THE WILD AND TURBULENTS 1960's

Fotografía y texto original en español por Luis Fernando Rodriguez Garcia para Qhubo - Traducción por el escritor Mark Owen.

A GRINGA STORY THAT MADE ITS HOME IN SALAMINA

Mark Owen and Tara Cortes met online. She is a multi-media artist and he is a fiction writer. They arrived in the mountain top village of Salamina about a 15 months ago, attracted by the tranquil life, the timeless  landscapes, the friendly people, and the healthy local food.

The novel "Other Than Flashbacks" written by Mark Owen, evokes the 60's in the United States. According to Owen, "the story captures two and a half years of the life of a rebellious young seeker and his friends, and the unusual adventures and intensity with which they lived."

Family background. Mark's father was an aerospace engineer in the 1950's and his mother, a traditional southern woman from old Florida. Because of the work of his father, the family moved a great deal and never had a single home, so Mark was able to know many places in his country and different ways of living. In his family were five sons and a daughter of one of his brothers who grew up with them. "Living in rural Texas for five years as a boy influenced my life deeply. There was land with trees and hills all around us and that feeling of freedom defined my existence. My life has been spent living between big dramatic cities and natural frontier places."

Literary insight. Mark said that he feels fortunate to have had a life full of bold travels and colorful adventures. Although his book is not autobiographical, it has much of what he has lived, enriched with his own imagination and told in the first person.

He says his book is the adventure of the young men and their women who resisted going to the Vietnam War, choosing instead the revolution in free love, civil rights, the anti-war movement, and the dangerous smuggling of marijuana into California from Mexico. It tells vividly of the radical mystical experiments with LSD and the magic mushrooms deep in the sierras of Oaxaca. "It's a powerful story that changes you,” Owen relates. “The action happens quickly and takes paths that the reader never expects, just as it often happens in real life. "

His Arrival in Colombia: Mark had lived in Mexico previously and about six years ago wanted to return to Latin America. At first he planned to leave for Costa Rica, Nicaragua or Ecuador. However, as his plans took shape, he met the Colombiana Tara online and they began a deep and romantic conversation, sharing their lives and hopes. Today Tara is his girlfriend and beloved companion and they live together on a high ridege above the Rio Chamberi, writing and painting. When he was still in New Orleans and she was in Bogata, they did a lot of internet research for interesting places to live. Mark found Salamina, an Andean village with a rich cultural history, and they decided to come here, "I like it here very much,” he smiles. “It's not full of gringos and in fact I'm probably the only one. The people here have made me feel very much at home.” His Spanish is still limited and he communicates through Tara, his translator, and the designer of the cover of his novel.

Notes on his Book:This work was written in the English language, published with his own resources and made in the United States. Its launch was last October, 2016  It is available online at Amazon books in beautiful paperback edition and also in eBook format at all major book sellers. Several physical copies of “Other Than Flashbacks” are also available at various stores and coffee shops in Salamina.