the harder we look the more difficult to encounter the reveal. The reveal that refreshes.
In Tangier Gardens, protagonist CJ defined that moment of inspiration in the garden, in the landscape as a portal. A portal.
I am certain Tolkien crossed a portal in the Jungfrau landscape. After which he was never the same. He took the portal experience and over years elaborated on it and shared it through his books and illustrations.
That originating experience remains in these Jungfrau Region mountain landscapes—but not everyone finds that magic portal. Some say it is the work of the pineal gland.
Drive it? Fly it? Take the train? Ride a bike?
Walk it. In the quiet of walk the portal may more easily reveal itself. When that light shines, there is no mistaking it. Can’t be seen, can’t be heard; but communication happens—like instant trance—beyond meditation.
Read how CJ discovers portals in Tangier Gardens. Find the portals for yourself.
Take your part in one of life’s greatest mysteries.
