Andrew Anzur Clement's Blog, page 8
July 16, 2019
Tito’s Lost Children. War Two: Croatia Launches
It’s launching at the special discount price of $0.99 down from $2.99, so grab it while you can before the price goes back up on July 21st.
As part of the launch, Tito’s lost Children. War One: Slovenia will also be FREE on Amazon through July 20th. Now is the perfect chance to try out this action-packed alternative history series that dares to ask the question: what if Maršal Tito, the strongman of Yugoslavia, named a completely untested successor to take over for him?
June 26, 2019
Tito’s Lost Children Historical References
I’ve written this as a sort of companion to Tito’s Lost Children War (book) One. One of the things I enjoy about writing these books is the idea that a story like this could have happened in the real world, in real places that you can go to. So, to give the book more of a grounding in real history, the identification of certain historical events and persons may prove helpful and interesting to readers.
Let me start by saying that the books which comprise Tito’s Lost Children are novels. The main characters, Jovana, Hristijan, Mojca, Predrag and Zlatko are fictional, as are their actions and (mostly) those of the real historical figures they encounter. However they sometimes also encounter real events and people that were important to the breakup of Yugoslavia. I will point some of these references out by chapter (battle). Hopefully, it won’t give too many spoilers if you haven’t read the book, but if you really mind them consider yourself forewarned. Here goes:
Battle One: All of the news the characters mention happening in the background of their lives is historical. The village of Vevčani really exists and tried to declare independence as it’s own country after Macedonia became independent, because the inhabitants didn’t like the idea of being surrounded by ethnically Albanian villages.
Battle Two: The parliament of Kosovo really was shut down and subsequently met secretly in Kaçanik. Jusuf Zejnullahu did serve as the prime minister of its self-declared republic for a time during the early nineties. His actions in the book are, of course, fiction.
Battle Three: General Popović was a real person and was considered a war hero in Yugoslavia. The First Proletarian Brigade was a real fighting force in the Second World War; it’s continued role in the books is fictional. So is the character of Mojca’s grandmother.
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Near Dubrovnik, where Jovana discovers the true purpose behind her upbringing.
Battle Four: The design of the 1974 Yugoslav constitution that created the Presidium has been presented as faithfully as possible, though Jovana’s role in Yugoslavia and the ‘secret’ amendment to that constitution are, of course, completely speculative.
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In Book One our heroes must make their way from Ohrid, Macedonia to Ljubljana, Slovenia on the opposite side of the country.
Battle Five: Medjugorje is a real place, as are the things in it like Cross Mountain. Some of the people there who claim to have visions of the Virgin Mary, continue to have them on a regular basis.
Battle Six: The Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina and the Log Revolution are historical, as are President Babić and Police Chief Martić. The rest of the characters are fictional. The JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) did aid the Krajina Serbs, though in the story, the extent of the aid at that specific point in history may be exaggerated for purposes of simplicity.
Battle Seven: The declaration that Duško wants Jovana to give her support to is historical. The fighting and stealth techniques that Jure (and others) practice are completely made up by me, but the knives they use are real kinds of knives, as is Hristijan’s and the Serb Cutter.
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Map of the Serbian Autonomous Oblast of Krajina (in red).
Battle Eight: The Pakrac Clash is historical and has been presented faithfully. While it is true that the Krajina Armed Forces did persecute Croats on its territory, the specific ‘tax’ Duško mentions is fictional.
Battle Nine: The Serbs’ Meeting of Truth and the conflict that occurred at Plitvice Lakes are historical, as is Milošević’s/the JNA’s attempt to call a state of emergency in Yugoslavia. The Croatian combatant who dies so that Hristijan and Jovana can get away is implied to be the first person to die in the Yugoslav conflicts. The Veliki Slap is a real place, as is the waterfall that plays a role in the story on the way to it.
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The Veliki Slap (Big Waterfall), Plitvice Lakes
Battle Ten: The House of Flowers is where Tito is buried and Kumrovec was where he was born. The existence of Yugoslav Youth Day and the Slet are historical. However, as the fictional mayor of Kumrovec states in the book, the specific ceremony and baton relay differs somewhat from how a ‘real’ one would have looked, while still being based on it. The Serb Volunteer Guard and Arkan are historical, though the daughter Predrag mentions is fictional.
Battle Eleven: The Bura windstorm is really a concern in north west Croatia and costal Slovenia. The bunker Jovana hides in is a reference to the bunkers that the Albanian totalitarian dictator Hoxha ordered built all over his country. The place where Predrag likes to brood in Belgrade is real, though the specific statue is fictional (there’s a different statue there).
Battle Twelve: The Galeb was Maršal Tito’s personal yacht, and it’s location at the time has been faithfully presented. The Navy base’s Admiral is fictional. The arena in Pula is very real. President Poos is historical as well, though his visit to Yugoslavia at that time is fictional. The Metelkova barracks are a real place, which today (fun fact!) is no longer a military compound but Ljubljana’s main alternative culture hub. General Aksentović is fictional, as is his love of Šljivovica, though I very loosely based his character on one of the real top JNA commanders in Slovenia at the time (If you’re that interested in which one, they share the same initials).
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Inside the Pula arena
Battle Thirteen: Admiral Mamula and President Kučan are historical. Kučan’s speech at the Slovene independence ceremony has been faithfully depicted, though not in its entirety. It occurred in present-day Republic Square. The other the parts of the ceremony were fictionalized.
Battle Fourteen: The story of Prešeren and Julija is historical and the line Hristijan says to Antonija after almost falling in the river is a reference to one of Prešeren’s poems about Julija. While the characters of Antonija and Janez are, of course, made up, the conflict between the domobranci and the partisans during World War Two was very real. The domobranci were persecuted by the victorious partisans right after the war, and having family on the ‘losing’ side of the conflict is still considered something of a stigma in Slovenia today. The extent to which it causes problems for Antonija more than forty years later in the 1990’s may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Battle Fifteen: In real life, Slovenia’s president and defense minister can’t agree on who gave the order to fire on the JNA. The helicopter that Mojca’s sees get shot down is historical as are the peace talks that she mentions Jovana is attending in Zagreb.
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The view from Shoemakers Bridge where Mojca ends up during the Ten-Day War.
Battle Sixteen: The fighting at Holmec really did happen and the border crossing really did get torched.
Battle Seventeen: All the trivia that Jovana gives about Mt. Triglav and Aljaž Tower is true; it is said that you are not a ‘true’ Slovenian if you have not climbed Triglav once in your life. Anything related to ending the Ten-Day War from its summit is, or the JNA trying to renege on the ceasefire by cutting the phone lines to Ljubljana is, of course, totally made up by me. The Brijuni Agreement formally ending the war, however, is real.
Battle Eighteen: The RAM plan, as depicted in Tito’s Lost Children, is semi-real. It is known that something called RAM existed, but the content has never been revealed. While the specific contents of it in the book is speculative, it is however, known that the Serb leadership did premeditate much of the ethnic-cleansing, especially in Bosnia. The base Jovana is training on is fictional, though the Slovene Territorial Defense Force did have a training facility near Ljubljana. President Tudjman, who Janez mentions, is historical and we will meet a fictional personage of him in War Two: Croatia.
Tito’s Lost Children War One: Slovenia is available here.
June 25, 2019
Acknowledgements for Voyages of Fortune
Below is the acknowledgements and inspirational background section that I had in the at the back of the final book of Voyages of Fortune, the sequel to my first trilogy, Keepers of the Stone. When I got off the train the town of Celje one day I never imagined that I would come away with an idea for a continuation in the person of Alma Karlin. It was a pleasure to see what ‘happened’ when her real journey around the world met with the Keepers/Voyages fantasy universe. Oh, and there’s time travel, too…
When I first visited Celje in the summer of 2016, I never thought I would find a kindred spirit in the form of a statue standing just beyond the train station. It was here that I encountered the life story of Alma Karlin: a writer and novelist who, in the 1920s, left home with nothing but a few dinars in her pocket. Holding a passport almost no one would accept, she traveled the world for nine years alone rather than living the traditional life expected of her in the city’s bourgeois circles.
Over the course of that day, I learned about her travels and writings. She quickly became one of my heroes. So thanks, Alma, for setting out on your journey, inspiring my latest trilogy, and lending me the courage to write and travel as I choose, no matter what.
In addition to Alma’s travels and the legend of Friderik, Veronika, and the Counts of Celje so much of this story – from Mark’s internship in Southeast Asia, to Henry’s rediscovering his Slovene roots – has been inspired by my own travels and experiences over the past ten years. Some of the characters – I’ll leave you guessing as to which ones – were inspired by the people I have met over the course of my own journey. So thanks – or in some cases ‘thanks’ – for spurring me to put pen to paper.
The city of Karachi provides the setting for a large part of Book Three. So I also have to give special acknowledgement to my friends and host family from that city for the amazing time you showed me on my academic research trips there in 2012 and 2014. Your city will always hold a quirky, special place in my heart; one day I hope to be back.
Thanks, Mom. You’ve been my staunch first-line beta reader who cracked the whip on me when my efforts to connect the stories of Friderik and Veronika, Alma, and the other plotlines from the Keepers of the Stone universe turned the first draft of Book One into a hot mess. Because of you, the final one ended up being largely unrecognizable from the first one, in a very good way.
As always, my final thank you goes to you, the readers. If you’ve made it to the end, you understand what it means to live for yourself and to never let anyone choose your life for you. Thanks for letting me share the stuff that goes on in my sometimes overactive, bizarre imagination.
The Voyages of Fortune trilogy is available Here.
June 24, 2019
Acknowledgements for Keepers of the Stone
Below are the acknowledgements and inspiration behind my first trilogy, Keepers of the Stone, a historical fantasy set in India, the US and Europe during the 1880’s. I decided to take it out of the back of my books and rather than just let it lay around my hard drive I thought it would be good to post it here. It’s true that the idea came in a flash; and these books were inspired by my favorite novel, Nobel Prize winning author Henryk Sienkiewicz’s In Desert and Wilderness. When I sat down to write the first chapter I had no idea that it would turn into an entire series, let alone spark my career as a writer, but three years down the road here I am.
This is your fault, dad.
When you told me that you were planning a family trip to Egypt, I guess you couldn’t have known that the first thing I thought of was not the pyramids. Or the Sphinx. Or Cairo. Or Abu Simbel….
It was of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel: W Pustyni i w Puszczy, my favorite book since I first read it at the age of seventeen, which is partly set there. When I heard of our family’s travel plans, first thing I did was start comparing the places we would go with locations in the original novel. Sadly, there was little coincidence. Yet, during this process, I noticed that someone had written a sequel to that novel. I put it on my reading list.
Shortly after, my hard drive crashed. I had time to read the continuation.
The morning after I’d finished it, I took a walk in Coventry, England – for better or worse where I was living at the time. I found myself standing in front of the town’s Lady Godiva statue, staring at the figure of a girl on a horse. Having no idea what the story of that noblewoman was, it came to me in a flash. There are some things you can’t unsee; this was one of them.
So, thanks, dad – like it or not – for setting me on the course that led to my putting proverbial pen to paper.
And thanks, mom. If you had not encouraged me to put this out there, it’s likely it would have simply sat on my hard drive. Also, you’ve been my proofreader and editor. If I created it, you helped figure out what it meant.
Also, thanks to my two close friends from high school, who encouraged me when I wondered if I was crazy for writing this – while doing a PhD, no less. And to my first Polish language teacher – wherever you are – who shoved a certain novel into the hands of an overstressed boy in his late teens.
Finally, I should thank Henryk Sienkiewicz and Leszek Talko: those whose stories – W Pustyni i w Puszczy and Staś i Nel: Zaginiony Klejnot Indii – loosely inspired me to create this dark parody of what might have happened next. You’ve spurred me to make a new world grown from the tales you’ve told.
To close it all out, I’ll just say thanks to you – all those who have read the books. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share the stuff that goes on in my sometimes very, very weird mind.
The complete Keepers of the Stone trilogy is available here.
May 8, 2019
Tito’s Lost Children Interview with Total Slovenia News
On the 39th anniversary of Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia’s funeral I thought I’d leave this here: My recent interview with Total Slovenia News, Slovenia’s leading English language news site, about the release of the first book in my new series: Tito’s Lost Children, A Tale of the Yugoslav Wars. It’s an alternative history adventure of the break up of Yugoslavia. What if it turned out that Tito left behind a secret, illegitimate daughter as his chosen successor and stopping the Yugoslav wars was up to her?
In the interview I talk a bit more about how I got the inspiration for creating the story and doing research for the novels. I also go into depth about how Book (War) One has a special connection with Slovenia and Slovenian history, publishing in Slovenia and more!
The link to the interview is here.
May 3, 2019
Tito’s Lost Children Launches!
The first installment in my new series, Tito’s Lost Children. A Tale of the Yugoslav Wars, is finally out. It’s launching at the special price of $0.99, so now is your chance to get it before the price goes rocketing up to $2.99 on May 8th!
Get it now!
It’s an alternative history first-person shifting perspective novel set during the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia that doesn’t always take itself to seriously. So it’s same, same but different from some of the stuff I’ve written before this. If I do say so myself, it’s also the best thing I’ve written yet; everyone I’ve shown it to so far agrees! If you’re nor familiar with the region or history don’t worry. I’ve written this with you in mind.
The synopsis is below:
Yugoslav People’s Army brats Jovana and Hristijan grew up in a secluded border-watch compound, dreaming of grander horizons. They get their wish in the worst way possible when Predrag, a rogue Army captain, kidnaps Jovana for no apparent reason. Hristijan manages to rescue her, but their ordeals are far from over.
On the run, they uncover the shocking secret behind Jovana’s upbringing: she is the chosen successor to Maršal Josip Broz Tito. With Yugoslavia on the brink of collapse, it is her duty to keep order among the country’s quarrelsome nationalities – and stop the Serbs from grabbing power. There’s only one tiny problem: Jovana was never trained to take on her new role as the only hope for a unified Yugoslavia.
Joining forces with a hard-fighting mute girl, Jovana and Hristijan must make their way to Slovenia to prevent its secession from the Yugoslav Federation. To get there, they will have to outwit Predrag, who is determined to capture Jovana and win the approval of his Serb nationalist father.
The fate of Yugoslavia now rests with a band of snarky teenagers. Armed with nothing but a few guns and an old Army truck, they are about to make their mark on history.
Get your copy here
March 15, 2019
Voyages of Fortune Box Set Launches!
The entire Voyages of Fortune trilogy is now available as one box set here!
Don’t miss this chance to get the exciting, fast paced sequel to the Keepers of the Stone Historical fantasy trilogy in one go!
February 16, 2019
Keepers of the Stone Book One is FREE!
Outcast, the first book in in the Keepers of the Stone trilogy just became FREE yesterday.
Now there’s no downside to trying it out, absolutely no strings attached.
Even better, the entire Keepers of the Stone trilogy is now available at the ebook retailer of your choice.
Click here for Amazon or here for basically everywhere else (B&N, Ibooks, Kobo, etc…) to start reading!
January 9, 2019
My books on House Hunters International
Hey there! Welcome to my site! If you’re visiting now, you probably heard about me because I was on HGTV House Hunters International.
Here are some behind the scenes pics from the shoot for my family’s episode.
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Introductory Interview: Not my real apartment in Brussels. It was WAY smaller, believe me…
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Camera Crew during the arduous five day shoot was great and patient with us non-actors.
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The final decision scene in the swamp south of Ljubljana. One of the hardest scenes to shoot. It was actually really buggy and the natural lighting kept being a problem, prompting the director to shout “I’ll pay a million dollars to anyone who can move the sun!”
Overall, I had a great time during the shoot and I continue to enjoy living in Slovenia and exploring my Slavic (Polish and Slovene) heritage It continues to inspire my books. You can check out book one in both of my historical fantasy trilogies Keepers of the Stone and Voyages of Fortune on Amazon.
They are both FREE through Friday to celebrate the airing of the show, so what’s the downside to trying them out?
The region continues to inspire my next series Tito’s Lost Children: A Tale of the Yugoslav Wars a first person historical Fiction epic set during the 1990’s Balkan conflicts. War (Book) One: Slovenia should be out in about a month! Was it any wonder I liked the Yugoslav era blok?
Happy watching and reading!
November 27, 2018
Dragon’s Destiny: Voyages of Fortune Book Three Launches!
The exciting conclusion to the Voyages of Fortune Trilogy is finally out! And it’s launching at the price of $0.99 through Dec. 1
As part of the launch, Voyages of Fortune: Book One will be FREE and Book Two will be $0.99 for the same time period.
The Cover and synopsis for Voyages of Fortune Book Three: Dragon’s Destiny are below:
Three missions. Two bloodlines. One endgame. One destiny.
In the Indian Ocean, 2005: Time-traveler Henry finds himself imprisoned on Jenn’s ship of mercenaries, more than seven decades farther into the future than he expected. He will have to find a way to win the trust of a crew captained by his greatest nemesis if he is to have any hope of accomplishing the Order of the Dragon’s goals, and saving Natalia’s captured gypsy troop.
Following the crew’s attempted mutiny, castaway Mark Fletcher decides to return home to England. But the Urumi’s demonic Order has other ideas for Mark’s future. They are planning to turn him against the crew in a final bid to control time itself.
To stop the Urumi, the crew must fight their way through multiple enemies in one of the world’s most dangerous cities, as they try to gain control of the Invisible Circus’s time-travel portals. Their success or failure may hinge on a secret deep in crewmember Mei Hua’s past that could mean she is fated to play a pivotal role in the Order of the Dragon’s endgame.
In Romania, 1890: Having escaped from her grandfather’s rival gypsy troop, Natalia must make her way into the Ottoman Empire to locate the only magical object that could save her people. But her grandfather’s adopted daughter, a vicious tyrant with superhuman combat abilities, is hot on her trail. Can Natalia outwit her long enough to aid the Order of the Dragon and lead her troop to salvation?
Location Unknown, 1928: Seven decades into the future, the Order of the Dragon’s and the Urumi’s ploys are coming to a head, but what role might world traveler and adventurer Alma Karlin still have to play?
The stakes have never been higher as the struggle to control time enters its final stages. The only hope is to trust the notes that continue to appear out of nowhere, sent by a mysterious puppet master who seems to be pulling all the strings for some purpose still unknown. Henry, the crew, and Natalia must fight their most difficult battles yet as they attempt to accomplish the Order of the Dragon’s true purpose, uncover the sender’s real identity, and the common destiny that will change the world.
Get Voyages of Fortune Book Three: Dragon’s Destiny here!
