Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "bernard-jan"

If you want to purchase my latest novel Okrutno ljeto in Croatian, you can do that directly at my publisher's web page here. Feel free to visit my web page to read sample chapters in Croatian and in English. Thanks!

The day has come. I have it! Now! Finally!

My own domain.

BERNARDJAN.COM

Yesterday was the day when I did that major change in my Internet appearance and life. I still have to do Google-related changes and stuff (ugh!), but it is already available for browsing, with much simpler and more memorable URLs.

I invite you to visit www.bernardjan.com and share with me my enthusiasm and happiness!

Hope you enjoy it and please don't hesitate to share and recommend my web page to others if you like it. (Not hard to imagine a happy grin on my face!)

Thank you!

Bernard Jan

One of the best trilogies I've ever read. Scary, gripping, moving. Highly impressing.

Unlike some novels I have been reading with a serious effort like I was plowing through a field devastated by drought, The Wool Trilogy by Hugh Howey is exactly the opposite. A perfectly balanced deep fall through a silo, which forces the reader to keep falling and falling, unable to stop himself and put the the books down until he hits the end.

Science fiction? Maybe. But only for the reason of being set in a Dystopian future.

The scariest thing was looking at a daringly realistic portrait of our society today. What happened to humanity?!? Plausibly unintentionally (or maybe intentionally after all), upsetting parallels of the real world are screaming into our faces like a wake-up call. If we do not do something to light up the flames of humanity and share with our loved ones and the stranger on the street, we will all end up in our present-day versions of silos eventually to be suffocated and poisoned, reduced to mere things, numbers.

Howey gave us a masterpiece. But he has also shown us the safe path to our future. This is the gift we should cherish, even if we chose not to believe that silos could actually happen.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Two of my books in Croatian are now also on Promocave.com.

For those of you who speak Croatian, you can check my novella Potraži me ispod duge (Look For Me Under the Rainbow) here:

a) About Potraži me ispod duge
b) Excerpt from Potraži me ispod duge

or my novel Okrutno ljeto (Cruel Summer) here:

a) About Okrutno ljeto
b) Excerpt from Okrutno ljeto

I also thought of you who do not speak Croatian. On this blog post you will find an excerpt and a link to read more about my novella Look For Me Under the Rainbow, while this blog post will provide you with excerpts in English from my YA adventure/mystery novel Cruel Summer.

Thanks for checking me out!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Ghost Flight by Bear Grylls

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ever heard of Bear Grylls? I truly hope so, because this former soldier in the British Special Forces, the youngest ever Chief Scout to the UK Scout Association and an honorary Colonel to the Royal Marine Commandos is also an adventurer, writer and television presenter. His Facebook bio says that “Bear Grylls has become known around the world as one of the most recognized faces of survival and outdoor adventure.”

I first heard about Bear Grylls seven years ago when I was on my vacation visiting my friends in Sweden and we watched his Ultimate Survival (also known as Born Survivor/Man vs. Wild) on the Discovery Channel. Needless to say that Bear Grylls captured my attention on the spot, that I wanted to see more of him, making me check for him online immediately after returning home to Croatia.

I loved the concept of his show in which he was left stranded with his crew in an unfamiliar wilderness – rainforests, glaciers, deserts, islands, to name just a few – with only one goal: to survive and find his way back to civilization.

The similar pattern follows his entertaining and exciting thriller Ghost Flight. Packed with action, adventure, beautiful landscapes of the remote Amazon jungle where lies hidden a mysterious WWII warplane, Ghost Flight guarantees to keep even the most demanding fans of this genre glued to its pages. It is so easy to picture Bear Grylls, an ex-soldier and a survivor, as an ex-soldier Will Jaeger, also a leader of a team of former elite warriors in their quest to uncover the mystery of the hidden warplane and the secret of Nazi evil forces (Wir sind die Zukunft) that lie buried in it.

I am a sucker for WWII novels and I am a sucker for Amazon rainforest. When those two are combined, you have an explosive reading before you. You are drinking up a cocktail made of ghosts from not so recent past, to majority of people almost forgotten, but the ghosts which are patiently waiting for their moment of the rise of the new Reich, and a pristine nature beaming with both beautiful and deadly life.

Ghost Flight is a successful debut novel with interesting and well-developed characters, full of action, twists and turns and gripping moments. It is also a very detailed novel which probably might not help us in a fight against the rise of a new Reich if it comes to it, but it could very well serve us as a survival guide in a primeval rainforest if we ever find ourselves in our personal mission under the canopy of magnificent trees where neither evil Nazis nor modern-day humans got to leave their destructive imprint.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Suppose the accident didn't happen. Suppose we were less immersed into things we were doing and more focused on the things the others were about to do. It took only a second, a blink of an eye, for a scream to penetrate the stale calmness of an ordinary evening and set everybody in motion.

It did happen; accidents happen when no one expects them, this is why they are accidents, I guess. Commotion and shouts in the room are fighting for the primacy with the sounds of the howling wind and things falling and clattering from the outside. Suddenly everyone and everything wants your attention. Suddenly nothing was important except for this brief moment in time when you have to ACT in order to prevent more grave things to happen, to stop consequences from taking their course and reach the point beyond the conclusion: The damage is irreparable. Once you step over the threshold, the door closes and not even the howling wind and drums of rain of the building storm can open it again.

Once bygones, always bygones.

Life sucks, doesn't it?

Sure it does, don't lie to me about it!

Monsters of the night are screaming behind my windows, thudding and banging for my attention as I am trying to make love with the sleep, craving to be embraced in its comforting promise of things to be undone and the history reversed to before it happened. I crack-open the balcony door, securing it from being shattered into pieces of the broken glass in case the wind wishes to grab its handle and tries to force itself on my slumber. Nothing happens, though. At least nothing I perceive. A barely traceable kiss of the fresh air softly lands on my exposed neck, arms and bare chest as I surrender myself into the winning pull of a sleep, aware of the blinking dim dot of consciousness that the morning will be the time and place to deal with the consequences. To tackle the issue. If what did happen decided to leave the scars of the accident of the event that only in my regretful mind supposedly didn't happen.

I'll try, but I know that sleeping the morning away won't make any difference. What is bound to happen is already being fed with the thick squish of the pouring rain.

If only this water turned into tears of remedy that would make my dad's eye heal. My mom would be granted forgiveness, and one ordinary, boring and uneventful night would be written off in the forgetfulness of time.

If only it didn't happen when it happened.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Original blog post

My Muse Blog

When everything is gone, memories remain. Snapshots of the moments your soul feeds on. And craves for more. Even when it's over. Because all good things come to an end.

Not the craving, though. It's insatiable. It wants more. It wants to suck on your good memories, rip your heart to pieces. Devour it in a few bites of the crazed, starved beast, making you bleed on the inside as you go on with your life with a fake and pathetic smile on your face. Like a clown.

Pagliacci.

No one sees your tears. No one smells your longing. No one licks your wounds. No one hears you cry.

No one picks you up and holds you under your arm as you stumble to take another breath and blink away your blurry sight while you grope for a familiar memory in a very distant future, trying to make it alive. Trying to make it omnipresent. Trying to relive it – now.

Except for those who know you, except for those who have shared it with you. The moments, the images, the laughter, the smells, the walks, the ice creams, the sounds, the games, the thoughts, the experiences, the dreams, the feelings, the recollections, the foolishness. Knitting them into collages that will stay with you forever. Those are your people. Your friends.

That is the beauty of it. The beauty I will try to share and portray here for you. Because when the words fail, pictures continue to tell our story.

Thank you, Växjö, for everything. Really.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Original blog post - images from Sweden

Related posts:
Summer in Sweden
Sweden in My Mind
In Between Places

My other blogs

The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Girl of Millennium

The girl with the dragon tattoo. The girl who played with fire. The girl who kicked the hornet's nest.

And the girl in the spider's web.

I love the Millennium series. I love this brutal, raw, dark and violent Swedish saga, cold and ruthless as the Swedish weather. And I love that this story continues.

Even though the first opening pages of The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz stroke me as slow and a bit lulling in building the plot, soon new pages are turned and stick to your fingers like frost sticks to the frozen windows in December Stockholm. The Girl in the Spider's Web sets with vigor and thrill into an action worthy of its literary predecessors, continuing Stieg Larsson's series with dignity and justified trust. Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander continue living, and that is what's most important.

I didn't pick this book by chance to read it during my vacation in Sweden, although I had a few more other books in store to chose from. I took The Girl in the Spider's Web on a flight with me and read it until I reached my final destination; as well as on my way back via Copenhagen and Frankfurt to Zagreb. However, while staying in Växjö I chose to live my own personal Swedish story, a story of hundreds of unwritten pages no one will be able to read but me.

As for Lisbeth and Mikael, they kept me company for ten more days upon my return, making that intoxicating feeling of Sweden linger linger linger and last throughout my whole conscious being.

I look forward to our reunion. We are alive and Sweden is ready and waiting for us.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Despite a disclaimer “This video shows images that some people may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.” on the brand-new powerful music video “Don't Leave Me” by Moby & The Void Pacific Choir, I think that everyone should see it.

For far too long we have been turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the world around us, and simply because we chose to ignore it, it does not mean it doesn't exist or will go away. The truth is out there and one day we will find it, we may think, but the truth is everywhere around us. We don't see it only because it is hidden from us or we chose not to see it.

It is so simple: the choices we make in our everyday lives, the things we do (or not) for others, define the world we live in. The capacity for goodness of a human species is so powerful that it can switch our reality from hopelessness and desperation to an utopian realm of paradise for every one of us and every creature we share this one life with.

We are the only obstacle. We are the cause and we are the change. With every breath and every bite we take, by spreading our comfort zone onto others and the world that surrounds us. Not excluding anyone, even the tiniest miserable creature that crawls on this planet.

I don't need to tell you or anyone what to do. We are intelligent and compassionate creatures and we can make choices. We can fortify our hearts in goodness and do the right things. Or we can turn our heads the other way and pretend again that bad things are not happening. That they will disappear because they have nothing to do with us, because we are not accountable. Well, this is also our choice. But in that case, I am afraid, this world will be lost for us.

Please watch this video. And do something about it. Little choices we make today can mean the world to someone out there.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0 by Eliot Peper

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Once in a while you come upon a book that throws you completely unguarded off your feet. When you buy a book you usually have an idea what to expect to find between the covers and you prepare yourself for a pleasurable journey into a new world unknown. But when you get a free copy of an e-book as a runner up for the review giveaway contest, you do not know much about it, or whom you are going to deal with and spend your Kindle-time with during the next few days or weeks.

Mara Winkle is the heroine of Eliot Peper's Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0. She is a strong female character caught in the bizarre love-business triangle between her boyfriend Craig and her best friend James. Craig and James are not too much fond of each other, which makes Mara's life even more colorful and exciting, pushing her every now and then to express her strong character in both decision-and-relationship making. Beside being strong headed and ready to cut off people seemingly without a second thought or regret, Mara is passionate about mountain biking and especially rock climbing. "Climbing was the most intellectually intense sport Mara had experienced. She had heard it described as physical chess. It was a kind of dynamic athletic geometry and there was a good reason bouldering routes were called problems. Every move was an exercise in balance, a special mixture of intuition and calculation." However, she is not so enthusiastic about studying at the University of Colorado, Boulder, especially when her best friend James asks her to partner with him to start a new software company Mozaik Industries.

This is a decision that changes both James' and Mara's lives. In their new partnership, James focuses himself on "what he does best, technical development to make Mozaik as awesome as it can possibly be" while Mara becomes "the buffer between him and all the rest of the random shit that needs doing" (Peper describes them as sales, investment, legal, and marketing). In short, they split their roles in doing what they are both best at: "programming for James, juggling for Mara." How this decision affects Craig we won't mention here, so as not to reveal too much and thus spoil the thrill of reading!

This is the moment when all the fun starts in Uncommon Stock, placing this novel among the ranks of fast-paced tech startup thrillers. For new entrepreneurs and enthusiasts Uncommon Stock may serve as a greatly informative and educational reading full of useful advice, but also as the warning on the cruel facts of starting your own business. "Founding a company is a fuck-ton of work. The sausage factory reality is far from the glitzy Silicon Valley mythology. It's a grinding slog that can be enormously satisfying and rewarding, but it's also painful, frustrating, and soul-crushing. If you're going to make it you'll have to sink blood, sweat, and tears into the process. And if you're going to make that kind of a commitment, you've got to truly believe in what you're doing. You've got to be such a zealot that other people are magnetically attracted to you and what you're working on. You've got to dream."

Eliot Peper masterfully leads us through a painful startup process, showing us all the traps and hardships we face along the way. No price is too high, every mistake is paid dearly. Before we realize it, we have already accumulated basic knowledge of the craft, ending up much smarter than we were before starting reading this exciting, adventurous, wise and gripping novel of a slightly unusual title.

In between twists and turns, Eliot Peper amazes us with beautifully intelligent descriptions and ingenious eye for a detail. "They people-watched along the way, relishing the familiar oddities of Boulder's unique human condition. Cyclists were out in force. Mara wondered why it was considered cool to wear jerseys plastered with tacky Fortune 500 branding. A shirtless homeless man was loudly touting the spiritual virtues of vegetarianism and handing out handwritten flyers on the evils of meat from a street corner." "The sky was mostly clear with a thin patina of smog and the sun shone down on an endless grid of concrete, steel, asphalt, and cars. An occasional palm tree or soccer field broke up the urban mélange." "Trees occupied a different dimension than humans. Movement was never an option. They were literally rooted in place and experienced the world through a permanently local lens. Seeds blew off in the wind to sprout new trees in places the parents would never see. And entire generations lived in one area."

Or, "The snakes in her stomach had distilled into a cocktail of righteous anger and frustration."

Beautiful!

I don't shun admitting: Eliot Peper bought me with his descriptions, if not only with his page-turning plot. Uncommon Stock is a high-quality intelligent and intriguing writing of a skillful and undoubtedly talented author whose success and a true value cannot be measured only by a number of sold copies, but also by a commitment and professionalism of this indie writer invested into creating the best end-product for his readers, the only ones that matter to him.

I wouldn't be surprised if it also helps a few startup businesses in the process with his motivational and inspirational dialogues, situations and advices, because, as the author himself says in the novel, "there is something ephemeral but infinitely satisfying about starting something yourself."

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Original blog post



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