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All right, everyone. Well, welcome back to the podcast here. It's the first episode that I'm not wearing my Croatian checkers, unfortunately, I'm repping the in and out California t shirt in Brussels at the moment, just for a few weeks before I go back to Croatia, so I don't have my my whole wardrobe here.

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But we've got a great episode ahead of us here we've got Jessica Julian, who is our special guest for this episode, and she just recently wrote a children's book, although she might have something to say about that description called every the magnificent,

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which takes place completely entirely in Croatia. And there it is.

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On the show that again and say something because sometimes it won't pan to you unless you speak.

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Okay, so yeah, this is a this is my book, every the magnificent it takes place entirely in Croatia. Awesome. That's a beautiful looking cover. We're going to get a little bit into that we're going to talk some other corrosion related things should be a good one, Jessica, thanks for coming on the podcast.

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Thank you so very much for asking me. Yeah, yeah, really appreciate it.

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You know, just to start us off let's learn a little bit more about you, you know if you can give us sort of a little bit of your background and your connection to Croatia.

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Okay, well I was born in Utah, in the United States of America. I then grew up in New Mexico, and went to law school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then after I finished getting my law degree I moved up to Vancouver, Washington, which is right on the border between

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Oregon and Washington State, way over on the northwest corner of the United States so most people think of America as you know, in terms of California, maybe Texas, and New York, and maybe Florida.

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So we are completely up as far away from Florida as you can get, and as pretty much as far from New York as you can get. I practice law for 25 years, I had my own practice.

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And during the last 15 years of it or so, when I had my own firm we specialize in elder abuse cases. So, we help law enforcement and adult protective services, protect the elderly from abuse of financial, physical, emotional abuse.

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And after 24 years really of practicing law.

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I decided to retire and enjoy my life.

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And incredibly fortuitously I met the most wonderful man in the world, who happened to be Croatian, and his name is john your Tinovich, and he was born in Rieka was where the hospital was but he was from a small little village called the even eat, which is in the Vinodal

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Gorski Kotar region region of Croatia so we're way far near the coast.

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And we got married about 11 years ago we've been dated for two when we got married and since then, we have both retired and we now divide our time pretty equally for the last, I'd say, eight or nine years we divide our time equally between Croatia and the United

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States and Vancouver where we live in Vancouver, Washington, where we live by going back and forth every three months. And my husband and I bought his mother's ancestral home.

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And so we have been just living the life and going back and forth between the two.

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That's awesome you mentioned to me off the camera that it's sort of opposite of the usual season you know when the tourists come, you guys are leaving Croatia and when they're leaving you guys come back.

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Absolutely like the peace and quiet a little bit better. We do.

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As you probably have experienced yourself, if you're in Croatia. In the summer there are two things that are you're guaranteed to experience one is a lot of tourists, very crowded beaches crowded roads crowded everything number one and number two, a lot of heat,

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and I, I just, you know that my age now I just prefer it to be cool so we come back here to Washington when and actually it's the best time of the year to be here in Washington State because we get a lot of rain, a lot of clouds I mean we can be socked in

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for, you know, a month, just with clouds and so when the summer comes is the perfect time to be outdoors and hiking and we just live in an amazing place, wonderful nature here so we prefer to be here in the summer and and let the all the tourists enjoy

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Croatia without us. Yeah, it can definitely get crowded and definitely gets hot, and especially when it's crowded, like in Dubrovnik for example when when you're there on you know the names throughout the street and the cobblestones and you're like packed like sardines

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in there and you got the sun beating down. Yeah, definitely can get get crowded so it's nice that you're able to have the best of both worlds there.

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Yes. Yeah, I want to ask you about a story that that I read about.

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It's about a goulash cooking competition in Croatia, can you sort of talk about what that was and sort of the history behind that and how you ended up involved in that.

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Well, so, as most villages and probably bigger cities I don't know have every year we have a Saint, a Saint Day.

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The Saint that our church in Dubrovnik is named after is Sveti Dujam, and so every year on his day, which is sometime in May.

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They have a big cutlich competition is which is where they cook goulash outside over an open fire, and you. It's a timed event, and it's a competition.

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So in 2015, we went and attended the first, first time we went, my husband and I went and actually attended the competition itself and it's so much fun.

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There are teams from all over Vinodal and I think probably some people come from other regions to compete to see who makes the best goulash.

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And it was so much fun, and there is wine and rickia and sparkling water for the people who like to mix their wine, which is a very odd thing, by the way.

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Although it does build in some extra time before you get completely drunk.

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So, anyway, we went to this competition it was so much fun. And the next day we met for the first time we met one of John's cousins who lives there in Dubrovnik, and his wife Manuela, and Manuela was at that time, one of the very few people who spoke English, and I, my, my Croatian is sadly wanting.

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So, when I met her, I just bonded her immediately I just glomped onto her and I said, we should compete in next year's competition.

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And so she agreed, and so the next year was 2016 I think we, we decided we would compete. And it was actually a historical moment in Vinodal. Probably nothing greater has happened in Vinodal since we competed for goulash because we were the first women to compete.

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And so, since the beginning of time, it was a man only competition, which is kind of funny to me, considering the fact that I don't think these men cook at home very much.

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So, they were very the men of the in the region where we're very upset and in a fun sort of way I mean it wasn't nobody tried to kill us or anything but there was a lot of disparaging comments about what are what are you women doing here in this, this goulash competition.

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And so, yeah, we, we went there and I had never, I had never cooked goulash before I think that's important to point out. I practiced twice before the competition.

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And I was the designated chef for it and Manuela was my sous chef and she helped me cut everything, and, and then we had another woman but she wasn't really able to participate much because she had to work but when she got off work she came and stirred the pot for us.

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And we competed.

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I don't want to tell you what happened because I don't want to do a spoiler alert.

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Okay, no spoilers. Was it good though at the end did it taste did everyone get to eat their own.

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It was fantastic, and it was eaten down to the last drop.

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Yeah, that sounds delicious I'm getting hungry already even though I could say dinner but never pass up goulash. That's awesome. Awesome experience. That's like, you know everyone wants sort of that local village experience you know when you when you come to Croatia,

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especially you know those of us that have Croatian roots and you know family in the village and that's really the what you want, you know, out of your if you're doing like a summer trip to Croatia.

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I don't know if you've ever been to Croatia or anything like that. Even though there's nothing better. There's nothing better than being able to connect with the people on their own on their own terms and their comfort zone which is why we have, I mean, we just got back here to

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the United States we're in the United States right now it's about almost noon and you're, it's time for you to go to bed practically.

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And it is without exception every time we leave Croatia to come here.

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We have a sense of sadness for leaving. But then we're so excited about being here because we do love our home here as well. And we know in three months we're going to be back there so it's like, it's never.

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It's sad we're not, you know, we're not gnashing our teeth and tearing our clothes from sadness, because we're leaving and I think, to be honest I think that's part of what makes it even more precious is the fact that we don't get, we never get

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tired of it we never get tired of being there and walking into the, into the, the house it's an old stone house built, probably 100 and at least 140 150 years ago.

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And you know that when you walk into the door and you have that smell of a stone house, it's just magical. And so, anyway, I digress. No, no, not at all. I mean that's, that's what we're here for you know on the podcast, but we're also here to talk about

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your book. And you know I'd like to get into that a little bit. Tell us about, you know, what's it called first of all and where did you come up with the idea for it.

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Okay, so this is my book and it's called, Eddie the magnificent tales of an elusive baby bunny.

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And, Eddie, I, this is the first book I've ever written, but I have been writing travel logs for about 25 or 30 years I love to travel. So I have traveled all over the world.

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70 countries 7080 countries on every continent except for Antarctica. And so, I, I started writing travel logs back in the days when they first started having internet cafes.

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And at the time, it was dial up, it was slow. I would be in India, in a little smelly little room typing madly to share my adventures with many of my friends, a couple hundred of my friends and clients, many who had never traveled.

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And I wanted to give them a sense of what the rest of the world was like.

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And at the time when I was doing that there was, there was before there were digital cameras, or if there were they were very expensive and we didn't have one.

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And, and there was no way at that time to actually attach a photo to one of my episodes. So, because of that, I had to learn how to, I developed a writing style that was very descriptive, so people felt like they were there with me, and I have few years later.

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And so, I started getting digital cameras but they were so I mean you'd be lucky if there were 12 pixels on it, or whatever those are called.

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And slowly I started being able to, I never, it's still at that point I wasn't able to incorporate pictures into my travel logs, but slowly. When I would get back home, I would then send some pictures, digital pictures over the internet.

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And so they could see it after, you know, after the fact to say oh okay this is where she was in Malaysia or this is what the food looked like that she was eating in

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where India. So, finally, it came to the point where you could attach digital pictures to the writing, and I started writing in a word format with a PDF.

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And so, again for your younger listeners, you're probably absolutely bored to tears already but that was a huge thing to be able to actually add a photograph to written word immediately as you were doing it and then to send it out across the world.

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So I started incorporating photos that I took in my travel logs and it was all episodic so this is what I did today and this is what this is where we ate and this is what I saw, and then I would send that and would go out to like three or 400 people.

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And then I was never a blog I was always doing it on a PDF format. And, and then when I decided to retire from practicing law, it was about nine years ago.

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My husband suggested that I take up a hobby so that we didn't kill each other with all of our free time. And so I started painting.

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And I'm self taught I took no did not go to school I didn't.

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I just have always loved art was one of the first things I would do when we would go to a new place was to go to their museums and and see what the masters did and go see those paintings in real life, you know, in Italy and wherever in Argentina, you'd go to their,

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you'd go to their museums and you'd see all this wonderful art and I always loved color.

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And so I happened to be in Roving, which is in Istria, and met this amazing artist named Zoto, which is short for his Iran to Dora beach, and he's from McCarthike McCarthike.

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And I, his paintings were just amazing. I have a bunch of them here, but he specialized in still still life, but he also did landscapes and other things.

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And I was so struck and by his artwork I asked him if he could teach me how to paint. And he said I, I'm self taught, I wouldn't know how to teach you.

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You know other people might be able to but not me and I said well, if you were going to give advice to somebody wanted to learn how to paint with advice would you give.

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And he said, pick up a paintbrush and paint from your heart.

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And so I took that to heart, and I went and I bought some paints and I bought some paint brushes and I started painting our furniture, we had a bunch of old stools you know the wooden little wooden square stools that they had all over Croatia.

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And I just started painting them and I put grape leaves and flowers and all sorts of it and then I gradually started painting on canvas and I started getting better and better.

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And so then I started painting the photos I took on our travels.

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And I would incorporate my paintings into the travel logs. This is kind of a long winded story. But then I started painting these so my travel log started becoming not only containing photos but containing the paintings I did of the photos I took.

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And as a result since we were in Croatia so much of the year I think I painted a lot of scenes of Croatia.

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And, if anybody, if anybody's listening to this podcast has not been to Croatia.

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You can watch this podcast on pause and buy a ticket to go to Croatia. It is the most extraordinarily photogenic beautiful place they have the, the best clouds, I mean I've been all over the world, they have the best sunset from the best clouds and the

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cleanest water ever and dramatic dramatic scenes of cliffs and castles and ruins it's just a wonderful place so anyway I started painting a lot of scenes of Croatia and incorporating them into the

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into my travel logs.

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And then the pandemic hit in March of 2020 and we could no longer travel we were actually, we had tickets to go back to Croatia on the 20th and I think or something like that.

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And then on March 11, they canceled our flight so we were stuck homebound, as was everybody else for like two years, and for me that was a wonderful time because it gave me the opportunity to hone my painting craft.

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And I started writing any the magnificent.

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Because I couldn't travel anymore. I wanted to write a book about travel. And so that's, that's kind of the genesis of, of where the idea for the book came was the reason I put it in Croatia is because I love Croatia.

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My husband and I have donated funds to our local school in the revenue can actually the schools in three bio which is the neighboring village.

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Because for me education is the most important thing in the world and I'm not doesn't have to necessarily be school education but to educate yourself and to become as knowledgeable as you can about as many things as possible was so important,

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and our little high school or school, like from kindergarten to eighth grade.

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And we still have the little chalkboard that she had that she would write her homework on. And so we wanted to encourage the children of in adult to strive to be everything they could be. And so we donated money to that school and to buy smart, smart boards and computers

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and whatnot so they can learn, give them a leg up, but them be able to learn technology at an early age from eighth grade on you know or I think is when they started it.

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So, I don't know where I'm digressing with this. I know where it is. So I wanted to write a book about Croatia, so that the children of Croatia would have a book that took place in Croatia that had Croatian characters.

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That was essentially my love letter to Croatia so they said I mean there are so many wonderful books in the world that you can read.

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But to have a book that they could call their own that they could read and they can understand, you know, names like Darko and Nicola names that they would recognize from either that there was their own name or they were the names of people they knew somebody

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that everybody has an uncle Darko right or stonko or Marco or whatever. And so that's why I put the book in Croatia, because first of all, I, it's such a picturesque place and then second of all, so that, so that they can have some ownership of it, of a, of a, of a real book

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and this is not, this is, it's, it's, technically it's a, it's technically it's a children's book, but I wrote it for children and adults, and it's not. It's a 256 page novel with about 80 full color paintings, and it's got a map at the beginning that my husband did.

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And it's, I call Croatia the land of stones, because in Gorski Kutar where we live, you literally cannot throw a stone without hitting a stone.

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It is the craziest stoniest place, how people have eeked out a live a life there I don't really know. And so we, I call Croatia the land of stones, and I included in it.

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Some places that are other than the Brovnik and split where most people when they think or Zagreb. Most people when they think of Croatia they think of those places so instead my book takes place in Sloan, which is out by the bits lakes and Rovin, which is in Istria,

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and Draveni, because, of course I had to. Yeah, well can you we've got only a couple minutes left. Actually, but can you give us a quick sort of description you know no spoilers again of course, but of what the book is about.

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So the book is about this baby bunny right there, EBI, and EBI stands for elusive baby bunny, and she's elusive because from the moment she's born, she has this insatiable appetite to explore.

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She wants to go everywhere there is to go and see everything there is to see. And she has a pure heart.

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And one of the reasons I wrote the book is because during the pandemic.

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We were, we were being force fed fear and division, and from every source, the news articles everything that you got was fear and death and dying and division, and I wanted to write a positive, extremely positive book that

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encouraged people, not to judge people by the color of their skin or their religion, or which village they came from. And so, EBI is, she is the, the heroine of my book, and she has the purest of hearts and she lacks, she lacks the ability to judge others because she

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hasn't been taught to judge others. So every character she meets, regardless of whether it's a horse, a fox, humans.

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She meets many different characters, and she greets each one with the same degree of respect and admiration, regardless of where what kind of tail they have.

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And so, when I call it tales of an elusive baby bunny I spelled it TA ILS, rather than TA LES because she meets creatures with every kind of tail and it doesn't matter.

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So, this is the book is unusual in that it is kind of analogous in terms of having characters that are animal and human interacting with each other, but there is no violence, there is no cruelty.

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There are no orphans there. This is not a Walt Disney book, this is not. This is not a tearjerker where you get to see Bambi's father killed at the beginning of the movie, and you don't see Dumbo's mother in a cage, this is a happy,

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this book that teaches the importance of travel and of trying different things so one of the characters is a fox, and she wants to. She doesn't, she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, and so she tries different things, and one

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in the book is that that's fantastic.

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You should try different things.

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And you might not like everything that you try

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and you might not like the first thing you try,

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but you can reinvent yourself.

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Which is kind of my story as well.

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I mean, I was a lawyer and now I'm a painter and an author

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and I'm 57 years old.

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I'm not afraid to say that.

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And it's been the most rewarding thing

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that I've done in the last nine years.

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I won't say it's the most rewarding thing

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I've done in my life,

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but reinventing yourself is a wonderful thing to do.

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And the last nine years that I've been retired

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and reinventing myself into being an artist

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and an author has just been fantastic.

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That's awesome. That's awesome.

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What sort of reception have you gotten?

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I know you were able to sort of do a showing

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at the local library there in the village

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in Srikpenica and you were actually what,

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the first person to sort of do a book showing

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in English there or not in-

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In English.

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I was the very first author to speak in English,

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to an English author.

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And my book is in English.

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Hopefully it'll be, if it does well here in the United States,

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I will have it translated into Croatian.

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And the reception has been overwhelmingly positive.

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I have, I think this is an important thing to note.

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I had it printed in Croatia.

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So there is an amazing printer in Zagreb called Danona

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and it's a family owned business.

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And they, they're just incredible.

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And this book that they produced was,

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is so phenomenally lovely.

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It's full color and it's got,

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it's like an heirloom quality book.

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It's padded, the cover is padded.

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It's in full color.

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It's absolutely vibrant and beautiful.

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And so to be honest, when most people pick up this book

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and there's a scene, it sells itself.

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First of all, it has a very positive message.

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And I think people are looking for positive messages.

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So number one is positive.

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And then number two, it's absolutely beautiful.

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So I have had, it was kind of a lark

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because I just joined Facebook recently,

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but it has resonated with Croatians, especially expats

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and people who have any sort of love for Croatia,

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have just, have been eating this book up.

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So it's been really fabulous.

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Oh, that's awesome.

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That's awesome to hear.

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And that's cool that you got it printed in Croatia.

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Yes.

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That's great.

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Jessica, where can people go who want to buy the book?

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And also, you can shout out if you have a website

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or any social media accounts to follow.

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Okay.

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Well, so this Croatian version, I ordered 2000 copies

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and 1500 of them are on their way

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to the United States right now.

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We put some in our luggage,

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but the only way you can get this Croatian printed

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hardback version is through me.

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And my website is jwjulian.com.

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It's j-w-j-u-l-i-a-n.com.

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My Facebook author page is jwjulianbooks.

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That's all one word.

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My personal Facebook page is jessicajulian.

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And that's how you,

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if you want to get a copy of this,

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this hardback version, that's how you get it.

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It's also available on electronic form

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and in a print on demand form,

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which is Amazon's version of printing out

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in a digital format, but it's a hardback version.

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And it's not nearly as nice as this version,

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which has the map and it's just a much better quality book.

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So if you want the hardback version, contact me

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and I will see what I can do.

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If it's outside of the United States,

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it may be difficult for me to get it to you

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without a great deal of cost on the postage, but who knows?

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I mean, it's a wonderful book.

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And when I go back in September, if you're in Croatia,

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I'll be able to get it to you there

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because I do have some copies in Croatia.

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Awesome, well, I'll include all those links as well

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in the description so everyone listening right now

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can go ahead and click on those and contact you that way.

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Jessica, that about wraps up what I had prepared

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for this episode.

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I just want to thank you so much for coming on

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and telling us a little bit about you

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and your husband's story, as well as the story that you wrote.

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And I just want to say thank you for coming on

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to All Things Croatia podcast.

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Thank you so much, Stankar.

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I really, really appreciate it.