Your “Monster” in Moldova and Romania

Posted on 01/31/2015 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

In the blog post “Your Translation, Your Book, Your Success” I mentioned that I am searching for amazing people to translate the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” into other languages besides Russian and English. This post has a more concrete offer: I am offering you to share the authorship and royalties on the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” distributed in Moldova and Romania if you help me translate it into the Romanian language.

The situation is that through the community of Amazing Readers of the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” it becomes quite well-known in Moldova and Romania, and more and more people request it to be translated into Romanian. I am willing to satisfy this demand, but my skills working with the Romanian language are not sufficient for translating a literary work. That is why I request your help.

In exchange for your support in translating the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” you will:

+ Be featured as the translator of the book on its cover and title page, as well as in a special gratitude letter to you in the book;

+ Receive royalties from each book sold an equal basis;

+ See the electronic version of our book available on Amazon, Books Express, Lulu, and other on-line bookstores worldwide;

+ Enjoy the sight of our book with your name on it being borrowed from the street libraries in Moldova and Romania and read by Romanian-speaking Amazing Readers.

I hope you are already interested in this unique opportunity. If yes, please write me to author@themonster.info or use the Contact section of this website.

I am looking forward to working on the Romanian version of the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” together with you!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Posted on 12/25/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Greetings

Dear Amazing Supporters and Readers,

Firstly, allow me to express my gratitude for your support and appreciation of my first large novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” and for sharing this dream with me. I am happy and honored that this dream is in your hands and you enjoy it! This means a lot to me!

And secondly, I wish you a MEGA Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year! May all your dreams also come true next year, like it happened to me this year! And I wish you to experience inspiration, success, and love each day!

See you in 2015!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

The Monster in 2015

Posted on 12/21/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

The New Year is approaching fast. Soon we will enter the year 2015 full of new inspiration, creations, challenges, and successes. Great results that are consequences of our actions this year await us ahead.

This is true for me and my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” that has been published this year and has already raised an international community of amazing readers. They have given me very good and inspiring feedback, which motivates me to start the second book of “The Monster” trilogy faster. And it is also great to know that some of the readers were so inspired by my novel that they started working on releasing their own literary creations.

The year 2015 will bring new interesting results. Before initiating the work on the second book, “The Monster: Armageddon’s Blade”, I intend to write and publish a relatively short side novel entitled “Simply Love”. The novel will be included in the book with the same title along with a collection of my love-and-romance poem. The reason to do that is not only to try to explain the intricacies of love relationships in the modern world, but also to introduce several key characters to be featured in the upcoming novel “The Monster: Armageddon’s Blade”, as well as their life stories, and thus expand “The Monster Universe”.

Besides that, the book lovers in Ukraine can expect a special gift in 2015 in the form of the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” in Ukrainian language. Two of my amazing friends from Ukraine, Lada Merkulova and Aleksandra Polivanaya, have kindly volunteered to bring it to the Ukrainian-speaking readers and have already started translating the novel. Thus the Ukrainian version will then supplement the Russian and English books already on sale and should become available by the end of 2015.

And that is not all! There will be much more exciting news related to the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” coming throughout next year. So, stay tuned and enjoy the holiday season!

And I wish you a MEGA wonderful, inspiring, and happy New Year!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

A Look inside the Monster

Posted on 11/22/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

The novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” continues to share its incredible adventures and insights about the interrelations between Human and Nature with people worldwide. Now the community of its readers is comprised of more than 40 amazing people from 10 different countries. And all these people have very good feedback on the novel that I share in the Testimonials section of this website and the Facebook page of the novel one by one.

However, if you have not joined this community yet, it might be difficult for you to decide on getting the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” without having a look inside it. In order to change that, I have created the preview version of the book with the first five chapters for you to get a feeling of its plot. You can access this version through the homepage of the novel website or directly here.

Now enjoy the book!

And please share what you think of it through the Contact section of the website!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

#Monster at Halloween

Posted on 10/29/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

Halloween is approaching. On the 31^st of October you will probably see lots of people dressed in ghosts, ghouls, vampires, witches, and monsters celebrating this curious holiday. Most likely the social networks will be flooded with photos of various creepy and creative Halloween costumes as well. This promises to be a true “night of the monsters”.

On this occasion serendii publishing, the publisher of the English version of the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” and I, its author, have launched a Halloween competition. We called it #Monster at Halloween.

The rules are very simple. All you have to do is:

Take a photo of yourself in a Monster-style Halloween costume and upload it to the competition page on Facebook;
Share this photo on Facebook and Twitter with a hashtag #MonsteratHalloween and collect as many “likes” as possible until the 31^st of October.

The photo with the most “likes” wins!

“And what is the prize?” you may ask. Of course, it is

THE BOOK “THE MONSTER: BLADE OF DARKNESS”!

The winner will be announced at the #Monster at Halloween Facebook page and on this blog on the 1^st of November.

Now, unleash your creativity and SHOW US YOUR MONSTER SIDE!

The Most Valuable Thing for a Writer

Posted on 10/18/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

What do you think is the most important and valuable thing for a writer?

Yes, that is right! It is, dear readers, your appreciation and opinion about the writer’s work. It is your feedback that gives the writer the stimulus and motivation to write more, as well as the ideas and suggestions for improvement to be considered in his/her writing.

This is also true for me. I love readers’ feedback about my poems, short stories, and novels. It is like a fuel for my writing engine: the more feedback I receive, the faster and better it works.

My novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” has already been read by a good number of amazing people worldwide. That is why I started contacting them and asking for their opinion on the novel. All feedback that came from them was quite interesting, positive, and useful for me in terms of planning the style and plot of the other novels of “The Monster” trilogy. And in order to show the feedback received, I set up the section Testimonials on this website. There you are able to see the readers, who have already finished reading the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”, and their opinion regarding it.

Furthermore, I invite YOU to share your feedback about the book. For that please use the Contact section of the website. I will be much grateful for your opinion and suggestions, dear reader.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

The Story of How Let’s Do It World! Heroes Contributed to the Dream

Posted on 10/04/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

I continue to reveal the story of writing my largest novel so far, “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”, bits by bits. And this time I would like to describe you how the global movement for a clean planet Let’s Do It World! (LDIW), where I had been a volunteer and researcher behind the Waste Explorer project, contributed to the publishing of this book.

You already know that the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”” has been created through crowdsourcing and crowdfunding support, and now it is available in Russian and English and in hardcover and e-book formats in more than 20 countries of the world. What you probably do not know yet is that the book was indirectly and directly created by a number of awesome people, who I like to call the LDIW Heroes.

The indirect contribution of LDIW to making this literary dream come true is represented by the “community action experiment” applied to the publishing of the book. During its preparation I joined efforts with other people to make it happen, just like the community of this movement helps to organize national cleanups in different countries.

The direct contribution is represented by the fact that the actual LDIW members together with me took part in transforming the dream about the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” into reality. The talented artist Kärt Viljalo made a number of wonderful illustrations that you can now see in the book and in the on-line gallery. The generous Toomas Trapido supported the publishing of the book through its Indiegogo crowdfunding page. And supportive Kristiina Kerge and Kadi Kenk helped in sharing the page and spreading the word about this literary dream. Their names can now be found in the Gratitude Letter in all “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” books, as well as on the official website of the novel.

All in all, due to the LDIW global network and my participation in it I have found all these talented, amazing, and extraordinary people. And together with other contributors we have succeeded in bringing the science fiction adventure novel about the interrelations between Human and Nature entitled “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” to the readers worldwide. And for that I am enormously grateful to LDIW and its heroes!

This piece of the novel writing story has been featured in the LDIW Newsletter #44 under the title “A book inspired by Let’s Do It! World heroes published”. Thank you, Kadi Kenk, for writing and sharing it!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Finishing Touches under the Californian Sun

Posted on 09/21/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

Recently an article entitled “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”: The Novel with an ELP Footprint in It has appeared on the blog of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) managed by the University of California in Berkeley, California, the US. It tells the story of how I finished the draft of my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” while being in California and studying at Beahrs ELP in June – July 2013. The article was written by me and then shared by the blog administrators from the University of California, Anita and Megan.

The reasons for writing about this footprint of California and Beahrs ELP in the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” are firstly to acknowledge the contribution of such events and experience in shaping up its final chapters, and secondly to start revealing bits of the whole story of making my literary dream come true in the hope to inspire at least some of you to do a similar thing. This is because the aims of writing and publishing this novel include not only expressing and sharing my ideas on how Human-to-Nature interrelations might develop, but also showing on the real example that it is possible to realize the dream of publishing your own book. I would really like to see and read poems, stories, and novels written by my friends and other amazing people I know. And I am ready to support them.

So, I suggest you to take a look at the article “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”: The Novel with an ELP Footprint in It about how I made the finishing touches to my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” in a small room of a student campus lit by the warm Californian sun. Perhaps it will motivate you to find a similar inspirational environment and write your own literary work. And one day I will be able to hold your own book in my hands and read about how it had been written. I am very much looking forward to that day!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

“The Monster” Comes to Germany and Denmark

Posted on 09/06/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

Slowly but steadily my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” becomes available to everyone everywhere. If you check its page on the global platform for readers and book recommendations Goodreads, you will see a long list of on-line bookstores, where my book can be found. The e-book version of the novel has even reached iTunes! So, now you can read it on your Mac or iOS device.

The books “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” are also travelling around in the real world. During the last weeks I have received updates that they arrived to Germany and Denmark, where awesome and excited readers had been waiting for them. And now these people fully enjoy the action-packed adventures of Jessie and Jack on a remote island and together with them try to solve the mystery of the local dinosaur-like creature named Blade of Darkness. After the readers finish reading the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”, I will ask them to provide their opinion and feedback on the book, which I will then post on this website.

Until then you are encouraged to contact me for receiving several pages of the book in Russian or English for a preview. And then you can get your own copy of the novel in this or any other on-line bookstore here throughout the Web. I will be very happy if my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” reaches your place as well!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Your Translation, Your Book, Your Success

Posted on 08/24/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

My novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” continues to penetrate into different corners of the world. It is now being sold in Australia, China, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, the US, and other countries. With such a large international distribution I have started receiving requests on having the book available in other languages besides Russian (original) and English. Most of the people, who request that, ask for the novel in Romanian, but there are also questions about German, French, Polish, etc. coming in. So, I suppose, it is time to start making such thing happen… in a traditional for my novel way.

In designing and publishing the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” I had been using crowdsourced support practically right from the start. The Russian text of the novel was reviewed by my former teacher in Russian language and literature Violina Mihalevskaia; it was then translated into English by my friend from Sweden Erika Rydergard and reviewed by my US friend from Peace Corps Barbara Jue; illustrations for both versions of the book were provided by my Ukrainian and Estonian friends Catherine Starostenko and Kärt Viljalo; and the English book was published and is now distributed by the founder of serendii publishing Wolfgang Stricker. Names of all these wonderful people can now be seen in the book and its official website.

Thus, I have decided once again to call upon the support of amazing people to contribute to making the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” even more accessible to the world.

So, if you know any other language besides Russian and/or English, and would like to contribute to the translation of the book into this language, I will be more than happy to collaborate with you. As a result of your efforts you will see how the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” translated by you and with your name in it goes global, how your friends and people around you read it with enthusiasm, and how they appreciate your work. Certainly we can agree upon your share in the revenue generated by the books sold. Just write me by using the Contact section of this website for us to start the discussion.

Like the American writer Helen Keller once put it:

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander