My name is Jared Gulian (pronounced GHOUL-eee-in… it’s Armenian). I’m a two-time New Zealand bestselling author—first in 2013 for my olive farming memoir Moon Over Martinborough (now available internationally under the title An Olive Grove at the Edge of the World), and again in 2022 for my sci-fi thriller The Last Beekeeper.
I grew up in the United States of America, taught in Japan for four years, and immigrated to New Zealand in 2003. I currently live in rural New Zealand with my partner, four magical horses, and a gang of scheming chickens who outsmart me daily.
Full Moon Newsletter
You can join my free mailing list using the ‘Send my starter kit’ sign-up on this page. Your ‘starter kit’ will include exclusive goodies—a short story about life on our olive farm, my hand-drawn map of Gull Island (the setting of The Last Beekeeper), and an excerpt from The Last Beekeeper.
After that, every full moon you’ll receive recommendations on books I love (I read widely so these are varied), news about life on our tiny olive farm, updates on my various creative projects. (I occasionally send other quick updates on new releases, but that’s rare.)
NOTE: While you can still sign up for the Starter Kit, I’ve paused the Full Moon Newsletter for now. If you subscribe, you’ll receive the regular newsletter when it starts up again.
Living in New Zealand
I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up living in paradise. My partner CJ and I are both expat American city boys, and in 2006 we moved to the Wairarapa valley in New Zealand. We live on 20 acres just outside the charming wine and olive village of Martinborough, at the bottom of the North Island.
In 2009 I started a blog called Moon Over Martinborough about our misadventures here. Some of the old posts are still available on this site. The blog became surprisingly popular, won some awards, and led to my first book in 2013, also called Moon Over Martinborough, which was published by Random House New Zealand. It was on the NZ bestseller list for 6 weeks, rising to number 4, and was serialized by Radio NZ.
In March 2018 I released an international edition of that book under the new title: An Olive Grove at the Edge of the World. The global release surpassed my expectations. The new edition quickly hit #1 in three categories on Amazon.com: Rural Life Humor, New Zealand Travel, and Australia & South Pacific Travel. It then went on to become a bestseller in Australia and Canada as well, hitting #1 in Animals Humor on Amazon.com.au and later hitting #1 in New Zealand Travel on Amazon.ca.
This memoir has been influenced by several books I love–including A Year in Provence, Under the Tuscan Sun, All Creatures Great and Small, and A Good Keen Man.
My science fiction thriller series
My suspense-filled, science fiction thriller series was launched in July 2021 with the release of The Last Beekeeper, and the book hit the New Zealand bestseller list. It is the first book in what is currently planned as a two-part series that I’m thinking of as The Vespling Duology.
The Last Beekeeper takes place on a remote island in Lake Michigan, inspired by a real-life place in Michigan as well as my own rural experiences in the Wairarapa. If you’d like to read the first four chapters for free, sign up for my mailing list and you’ll get an excerpt as part of your Jared Gulian Starter Kit, along with a non-fiction short story about our unexpected and often hilarious life on a tiny olive farm.
Since the book came out:
- January 2022 – Selected as one of four ‘Best Fantasy and Science Fiction of 2021’ by Hedley’s Books.
- May 2022 – Chosen by the Wairarapa Library Services for a series of events called One Book One Community. The idea was to encourage everyone in the community to read the same book and come together for discussion and activities in order to promote awareness of our libraries and foster a sense of community through reading. It was an honor to be chosen.
- June 2022 – Hit number 7 on the New Zealand bestseller list—a miraculous feat for a self-published book.
- July 2022 – Finalist in the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Awards for Best Sci-fi or Fantasy.
I’m currently working on Book 2 in The Vespling Duology. The working title is The Brood Chamber.
This series has influences from several authors I thoroughly enjoy–including Michael Crichton, and Blake Crouch, Stephen King, and Ronald Hugh Morrieson. As a young reader, one of my early reading obsessions was science fiction and fantasy, and I got absolutely lost in books like A Wrinkle In Time, The Star Beast, and The Ship Who Sang. I also thoroughly loved Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall Trilogy, which led me to the original Dragonriders of Pern trilogy in my teens.
Where I live in real life
Our 20-acre property has about 500 olive trees and a trout stream just out the bottom gate. Plus we have heaps of other fruit and nut trees — apricot, peach, pear, plum, chestnut, almond, pine nut, feijoa, and even a quince tree. Cattle and sheep graze in the paddocks.
There’s a 2-bay hay shed with a million dollar view, a veggie garden, green house, flower garden, native garden, some very well fed chickens, and some pet kunekune pigs. I’m always posting pictures of the property on Instagram.
For more on how CJ and I ended up here, read my life story as recipe on my blog: ‘Make your own olive oil in 23 easy steps‘.
Where I live on the interwebs
You can find me on social media at the links below, ranked in order of how active I am on them. 🙂
You can also contact me using the form at the bottom of this page.
Recommendations
Any books, products, or content I recommend are things that I truly appreciate myself. I don’t recommend things that I don’t feel strongly about. On occasion, I do use affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission on sales to linked products.
Contact
Please use the contact form below to send me an email.
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