A Kitty Dreaming About Wings

An Excerpt From a Future WiP

2012-01-18T18:56:00.000+01:00

I can't exactly call it a WiP, because it would indicate the book in progress, and I haven't started writing it yet. But this humorous piece can give you some taste of what my non-fiction book about cats is going to be like (although, not everything is going to be as funny). It appeared here first, and people seemed to enjoy the silly but true story of a cat refusing to catch a mouse. I might re-write it for the book, especially the end part, but all the fun stuff will stay. So, without further ado, here it is.

Oh, and you also get a chance to see what my writing looked like 9 years ago. Not too bad, I hope.

Catching a Mouse

Once upon a time, Kes was a big, strong cat who hunted everything that moved. He was able to catch a fly while it was flying; several times, we have found remains of a big, fat pigeon which served as his snack. People in Belgrade tend to feed pigeons so much that they become too fat to fly, or at least too fat to fly away in time. A heaven for cats!
However, with years Kes became lazy. He could move fast when he wanted to, but he preferred to sleep and be fed and petted. And of course, my mom and I loved to feed him and pet him. Still, I believe my mom thought he should catch a mouse if an opportunity arises; I also believe Kes didn't share her opinion.
One morning, when I came back home (my boyfriend and I were celebrating our fourth anniversary), mom was panicking. She told me a mouse appeared in our apartment last night, and she had barely slept because she was afraid it would climb her bed and bite her. I gave her a puzzled look.
"Mom, mice don't climb beds. And why would it bite you?" I said.
"I'm not afraid of mice," she said. "But if it bit me, I could get some disease. Kes didn't even notice it; I believe it's somewhere in your room," she added.
I shrugged. What's so scary about a cute furry little thing, anyway?
Kes was sleeping on my bed, as usual. I petted him and turned my computer on, to read some book I've downloaded.
Later, I went to the bathroom. Mom summoned me from it, clearly in panic.
"I've seen it again! It IS in your room! I put Kes so he could see it, and he ran and hid under your bed!"
I laughed. I couldn't help it. Just imagining Kes -- the biggest cat I've ever seen (black with little white fur on his lower belly, as if he was wearing panties, if you want a more clear image) running away from a tiny little mouse -- made me laugh. Of course, I knew he wasn't running away from the mouse. He was running away from my mom, because he felt like sleeping and didn't want to be bothered. At the age of twelve, he was a senior kitty citizen and was rarely in the mood to hunt.
I tried to explain to mom that such a tiny thing as a mouse couldn't possibly be a threat. Besides, if it spent entire night in my room, it was probably half-dead with hunger (I don't keep food on my floor) and fear. Mom reminded me that hungry mice chew on cables. Ouch. I also remembered that if it hid behind some big furniture piece and died of hunger, it would be extremely difficult to find and get rid of. Ouch again.
And Kes still refused to get out from under my bed. He decided to take a nap there. A very long nap, if necessary. Nice kitty.
Eventually, I had to catch the mouse myself (well, people do compare me to a cat, sometimes :) ). It wasn't difficult, really. It was in the middle of my room, confused, and all I had to do was to throw an old T-shirt on it. It was so scared it didn't even wriggle in my hands. I took it out of the house and set it free. It disappeared in the bushes. Cute furry little thing. I hoped it would survive.
My boyfriend's comment to this was: "I know you grew up with cats. It's all right to catch a mouse, we all do it sometimes. Just don't eat it."
Kes? Once it was all over, he went to the kitchen to get a snack. Then he got back to my bed and fell asleep. He seemed satisfied.
Several months ago, Kes disappeared. Sometimes he would disappear for a week, or even more, especially in February (or whenever there was female kitty company to please). But he had never disappeared for months, and knowing he was more than thirteen years old, there isn't much hope he's still somewhere, lost but alive. :( The only thing that comforts me is that he was a happy cat. He had a good life, and is probably chasing females somewhere in kitty heaven.

"I Write For Love, Not For Money!"

2012-01-16T17:37:00.000+01:00

The title sentence is one I hear from time to time, and seriously dislike it.

For one thing, it implies that it's impossible to love writing and still want to get paid for your work.

For the other, it often sounds as if those saying it see themselves as better than those who write for a living.

And frankly, to me it sounds like: "My writing is not good enough that anyone would want to pay me for it, so I'm going to put down those who manage to sell their work." Not to mention that I often hear it either from people who are financially supported by their parents (regardless of their age), or from those who do something else for a living, like to write, but for various reasons don't give their writing serious effort and don't dare to attempt to make it more than a hobby.

As for me, I love writing. I couldn't imagine my life without it. And the main reason I want to get paid for writing is so that I can write full-time, so that I don't have to do something else for a living and write only when time/energy/circumstances permit.

And besides, is there anything better than doing what you love most and being paid to do it?

Put It Away, Will Ya?

2012-01-10T19:32:00.000+01:00

Remove those darn animations if you want me to read it!

I've been looking through some blogs, and it's probably just my bad luck, but several blogs in a row had one of the most additions ever.

Animations.

I'm not talking about some discreet snow animation, or something else equally discreet and non-disruptive. I'm talking about very visible animations, such as big snowflakes falling over posts and making them difficult to read, or about those annoying Tweety wittwe biwds. You know, the Twitter bird which is supposed to make you follow the blog owner through Twitter. On some blogs, the darn blue bird was flying over posts, making them difficult to read. On some others, it was flying on the side, still annoying and distracting.

If I come to a blog to look at cute animations, then I expect some cute animations. But if I come to a blog to read it, and the blog owner made it difficult to read with obtrusive animations, well, guess what, I won't be straining my eyes to read it, nor will I be following.

So, if, by some chance, you want me to read your blog, do me some courtesy of making it possible for me to read without a bunch of distractions.

Thank you.

Rant over.

The Things I've Learned from CastleVille

2012-01-07T13:32:00.000+01:00

For those of you who don't who've never heard of CastleVille, it's a game by Zynga, played on Facebook (or at least I play it on Facebook, on the account made solely for playing games, not the one you can see on my blog). It is a cute and a fun game, great for wasting time, with all the ups and downs of the Zynga games -- but that's not what I'm talking about now.

Computer games, including those on Facebook, which real gamers would never even acknowledge as real games, can occasionally teach you something. Such as, you get extra points if you hit pedestrians with the car you've stolen (that would be GTA). Or some English words, for non-native speakers. Joking aside, some games are actually designed to teach children some stuff, however, CastleVille, as cute as it is, is not one of them.

Without further ado, here are things I've learned from CastleVille, and they're about animals such as pigs, cows, chicken and so on -- it's useful to know about them, isn't it?

Cows start out as baby cows. You feed them and they grow first into youths, and then into adult cows. They don't die if you don't feed them, they just don't grow in that case. Once they're adults, they produce bottles of milk and cow hides. They keep producing bottles of milk and cow hides as long as you feed them. A cow is in no way harmed when you get cow hide.

All animals start from babies, grow into youths when fed, and then into adults. Chicken start as baby chicken, and eventually grow into adult chicken. Adult chicken produce eggs and chicken meat. They keep producing both; chickens are in no way harmed when you get chicken meat, and keep producing more.

Sheep produce wool when adults. Getting wool doesn't harm sheep in any way. That's for a bit of sanity there.

Adult pigs produce meat. Getting meat... You already know. Adult minks produce mink oil. They don't mind it when you take mink oil, and are not harmed by it.

Geese and peacocks produce down-feathers (geese) and red and blue feathers (peacocks). Seeing how they produce very small amounts of those, it is plausible that the feathers simply fell off without harming the animals. So, another bit of sanity here.

No animals were harmed for the purpose of writing this post.

Oh, and I have nothing against Zynga or CastleVille, either. This was for fun only.

The Versatile Blogger Award

2012-01-06T14:43:00.000+01:00

I got an award for my blog, yay! Karen gave it to me, thanks! Now I'm supposed to mention the one who gave me the award (done), say seven things you probably didn't know about me, and award five other bloggers.

1. I think that having fancy gadgets you don't truly need is silly, not to mention a waste, and yet, there are some I wouldn't mind having, like iPad, laptop or an iPhone, even though I'm perfectly aware they're way too expensive for what they do.

2. I was quite introvert in high school (I still am), didn't have any real friends there, and believed I was too boring for anyone to gossip about me. Later I found out that there were some rumors about me anyway, such as, that I was a witch, that I had an evil eye and it was a bad idea to mess with me, and that I burned down a house to the ground during summer holidays.

3. When I was a kid, my favorite color for a while was yellow, after I saw a yellow seat in a streetcar and loved that particular bright color.

4. One of the first books I've read, and that was before I started going to the elementary school, was a book about children diseases, a sort of how-to book for parents. I loved that book and re-read it several times.

5. I think of spiders as useful house animals, as long as they stay away from me.

6. While I do enjoy music, I can't listen to music while I write. It's too distracting. I prefer silence.

7. Come to think of it, what I enjoy listening to the most is silence.

That would be it. The five bloggers I'm awarding, because they more than deserve it:

1. One Sister's Rant

2. Beverly Diehl's Writing in Flow

3. Love versus Goliath

4. Lessons from the Monk I Married

5. Anne K. Albert

The Books I've Read In 2011

2012-01-05T13:40:00.000+01:00

I tried to read 100 books in 2011, and failed; I only got to 78. Translating all day and recovering after the work is done seem to take their toll. Still, I did manage to read some really good books, and below are the seven that meant most to me, in no particular order. If I've written a review of the book, there's a link to it.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes. If you wish for a book with a strong African female protagonist, this one would be a great choice.

The Woman In the Dunes by Kobo Abe. A surreal Japanese novel about the erosion of the mind and the spirit and the morality, an unusual love story, and a story of an unexpected enlightenment.

Dreamsongs: A Retrospective by G.R.R. Martin. A retrospective of a famous writer, starting with his early, not-so-good works, and following his career. A huge book mostly filled with compelling stories. After reading it, I came to the conclusion that his A Song For Lya is still one of the most beautiful stories ever, and that, as much as I find A Song of Ice and Fire fun, his science fiction Sandkings are much, much better.

Master of the Day of Judgement by Leo Perutz. This novel is from 1923, and on the surface, it's your typical murder-in-the-locked-room story, with fantastical elements thrown in. It's also a masterfully written novel, with the flawless rhythm and the fantastical images which stay with you long after you've finished it.

Dying Inside, by Robert Silverberg.

Old Masters by Thomas Benrhard. The old misanthrope at his best -- and with the ending which will make you roar in laughter.

Overall, I did read some great books in the last year, I just hope I'll be able to read even more.

Have you read something great?

Wishes Do Come True

2012-01-04T15:40:00.002+01:00

Wishes do come true.

Yesterday I've read this post, and it inspired me to say something on the subject of the wishes.

Wishes do come true.

There's a catch, though. They don't come true out of the blue; you do have to do some work. You also have to be careful what you wish for.

My wish was to be able to survive from writing. I was told it was impossible to do in Serbia, small country, small language, there's no money in it... And yet, I've managed to do exactly that. For seven years, I've been writing for a living (it ended about a year ago). My wish did come true.

However, there was work involved. When choosing University, I've chosen to study dramaturgy (writing for theater, for television, screenplays...), because, at the time, it was the only place in my country where I could learn about writing, where I would be required to write and the professors and other students would read it. In terms of money, it was not a profitable choice; in terms of later employment, it almost guaranteed I would stay unemployed. But writing was my wish.

After getting my diploma, it was working this and that, applying here and there, until I started getting contracts to write. When I did start getting contracts, since the pay was low, it meant I had to write a LOT. Day after day, week after week, month after month. If I wanted to go to a vacation, no problem -- I just had to write all that stuff in advance (think being required to write about 100 articles per month, every single month, and doing it in considerably less than a month if you wanted to go to a vacation). But hey, my wish to write for a living did come true.

That is, my wish to be able to survive from writing -- now we come to the be careful what you wish for part. I was able to survive, yes. If I worked as much as I said, I was able to survive. There was no getting rich, popular, famous, there was surviving.

I'm not complaining. I got my wish, and I loved it. I didn't want to get rich, famous, popular, I just wanted to be able to survive from writing, and that is exactly what I got.

So I can tell, from my own experience, that wishes do come true. It's not easy, and the outcome of the wish might surprise you, but they do come true, and give you a great ride.

Pics Or It Didn't Happen

2012-01-03T13:08:00.000+01:00

To take a photo or not?

I know people who take their cameras wherever they go. Sometimes I get the wish to do the same -- hey, who knows, I might run into something great and regret not having my camera with me! -- but, in most cases, feel too lazy to actually do it. It's not that my camera is big or heavy; while it's not one of the fancy thin ones, it's not a big huge pro thingy either. It's just that, big or not, it can feel like a burden, and taking photos can be way too distracting from truly experiencing things. It even happens that I do take my camera with me, and then don't use it.

I know people who feel, if they go somewhere, they must see and photograph absolutely everything there, otherwise they feel like they haven't really seen the place. It could be a generational thing, since all the people I know who feel that way are at least seven years younger than me, but for me, it's the opposite: if I photograph everything, I feel like I haven't really seen it, because too much of my attention went to making good photos and too little went to experiencing it.

On our first trip to Egypt, Significant Other and I made tons of photos, some great, some mediocre, some lousy; it was our first trip abroad together, and our camera was brand new, so it was all a novelty for us. In that one case, making tons of photos didn't feel like too much of a distraction, it was a shiny new thing and a part of the experience. On our later trips, making so many photos wasn't such an exciting new thing anymore, so we didn't do it, and we never regretted not doing it.

Don't get me wrong: I do love making interesting photos, and sometimes I will take my camera with me and try to capture something funny, pretty, informative, or in other way interesting. But most of the time, I leave my camera at home, and just enjoy experiencing things.

Pics or it didn't happen? It did happen, whether I have a photo to show or not; and if I didn't make photos, I might be remembering it better than if I did.

How do you feel about taking photos and about Pics or it didn't happen way of seeing things?

Long Blog Posts

2012-01-02T14:09:00.000+01:00

Most of the time, I can't make myself read long blog posts. C'mon, people, keep it short and to the point, is it that difficult to do? Granted, some subjects require long posts to be properly addressed (no, what someone ate for lunch (without providing a recipe for something really interesting and yummy) or what they feel like eating or how they went to the bathroom with all the details doesn't fall into that category), but quite often, people just get lost in their train of thought, or fill up the post with various things, each one of them interesting by itself, but too long when put together.

It could be that my attention span isn't what it used to be. It could also be that, when tired after work, I have no patience for long blog posts. If I want to read something long, it's going to be a book. Or, it could be that sometimes (most of the time, to be honest) I'm not in the mood for a long post.

Unless it's as beautiful as Amanda Palmer talking about her and Neil Gaiman's wedding. And no, dammit, I'm not saying this because it's about a wedding and I'm a female. Go see for yourself -- it's a beautiful post whether you care for weddings or not.

How do you feel about long blog posts?

Holiday Plans

2012-01-01T13:26:00.000+01:00

Forget the plans, just enjoy!

Do you make plans for the holidays?

I've seen people make tons of completely unrealistic plans for holidays. Even before the holidays start, there's this urge to prepare tons of food, more than all of you celebrating could possibly eat (and then there's later the pain of the food thrown away), to clean the house to the point of making it sterile, to decorate it, to buy gifts, to make plans, to... You know what I'm talking about, you've been there.

And then, for the holidays themselves, there are plans to visit all the dear people whom we don't otherwise have time to see, to finally read War and Peace and the rest of 5 million books we meant to read but didn't have time to actually do it, to watch all the series and movies and whatnot we didn't have time to watch... The holiday times, which are supposed to give us some rest, become the most stressful time, and we can't wait to get back to work, into our comfy routine, and get some true rest. Sort of.

And the holidays come. The dear people turn out not to be truly eager to see us, they have other plans (they said they would do it, but you have to hunt them with a lasso if you want to actually see them, which kind of ruins it), we don't really feel like reading or watching (we've been having too much of that for work), we don't feel like doing anything -- and then there;s this guilt for not using the holiday time for all that great stuff we don't otherwise have time for. The guilt we're wasting our time.

Except that we're not wasting it. If resting and staring at one spot or sleeping or generally doing nothing is what we need, then it's not a waste of time to do exactly that. On the contrary -- we're using the time to do what we need most, and there's no better use than that.

So, maybe I'm not going to finally finish River of Gods during holidays. Maybe I'm not going to see the third season of Misfits and all the other cool stuff I wanted to see. And I have no idea where my lasso is (oh, wait, I don't even have one). Or maybe I'm going to change my mind and watch some of it, read some of it. Either way, it's fine.

It really is.

Happy holidays!

My 2011

2011-12-31T16:23:00.001+01:00

I did some work before I fell asleep, really!

This has been a tricky year for me. At the very beginning of it, I was left without job; not only was I left without my income (which wasn't much to begin with, but still better than nothing), I was also no longer writing for a living. Although, truth be told, I was more concerned about the income.

Some start of a year.

A friend helped me, she found a guy who needed a book translated from Croatian to English, a crime novel. I've never translated an entire novel before that, but hey, there's a first time for everything, and I made it. After that, a publishing house hired me to translate Graceling by Kristin Cashore and City of Glass by Cassandra Clare. More work, yay! And then, there was translating The Man from the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman with a killing deadline -- a new challenge, and a great experience; I'll be translating another book by Mr Newman, the one which nobody dared to publish.

So, within a year, I have translated four books -- is it good, bad, average? I'm not sure.

I've also managed to finish a short story collection (ghost stories), I hope it will get published sometime next year.

Not to forget: I've written some reviews for Suite101, and one of those reviews helped a book get translated into Polish. I'm really proud of that.

All the time, there's the economy crisis (although, there's always some sort of a crisis here), lousy health mostly due to stress (both me and SO).

Did I do well this year? Or bad? Something in the middle? I don't know, but we survived. I guess that counts for something.

What was your year like?

Christmas Fun

2011-12-23T21:00:00.000+01:00

It happens: you see something, hear something, experience something, and then, there's this thing which is just not the same anymore.

It doesn't have to big, and it doesn't have to be serious. It can be a silly song by Lady Gaga, a song which makes you wonder just how drunk, stoned or whatever someone must be to think of it, and then to actually record it.

And now, whenever I think of Christmas, I can't help but think of that song too.

In case you haven't heard it yet, there it is -- I hope it will give you a laugh. Merry Christmas (I'm a bit early, I know)!

Friday Fun -- Snakes!

2011-12-16T18:57:00.000+01:00

Holding a boa for the first time...

Snakes are adorable. Well, at least some of them. About two months ago, I had a chance to hold a snake for the very first time, and it was a great experience. You can see the snake -- it's a rainbow boa named Kali -- on the pictures. You can see me grinning like an idiot too. :) I was fascinated to find out that Kali needs to eat only once in two weeks, and could survive for an entire year without any food.

Kali is two, maybe two and a half years old, about a meter long, and pretty much used to people. She belongs to a friend, and the friend's six-year-old granddaughter simply adores Kali and loves holding her. Kali doesn't complain, either; as I said, she's used to people, and doesn't mind being held.

...and very much loving it.

For the end, there's some snake fun -- if you have kids, they might love this one.

Of Zen, Health and Lily Allen

2011-12-12T09:06:00.000+01:00

Zen can improve your health. So can cats.

There's this virus going around where I live, giving trouble to everyone; combine it with a lot of work, and there's almost no way of avoiding it. There was a bit of luck in all that; the publisher told me he decided to delay the publishing of the book I'm currently translating for a little, meaning I had more time to translate it, meaning I could actually allow myself to be sick and not work for as long as I can keep my eyes open.

During that pause, I've read The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk by D.T. Suzuki. It's a short book, and a quick read; and yet, it's so full of information. It starts from the moment a monk gets refused at the door, goes through the acceptance, the work, the service, the humility, the koan the monk receives, the meditation, the rules everyone has to obey... And a lot more. The book is also filled with naive, and yet so lovely, illustrations by another Zen Buddhist monk, showing all the phases of a monk's life and the instruments used in Zen Buddhism. Such a simple book, and a wonderful read. And it helped me feel a bit better and do some more work. The feel-better didn't last for all that long, but hey, every bit helps, and I have no doubt I'll recover eventually.

Lately, I've been listening to some Lily Allen songs, and for some reason, the one bellow, if you pay attention to the lyrics, went quite well with the book.

FENTON!!!

2011-12-04T17:20:00.000+01:00

When the Nyan cat first came out on YouTube, it was fun -- and it was even more fun as everything and everyone got "Nyaned". It seems a similar thing is happening now, only this time it's a dog, not a cat -- and a real live dog at that.

In case you haven't heard of it yet, the story behind it is this: a father and a son went to a park to film some red deer. The deer were not tame, but were used enough to humans in the park they wouldn't automatically run away either. Well, they wouldn't run away from humans, as you can see in the first few seconds of the video below -- but they would run away, and in a stampede, if there was a dog chasing them. The dog's name is Fenton, and the unfortunate fellow running after him and yelling is the proud owner. The father and son from the beginning of the story put the video they were making on YouTube, and the proud owner instantly became the "Fenton Jesus Christ Guy". And immediately after that, plenty of stuff got "Fentoned" -- if there's a stampede or a fuss, you can be certain Fenton is behind it, while the unfortunate owner yells after him.

The best two "Fentoned" videos I found were Jurassic Park and the subtitled Hitler scene (though only about the first half of the latter is really fun, after that they start overdoing it).

Enjoy!

Forty Days -- Protect Yourself From Vampires!

2011-11-22T20:58:00.000+01:00

The vampires from the Serbian folklore don't look like this.

Last night I watched a short documentary in Serbian called Forty Days. It was a fascinating insight into Serbian folklore.

According to the old custom, after a person dies, the soul stays around for forty days -- it's normal. The soul revisits the favorite places and watches over the family (often coming into the dreams of the oldest members) and, if it was a good person while alive, makes no trouble and peacefully leaves after 40 days, to unite with the older ancestors so all of them watch over the family.

However, if the person was bad -- a thief, or, the worst, a murderer, those 40 days don't go quietly, the soul gives the trouble all the time, and the deceased might raise as a vampire.

The vampire of the Serbian folklore is neither sparkly nor a creature of the Anne Rice novels. They're not pale, either -- they're very red, from all the blood they've taken, and swollen from it, too (swollen like a tick). If the wife of the vampire is still alive, he might keep visiting her, even getting her pregnant (that was one of the explanations as to how a widow could become pregnant and have a baby). The vampires are prone to revisiting their old homes, but also other homes, looking for food and/or women. They also pester people, cause them trouble, blood-drinking being only one of them.

If the trouble starts in the village the vampire is from, people figure out what's happening and start looking for the vampire's grave, to dig him out and to destroy the body. However, the vampire of the Serbian folklore doesn't mind the sun (they usually appear between the midnight and the dawn, but sunlight does them no harm), so they can travel far enough -- which is, to some other village, where nobody knew them while alive so nobody knows they've died. There they start new lives, it is possible for them to marry again and to have children. The jobs they usually take are that of a butcher or a blacksmith -- the things associated with the unclean or the underworld.

If you listen to the old, old stories, those telling them know a lot which is unfamiliar to you; for example, you can listen to a story about a hero solving many problems in order to achieve whatever, and then the last trouble comes, the hardest one -- he gets into a village full of butchers. And if you don't know this part about the vampires, you have no idea why would a village full of butchers, other than being a bit unusual and not very logical, be a problem, let alone the most difficult part.

Those old stories can be quite contradictory; the neighboring villages can tell different, even contradictory stories, and even the stories themselves can be self-contradictory. An example: a vampire can leave his old village and become a butcher, a blacksmith or the like. On the other side, one of the best defenses against a vampire is a sharp object (not necessarily a stake and not necessarily made of wood), they are afraid of them and tend to avoid them. A butcher or a blacksmith who stays away from sharp objects, tools included? And there's no solving this; too many of the old stories are lost, not much is written (there's more than enough for a life-time study, but not enough to fill in the holes), and the villages are dying. Pretty soon, there will be nobody left to tell those stories, nobody who remembers them. A pity, really.

We heard all that, and more, in that 20-minutes documentary. It was fascinating, really -- and there's so, so much more.

BusyBusyBUSY!

2011-11-08T20:26:00.000+01:00

I actually enjoy having a lot of work.

When it's raining, it's pouring.

Yesterday was my birthday. In the morning, I did the laundry. I spent the entire day translating, except for a pause to get some groceries and another to make a quick meal in a microwave.

At the end of the day, I was barely able to look, because of the all-day translating -- and I guess it will be like that until I finish it, which will take some time.

I look tired and I feel tired and I can barely keep my eyes open, and yet, I'm not complaining. I can rant about having a lot to do (although I prefer actually doing it), but I don't feel bad. I like being busy, and it's not just because it pays the bills, and not even just because I enjoy translating this particular book; it's because I enjoy being busy like this, it's a challenge and it's keeping me occupied and there's this good feeling of accomplishing something worth accomplishing. Know the feeling?

Anyone else feeling this way when working?

The Great Belgrade Book Fair, Part III

2011-10-31T20:07:00.000+01:00

Jelena Đurović signing her book

Sunday was the official last day of the Belgrade Book Fair, but my last day there was Friday -- there was too much work after that.

My intention was to go to the promotion of the 30. februar novel by Jelena Đurović; she's a colleague dramaturgist, and also a young politician trying to make things better. Unfortunately, I was late, and only got to the end (public transportation, what can I say); I still managed to make some pics of the promotion, and to get my copy signed.

After that, I went to another promotion; it partially overlapped with the first one, but I managed to see a part of it; it was about a new edition of Goran Skrobonja somewhat cult horror novel Nakot (it translates to The Spawn, it's a hard-core horror about a bunch of monstrous babies being born and overtaking the world), and also about the Naked Heat by "Richard Castle". Other than being a writer and a translator, Mr. Skrobonja is also a publisher, and the talk was about his editions and some of his publishing plans; it wasn't mentioned there, but those plans include The Man from the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman which I'm translating right now (yay, working again! darn British slang and the wardrobe from the seventies and the writer who pays much more attention to what people are wearing than I do! still, the book is great, it will be really hard work because of the very short deadline, but hey, it's fun!).

Then there was some more walking through the Book Fair, buying a few more books (the already mentioned Naked Heat, The River of Gods by Ian McDonald, The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk by D.T. Suzuki, and something else I can't remember right now), and seeing some nice people, fellow writers promoting their stuff and signing their books. One of them was Mr. Aleksandar Tešić, the author of Kosingas - The Order of the Dragon and its two sequels. His publishing house brought some knights to entertain the audience (well, they're not really knights, they're a society for preservation of the old Serbian skills and arts, and a part of it is training with the equipment the real Serbian knights of old were using -- when they went for a walk, I tried the sword, and I can tell you it's quite heavy, and so is the chain-mail; it really takes a lot of strength and stamina to be able to move in that all day and then take part in battles, and the guys from the Society go and have tournaments in it; the girls usually just wear those pretty medieval dresses, but there's one of them who fights with the guys).

Me with a sword (which I have no idea how to hold properly)

And so my last day at the Book Fair ended with me wielding a real sword, which is great; and I managed to do some business, that is, to get another translation to do (and a challenging book at that!), which is also great. The experience was somewhat tiresome because the Fair is so huge, but I loved it, and wish for more events like that.

The Great Belgrade Book Fair, Part II

2011-10-27T20:38:00.000+02:00

Belgrade Book Fair

The Belgrade Book Fair is too big to see everything and to get everything you want during the first visit, so I went again. This time, I didn't buy as many books, although I did buy some great ones:

Wittgenstein's Nephew and Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall by Thomas Bernhard - Bernhard is always good
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco - a new novel by Umberto Eco, should I say more?
Rechnitz by Elfriede Jelinek - a play by a Nobel prize winner
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson - again, should I say more?

The books I bought this time.

This time, I saw a bunch of schoolkids at the Book Fair; it is a tradition here for teachers to bring the schoolkids to this Fair -- they basically just let them loose at the Fair and pick them up at the appointed time, and it seems to work, the kids have a good time (one bookseller told me they were so cute, they wanted to but so many books, but never had money for any), and I've never seen them get into trouble or cause any.

Schoolkids coming to the Book Fair

I also managed to get money for an earlier translation -- the guy I translated a story for lives in another country, and he managed to send me money through his fellow bookseller who was at the Fair (he was hoping to come himself, but had an injury). I mentioned it to a friend who is a publisher, and we agreed that for us who have some business with books (as writers or translators or publishers or editors or a little bit of everything) it's impossible to be just visitors at the Book Fair, there's always business involved.

Overall, it was another pleasant visit to the Book Fair; I'll be going tomorrow again, mostly to attend some promotions -- and to bring you more pictures. I hope more people will come; while it's easier to move around if there isn't too much crowd, overcrowded Book Fair is somehow nice to see, not to mention it means better business.

And now for some more pictures:

You don't have to know Serbian to recognize this, do you? :)

Two girls taking a break.

A plenty of comic books and graphic novels, too!

Books!

There could be more visitors, though.

The Great Belgrade Book Fair, Part I

2011-10-25T21:20:00.000+02:00

The Great Belgrade Book Fair

The last week in October is a great time for every book lover in Belgrade, Serbia -- and not just in Belgrade, people from other cities and countries come too. It is the time of the Belgrade Book Fair. The big publishing houses are all present, but the Fair doesn't mean all that much to them, they have other ways of selling books. However, it is the time when the small publishing houses manage to earn some money (typically used to pay their debts), and thus survive in the market.

As for the readers, it is the time when they can find a lot of books from the domestic and foreign publishing houses, some of them rare and old and otherwise difficult to find, and the prices are lower than the usual.

And, you get to look at a lot of books at one place.

I went to the Book Fair yesterday and will probably be going again tomorrow and on Friday. I bought 8 books: 30. februar by Jelena Đurović (she is a former University colleague and the novel is part science fiction, part romance, part poitical satire), Vrtovi nestvarnog by Sava Damjanov (the title translates to The Gardens of Unreal, it is a book of essays about Serbian fantastic literature), All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, Goethe schtirbt by Thomas Bernhard (stories which haven't been translated to English yet), Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, Abraxas' Guide Down the Documentary Movie, 2nd edition by Bojan Pandža (weird, bizarre documentary movies, serial killers, Zeitgeist...), his blog is here, it's a great place if you want to download various interesting documentary movies), a book about No and Kabuki theater, and Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (a Russian urban fantasy). What made me very happy was finally getting my hands on my copy of another translation of mine, this one is a book of essays by Norman Spinrad, I translated two of them (two essays, not two Spinrads :) ).

Other than seeing a lot of books, which is always a joy, it's great to see dear people I know there -- and it happens every year, because we're all book lovers. One of them bought my book, which is another great thing; since we happened to be there at the same time, she got her copy signed.

Going to the Belgrade Book Fair was a great pleasure -- and there will be more of that pleasure in the days to come. I look forward to it.

My book is there!

P.S. If it doesn't seem crowded to you, it's because i went early, while most people are still at work; the big crowd comes later, making it difficult to see the books and sometimes even to move.

Here are some more pictures, just for you!

Portugal is the special guest this year.

Come back soon, there will be more!

Friday Fun

2011-10-21T20:51:00.000+02:00

I'm sure it's pretty obvious I like cats; I enjoy silly fun too, so of course I enjoyed this:

Everybody loves Nyan Cat, right? People love it so much they put the music, or the idea, wherever they can, like here:

However, being the geek I am, other than the original, this is my favorite Nyan:

I hope you had some fun with these cats! Thanks for dropping by!

Backup!

2011-10-19T22:35:00.000+02:00

Never forget the backup!

It looks like my computer is dying (I'm writing this from my netbook). The Windows won't start, and I have no access to my stuff there. Maybe I'll be able to save my data, maybe not; Significant Other will look into it.

And, you guessed it, I was an idiot enough not to do the backup.

Now, don't get me wrong: whatever was related to paying work (translation, editing and so on) is safe -- already sent where it should be, mostly payed for, and while I was doing that particular work, I was always careful to save it in more than one place. When it comes to work I get money for, I'm extremely careful.

But. My stories, the photos I took, some other stuff -- I made no backup of that.

It turned out I was pretty lucky: some other stuff I can get again, most of the stories were either already sent to my publisher as a short story collection (it also means I have them in the attachment of my sent mail) and some of them were published on my blog, so, if I can't retrieve my data, I'll lose one or two very short stories and some photos. Some of those photos were really nice, but it won't break my heart if I have to lose them; as for the stories, I might be able to write them again -- they wouldn't be exactly the same, but it's not the end of the world.

Still. I should have been more careful. I knew my computer was ancient and it was matter of time before something like this happened, and even if it wasn't, I should have saved important work -- and my writing is important, right? Right.

On top of all that, the flu refuses to leave either me or Significant Other (by the way, my computer decided to crash on his birthday), I can barely breathe, and this time flu managed to make my gums bleed. Ouch.

Rant over.

So, has it ever happened to you to forget the backup of the important (or not so important) stuff?

A Book and a Story

2011-10-14T17:17:00.000+02:00

A book and a story on the same day!

I received my copies of the translation of the Cassandra Clare's City of Glass today. It still feels great being able to hold my translations in my hands!

Also, it's Friday today, meaning Flash Fiction Friday's at Karen Wojcik Berner's blog -- and this Friday, my story Golden Eyes made it there. It's a Nightmare month over there, so if you're in the mood for it, go check it out!

Dying Inside

2011-10-12T18:54:00.000+02:00

Last night, while the darn flu bothered both me and SO, I have finished reading Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. It's a science fiction novel -- but also a beautiful book for everyone, whether you're into science fiction or not.

David Selig is a middle-aged telepath who is slowly losing his gift, and he feels like he's dying on the inside. It's not that he ever used telepathy for anything great; quite the contrary, he was using it to achieve his selfish goals, and since his ability showed him his fellow human beings as usually small-minded and petty and full of flaws, he rarely managed to really care about anyone. And yet, he can't stand losing it, because, since his early childhood, he defined himself as a telepath, and has no idea what to do with himself after it goes away.

Don't get me wrong: David Selig is not an evil man. He's just as small-minded as all those people he despises -- and he's also having difficulties overcoming his own flaws, which made him unable to reach out to people, which in turn made him very lonely, and he's very, very scared.

The novel goes back and forth in time (but never in a way difficult to follow), so we get to see David as an adult who's losing his ability, as a young adult who meets another telepath for the first time, as a misfit kid who wants to murder his adopted baby sister, as a young man falling in love and ruining it, while he's trying to make peace with his sister... Some episodes are hilarious; others read like poetry; and, even though it's a novel about a telepath, even though it can be read as a study about telepathy at its various stages, it can also be read as a novel about any of us slowly losing that one thing we believe defines us and trying to cope with it -- any of us, whether it's you or someone you deeply care for.

A beautiful novel, and well worth a try even if you don't usually read science fiction.

Enough Already!

2011-10-10T15:48:00.000+02:00

I've seen my dentist 6 times in the previous 2 weeks. It was routine, changing the old fillings in my teeth, putting one new filling, and cleaning the tartar on the teeth. Cleaning the tartar was somewhat painful for my gums, the rest was unpleasant, nothing more than that.

Except that I'm tired of people repairing parts of my body. I'm not afraid of doctors or of dentists, I don't have a dentist trauma to share (I do have a tiresome experience, but not a trauma), I'm just tired of the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong, my dentist is nothing like this:

Or this:

She's nice, quick and efficient. But, as I said, I'm tired of people finding something to repair on my body -- and, while she was cleaning the teeth tartar, she discovered another teeth that needed a filling. I'll have to go again, on Wednesday.

I was so hoping that the previous Friday would be my last visit to her for a long long time. *sigh* And if I ever put my dentist experiences in a story, it would be something quite uneventful.

Of course, I do hope that my dentist experience stays that way.

The Sound Was So Soft

2011-10-04T12:22:00.000+02:00

The sound of a car hitting a human body was so soft it was creepy.

The sound was so soft.

Last Thursday, I was going home after a book promotion. I was on the sidewalk of the one of the main streets of Belgrade, and I heard something on the street behind me. Not really noisy. I turned around to see a car more pushing than hitting a woman, and she fell to the ground.

The sound of it was so soft.

Seeing where the woman was -- several meters away from the pedestrian crossing -- I assumed she was too lazy to walk to the crossing and was instead running where she felt was convenient to her. People do it all the time. And I kept thinking how soft that sound was while the driver was getting out of the car.

Then I saw a spiderweb of the almost broken glass over half the windshield. And I realized she probably did use the pedestrian crossing, and the guy hit her, and carried her several meters on his car, and she fell off the car, and then he pushed her. That sound that made me turn around, that not-so-noisy, soft sound, was the sound of a car hitting a human body.

The cops happened to be just around the corner, so they arrived quickly. One of the pedestrians who were passing by, a woman, started to check out the body parts of the fallen woman; probably a doctor who happened to be around, or at least someone with some medical training. I saw that the woman who was hit could still move her legs, which meant neither the spine nor the neck were damaged -- at least not too bad.

The sound was so soft.

Both the cops and the doctor lady used their cell phones, my guess is that they called the ambulance, and since the call came from them, the ambulance actually arrived before someone died. The woman wasn't screaming or anything while they were moving her and taking her, and she was still able to move, so someone commented that she probably didn't break any bones. I hope he was right.

And through all of that, I kept thinking how soft the sound of a car hitting a human body was. So soft it was creepy.

I still think about it.

Friday Laugh

2011-09-23T15:45:00.000+02:00

Quite often, there are music videos I enjoy not because the music is great (although, the musicians are not tone-deaf), but because they make me laugh, for various reasons.

Here's one of them -- I guess it's pretty obvious from that one that I'm a geek.

Of course, there's always Weird Al when you need a laugh, and the next one is a wonderful play with stereotypes.

For the end, there's a really funny one, although one young woman complained it would give her nightmares, even though she almost fell from her chair laughing. Oh, and please, please don't eat or drink while watching the last one, I really don't want you to choke or to spill hot coffee all over yourselves.

I hope you had some fun here!

Parents Influence Their Children

2011-09-21T15:00:00.000+02:00

The cub will be influenced by this.

When I create my story characters, I start with the parents. I go even more in the past if necessary, but the parents are a must, whether they actually appear in the story or not. If asked how to make the story character seem real, I'd suggest: "Start with the parents."

We all are who and what we are partly due to our parents. I'm not saying we're just like them; in many cases, we're not. People can become this or that in spite of their parents, not just because of them -- but one way or another, their parents will have some influence on them.

What if they're orphans? What if their grandparents or relatives brought them up? What if they were taken away from their parents because they were criminals? What if they grew up in a foster home, or an orphanage, or on the streets? The lack of the parental presence influences people just as much as the presence does -- the person won't be the same if they grew up with a loving mother and a loving father and if they grew up on the streets, looking up at their gang leader. It's also not the same if a human brought them up, or a pack of wolves, or if it was an alien family or an elven or a dwarf family.

I usually start at the moment the characters' parents first met. How did they meet? How old were they at the time, what were they doing, what were their hopes and dreams? How did they marry (if there was a marriage)? How did the pregnancy go, was it risky, was it difficult? Did the parents even want that child? What kind of childhood did that character have? What sort of relationship did they have with the parents? And so on, until I have the character's entire life story in my mind, starting at the moment their parents met.

I don't write all these things down. I often write none of them down, and most of them never even show up in the story, at least not directly -- but the result is there. And the result is a character you know almost everything about, starting from the time before they were even born -- and the readers will sense that, they will find your characters believable and will care about them. On top of that, you'll find the writing easier, because the picture of the character is so clear in your head (it could also mean the character won't always do what is convenient for the writer to do -- but hey, it's quite possible to adapt to that), and the whole thing doesn't take too much effort, just some daydreaming about the characters who refuse to leave your head anyway, so you might as well play with them.

Ouch

2011-09-17T18:33:00.000+02:00

I have written a bad story and survived it.

It happened to me, and I suppose it happens to every writer from time to time. And it hurts every darn time.

I have written a bad story. As in, really bad. And sent it to a writers workshop of kinds, the best stories from that particular round were supposed to be published in a family magazine, a legend I grew up with. As it happened, we all sent really bad stories. Now, most of the participants are not really writers, but I am -- and my story turned out to be the worst. Ouch.

It hurts. Acknowledging that I've written such a bad story hurts. Realizing I was clueless as to how bad it was hurts too -- why didn't I see it before I sent it? Or before it was even written? Plus, in the rare moments I show up in that workshop, I act arrogant more often than I should (I shouldn't be acting like that at all), and then I send a truly bad story.

The only good thing I did was accepting criticism with grace, asking for explanations and thanking for comments. No being defensive, no hissing fits. Good for me.

So, what do you do when something like that happens, when you feel ashamed because your story, for which you thought was somewhat cute, turns out to be bad?

I suppose I could work on that story and make a better one, but I'm not really interested in that particular story enough to do it. Or I could write something else, hope I do better this time, send it to someone whose judgement I trust, and see what happens.

That's what I did. I have written a story for Karen's Flash Fiction Fridays (the October one, with nightmares as a subject), and sent it to her, and she told me it was good and would appear on her blog.

Having someone with decades of experience as an editor tell you you wrote a good story after a fiasco sure feels good. It helps with moving on, with realizing that, yes, one of my stories was really bad, but I have written another, and it was good.

I've written a bad story and survived. I'm moving on and I still write and I still have good writing in me, and it feels good.

Holding My Book!

2011-09-10T12:33:00.001+02:00

Graceling by Kristin Cashore in Serbian edition, translated by me.

Well, not really my book, it's Kristin Cashore's Graceling, I just translated it. But it's the first book I translated and then got the chance to hold in my hands -- I've just received my copies. You can see on the picture what the book looks like in the Serbian edition. Holding your first published (not just awaiting-being-published-which-might-even-happen-someday) translation is so exciting, not as exciting as holding the book you wrote, but still, so I thought I'd share.

The Book Characters Are Not Real Life People

2011-09-09T18:12:00.000+02:00

Afternoon sun in the trees.

When I critique characters from someone's story, saying that their actions make no sense, I often hear: "Well that's what's it like in real life." On the other hand, people who tell me that often realize their story characters really don't work very well, and they ask me: "How do you do that? How do you make that character believable with one sentence only?"

This time I won't talk about making the story character believable with one sentence only; I'll talk about book (or story) characters not being real life people. The tree pictures have nothing to do with this, I just thought they looked pretty.

I can see these trees from my window.

So, once again: the book characters are not real life characters. You might know this really interesting guy who always wears two neckties at the same time, and be clueless as to why he does that; that's life. But if your protagonist (or any other book character) acts like that, you must state his reason for doing it, or at least acknowledge that nobody knows why he does it and nobody ever finds out. You can't just leave it be. Otherwise that character won't be believable, and you will appear a writer who can't define their own characters well.

While it's impossible to define a tree, it's necessary to define your story character.

If book characters are not real life characters, what are they? They're constructs. That's why you have to make them so carefully. It can give you a lot of trouble, because if you create them well, they might refuse to do what you need them to do - they might tell you: "Wait a minute, there's no reason for me to do that!', and you would have to admit they were right. On the other hand, it can also give you a lot of freedom, because if you give them a good enough reason, and if that's how you create the world you place them in, they'll be able to do what a real life character never would. They will fly. They will move mountains. They will know when to reply with a witty comment and when to stay silent. And they will lead you, their own creator, to ideas and worlds you never thought you could come up with - because, even though they're constructs when we look at them from our side, in their own worlds they're real, and can guide you through them.

Once you're done, you can just look at the pretty trees.

And when you get tired, they will take your hand and lead you to sit under a pretty tree, to daydream of the new adventures and the new worlds to come.

Coffee Photo Revolution

2011-09-03T14:25:00.000+02:00

You can read all about Bella's Coffee Photo Revolution here, and this is my contribution.

I usually use this:

However, this morning I used this one:

And this is what it looks like inside:

Nothing fancy, I'm afraid - fancy requires milk in various shapes, and milk and me don't agree so well. What you see inside is Nescafe Gold with brown sugar and with some cinnamon on top.

Thanks for dropping by!

Why Are His Lips Black?

2011-09-02T16:05:00.000+02:00

The train of thought can be such a strange thing... There I was, drinking my morning coffee, and I couldn't help but thinking of this silly song:

And that, in return, reminded me of something else.

Now we go back in time, to the moment when I was four or maybe five - no more than five - and saw a man of African descent for the first time (there are not many of them where I live, and back then, there were even less of them, it was just a small number of foreign students and of diplomats). His appearance puzzled me, so I asked my parents, aloud: "Why are his lips black?"

You see, while both of my parents were white, my father was very white and stayed that way, he could get horrible sunburns and barely ever tanned; on the other hand, my mother was a half-Greek, and she tanned easily, and a lot; during the summers, she'd look like a gypsy. So, when I saw this man, I thought he just spent a lot of time in the sun and tanned even more easily then my mother - but if that was the case, why were his lips black? My mother's lips never changed color, no matter how much she tanned.

Of course, my parents silenced me, and looked around to see if the man heard me and if he was offended. He didn't seem to notice.

Some time later, I was looking into a picture book for children, and there was this picture of a black boy and a white girl playing together on a beach. And I said to my father that the boy must have spent a lot of time in the sun. It was then that he explained it to me that some people were born black like I was born white. I was like 'Oh", and that was it.

Fast-forward now. I'm twelve or thirteen, and talking to my best friend, like girls talk about this and that. And she tells me, "Imagine how stupid I was when I was little, I asked my dad if a black man could become white after being washed with a detergent!" We both laughed after that silly idea, and i told her about my first question about a black guy, and we laughed some more.

Now when I think of it, both of her parents were very white and barely tanned. And they were both a bit on the obsessed side when it came to cleaning, everything had to be clean and shiny. So her assumption was as logical as mine was, in its own way.

Fast-forward some more. We're both in our early twenties now, still friends, still talking about this and that. It was quickly after the Belgrade marathon, a sports manifestation attracting many runners, some of them of the African descent. Part of their route went through the street I lived in, so I could watch them from my window, which I did, and mentioned to my friend sometime later that the black runners looked really good. Then she told me she didn't really like black people. I was puzzled by that, since neither of us actually knew anyone of African descent - how can you dislike (or like, for that matter) someone you don't even know? And she told me they reminded her of filth. She was well aware it was irrational, and it's not like she would ever be rude to or harm a person of African descent just because of their origin, it was just how she felt about them.

I asked her what if I married a black guy someday, and had black kids with him, would she see my children as filthy? She was honestly surprised by the question, and said of course not, they would be my children, she could never see my child as filthy.

Huh.

It's so weird, how some small things we rarely or never think of, can form our opinions, and influence our way of thinking and seeing the world and the people in it.

A Cosmetics Appreciation Post

2011-08-31T16:15:00.000+02:00

The scent of the Godiva solid shampoo is simply amazing.

I don't use make-up. I rarely even think about cosmetics - about any kind of it. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are cosmetic thingies which are so adorable that they manage to grab my attention, and then refuse to let it go. One such thingy is Lush's Godiva solid shampoo.

I bought that one for the first time a few years ago. It's like a soap in your hand; you use it quite easily, as if washing your hair with a soap. It's easy to apply and easy to rinse; since it's both a shampoo and a conditioner, you don't need a conditioner later on, unless your hair gives you a lot of trouble without very special products. If you have to, you can wash your body with this solid shampoo too; in the times of need, it's also good for hand-washing small, delicate pieces of clothing.

All of it is very practical, but that's not what makes Godiva so special. It's the scent.

On the catalog, they say it's the scent of jasmine. And it is, but not just jasmine; and whatever it is, it's divine. I kid you not. It's wonderful while you wash you hair; afterward, the scent is so amazing you wish to run your fingers through your hair and smell them - do I sound like a pervert now?

I remember washing my hair with it a few years ago, and then going out. After a while, the rain started, a heavy rain. My hair got all wet - and then I felt the intense scent of Godiva. It was so wonderful that I wished I could keep my hair wet all the time. And since it was a silly idea, I kept hoping for the rain to fall in order for my hair to get wet again, which was even more silly. I'll have to put this amazing shampoo in a story sometime - you know, a heroine using it one way or another, just a routine thingy, nothing over the top.

Today I bought the Godiva solid shampoo again (that's what inspired me for this post), but not for me; I bought it for a friend whose birthday will be soon (you can see it on the picture above). She likes Lush products, and I hope she'll enjoy this one too.

Anyway, am I the only one getting silly ideas when it comes to cosmetics?

We Got to Install Microwave Ovens...

2011-08-30T17:29:00.001+02:00

Yesterday evening, we got ourselves a microwave oven for the first time (where we live, many people prefer good old-fashioned stoves and ovens, and up until recently, microwave ovens were way overpriced and simply not worth it unless you really can't live without one). We spent the evening experimenting with it (my SO was preparing food - it turned out pretty good - and I was cleaning afterward), but today morning, my mind started to work in another direction: that of a writer.

The first thing I looked up in the microwave oven instructions was how to prepare coffee, and while I was preparing it, I thought of a story or a book character. The first thing she does when she gets up is make a Nescafe in a microwave oven. It's like a gesture, like someone grabbing for cigarettes and a lighter as soon as they open their eyes in the morning; only after she had her coffee, her mind starts functioning. It's then that her day starts.

Except for that one thing, I don't know anything about her; but with that one thing, she seems so clear in my mind. I don't know whether I'm ever going to actually write about her; right now, while she does seem clear, I don't know her story yet. But this post isn't about her, not really. It isn't about microwave ovens, either.

This post is about a small thing which sparks a new character or a story idea or, sometimes, even a novel idea into life. It can start so small, and can end up pretty big - and if you're a writer, such a thing can happen anytime, with next to anything and everything.

So, what was the last small thing giving you an idea for a character, or a story, a scene, a plot, a book?

For the end, something not quite related: because of the line from the title of this post, this song keeps going on in my head.

That Darn Song

2011-08-29T17:21:00.000+02:00

It happens to all of us: a song gets into your head and refuses to get out. The main thing about that song is that it's catchy; you don't have to like it - and if you happen to hate that particular song, it's even more annoying if it keeps pestering you.

But it's not always something you hate. Sometimes it's smart and very amusing and yes, catchy, like this one:

I don't mind that one being in my head all the time. On the contrary; it keeps amusing me.

However, sometimes it's somewhat amusing, but not so much that I'd want to listen to it over and over again, like this one (and keep in mind that I do like Weird Al):

Now, what do you do when a song refuses to get out of your head? As a writer, I tend to use writing when something - anything - refuses to get out of my head. And, a few years ago, I wrote a story about a song refusing to get out of a young woman's head - a song which turned out to be a sort of a parasite, seeking to mate and to make a new song.

The story was entertaining, even if I say so. :) And it was a great fun writing it. But it didn't help; the unwanted song (I no longer remember which one it was) was still in my head. The writing, it turned out, wasn't a cure for everything.

The only cure I found for a song refusing to leave my head is listening to another song, just as catchy, but more powerful, and a beautiful one. Like this:

I hope you enjoy the cure as much as I do!

Between Projects, What's That?

2011-08-26T18:34:00.000+02:00

I'm always working on something, even if it doesn't look like that.

Saying I'm between jobs usually means we're unemployed, while saying I'm between projects usually means we're not working on anything right now. But, if you're a writer and a translator like me, how can you ever be between projects? That is, how can you ever be in the position of doing nothing?

True, I'm not working on any translation right now. But that leaves me time for writing, the same writing the translating often left me too tired for. And so I write. While I won't get money worth mentioning for what I'm writing now (the situation here is a disaster, writers often get paid in copies of their books instead of getting cash), I do hope to get a new story collection published, and hey, having a book published is always great. Not to mention I might find a way to also earn some cash for it.

I wrote three short stories today, and now I have enough of them for a nice collection, and I've also written all the stories on the subject (ghosts in every meaning of the word - there are cat ghosts, dog ghosts, a smilodon ghost among the others, and a ghost town, and ghosts of children never born...) I wanted to write, which leaves me with a sense of fulfillment, of a job done. Sure, I need to edit all of them now, but the majority of the work on this collection is done.

Also, while between projects as far as translating is considered, I've translated an old story of mine originally written in English and sent it to a contest for an anthology; if it gets accepted, it will be in a vampire-themed anthology published in Serbian, Romanian and English. And I've written and sent a story to a contest for stories for the most legendary family magazine around here.

After doing all of these stories, am I between projects? No. I need to edit my ghost story collection, I should also work on another collection, and I could also translate my stories to English and try and sell them abroad.

While I'm doing that, at one point or another, there will be another translation to work on.

So please, if you're into writing like me, can you tell me what's this between projects about?

Almost Done

2011-08-06T16:58:00.000+02:00

Ah, the feeling of almost done. We all feel it sometimes, and I’m feeling it these days, the sweet anticipation of almost getting there, knowing I will get there, and the relief and the fulfillment of it soon to be completed.

Not so long ago, I was almost done with the reading of the Kafka’s The Castle. For some reason I don’t understand, it took me quite a while to read that book – as a matter of fact, I’ve read several other books while being troubled by that one. And then, the end of the book got near, and it felt good.

The translation of the City of Glass: almost done. The translation itself is over, actually, but there’s still work to be done, proofreading and finding the already existing translations of the quotes of Shakespeare, T. E. Lawrence, Coleridge… On a side note, it turned out that the librarian who never heard of Catullus or Milton also doesn’t know how to use the library computer properly – she told me the library had no Milton, and another librarian immediately found me Paradise Lost (that other librarian isn’t all smiles like the first one, but she knows her job, which is what I’m looking for in a librarian – I asked her for Coleridge, and she went straight to the shelf where the book was supposed to be, without looking like a puppy on a busy railway station).

As I said: the translation is almost done, and with this somewhat longish book, I cannot even begin to describe what a relief it is.

And then, there are the short story collections I’m working on. I need just a few more stories for one of them – the stories I write are very short, so that’s another thing almost done. And a good thing, at that.

I thought of doing something today – I’d certainly make a pause with the translation work, I always make it between the translation itself and the proofreading, but I thought of working on one of the books. However, it turned out I was too darn tired for it, so I’m getting some rest, drinking some green tea (the one with a beautiful golden-green color), doing some beauty rituals (everyone needs them!), and watching that pretty and interesting tree you can see on the picture.

Tree watching is always pleasant.

So, how about you? Is there something you’re almost done with right now?

Milton Who?

2011-07-08T18:13:00.000+02:00

Who is this Milton you talk about? - photo by David Kessler

Today I went to the library to return the books I've read (all of them from the previous post, except for Kafka's The Castle), and to take some new ones; some of them I need for the translation I'm currently doing, Paradise Lost and Catullus are quoted there, and I have no wish to invent hot water if the translation of those works to Serbian already exists, and it does.

The librarian I encountered was the same one who wondered if I could read 6 books in 20 days and who loves romance novels and Twilight. Oh, and to whom I had to show where George R.R. Martin's books were on the shelf. But hey, I was looking for classics, librarians know about classics, right?

Wrong.

The first one I tried was Catullus. Poems by Catullus. She had no idea who Catullus was, I had to spell out the name to her so she could check it in the library computer. She doubted there was such an author in the library, and even when she found his name in the catalogue she was still not certain, but, since the numbers told her exactly where the book was, she was able to find it. Yay. I told her I was doing a translation and some Catullus was in it and that's why i needed this book. She looked at me, puzzled, and said: "But this is in Serbian!"

The next one I was looking for was Paradise Lost. I told her the title and the author, just in case, still somehow sure that, even if she had no idea who Catullus was, she would certainly know Milton. Come on, everybody knows Paradise Lost and Milton and that wonderful Satan he created!

Both the title and the author were unknown to her. She typed the title into the computer and came up with no results (it's a small library, it's possible for them not to have every classic). I don't guarantee she typed the title right, though. Then she asked me for the name of the author, to try that way. Milton, I said. John Milton. Still no recognition, but she checked it out. Nope, no Milton in this library.

So, I came back home with Poems by Catullus and three other books; I'd say those three were for pleasure while Catullus was for work, but hey, it's all pleasure. I also did a good deed and told the librarian where the books I returned (Hamsun, Loe, Svendsen, Petterson ) were supposed to stand. She commented on me reading so many Scandinavian authors - of course, she commented after I told her they were on the shelf right next to her desk, with Scandinavian authors.

Don't get me wrong, she really is a very nice lady, and she really does try to help, and her not knowing where the books stand in the library she works in isn't too much of an issue for me since I mostly find them by myself anyway, but, aren't people supposed to know a bit more about the jobs they're performing? Even if it's not some life-saving job, like a doctor?

Oh well, I got some of the books I needed, and the situation wasn't life-threatening by any means. Some similar experiences, anyone?

Summer (What Summer?) Reading (A Bookpile Post)

2011-06-30T18:09:00.000+02:00

The weather is killing me.

Summer? Seriously?

It's supposed to be summer, but you can see on the picture what it looks like these days. I can't properly wake up, my mind refuses to work, and on Twitter I read that my friends are experiencing similar problems, taking four hours just to wake up and then forgetting stuff at home, saying "Hi" to everyone and then going for a nap at 3 in the afternoon, and we're talking about young, healthy people here.

So, what I do mostly is read. Some time ago i went to the library again, and took seven books. The librarian was new, and didn't ask me whether I'd be able to read it; she seemed not to care one way or the other.

My new bookpile

The books in the pile, from the top to the bottom, are: Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Surfacing by Margaret Atwood, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Castle by Franz Kafka, A Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Fr. H. Svendsen, Muleum by Erlend Loe, and Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Hamsun, Svendsen, Loe and Petterson are Scandinavian authors, Kafka is German, Atwood is Canadian, and Adichie African. A wide variety, and so far a good pile of books.

The first one I read from the pile was Hunger, about a talented, but still unrecognized writer. Wait now, where have I seen that one before? Fante and Bukowski come to mind, but, while their protagonists were drinking and doing dumb things, the protagonist of Hunger is starving. Not being really hungry and managing to find something to eat, even if it's same old, same old; no, not eating for days, so he gets thinner and thinner, his hair falls off, he really, truly looks like a ruin. A very well written novel.

Then there was Out Stealing Horses, an old man coming to live in a distant part of Norway, wishing to be alone, to escape... Well, to escape himself, mostly. And there he remembers the summer when he was fifteen, had a friend he used to steal horses with (the "theft" was actually getting on neighbor's horses, riding them while imagining they were in the Wild West, and sending them back to the owner). As the novel progresses, the things become more serious. Something horrible, unforgivable happened to the friend right before they went to the horse theft. And "stealing horses" was a phrase used before, by the protagonist's father, during the resistance to the Nazis. And the protagonist's father and the friend's mother have a sort of a history together (no, not some cheap affair). And the protagonist, in his old days, meets someone he never expected nor wanted to meet again, and discovers it's actually a good thing.

With all this said, this short novel is quite easy to read, and gets you in its world pretty quickly.

After that, there was Muleum by Erlend Loe. The main character is 18-year-old Juliet from Norway who lost her entire family when a plane crashed. While she doesn't have to fight for physical existence - her family was rich, and she has lots of money - she has to find a reason to keep living, and she fails to do it. Juliet tries to kill herself, then travels the world, stays at the airports, hopes that the next plane she gets on will crash (and feels guilty because of all the other people who would die too), meets a Korean athletic star she likes... Although the subject is difficult, there's humor in the novel too, and there's some strength in this young woman as she seeks some sense after the family to whom the word "muleum" meant something is gone (one of the first words little Juliet spoke was "muleum", it was supposed to be "museum", but ever since then her family kept saying "muleum", it was like their family word). While what happened to Juliet is tragic, there's nothing pathetic in this novel, and it's quite an enjoyable read.

Then there was A Philosophy of Boredom. Svendsen writes in a clear, understandable style - you don't have to be a Philosophy major in order to understand his books. In this book, he explores the history of boredom (boredom as we know it today seems to be somewhat new), gives some examples in great literature about the consequences of boredom brought to the extreme, and, while he doesn't give an answer to the problem of boredom, he does give some suggestions.

Right now, I'm reading Surfacing. I'm still at the beginning, so all I can tell you is that it is about a woman who comes to Quebec to look for her father who just disappeared; she comes to an extremely, err, old-fashioned community (for example, a divorce is unimaginable there) she ran away from when she was younger, and isn't happy about it, but hey, her father disappeared, and she wants to know what happened.

Well, that would be it for now. And, for the end, and completely unrelated, here's a cat picture, because every blog needs one.

Every blog needs a cat picture.

Weird Much?

2011-06-19T09:47:00.000+02:00

Writing horror/fantasy/murder mystery is considered weird. photo by tassie.sim

I'm translating City of Bones, the third book of the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, into Serbian. Recently I've contacted the lady who translated the first and is translating the second book in the series to ask how she translated a few things, one of them being the Ritual of Infernal Conversion. It turned out we translated it the same, which made us giggle a bit - what were the odds?

Anyway, when I mentioned that to someone else, the reaction was like 'Ritual of Infernal Conversion, what is it you're translating?' While this reaction was a joke, it reminded me that things I enjoy reading/watching/writing are considered weird by many.

I enjoy SF/fantasy/horror, and many find it childish/creepy. Some of the stories I've written are quite creepy, and then some people come to the conclusion I'm creepy. Hey, I'm just writing that stuff! I don't have the heart to harm a cockroach even though I can't stand them, let alone anyone bigger than that!

A friend of mine, a very strong woman (talking about personality here) is considered immature by her mother because she reads (and writes) science fiction. Women see another friend of mine as a non-long-term relationship material because he enjoys reading and watching science fiction, fantasy and horror, and he also enjoys reading comic books (which some people see as something only children should be doing). Yet another friend, a writer of fantasy, is often considered to be someone with his head in the clouds, while he's actually a very down-to-earth person. I know of ladies who write murder mysteries and are considered scary because of that, as if they were murderers instead of writers. And then, of course, there are those who believe that reading itself is for children and the idle, not for serious people; or that being a writer means that you've got too much free time on your hands and are available to do the chores they're too lazy to do.

So, to all of you who might happen to read this, do they consider you weird because of the things you write, enjoy reading or watching?

Back Home

2011-06-12T09:18:00.000+02:00

It's been hectic.

Go sign the contract and get the money for the translation. Check. Go see the doctor (the results were good, yay!). Check. Go buy the bus ticket. Check.

Sea is always nice

And then, there I was, on the bus for Croatia, to visit my family. They live by the sea, which is always nice seeing. The water was too cold for swimming, at least for my taste - there were people in it. Not that it mattered; I enjoyed being by the sea, spending time with my father and my kid brother (twenty years younger than me and almost twice my size), and, being the workaholic I am, I also brought my netbook with me, read the books I intended to read, and started the work on the new translation.

A friendly dog, unless you're an intruder, or a dominant dog.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget Roko, my father's dog, now a senior canine citizen, age 14 (a year younger than my brother). His hearing and sight are poor now, but he still enjoys seeing me, and being petted and walked (not a long walk, though, he gets tired).

Roko and me; he doesn't care to pose.

And, after a 13-day-long trip, I'm back home, got some really good results from the doctor, I'm back to translating, and back to writing.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Getting Carried and Forgetting Goals

2011-05-24T14:16:00.000+02:00

Don't forget to see the forest, it's not just the trees! - photo by Kenneth Baruch

Being a writer and writing is wonderful; planning to try and survive from writing alone is also great. However, before that happens, we all need some other means of survival, that is, we need to do something and earn money. And, of course, there could also be health issues (ours or of someone we care for), there's purchasing groceries, doing laundry, cooking, and all the other household tasks which need to be done. It is very possible to get carried with one thing, such as finding a way to earn money, preferably by doing something you like, and to forget what was the goal: writing.

Sure, if I'm to be a writer, I need to stay alive, that is, to avoid starving to death, so earning money is important. And various other tasks do need to get done. But it's far too easy to get carried in numerous other things and to forget to write. To forget what was the main goal, and what was the big picture. Like not seeing the forest for the trees, all these trees you keep bumping into or avoiding them and forgetting there was actually an entire forest around you.

In January, I lost my regular income which I was earning by writing articles. A friend found me a novel to translate from Croatian to English, but that was only a temporary solution. Then I started translating for a publishing house - it was my first time to translate an entire novel from English to Serbian. I didn't know if I'd be good enough. I didn't know if they were going to like it - if they did, they might give me novels to translate on regular basis, but what if they didn't?

While translating, and doing various small tasks, and worrying, I was barely writing. And one day I realized that. The novel was almost translated. After a day's work of translation, I was tired. But I remembered I should be writing, remembered some ideas I had, and wrote some short stories.

Now I keep writing. I have some plans - a ghost story collection, a collection of Sf/fantasy stories about others and human relationship with what they perceive as the Other (Cold is one of those stories, only in Serbian version), and I'm also thinking about a third story collection, the one gathering all my stories about cats. And there's this idea about a non-fiction book about cats which went through my life.

I'm not writing all of that at once, but I am writing stories for the ghost story collection and for the Other collection. The third one will come out of these two and of my first story collection, the published one, and the non-fiction.... I'll write that one too, at some point.

Most important, I intend not to forget to write again. Because writing is my forest, and I want it to be a big, enjoyable one, not something that shrivels and dies. I'm not quite sure yet how I'm going to achieve that not-forgetting, but I'll do it.

And hopefully see a plenty of my books published.

Crazie

2011-05-22T13:16:00.000+02:00

The translation I was talking about in the previous posts went well; it was accepted, and I got another book to translate. A longer one, this time - I can't tell you what book it is, I'll just say it's the third in a YA urban fantasy series, and, according to Amazon, it's 560 pages long.

Now that will take a while.

My plan is, of course, to read that book before I start translating it. I also intend to read the first two books before I start translating the third one. And there's this book, about 700 pages long, that I've started to read, and which i intend to finish before I begin reading this YA urban fantasy series. That's about 2000 pages before i even start translating.

Now, do you think that such a plan means I'm too ambitious? Too confident of my abilities? Too optimistic? Or just plain crazy?

If nothing else, I'm going to have fun with it. And it's a great relief that things are doing well.

Completely non-related, but fun, is the Photoshopped pic of me, done by my SO. Judging from the picture, do I look weird? Maybe it's the hair. What do you think?

Do I look different to you?

Pirates, Zombies, Weird, Dreams and Songs and Castles (A Bookpile Post)

2011-05-11T12:53:00.000+02:00

Pirates, Zombies, Voodoo, Secret History, Yay!

Even though I haven't been feeling very well, I kept reading, and I found some quite interesting books.

Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami is the fourth book in the Rat tetralogy, and also the only book in the series translated into Serbian. Still, it wasn't too difficult to follow it, once I just accepted that there was some mysterious stuff happening in the previous books, and then there was some mysterious stuff happening in the Dance Dance Dance. Basically, it was about a one man's attempt to pull himself (and his life) together.

Then there was On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers; you can see the cover of the Serbian edition, done by Zeljko Pahek. The idea behind this book is fun: pirates, zombies, voodoo, loa, Blackbeard, Fountain of Youth, magic, adventures... In his usual manner, Powers writes a secret history, implementing magical events and explanations into things which really happened. The way Powers does it, everything has a logical explanation (involving voodoo and the rules of magic, but still logical), and everything fits. However, I have enjoyed other works by Powers more. One thing which annoyed me in On Stranger Tides were ship parts - yes, there are pirates, and ships, but if I'm going to read half a page about ship parts, and to read it every now and then, I'd like some explanation about those parts, what they do exactly, what's their function on the ship and so on. But no; even when we're told that the protagonist, Jack Shandy. has learned the difference between this and that type of rope, we're never told what the difference is. The other thing that annoyed me were the characters of Jack and Beth; Beth is a damsel in distress throughout the entire novel, she's there to be kidnapped and rescued and so on, she's pretty much helpless, and at the end she's the one saving the day; as for Jack, he used to be an accountant and a puppeteer, then was forced into becoming a pirate, and it turns out he's extremely talented with cannons (one previously undiscovered talent would be fine), and that he's extremely talented with all the sailor's work (we're not really told what sailor's work exactly involves, other than sailing and carrying heavy stuff, we're just told that Jack is talented in all of it).

Too bad, especially since I know that Powers can do so much better than this. The novel is still fun, but it could have been much better.

Then, Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. It's based on a real serial killer, and it's about a dude who fantasizes about having his sex-slave, a lobotomized teenage boy who would adore him and do whatever he wants him to do, so he goes around, kidnaps teenage boys and tries to lobotomize them at home (children, don't lobotomize people at home! And no, he's not a surgeon, he just read about lobotomy in a book). The story is told from this dude's point of view. A quick read, and an interesting one - assuming you can stomach it.

What's left on my bookpile at the moment are the second and the third books of Dreamsongs by George R.R. Martin, a retrospective of his work; it's quite an enjoyable read; and Gormenghast, the second book in the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervin Peak, a fantasy (sort of) trilogy where the main character is actually the Gormenghast Castle.That's about 1600+ pages, and I expect them to be an enjoyable read.

Keep Movin' (Romania, Here I Come, Part 2)

2011-05-06T19:06:00.000+02:00

Plans don't always turn out the way I intend them to. - photo by Ethan Hein

Plans. Gotta love them. While I never make strict plans, as in, writing from 9 to 13h, then cooking, then... I do normally have some sort of a plan for the day or the moth, the plan which looks like a bunch of things to do in the given period of time. And it goes with the assumption that I will be able to do all that in the given period of time, and we all know what they say about assumptions.

There I was, having a plan. I'll finish the translation, send it, and if the money comes quickly enough, I'll go and visit my family in Croatia, and get back in time for the appointment with my doctor.

Yeah, right.

I was having a cold for moths because the weather was terrible, the temperature kept going up and down and up and down and... But I was still able to work. I managed to finish the translation, and the only thing I had left before sending it was to proofread it. Then the cold got worse, it was so bad I was barely able to look. My eyes kept hurting, I could only read one or two sentences at a time. No way to proofread a translation of an entire novel with the eyes like that. So I had to rest for a few days, and what I intended to end on Monday or Tuesday I finished and sent today. In the meantime I also got an appointment with another doctor, and those two appointments mean I'll go to Croatia at the end of the month, instead in a few days.

Of course, it's not the end of the world. Croatia and my family won't run away, they will still be there when I get there, and they're happy to see me whenever I get the chance to come. Still, I had some sort of a plan. And that's what often happens to my plans, I manage, just not quite the way I planned.

However, something else also happened. My story, the one which was published on a Romanian website, was translated into Romanian, and if you speak the language, you can read it here. During the time I was barely able to look. And it's comforting, that knowledge that, once set in motion, things keep moving. I don't have to be there all the time and to keep pushing. Of course I should stick around and do something, from time to time at least, but things will keep moving, and that's a good thing to know. It's a good feeling.

So, what now? Now I wait to get the reply from the publisher I did the translation for (keep your fingers crossed for me so they like it!), then I go to see the doctors, then I go to see my family. And in the meantime, I do another translation, and hopefully some writing, and get the money for the translation, and whatever else comes up. Maybe I get another book to translate, that would be great.

Oh, and I try not to feel annoyed when my plans don't turn out exactly the way I intended them to.

Romania, Here I Come!

2011-04-21T17:54:00.000+02:00

My story published on a Romanian website!

Well, not really.

I don't normally blog day after day, but today I got great news: my fantasy story Cold was published on a Romanian SRSFF website, and will be translated into Romanian too.

I have never had anything published in Romanian before, so... Err... I don't really know what to say, other than that I'm very happy about this.

If you wish, go read it!

My Review Helped a Book!

2011-04-20T19:12:00.000+02:00

My review helped a book!

I've received wonderful news yesterday: Kosingas - The Order of the Dragon by Aleksandar Tesic will be bought by a Polish publishing house and translated into Polish. And my review helped that happen.

My story with the Kosingas trilogy (an epic fantasy trilogy with a flavor of Slavic mythology) began a few years ago, when I found the first book of the trilogy, the only one published at the time, in a local library. I've read it, enjoyed it, and wrote a favorable review at a website I was working for at the time.

When the second book in the trilogy came out, the publisher contacted me. It turned out they loved my review (it seems that, at the time, other reviewers of the book focused on some aspects of the book, and that nobody wrote just a review, an article telling people what the book was about, the good, the bad, the interesting... They just insisted on this or that aspect of the book, and some were quite overdoing it), and they gave me the second book in the trilogy. A book for free, yay! The book was good, and I wrote another favorable review.

By the time the third book came out, the website I was working for no longer published book reviews. Books, who needs them? Celebrities, women's issues, teens, love&sex, that's what they wanted, not book reviews. The publisher gave me the third book anyway, because we worked so well in the past.

The first book in the trilogy was translated into English. When I started to write for Suite101, I wrote the review of the book, this time in English, adapted for foreign readers. A Polish editor happened to read it, and less than a month from the review being published, he found me on Facebook and asked for the contact with the author and/or publisher of the English edition. He was interested to read the book, and perhaps to buy it for his publishing house. I gave him all the contacts I had. I contacted the author and told him about it, and he was very happy to hear about it.

A bit more than a week passed. Nothing. Maybe the editor wasn't interested, after all? Maybe those things didn't work so fast? I didn't know, but I wanted to hope for the best.

As I said, I've got great news yesterday. The first book of the Kosingas trilogy will be translated into Polish and published in Poland. And I helped it happen.

I'm still wondering if it's really true. I'm still not certain that my review could have had such an impact. Of course, it wasn't just the doing of my review, Mr. Tesic had written about 1500 pages of the trilogy (it really ended with the third book!), and good pages at that, but still. My review helped.

It's a great feeling. Even though I'm still a bit dazzled.

Characters Resembling Their Authors

2011-04-18T16:50:00.000+02:00

Characters resemble their authors in some way.

Not so long ago I ran into a discussion about story/novel characters resembling their authors. Do they, or do they not? My first thought was that yes, of course that characters will be in some way similar to their authors, and then I remembered.

When I was eighteen, I wrote a story called The Wind of Hammal. It was about an old, senile sorceress. When the wind of Hammal, the city of sorcerers, the magical wind, blew, she could partially remember her glorious past and her punishment and her exile; as the wind lessened, so did her mind. That story was merely an experiment; I have attempted to write from a point of view of someone quite different from me, so a senile old lady seemed like a good contrast to my youth and my sharp mind.

I loved the result of the experiment. I loved creating someone so different from myself. Over the years, while some of my characters were similar to me, although more extreme (hey, it was fiction!), others were quite different. Some of them were not even human (such as a non-material being haunting a house), how's that for different? And yet...

And yet, all of them had something of mine. The non-human, non-material being enjoyed silence. Dying twelve-year-old girl dreamed of wings. Cats were definitely like me, with their wicked sense of humor. The senile old sorceress? With the last remains of her mind, she was weaving a story.

I also remembered what the actor Alexander Skarsgard said: that he couldn't possibly play a certain role if he couldn't find anything of that character within himself. He wouldn't know how to do it.

I wouldn't know how to do it either.

So, yes, my characters, old or young, male or female, human or not, resemble me in some way. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. But they always have something of mine; with all the research I could possibly do, I wouldn't know how to create them otherwise.

Would you?

You Can't Possibly Read That Much, the Librarian Said

2011-04-15T19:34:00.000+02:00

You can't possibly read that much, the librarian said.

I spend most of the day translating, something I'm not quite used to do yet. When I finish it, I don't really have much strength to stare at the screen, either to watch videos, play games or read blogs or something. So i read books. The paper ones.

I went to the library on Tuesday, and took the charming pile of books you see on the picture. The librarian told me I couldn't possibly read all of them in twenty days. I told her I'd return the ones I've read and re-borrow those I haven't managed to read. She agreed to that.

Me and librarians. Librarians who don't get it: I read, I read a lot, and I read quickly. One would expect more from the librarians; then again, this same librarian called Twilight a beautiful, beautiful book at the time I took Twilight, some books by de Lilo and a book by Doris Lessing. A great American writer, a Nobel prize winner, and she tells me the Twilight (yes, the silly one with the sparkling vampires) is beautiful?

Oh well.

The books I took on Tuesday: Sputnik Sweetheart and Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami, Twilight #2 and Twilight #3 by Stephenie Meyer, Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe and Ask the Dust by John Fante. The Twilight is to see what all the fuss is about, the rest of them is for pleasure. So far, I've read Woman in the Dunes and Sputnik Sweetheart, and I'm currently reading Ask the Dust.

Woman in the Dunes is a fascinating book about a Japanese man who goes to a remote village in the sand to look for some sand bugs, and the villagers capture him to help them remove the sand, because the erosion is the constant danger there, and the government does nothing to help. He is placed in a house in the hole in the sand with a thirty-year-old widow, to help her. He wants to escape, he's trying to find a way to get out of there, but at the same time, he's eroding, just like his surroundings. It's hard to describe this one; what goes on is bizarre, and the tone of the novel is surreal. A great read.

Sputnik Sweetheart is an unusual book -- which is quite usual for Murakami. It starts as a weird love triangle -- a young man is in love with his best friend, a pretty girl who likes him as a friend but falls in love with an older woman, and while the woman likes the girl, something weird happened to her fourteen years ago, she doesn't feel whole and cannot return love. And then things start to get weird -- I'm not going to spoil it for you here.

So far I've read about a third of the Ask the Dust. It's about the author's alter ego, a writer wannabe Arturo Bandini, who is trying to survive in LA and to finally sell some stories. Charles Bukowski loved this book, and so far it looks good (heh, us writers writing and reading about writers), so I guess I'll enjoy that one too.

And unless something prevents me, yes, I'll read them all within twenty days. And I've already noted the books I plan to borrow next.

In case you didn't notice: I'm a bookaholic. :)

Why Are You Reading It?

2011-04-07T20:29:00.000+02:00

I'm currently reading the first book of Dreamsong by George R.R. Martin. It's a sample, sort of, of his early works. Today I've read his beautiful story A Song for Lya, and remembered the first time I've read it, years ago.

I was a University student then, and broke. Whenever I had some time, I went to the National Library. You couldn't take any books out of it, you had to read them there. So there I went, day after day, and read the books I couldn't find in other libraries and didn't have the money to purchase. A Song for Lya was published in a SF almanac called Monolit, in its first issue. All the Monolits were hundreds and hundreds of pages long, they had one novel and a dozen or more stories and sometimes some essays. The novel in this one was the Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre, and it had me daydreaming for days.

Not like A Song for Lya, though, for that one was a haunting story about loneliness and love and the price one might be willing to pay for love eternal, for never feeling lonely again - the price including a sort of a suicide, by being eaten by an alien parasite. It was haunting. It was beautiful, and sad, and although I didn't quite agree with Lya's choice, I could understand it. I could understand the pull of being one with everyone and loving them all and being loved by them all - I prefer my privacy and being just me, but I could understand how attractive such a complete union might be.

It was nice, going to the library and spending most of the day there, reading. Sometimes I'd see my screenplay writing professor there, and we'd nod to each other, and smile. There was no need to say anything. We were writers and writers go to libraries to do their research and to read books they couldn't otherwise find; there was no explanation needed.

There were interesting encounters, too. One time, there was a guy sitting in front of me. Maybe he noticed me because I was sitting right behind him; maybe because we were the only ones wearing black. Whatever the reason, he asked me what I was reading. I showed him the cover; at the time, it was The Republic by Plato.

He asked me why I was reading it.

I stared at him in disbelief.

Why was I reading Plato? Err, because it's a normal thing for an educated person to read Plato, sooner or later? Because my dramaturgy professor mentioned another book by Plato and I've read that one and was curious to read what was, maybe, his most famous work? So much of philosophy has something to do with Plato, how does one follow it without reading Plato?

What kind of question was that, why was I reading Plato? In my mind, that was simply a thing to do.

I told him I was reading it because I wanted to. He seemed puzzled. I got back to the book.

And now I wonder. Why are we reading it - whatever "it" may be, whether it's a philosophy book or a fluff novel or something dark and serious or...

My answer stays pretty much the same, no matter what book I'm reading. I'm reading it because I want to. I'm reading because at least something about the book made me curious. I'm reading it because that's what I do, I read a lot of books and enjoy doing it, they make me dream and give me whole new worlds and inspire me to read and write some more.

Why are you reading it?

On a side note: my mother found another dirt cheap old book, published in 1950. Two stories by Charles Dickens. I'll be reading that one soon. Just because.

Why Reading a Book?

Saving Creativity? What Creativity?

2011-04-01T22:14:00.000+02:00

The Golden City - Serbian Edition

This morning, I've finished reading The Golden City by John Twelve Hawks. It's the last book in the Fourth Realm trilogy. The trilogy itself resembles, among the other things, the Matrix movies, people trying to free themselves from those who want to keep them in a virtual prison and control them completely, and the one visionary trying to find a way to do it. Visionaries and creative people are the natural enemies of those, of course. The first two books were fun to read, there was a lot of action, and also some interesting culture-jamming stuff, like the free runners. But the third one...

Maybe I've read too much. Maybe I've seen too much. But the third book was way too predictable. While it is completely normal for a book to follow a certain pattern, there should also be something creative in it. Especially if the author is going to preach (yes, this one preaches) about the necessity of visionaries, of Travelers, of creativity. If I see nothing creative in that sort of book, I ask: Err, what creativity am I supposed to fight for?

The characters are the same ones who were in the first two books, with an addition of some small roles of the new ones. Some of the main characters grow, and that is good. But they grow in a predictable way. The events are predictable. The ending is quite predictable.

Boring, and even worse, completely missing the point of the trilogy.

*yawns*

Living With Hashimoto Syndrome (Part 2)

2011-03-28T16:33:00.000+02:00

Continued from Part 1...

Since I was freelancing, I was afraid to stop working for a while – besides, I enjoyed writing. So I kept doing my six articles per day, much to the surprise of my doctor, who couldn't believe I was able to write about 100 articles per month in such a condition. Granted, I barely had energy left for anything else, but I wasn't supposed to be able to do that much, and yet, I was doing it. It was a challenge, to keep doing it in such a condition, and I enjoyed challenges.

Gradually, my condition improved. Very gradually. During that time, I started experiencing strong pain in my hands in the morning. During the first half an hour after I got up, I was barely able to do anything with them, they hurt that much. Later during the day, they almost didn't hurt at all. When I asked my doctor about it, she told me it couldn't be because of my thyroid gland, since my TSH level improved a lot (it still wasn't normal, but was quite close to it). She also told me one autoimmune disease might follow another, so it could be the beginning of the rheumatoid arthritis.

Oh joy.

During a visit to my dentist, I told her about Hashimoto syndrome, to find out that she and her daughter had it too (although her daughter was still very young and her thyroid gland was still functioning, but the antibodies which were to start attacking it were there). I mentioned the problem with my hands, and she told me she had similar problems with her hands and knees too, and that No-Dol capsules helped her a lot, she was taking them for three moths (what it does is helps rebuild cartilage, thus removing the reason for pain) and never needed them after that. I tried them out too, and the problem was gone, so I never checked out whether I really had rheumatoid arthritis.

During all that time, I kept writing, which is what I love doing most. I never stopped. Not when I had problems with my cervix too (and painful biopsies, and laser vaporizations, ouch). Not when my boyfriend (we've been together for thirteen years now, we're living together, and he's been very supportive all the time) got ill with bronchitis and it went on and on.

I kept writing, not just the usual amount of articles, but short stories too, and I got a book published. A book with 26 short stories, horror, fantasy, fairy tales retold, under the title “Macji snovi” (it means “Cat Dreams”). Finally, my first book published! And with the cover done by one of the most famous illustrators in Serbia!

My publisher was very supportive too, and waited for me to finish the book. Right now, she's waiting for me to finish another one.

It's not done yet, though, and I don't mean just the book. I'm not sure it can ever really be “done”, that some ideal condition can be achieved. Since my thyroid gland doesn't work, I'll have to keep taking synthetic hormones for the rest of my life, and it's hard to determine just how much exactly I should take, because it varies, and the TSH test results are not the only thing that matters, it also matters how I feel. My doctor tells me that I respond great to the therapy, that my body responds pretty much “by the book”, which is rare, but it's still not perfect. Right now, my TSH level shows I'm fine (it's 3 something, closer to the upper than to the lower limit), but I sweat a bit too much, feel it's too hot while people around me are freezing (actually, quite useful during the cold winter days), and I'm often restless.

Still, restless means I have energy – much more energy than I used to. And it matters a lot. My dentist told me that people with my (and her) condition should rest as much as we could, because we tired easily. However, while I'm lazy, I'm also 34. What am I going to do for the rest of my life, to spend most of my time resting? No way! There's too much I want to do, mostly writing, not to mention that spending entire life resting doesn't sound like an enjoyable idea to me.

So I write, I dream, I create, I love, I am loved, I try and learn something new whenever I can...

I live. With all the troubles and all the joy, with Hashimoto syndrome as a constant companion for the rest of my life, I live.

I write, I dream, I create, I love... Photo by Serena

Weird Sunday Ramblings

2011-03-27T16:11:00.000+02:00

Today we moved clocks. They stole an hour from us. In the autumn, the forces of dark give us an hour; in the spring, the forces of light take an hour from us. Darn thieves.

The weather is weird. It's almost April, but in the morning it was almost as cold as the February, while in the February it was as warm as the April. Now, in the afternoon, it's getting warm, but it's hard to tell for how long. It's seems that the spring can't make her mind whether she's coming or not.

The eggs were weird this morning, too. Just look at the picture -- I didn't do anything unusual to them, promise.

The eggs were weird this morning.

The taste was pretty much the normal one, though. Am I weird for actually eating something that looks like that?

I was thinking about writing another book review today, but decided I needed to rest at least once in a while. So, there's the review I wrote yesterday, of Richard Matheson's Hell House. Written forty years ago, it still has its charm, and it's still haunting, just as a haunted house novel should be.

So, today I'm having some rest and reading a book (scroll a few posts down to see which one).

Living With Hashimoto Syndrome (Part 1)

2011-03-25T17:31:00.001+01:00

I was so tired all the time. - photo by ClatieK

“It happens to somebody else” is what people often think, even when they don't have just common sense telling them it could happen to them too, but other reasons also to believe it's neither unusual nor something reserved for others only. It's so easy to dismiss, to never really think about certain kind of problems until it hits us directly, and to realize in hindsight something could've been done about it much sooner.

My grandmother (mother of my mother) had had thyroid gland problems, but that was before I was born, when my mother was just a child. The stories of my grandmother suffering from Basedow's Disease were just that, stories from my mother's childhood. I mean, I understood she must have been scared to see her mom with eyes bulging out, but that was a thing of the past, she had it treated, and suffered no such problems during my life.

Then my mother's sister started having some weird problems, like constantly forgetting things, lack of concentration, muscles in her legs hurt... It turned out she had hypothyroidism. It also turned out to be one of rare forms, so, for quite a while, the medications didn't work. My aunt was in such a pain that she was taking marijuana (she lived in Netherlands, where marijuana was legal). She never had a substance abuse problem of any kind, this was just to stop the pain, for it was unbearable, and she stopped using it when she found medications that did work for her.

Some time later, my mother was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. She responded well to the regular treatment, and, since she has always been checking for this or that disease, I didn't pay all that much attention to it.

Besides, I was busy. I was writing about six articles per day, almost every day, and it was making me tired. The constant change of subject required to successfully write six 400 words articles every day also made my concentration lacking. Since I was tired, I didn't really exercise, and my muscles were getting weaker. I was having cramps in the legs in the morning, I had no idea why. My cholesterol level was sometimes high, I attributed it to unhealthy eating and energy drinks I was sometimes taking to keep me awake and clear-minded enough to do my job. I lost some hair in patches, I didn't know why. I became sensitive to cold. And I was too depressed to question what was happening to me – after all, I did write a lot, it was normal that I was tired and that it was hard to keep focus after writing six different articles every day, since I didn't exercise it wasn't unusual I wasn't exactly strong, not to mention I wasn't as young as I used to be (I was a little over 30, which isn't old, but isn't 15 either)...

One day, my doctor (a wonderful woman, one of the most cheerful people I know) sent me to check out the thyroid gland hormones, just in case, because of my mother, aunt and grandmother. The result showed that my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) was higher than 75. The normal level is between 0.4 and 4.0. Higher than 75 can't be measured – it could be 76, could be 200... The other result showed it was an autoimmune disease, Hashimoto syndrome. My thyroid gland was being gradually destroyed by antibodies from my own organism.

At the time, I almost fell asleep while waiting for my doctor to see me. She asked me if I was tired. I showed her the results. She did her best to hide her shock.

After I got the results, but before seeing my doctor, I searched it up a bit on the Internet. I looked at the symptoms, and it was like: “Whoa! So that's what was happening to me?” I was surprised, but not scared, because I understood what was going on with me. I knew my mother had thyroid gland problems too and was feeling much better, so I was confident I was going to feel better too. We had the same doctor, so if she could help my mother, I had no doubt she could help me too.

And help me she did, although it took quite a while. Because of my small weight (hypothyroidism slows the metabolism down, making people gain weight easily, but it didn't happen to me), my doctor had to be very, very careful with the doses. We were gradually increasing it, seeing the results, she told me about some sort of problems a dose too high might cause and what to do if it happens, I looked up some possibilities on the Internet too, and yes, I did get some of the problems. Like my heart beating so hard I felt like it was in my throat and I was going to suffocate (it didn't help that I was also under considerable stress at the time). Like feeling nervous and not being able to sleep well. I was sweating a lot.

The part with feeling like my heart was beating in my throat was the scariest.

The Joy of Working Again

2011-03-23T17:58:00.000+01:00

Typing Cat - photo by Dr Stephen Dann

At the very beginning of the year, I was left without work. It was a shock. It made me feel ill. It's not just the matter of income (although, of course, it does matter a lot), it'a also that I'm not used to not working. And, fine, I'm not used to not earning either. I didn't earn much, but it was still something.

Three days later, a dear friend found me something, a translation of a novel from Croatian to English. I've never translated an entire novel before, but hey, why not? The money wasn't much, but I was also learning while I was translating, I was getting experience and I was practicing, so that was good.

I translated the novel. I got the money. Err, now what?

A lot of people told me they'd keep me in mind if something came up. Great, but I was impatient for something to come up immediately. Of course, I didn't just wait for them to find me something to do, I also applied wherever I thought it made sense.

Today, I started the translation of a charming YA fantasy novel from English to Serbian. I suppose that the publishing house I'm doing it for will give me more to translate if they're happy with my work. My writing will probably slow down as I spend the entire day translating, but hey, I enjoy doing it. Yes, I'm a workaholic, and I enjoy being one, as long as I'm doing something interesting.

Happy at my keyboard again. Yay!

Grateful&Amazed

2011-03-22T16:03:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I posted at She Writes about re-starting this blog. I didn't actually expect any replies, not immediately, so it was to my utmost amazement to wake up and find out that I had received comments. That some lovely ladies liked this blog, and my review of Sunshine.

Does it really take so little to make me happy? Kind words and somebody liking my writing?

Is it really "so little", kind words and someone liking my review?

I don't know, but I do know that these wonderful ladies inspired me to write another book review. If Sunshine seemed interesting, Tea with the Black Dragon by Roberta A. MacAvoy might be something you'd enjoy too. A fantasy novel set in the eighties in San Francisco, where an amazing woman is trying to find and rescue her daughter, and a Chinese dragon who is in love with her (with the woman, not the daughter) helps her. As in Sunshine, wonderful characters and a beautiful relationship. If I was to take one book with me on a deserted island, Tea with the Black Dragon would be it.

On a side note, I've noticed that Roberta MacAvoy is often listed as R.A. MacAvoy. While I don't think that the author's gender should matter -- a good book is a good book -- I can't help but wonder if somebody actually thought that a potential reader might skip an urban fantasy/romance because a woman wrote it.

Another side note: I'm currently reading a book called "Modern English Stories". That's what it would translate to, it's an anthology of English stories translated to Serbian, and the book was published in 1951, so the "modern" part brings a smile. The stories were originally published between 1900 and 1950; the anthology starts with Thomas Hardy and ends with Elizabeth Bowen. An interesting read, to say the least, although the book isn't in the best of shapes (my mother found it at some sale, it was dirt cheap).

Worn out books look charming, in a way.

Once again, kind ladies, thank you for being so kind.

Activating This One Again

2011-03-21T15:19:00.001+01:00

En Shi Yu Lu Tea - Wonderful Taste to Help With Writing

Once upon a time, I was using this blog to follow my writing. After that, it served several purposes, and now it will go back to the original thing - except that I'll be using it to follow my writing in English, since I already have this one to follow it in Serbian.

My today's good deed, while drinking tea and preparing some lunch and trying not to feel too bad, was writing a review of Robin McKinley's beautiful novel Sunshine, and posting it at Suite101. So, if you're in a mood for a beautiful novel with vampires who are not sexy and don't sparkle, if you love intelligent prose and captivating relationships in a fantasy novel, go read about Sunshine. And about a vampire who loved Sunshine.

And I'll think about making some more wonderful tea.

Oh, and you can also read this recipe for the yummy tzatziki sauce.

Lotsa Reviews

2011-03-15T16:04:00.000+01:00

The Strain, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

The Fall, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg.

The Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko.

Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko.

Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko.

And, for the fun of it, How to Feed a Vegetarian.

Kosingas review

2011-03-12T19:49:00.000+01:00

Kosingas - The Order of the Dragon, Aleksandar Tesic.

Reviews!

2011-03-11T22:51:00.000+01:00

The Quiet Girl, Peter Hoeg.

Dinner at Deviant's Palace, Tim Powers.

Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis.

Zoo City, Lauren Beukes.

Non-Sexy Vampires

2011-03-01T17:25:00.000+01:00

Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist.

Još prikaza...

2011-02-28T10:12:00.002+01:00

Anđeli na kocki šećera, Saša Robnik.

Milorad Pavić mora pisati priče, Sava Babić.

Led, Ilija Bakić.

Torba od vrbovog pruća, Miroljub Todorović.

Brasyl, Ian McDonald.

Prokleti prikaz

2010-12-18T11:05:00.000+01:00

Ostrvo prokletih, Đorđe Bajić.

Prikazi na gomili

2010-12-11T19:30:00.002+01:00

Nomadi, Spomenka Pululu.

Grotlo, Oliver Jovanović.

Manufaktura G, Adrijan Sarajlija.

Tabor na Kidisu, Radmilo Anđelković.

Legija Ida, Radmilo Anđelković.

Dodatni blog

2010-10-24T19:16:00.000+02:00

Posvećen spisateljskim nedelima: http://www.ivanamilakovic.blogspot.com/

Strvinarski prikaz

2010-08-28T08:37:00.000+02:00

Strvinarska uteha, Den Simons.

Brazilski prikaz

2010-08-26T07:27:00.000+02:00

Brazil, Ijan Mekdonald.

Legendarni prikaz

2010-08-24T10:22:00.001+02:00

Legende, priredio Robert Silverberg.

Prikaz straha

2010-08-22T15:14:00.000+02:00

Filozofija straha, Laš Fr. H. Svensen.

Damski prikaz

2010-08-20T09:54:00.000+02:00

Dama iz Monaka, Isidora Bjelica.

Prikaz Lisine priče

2010-08-18T11:02:00.000+02:00

Lisina priča, Stiven King.

Prikaz bespuća

2010-08-12T09:07:00.001+02:00

Bespuće, Ijan Mekdonald.

Drud prikaz

2010-08-08T10:19:00.001+02:00

Drud, Den Simons.

Krvavi prikaz

2010-08-02T08:30:00.001+02:00

Krvava kiša, Majkl Dibdin.

Ember prikaz

2010-07-31T10:13:00.000+02:00

Grad Ember, Džin Dupro.

Lavlji prikaz

2010-07-31T10:12:00.000+02:00

Lav zvani Kristijan, Entoni Burk i Džon Rendal.

Tigana prikaz

2010-07-17T22:59:00.000+02:00

Tigana, Gaj Gavrijel Kej.

Zombi prikaz

2010-07-08T07:50:00.001+02:00

Priručnik za odbranu i zaštitu od zombija, Maks Bruks.

Dijamant prikaz

2010-07-04T08:35:00.002+02:00

Dijamant iz Darkholda, Džin Dupro.

Djavolji prikaz

2010-06-04T10:50:00.000+02:00

Đavolji eliksiri, E.T.A. Hofman.

Prikaz Soja

2010-06-01T08:27:00.000+02:00

Soj, Giljermo del Toro i Čak Hogan.

Dva prikaza

2010-05-28T07:57:00.001+02:00

Vampirati - Plima užasa, Džastin Somper.

Prolaz, Biljana Malešević.

Dva prikaza

2010-05-16T11:09:00.001+02:00

Narod Sparksa, Džin Dupro.

Vukodav, Dijamantske gore, Marija Semjonova.

Artemis prikaz

2010-05-02T09:29:00.000+02:00

Artemis Faul i izgubljena kolonija, Oin Kolfer.

Kraljevski prikaz

2010-04-29T08:15:00.000+02:00

Kraljevi, Zoran Jakšić.

Bezdanj prikaz

2010-04-26T09:59:00.001+02:00

Kosingas: Bezdanj, Aleksandar Tešić.

Samurajski prikaz

2010-04-23T08:51:00.000+02:00

Samurajska etika i moderni Japan, Jukio Mišima.

Nekronomikon prikaz

2010-04-20T08:43:00.001+02:00

Nekronomikon, najbolje horor priče, H.F. Lavkraft, priredio Dejan Ognjanović.

Okoreli prikaz

2010-04-18T10:18:00.001+02:00

Okorela zemlja čuda i Kraj sveta, Haruki Murakami.

Zlatni prikaz

2010-03-31T09:11:00.000+02:00

Zlatna knjiga, Dragan R. Filipović.

Put-prikaz

2010-03-28T11:17:00.000+02:00

Put predaka i put bogova, Bela Hamvaš.

Prikaz avanture

2010-03-25T09:03:00.001+01:00

Poslednja velika avantura, Pavle Zelić.

Veštičji prikaz

2010-03-22T09:32:00.000+01:00

Mrtva si, veštice!, Kim Harison.

Izuzetan prikaz

2010-03-20T08:55:00.001+01:00

Izuzetna stvorenja, Trejsi Ševalije.

Srpski prikaz

2010-03-17T09:45:00.001+01:00

Srpkinja, Isidora Bjelica.

Hiperion-prikaz

2010-03-13T07:24:00.000+01:00

Mađarski Hiperion, Bela Hamvaš.

Zmaj-prikaz

2010-02-18T18:56:00.000+01:00

Zmajevi Istoka, Ernest Ingersol.

Prikaz XX veka

2010-02-15T11:08:00.001+01:00

Oda XX veku, Bela Hamvaš.

Olujni prikaz

2010-02-12T08:33:00.000+01:00

Olujni talas, Džim Bučer.