The Great Belgrade Book Fair, Part III

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.

My Review Helped a Book!

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.