The author blending into the scenery at the Taj Mahal

   I started writing novels as a vehicle to share the experiences I have enjoyed in more than fifty years of wandering the globe with a backpack. But I had little interest in writing about myself. My stories are not meant to be about me.

   I have been blessed with a special advantage as a traveler. I love to sit back and watch when I am traveling. I want to observe people in their normal daily environment, going about their business without distraction. The last thing I want is to be the center of attention or a reason for locals to deviate from their regular behavior. Most people cannot do this whether they wish to or not; their appearance gives them away. But I am a little brown man. In Latin America, the mideast, and India, I blend in. I have often capitalized on this advantage by wearing authentic native clothes. I spent months in Morocco wearing a djellaba, cloaked in invisibility. In a country where foreigners are besieged by vendors and guides, nobody bothered me. And I was able to see things, normally hidden from travelers.

  Here is an example from India, where foreigners sometimes feel like they are under constant assault. There is a main ghat (riverside embankment) in the sacred city of Varanasi where corpses are burned 24/7. Foreigners are not allowed anywhere near the pyres, and it goes without saying that any taking of photos is strongly discouraged. But dressed in my simple white kurta and pajamas, I was able to sit about ten meters up the slope and take it all in. I’m sure that many would not find this a pleasant pastime. But I have always had a passion to understand other peoples and their cultures and a strong attraction to what are considered to be the most sacred parts of human experience. 

   Benefitting from this good fortune, I hit on the concept of collecting experiences, extraordinary sights, happenings, interactions with natives, and weaving them into the core of my novels, with invented fictional plots and people in order to set them off and make them more vivid. Most of the countries involved in the novels are ones that I have visited multiple times and whose cultures I am very familiar with, Mexico, India, and Thailand being the primary settings.

   Each book features both a female and a male protagonist, with center stage being occupied by a young woman coming of age. As I am definitely an older man, this may seem a bit odd or presumptuous, but I have a compelling reason for my choices. For fifty years I have hung out with female travelers, had intimate talks with them, listened to their stories, hopes, fears and dreams. In family life, I was the single parent of an adolescent girl throughout her high school and university years. Thus I believe that I have gained my insights, such as they are, from long standing and honest experience. And I decided that their stories would be fresher and more interesting than my own, because unlike me, they would be seeing everything for the first time.

   So there it is. I hope you enjoy.

  As an addition, I have always thrilled at the tales of women who have dared to go out on their own and experience the world on their own terms. Two authors I recommend without reservation are Dervla Murphy and Robyn Davidson. And one of my favorite novels for forty years has been The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis. Though I was at first skeptical when it became an award winning limited series, I actually believe that the show is even more compelling than the book, due to Anya Taylor-Joy’s astonishing performance.