Andrew Anzur Clement's Blog, page 2

A new action-adventure series by Andrew launches

My latest book is out!

It’s the first book in a new action-adventure series of fighting, friendship and finding one’s voice amid loss of innocence that starts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the takes on it’s own life as it follows the the main characters to places ranging from present-day Ukraine, to Morocco, Poland and the Gulf of Aden.

All of this may sound rather expansive, but book one begins when two Western expat teens are kidnapped for ransom by a ruthless Taliban fighter hell bent on a quest for redemption in the eyes of his father — the chief Mullah of the Afghanistan’s main terror organization.

Start reading on Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

The synopsis of book one is below:

April 2021.

Jan and Kelly have a privileged life as the teenaged children of two wealthy defense contractors in Karachi. They don’t notice the odd behavior of their servants until it is too late.

Kidnapped from a Pakistani resort, the Polish boy and American girl are taken hostage by a disgraced Taliban fighter. He will stop at nothing to regain the favor of his father, the supreme Mullah of Afghanistan’s Islamic extremists.

Surviving with only their wits and the help of a courageous dog, the two western teens are at the mercy of their ruthless captors. They are taken to the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, controlled by rival factions of extremists with guns and suicide bombs.

Their hopes of rescue are destroyed by a shocking betrayal that will cause Jan and Kelly to question everything they thought they knew. Their only chance of salvation may be a face-to-face encounter with the Mullah himself.

Caught up in the chaotic American withdrawal from the Afghanistan war, the young hostages must rely on each other to survive torture, near-starvation and their loss of innocence. Their journey to The Circle of Fire begins In Pakistan.

Start reading The Circle of Fire, Book One: In Pakistan Here.

2023 Year in Review from a ‘Bah, Humbug’ Person

Generally speaking, I am not a holiday person. I maybe do a little something for Christmas. My plans for this new year are the same as for last new year: I plan to be in bed with my sweatpants on, writing.

Bah, Humbug. There, I said it.

Christmas Lights this year in Prešeren SquareChristmas lights on Trubarjeva Street

Still, I do like to see how things have progressed over time regarding my writing. A period of three-sixty-five and one fourth days, starting from January 1 is as good a measurement of time as any to have a retrospective, not least because it seems to be how a sizable chunk of people on planet Earth choose to count their accomplishments. So, here goes.

2023 saw my business and brand evolve in different ways again this year. My total number of books grew by four again. I now have a total of thirty works in print, in genres ranging from historical fantasy, to alternative history, action-adventure as well as thrillers and mysteries.

I also had a great presentation and sellout book signing at the Slovenian Union of America’s convention in Pueblo, Colorado. I began to get into making audiobooks of my works. For the for the first time, I’ve begun to penetrate the Slovenian market through a provisional deal with the Slovenian brick-and-mortar bookseller Sanje. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I started a YouTube channel with super cool video trailers of my books and, above all, Slovenian nutria?

What follows reads like something between a blog post and a newsletter, kind of like those ‘year in review’ letters that we used to get from various people my parents knew along with Christmas cards, back when I was a kid. Personally, I always found those letters annoying. I’m putting this out there on my little patch of the internet where people can read it or not. So, hopefully that’s nothing as egregiously cringe-worthy.

New Books Published

Over the past year my output has been mostly in the area of expanding two of my existing series. My bestselling alternative history thriller The Russia Chronicles, and my contemporary thriller/mystery series Poor Little Rich Kids.

Two New Books in Poor Little Rich Kids

I kicked off 2023 with a new release in January of the third book in Poor Little Rich Kids, The Underdogs of Tarzan.

The series details the tumultuous young lives of Svetlana and Sasha, a Bulgarian street child and a Ukrainian war orphan, as well as their curmudgeonly adoptive dad, Luka, a booze-loving Slovene-American emigrant to Central-Eastern Europe whose character is partially based on yours truly. Once adopted into a wealthy family, it seems that adventure and mystery just won’t leave the them alone as they go about their lives in Europe while Sasha and Svetlana pursue careers in professional figure skating.

The Underdogs of Tarzan picks up their story as teenagers, when they are sent on a forced summer vacation to a campsite on the Kolpa River, on Slovenia’s border with Croatia.

A cross-cultural faux pas gets Sasha and Svetlana involved in Tarzan: A game of acrobatic jumping off a rope swing by day, but linked to a dangerous after-dark competition involving drugs, sex, migrant trafficking and popularity that all of the local teens take part in. At first, the two young skaters excel at the acrobatic part of the game, but quickly find themselves in over their heads. When Tarzan’s dark shenanigans start to threaten Sasha’s life and her own, will Svetlana have what it takes to expose Tarzan for what it really is, under threats of death should she reveal its secrets?

In November of this year, I also published my thirtieth novel and the fourth book in the Poor Little Rich Kids series: Svetlana’s Game.

Now eighteen, Svetlana’s chance for an Olympic gold skate has finally come. But as she heads to the 2030 Olympic figure skating championships in Riga, Latvia, she finds herself the target of a series of threats against her and her family should she skate. Then, when Sasha is kidnapped and her roommate in the Olympic Village is found murdered, Svetlana becomes the prime suspect. Now a fugitive, she must solve the mystery and find her brother if she is to finally have her chance on the Olympic ice.

Note: I mention these books as numbers three and four in the series because that was the order that they were published in. Poor Little Rich Kids is designed so that you can read the books in any order.

This will be the last book in the Poor Little Rich Kids as such. However, I have left the door open for a future sequel series in which Sasha and his new girlfriend, a Spanish girl named Almerilla, who is a member of a secret sect of the Knights Templar, must find and keep certain aincient artifacts from the wrong hands.

I have already outlined the first book in that series: Sasha, Almerilla and the Quest for the Holy Wine Glass. If I ever decide to tackle it, it will be the first novel that I have written set largely in the contemporary United States. Strap in and hold on tight!

Rounding out The Russia Chronicles

During the middle part of the year, I found myself circling back to one of my best selling series, the alternative history thriller The Russia Chronicles. I had planned to end the series after book four, but it occurred to me that my street-rat turned next-leaders-of-Russia heroes had another part of their story.

In books one through four (which you do have to read in order), the main characters go from being a gang of Russian homeless youth to taking on the most powerful man in Russia and seizing power over the country. It all starts when Peter, an American teenager is stranded in Moscow and is forced to throw his lot in with a band of street teens, one of whom, little Katya, it turns out has unfortunate and unlikely ties to both the Kremlin and the Romanov dynasty.

Book five: Katya or Russia, picks up just after Peter, Katya and their friends have taken power in the Kremlin. Now they must hold on to it, and justify themselves on the world stage.

Unbenounced to them, another homeless youth leaves the remnants of his home in the Moscow city dump, intent on reuniting a long lost member of Katya’s gang with the rest of her found family as they are pursued by the remains of the Wagner paramilitary group, while Katya herself heads out of Russia for her first visit abroad: a tense meeting with the leaders of the United States and the European Union that will determine Russia’s future place in the world.

My editor said that this was the best thing I had written so far!

During the earlier summer months, I wrote a coda to the story of Katya and her gang (Some inside baseball here: Yes, although Peter is the main character of book one, I do consider Katya to be the main character of the series). Ten years after their taking power and ruling in prosperous peace, a new force arises from deep in the gangs past. Calling themselves The Blazing Wheel, in a reference to ancient Slavic mythology, they are intent destroying Katya and her friends by any means necessary, including the nuclear option. Can Katya, all of Russia and her gang find their enemy’s dirty nukes before the country they have fought so hard to protect goes up in a mushroom cloud?

For now, this is all I have planned for The Russia Chronicles. But, who knows what other mysteries and crises might befall them during the rest of their reign? I loved writing the main characters of The Russia Chronicles, especially Katya. You may see me circling back around to them yet again in the unnamed future.

Guest at the SUA’s Conference

As a citizen and full time resident of Slovenia who writes in English, it is sometimes hard to find opportunities to connect with my fans and meet new potential readers face to face. When the Slovenian Union of America invited me to be one of their speakers at their convention in Pueblo, Colorado, it was the perfect time for me to get on a plane and go.

My presentation on moving to and life in Slovenia as a Slovene-American was given to a packed audience and needed an encore running to people including the Slovenian Consul General in Cleveland, Ohio.

The SUA was also kind enough to let me set up a table with some of my Slovenia and Balkan centered novels, including Nutria Tales, a survival adventure about nutria, or swamp rats, set in the river that runs through Slovenia’s capital city, and my alternative history of the breakup of Yugoslavia, Tito’s Lost Children.

I knew I had some recognition among the Slovene-American community, but I was truly shocked at the amount of interest. I brought about one-hundred books to the convention. They all sold out within five hours.

As I said, I don’t get to do this sort of thing often. This was my first book signing and it was a great success. Thank you SUA!

Audiobook of The Kosovo War

The end of 2023 saw the beginning of my venture into recording some of my works as audiobooks. I began with The Kosovo War, a spinoff novella from Tito’s Lost Children. It is a story about an orphan and his brother who are made to fight as child soldiers during the 1998-9 conflict in Kosovo — and navigate impossible relationships with the family of the captor who killed their parents. This shorter intensely character driven story seemed like the perfect place for me to start finding my voice as a narrator. It became available on Amazon and Itunes in early December.

In 2024, I hope to record the first book I wrote in the Poor Little Rich Kids series, The Testimony of Some Poor Little Rich Kids.

My Books Available in a Bookstore

During the beginning of December, following a fruitful meeting at the Slovenian Book Convention in Ljubljana, eleven of my titles have been selected by the Slovenian book publisher Sanje to be placed in their bookshops. Apparently, they even count me as a Slovenian author.

Hopefully the sales go well in the new year and it becomes a regular arrangement.

Book Trailers and Nutria

During May of this year I started my own YouTube channel aimed at promoting my books, with nifty book trailers that you should go check out under the title “That Slavic Writer Guy.”

Unexpectedly, it started gaining popularity for my daily shorts of the nutria who live in Slovenia’s Ljubljanica River. So, come for the books and stay for the nutria. Or, wait, should that be the other way around…

What’s Next?

Aside from the new directions that I might take my two existing series in the future, mentioned above, I have a brand new series that will begin to come out in January 2024.

The Circle of Fire is an action-adventure story about two Western teens who are captured by the Afghan Taliban in 2021 and must find a way to survive in Pakistan and Afghanistan during the US withdrawal of troops from the region.

Book one: In Pakistan, is currently with the editor and will be out in about a month. Look for it this January.

I am also planning to run sales on the full series of The Russia Chronicles and Poor Little Rich Kids early in the new year.

Hopefully that will get 2024 — otherwise known as long march of days that start from soon here on out — off to a running start!

Tito’s Lost Children: The Kosovo War Audiobook

I have officially begun to bring out audio books of my works. They are read by yours truly.

The first one is finally out. It is the standalone spinoff novella from my alternative history action-adventure series Tito’s Lost Children. Tito’s Lost Children: The Kosovo War

The synopsis is below.

Listen here on Amazon. Also available on Ibooks.

A hand clamps down on a boy’s shoulder. He looks up from his father’s body. In an instant, his childhood is over. He kicks and screams as he and his little brother are dragged away by the Albanian terrorist who just killed their parents.

Forced to leave the only life they have ever known, the boys are taken to the murderer’s home – a traditional Albanian compound where honor is everything and the only thing prized above fighting for the nation is the loyalty code of the Kanun. Determined to keep his younger brother safe, 12-year old Drago must fight alongside the man he is now told to call Father.

As a soldier in the Kosovo Liberation Army, Drago is trapped on the frontlines, witnessing the senseless atrocities of war. Forced to follow the orders of a bloodthirsty commander, he must pay the price of survival without losing his will to resist.

Caught up in a never-ending cycle of vengeance, Drago fights for the lives of his brother and closest friends. The decisions he makes with the gun in his hands will determine their fate in the battle for Kosovo.

As always, you can get a free ebook copy off The Kosovo War by hitting Get Free Ebooks, above.

Svetlana’s Game, a new book in Poor Little Rich Kids, launches

During the second half of 2022 I began what turned into a series by writing The Testimony of Some Poor Little Rich Kids. It details the adventures of five upper-class eastern European twenty-somethings, who must go off the grid and on the run to save a street child and a Ukrainian war orphan from the clutches of the Bulgarian mafia.

Later the same year, I followed up with Murder in La Ciudad del Ingles, a who-done-it mystery in which Luka, the main character from the previous book, goes on an English language teaching program in Spain. After being implicated in the events of a shocking murder in the town near the program, he must solve the case and find the real killer if he is to make his way back to his newfound family.

At the beginning of 2023. I published the third book in the series, The Underdogs of Tarzan. This book picks up the story of the two adopted street kids, Sasha and Svetlana, when they are thirteen and fifteen. They are sent on a forced vacation to a summer camp in Slovenia and find themselves unwittingly involved in Tarzan, a brutal life-or-death game that many of the teens there play after dark. Finding themselves the victims of brutal treatment at the hands of the game’s organizers they must crack the game’s mysterious scoring system if they and their newfound friends are to beat the game and make it out alive.

After taking a bit of a break from the series to write books five and six in The Russia Chronicles, I returned to Poor Little Rich Kids to write the fourth and possibly final book in the series.

It’s called Svetlana’s Game.

The story catches up with Svetlana and Sasha, the adopted poor little rich kids, when they are eighteen and sixteen. As rising stars in the world of professional figure skating, Svetlana is about to head off to the 2030 Olympic Games, as a favorite to win gold, when she is sent a series of threats warning of dire consequences for her and her family if she skates.

Resolving to compete anyway, Svetlana, Sasha and two of their friends from Tarzan arrive in Latvia for the Olympic figure skating matches in high spirits. But, when Sasha gets kidnapped and Svetlana’s roommate is found murdered, she finds herself an unwilling part of an international spy game where no one can be trusted. It will take all of her courage to find her brother, unmask the murderer and have her moment on the Olympic Ice.

Svetlana’s Game is launching today.

As part of the launch there is a sale across the entire Poor Little Rich Kids series.

Book One, The Testimony of Some Poor Little Rich Kids will be free through November 6th. The other three books will be $0.99 each, including Svetlana’s Game, for the same amount of time.

It’s a great time to get the entire series for more than 80 percent off!

As is my normal publication schedule, this will my last new release of the year. I currently am about two-thirds done with my next project, the first book in a new action-adventure series set in 2021 Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The main characters, sixteen-year-old Jan and fourteen-year-old Kelly, are kidnapped by the Taliban to be used as ransom by its leader. The two products of pampered expat life in Karachi will have to escape their kidnappers and form unlikely alliances if they are survive and even thrive in the war-torn wilds of northern Pakistan and in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

The Final Book in The Russia Chronicles Launches!

When I finished The Russia Chronicles Book Four back at the end of 2021 I thought that I had crafted a great, at at that point in time, shocking and far out end to the series. At the end of book four, Pyotr, Katya and their band of homeless teens and later-on twentysomethings survive many trials and tribulations in order to — huge spoiler alert here — take out none other than Putin himself in a military backed coup.

Of course, I wrote all of this right before Russian invaded Ukraine only a couple of months later. The war was partially the inspiration for circling back to The Russia Chronicles, while working on the Poor Little Rich Kids series — which also came to include a character affected by the Ukraine war.

Book 1 in the ‘Poor Little Rich Kids’ series

Book five in the Russia Chronicles series, Katya of Russia, envisions a possible peace deal — and even new alliance — between Russia and the European Union, in which the heroes from Russia Chronicles are newly fledged leaders, still finding their feet, and the others from my action adventure political thriller series, Europe’s Lost Children, find common ground, before the Ukraine war ever had to happen.

Its a tale of friendship and survival, too, where a new character, a teen living in Moscow’s city dump, is unwittingly tasked with taking Pyotr’s long lost daughter from Book One through many of Ukraine’s pre-existing conflict zones with Russia to the new Royal Family.

Although am an author of alternative history fiction, Book Six goes beyond that and delves into an alternate future where Tsarina Katya, President Pyotr and the gang have ruled a prosperous, peaceful Russia with a just but firm hand for years.

In it, a new cabal has risen to take them and Russia down with homegrown weapons of mass destruction. We see them as Slavic pagan leaders having raised ‘normal’ families and created a dynasty of their own, come face to face their legacy, as they are confronted with making the ultimate sacrifice for the same country that once scorned them as worse than society’s refuse.

I hope that in the end my characters, whom I have come to know over the years, all rule happily aver after.

The author as a teenager at The Monument to the Conquers of Space, Moscow 2006

The final installment of The Russia Chronicles Six: The Blazing Wheel is available here.

As part of the launch, Book One is Free on Amazon through August 2nd. The rest of the books in the series, including The Blazing Wheel will be $0.99 through August 4th.

You can check out the entire series at this page on Amazon here.

Book Sell Out at Slovenian Union of America Convention

I am so thankful to report that my book signing and sale and at the 2023 convention of the Slovenian Union of America was a total sell out in less than twenty-four hours.

All four books in my alternative history thriller series ‘Tito’s Lost Children’ went like hotcakes, including the spinoff novella ‘The Kosovo War.’ My anthropomorphic survival adventure novel about Nutria living in Slovenia’s Ljubljanica River was not far behind. I wished that I had brought more of my other 24 titles, too!

I was honored to meet the Slovenian Consul in Columbus, USA. She was happy to pick up a copy of Tito’s Lost Children Book One for the consulate. The book takes place during the lead-up to and during Slovenia’s Ten-Day-War of independence from Yugoslavia. We had a nice discussion pa Slovenščini.

My presentation on gaining Slovenian citizenship through ancestry as well as moving to and living in Slovenia was so standing room only that I had to give it twice. I also discussed paid higher education study opportunities in Slovenia and the entire European Union.

Thanks once again to the Slovenian Union of America for inviting me to speak, sell books and meet my fans. I’ve heard that their next convention will be in four years time; that might be about perfect for my next trip to America. I look forward to seeing vsi Slovenci there.

In the meantime, I am headed back home to Slovenia to begin work on my 30th novel.

The Russia Chronicles Book 5 Launches

I had originally planned to close out The Russia Chronicles with book four, The Secret of Lenin’s Tomb, back in 2021. But sometimes stories just won’t leave me alone.

After book four of ‘Russia,’ I starting a new series, The Testimony of Some Poor Little Rich Kids, — the fourth and final installment I swear I will write before the years end — and doing other interesting things such as writing about some strange little critters known as nutria.

While on a writers retreat in Belgrade, it occurred to me that in light of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Katya, Pyotr and the rest of their gang, who, *spoiler alert,* assassinate Putin and take over Russia at the end of book four, had some more interesting and relevant stories that deserved to be told.

The result became two more books in the Russia Chronicles series. The first of which is titled ‘Katya of Russia.’

It follows two stories that meet at the end. One of Katya’s shaky but high stakes first foray into international diplomacy; the other of her husband, Pyotr’s, long lost daughter and her life and death struggle to find him. The girl holds a key secret that could clinch an important alliance for Katya and Russia, but who is wanted dead by the remnants of those in Putin’s orbit.

The sixth and (so far) final installment of The Russia Chronicles, The Blazing Wheel, is already about ready to be sent to the editor and should be out in early July.

My editor was full of praise for Katya of Russia, calling it possibly one of my best books yet!

Katya of Russia is launching at the special price of $0.99, down from the regular price $4.99, May 7th through 11th. As part of the launch, books 2-4 will be $0.99 cents and book one will be free.

Find Katya of Russia here.

The synopsis is below the cover.

Katya has been crowned Tsarina of all the Russias, but she can’t escape her past as a drug-addicted teenager living on the streets. To repair her public image on the world stage, she embarks on her first official state visit to the European Union.

Pyotr is by her side as president of the Russian Federation. But his leadership in the Kremlin is being tested by sinister forces that threaten topple their already-fragile hold on power.

Žan has grown up in desperate poverty, digging through trash in Moscow’s city dump. He stumbles upon a diabolical plot to kidnap and torture an innocent girl who may be Pyotr’s missing daughter.

As the royal family arrives in Brussels for a diplomatic showdown, Žan will make a mad dash through the most violent conflict zones in Russia’s border regions, pursued by a rogue platoon of paramilitary troops.

No one can be trusted, as the EU’s Covert Action Service calls the Russians to a summit meeting behind the secure gates of a NATO base. The Americans mediating the talks have their own secret agenda. Tsarina Katya, President Pyotr and their gang of former street bums will need to form unlikely alliances to outwit scheming diplomats and secure their hold on power before it’s too late.

Seven Balkan Books in one Boxed Set

This has been about five years in the making. In 2019 I began writing ‘Tito’s Lost Children,’ an alternative history action trilogy set during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia. In it, one untested 19 year old girl learns that she is the successor to Marshal Josip Broz Tito; she and her friends must struggle to keep their country together and stop the fighting.

The next year I followed on with a four book long sequel to that trilogy, ‘Europe’s Lost Children,’ an action packed political thriller, in which Tito’s granddaughter must go to the European Union’s capital of Brussels to try to bring the rest of the rest of the Balkans into its fold — if she can stop a secret plot from tearing the EU apart first. Some of the characters from it cross over into the next series I wrote: ‘The Russia Chronicles.’

Taken together, I consider the eight books that comprise Tito’s/Europe’s Lost Children to be a Magnum Opus that chronicles generations of one very special Balkan family in an adopted region and continent that is close to my heart.

It’s now available as one boxed set for the price of $9.99. But, for the next week or so I’m launching it a the special flash sale price of $0.99.

Get it here on Amazon

Or here everywhere else.

Opera Talks by Andrew

After some careful, tough and soul-crushing deliberation I have decided to get into video on YouTube.

It’s a new way of showcasing my books, new releasees and more in a way that I have control over.

But it’s not only going to be about me and my books. I also have a burning idea at the back of my mind to use my channel as a way to spread the word about something else I’m passionate about.

If you’ve read my books, in which there are fight scenes inside of opera houses (yes, more than one!), homeless kids sneaking into the Royal Box of the Bolshoi Theater, sopranos turned kick-ass fighters, and secrets berried deep in the titles of Slavic operas, you might be able to hazard a guess as to what that topic is.

Here’s the first opera talk from that Slavic Writer Guy aka me. Don Carlos by G. Verdi. I’ve never been good at genuinely tactful self-promotion. So, watch the goddamn video and then subscribe to my f***ing channel.

A new way to connect with Andrew’s books

After some careful, tough and soul-crushing deliberation I have decided to get into video on YouTube.

It’s a new way of showcasing my books, new releasees and more in a way that I have control over.

But it’s not only going to be about me and my books. I also have a burning idea at the back of my mind to use my channel as a way to spread the word about something else I’m passionate about.

If you’ve read my books, in which there are fight scenes inside of opera houses (yes, more than one!), homeless kids sneaking into the Royal Box of the Bolshoi Theater, sopranos turned kick-ass fighters, and secrets berried deep in the titles of Slavic operas, you might be able to hazard a guess as to what that topic is.

Stay tuned for Opera Talks, with that Slavic Writer Guy. I’ve never been good at genuinely tactful self-promotion. So, the the best way to know about them when they’re out is just moving your fingers a few centimeters and hitting the goddamn subscribe button when you watch this video…