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About The Owner

Jean-Thomas Cullen. Welcome to my webplex (as I call it) and its many linked websites. For our purposes as you read this, dear visitor, we'll focus on my Paris Bookshop or Books About Paris, where I thank you for visiting today.

The home site of my webplex (using my English name) is John T. Cullen. Another key site is my (sole proprietorship) small press publishing house (Clocktower Books) located in San Diego, California, USA. With the help of friends and volunteers over the past quarter century (as of 2021), Clocktower Books has been a pioneer publishing venture online since 1996. The Web address is Clocktower Books. I have in recent years added a Museum site, a work in progress like all of this, to record for posterity some of our adventures with new digital technologies. Currently, all or most of my work can be found at Café Okay, my playfully named online bookstore.

I don't like to talk about myself, but it's worthwhile to indicate my special connections with Europe, including Paris. I'm a citizen of the United States from birth, where I have spent most of my life as I near age 70. I live in the wonderful city of San Diego, California, which is in itself a great tourist destination with many sights to see, fun things to do, and let's not forget great stuff to eat. According to authorities here, we get over 33,000,000 visitors a year, a very strong showing compared Paris or London, which receive an estimated 80 million or so visitors per year. San Diego is, for me and my family, the best imaginable home for living and base for traveling.

Paris has long been a cultural hub for artists, writers, painters, musicians, and more. Jim Morrison, U.S. singer with The Doors, is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, just to name one of many artists with a special connection to Paris. I approach Paris as a long-time friend. I speak several languages, have lived and worked in several countries (not just visiting as a tourist, which I have also done in many more places). I am comfortable considering myself a citizen of the world, while proud of my particular citizenships. I once estimated, as I returned from my two tours of U.S. Army service in Europe at age 31, that I had lived exactly half my life in Europe and half in the U.S. by that point in my life.

I'm not interested in using this website to promote my progressive views, which are formed not based on hollow propaganda and angry rhethoric so common today, but based on facts as they are on the ground. Realistically, every culture has its strong and weak points. I'm interested only in providing a platform for you, the reader, to enjoy all the many books that continue to be written about Paris, the City of Lights. I have no illusions about people or cultures, but take them each in stride and look for the best cup of coffee and the best brioche (or equivalent) in each. I look for the best and most progressive, people-friendly features in each culture, and avoid the less desirable (found everywhere, including Paris) as much as possible. I believe in the unity and equality of all people regardless of who they are, what they look like, or which tribe they belong to, or what gender orientation (whom they love; isn't it pathetic that so many people feel they need to argue about such things?). Each human being is endowed with equal rights to life, liberty, and happiness (now where have we heard that before?).

I was born as a U.S. citizen in Europe, son of a U.S. Army soldier serving there, and a Luxembourg national as my mother, in Nürnberg, West Germany after World War Two. That makes me one of well over a million U.S. children born overseas to U.S. military, State Department, or other U.S. officials working in many countries representing the United States. Yes, I was an Army brat; an interesting and colorful background for anyone to have, with plenty of ups and downs.

I lived most of my childhood in Luxembourg, Germany, and France, and speak those three plus the German dialect of Pfälzisch because I was stationed as a U.S. Army soldier (second generation) in Germany for five years ending 1980. My first trips to Paris were as a child; my father was stationed there with the U.S. Army during the 1950s. While stationed in Germany, I often enjoyed taking a weekend jaunt to Paris to get a welcome break from both the Army and from Germany (although I love Germany and was always glad to get back for duty by Monday mornings). When I say jaunt, it was about a four hour drive or train ride as I recall, but a friend from Luxembourg recently told me he took a modern TGV train, which makes the trip in about two hours. In later years, I have vacationed in Paris with my wife and family while traveling through Europe for business and pleasure.

My actual European citizenship came later in life, as the result of a special law of return passed by the Luxembourg Parliament for those who had at least one Luxembourg relative living in Luxembourg in sthe Year 1900 (that included my grandfather, Jean Didier). I am named, actually (Jean-Thomas) after my mother's father and my father's father. Being a citizen of Luxembourg, I am therefore also effectively a citizen of the entire European Union (with over 25 nations, as defined by the Schengen Area, so-called after a town in Luxembourg where the Schengen Treaty was launched in the 1980s. My main reason for this long story is to indicate my own special, long-time connection with Paris, a cultural and tourist mecca special to all the world. And yes, among my nearly fifty published books (fiction and nonfiction; under my name or pseudonymous), at least three so far are set in Paris, with more to come (and announcements in due time on my webplex including this site).

On my websites you'll see displayed the Luxembourg flag, the European Union colors, and the U.S. flag (see below).