Ginkgo Sequoia

The Tree Mystic acquired his spiritual wisdom from a forest wood chopper. Ginkgo the author did something similar; spending most of his school years daydreaming and looking out of the classroom window at a forest of trees.

In his early professional career he managed a forestry estate on the wilds of Rannoch moor in Scotland and then the U.K. International Festival Gardens in England.

His career took a new direction after that. He worked for seven years as Director of Operations for the company that ran the U.K.'s elite sporting venues and the English Institute of Sport. At the same time he dabbled in the music world, as Director of Operations for the city of Sheffield's Classical Music Programme.

In 2005, he set up his own company with a hotel, language exchange and philosophy school. During this period and after many visits to Asia, he decided to write a non-fiction book about trees. However, when he witnessed the homeless widows of India, he changed his plan and wrote The Tree Mystic as a novel.

He now lives by the sea, in Devon England. He writes, tell stories at seaside market towns, and runs yoga healing retreats.

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Author Central Gallery.

The two location videos were filmed in Vrindavan and Varanasi, India. There are lots of other videos, with extracts from the book and a few secrets at - The Tree Mystic - YouTube channel -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVloidQLGaoYtSeBo5ZMw9w

In addition to some photos of myself ( young and old) I have added many of the photos taken by my son during his travels through India. These inspired the characters and locations in the book. I hope you can have some fun trying to match the photos to scenes and characters in the book!

Widows of India charity project

I would also like to thank the Scottish artist Moira Milne. I have never met Moira and yet when she read the chapters related to the widows' suffering, she painted all the sketches that you see in the gallery and the book for free. I think that she did this because she wanted to make a contribution to relieve the widows' suffering. I am hoping that other readers will do something similar. If you can make a donation on The Tree Mystic website, you will have done more than read the book; you will help bring the story to life.

PS I am not a writer - just someone with a story to tell. Don't let not being able to write, stop you from writing your story.

Ginkgo.