Author's word - The Valley of Kings
I started writing this novel in September 2020 and completed it one year and eight months later. That means I am on course to complete the Janus Clan series. It is one more journey of mine immortalized. I knew the Valley of Kings would be situated somewhere in Asia. I just did not know exactly where. There are quite a few deserts to choose from along the Silk Road. It was just a matter of deciding where the journey to the valley would end.
I wrote more of what has lingered in my mind since I was very young.
The Valley of Kings, like the Sherwood Forest is not a place, but a state of mind.
The Janus Clan has now visited all five (or six) populated continents, just like a gentleman by the name of Timothy Joyce once did.
I make two journeys, at least that when I write a story. The physical journey is usually first. Then, I make the same journey, reliving it as I write the novel. Both are equally satisfying. My memories from a visit to a given place are often stronger than that of most people, since I experience it twice, at least that.
My books would have been significantly different if not for my massive global travels in 2002 and 2003. I will always benefit from those, both as a writer and human being. It was and will probably remain the best two years of my life. Travel is victory, is a victory in itself, as the Arabs say. The desert will always have a special place in my books, at least in the Janus Clan books. Experiencing it does something to you, something profound. I almost did like Debra Winger and stayed in the Sahara desert much longer. She became attached to it after she had played in the Sheltering Sky directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Add the subsequent travel along the Silk Road to that, and it almost becomes too much. All those ancient places, several even left out of the book inspired me beyond belief.
If I ever had any western propaganda left in me after having completed that journey, it wasn’t much. Everything I had heard of that incessant false voice was exposed as the total bullshit it is.
I didn’t travel through Iran and Iraq during their war in the eighties, of course. I traveled there before the US invasion in Iraq, though. Iraq was downtrodden after a decade of brutal sanctions, but it wasn’t reduced to ruins like it was after a couple of years with massive US warfare. I visited Syria and Damascus well before United States and NATO started their demolition project there. I cried bitter tears during the US/NATO invasion and bombing.
From the moment I started out in Dakar in Senegal, and until I reached Kashgar in Xinjiang in western China, and far beyond that, I had a very strong impression of visiting another, better world.
This, all this is what US/NATO wishes to destroy. They wish to destroy everything. It is US/NATO, the most aggressive military alliance in human history that must be destroyed.
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