Steps Through the Mist Wins Gold Award for Production

Steps Through the Mist, Aio PublishingThe Detroit Club of Printing House Craftsmen recently awarded its 2008 Gold Award to McNaughton & Gunn, the truly excellent US printing company that produces all of Aio Publishing’s books. The award was given “for superb craftsmanship in the production of Steps Through the Mist by Zoran Zivkovic,” which has been added to its Gallery of Superb Printing.

My other Aio-produced book, Seven Touches of Music, previously took top honors for design at the 55th Annual Chicago Book Clinic Book and Media Show.

It is wonderful to see that the time, effort, and artistry taken to produce such beautiful editions of my books are being recognized and awarded. My congratulations to McNaughton & Gunn!

Blogcritics Magazine on Steps and Seven Touches

Richard Marcus at Blogcritics Magazine has posted some insightful reviews of my two books from Aio Publishing.

On Steps Through the Mist:

Like all of Zivkovic’s stories, Steps Through The Mist will leave you scratching your head about the nature of dreams, and what effect we may or may not have on our fates. Does it really matter whether we make a concentrated effort to change our futures, or will what comes about comes about no matter what? Reality is not as far removed from the world of our dreams as we like to think, and the future is always waiting for us no matter what we do.

Link to the full review.

On Seven Touches of Music:

For a novel like Seven Touches Of Music to work we have to believe in the characters and their circumstances sufficiently that the impact the music has on their lives becomes as significant to us as it does to them. Zivkovic has not only made his characters utterly convincing, but his depiction of their lives, and the environment they live in, are detailed in such a manner that we can feel the shock to their systems when they are given their brief glimpses into the unknown.

Link to the full review.

Escher’s Loops Reading in Budva

For my Serbian and Montenegrin readers:

I will be giving a literary reading next month to celebrate the release of my new novel Escher’s Loops (this is the Geopoetika edition; the PS Publishing edition will be out in 2009). The reading will take place on 12 July 2008, at Poets’ Square in the ancient Montenegrin city of Budva, the same city where last year I was presented with the Stefan Mitrov Ljubisa Award for lifetime achievement in literature.

If you have a Facebook account, please do visit the event page for the reading, and be so kind as to RSVP. Also, feel free to spread the news!

The Library and Miss Tamara Acquired by Blodnjak

The Ljubljana-based publisher Blodnjak has acquired the Slovenian-language rights for two more of my books: The Library and Miss Tamara, The Reader. Blodnjak previously published my novels The Fourth Circle in 2006 and The Bridge in 2008, and has announced that they will continue bringing out my books to a Slovenian audience.

Publication of The Library and Miss Tamara, The Reader is expected in 2008/2009.

The Barking Dog on Impossible Stories

Impossible EncountersLawrence Conquest recently reviewed my mega-collection Impossible Stories (PS Publishing, 2006) for The Barking Dog:

Zivkovic’s stories generally focus on the intrusion of the bizarre or fantastic into otherwise normal lives, often with characters facing moral dilemmas, with the results often reading like bizarre modern fairy tales or fables. Dreamlike, occasionally nightmarish, and loaded with symbolism, Zivkovic’s characters find themselves sliding through time, encountering God, the Devil, and even the author himself in several post-modern moments.

Link to the full review here.

Interview at Shirley Jackson Awards Blog

Filipino blogger and bibliophile Charles Tan has been conducting short interviews with a number of nominees of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Awards, including Lucius Shepard, Laird Barron, Carrie Laben, Barbara and Christopher Roden, Christopher Golden, Conrad Williams, and now my humble self. His interview with me was just recently posted:

What made you decide to use the format presented in 12 Collections?

Many prose books of mine share that format. Ursula LeGuin called it a “mosaic-novel”: A whole that is bigger than the mere sum of its constituent parts. An amalgam, not just a conglomerate. I find the term quite appropriate. The stones my literary mosaics are made of can be read and, hopefully, enjoyed, individually, but their true meaning emerges only when seen in entirety of the big picture. This is particularly evident in “Twelve Collections”: The final, twelfth collector collects collections, as if giving a frame to the picture…

Link to the interview.

OF Blog of the Fallen on Twelve Collections

Larry at OF Blog of the Fallen has some nice and insightful things to say about Twelve Collections and The Teashop:

In a day and age where it seems that even speculative fiction writers aim to pack as much descriptive verbiage into their stories as possible (often with deleterious consequences), it is refreshing to read stories written by authors who go in the opposite direction; their stories place a premium on the readers’ imaginative abilities to unpack meaning from just a few scant words.

Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic is one of those blessed few authors. Ever since I read his first novel released in the US, The Fourth Circle, back in 2004, I have marveled over how much depth there is to be found in stories that rarely go past 20 pages. In Twelve Collections and the Teashop, a 2007 limited-edition UK release (no known US release date), Zivkovic has written perhaps one of his best “story suites” to date.

In the introduction, Michael Moorcock discusses how Zivkovic’s writing reflects an older European fabulist tradition, one that was lost in the West with the rise of the Naturalists/Modernists and their (over)emphasis on verisimilitude. Moorcock posits that Eastern European authors such as Zivkovic, who came of age during the police state mentality of the Iron Curtain years, learned that being too specific was a risky matter and that much could be done with everywhere cities and such-and-such people. While this deliberate vagueness might annoy those who prefer focusing on the facts and not the vision behind the story plots, others have found the dreamlike qualities of such tales to be intoxicating, sucking one into reading and then considering what might be transpiring rather than just what really is happening there.

Link to the full review.

Twelve Collections Longlisted for the BFSA

12 CollectionsIn addition to Twelve Collections and The Teashop (PS Publishing, 2007) being a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, my mosaic-novel has now been longlisted for the 2008 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novella. The list of recommendations is as follows:

  • Deadbeat: The Dogs of Waugh, Guy Adams, Humdrumming
  • Starship Summer, Eric Brown, PS Publishing
  • The Mermaids, Robert Edric, PS Publishing
  • The Lees of Laughter’s End, Steven Erickson, PS Publishing
  • The City Beyond Play, Philip Jose Farmer and Danny Adams, PS Publishing
  • “The Helper and his Hero,” Matthew Hughes, F&SF, Feb-March 2007
  • The Crystal Cosmos, Rhys Hughes, PS Publishing
  • Dead Earth: The Green Dawn, Mark Justice and David T Wilbanks, PS Publishing
  • “The Lazarus Condition,” Paul Kane, The Lazarus Condition, Tasmaniac Publications
  • “Dalton Quayle Rides Out,” Paul Kane, Dalton Quayle Rides Out, Pendragon Press
  • After The War (Double Novella), Tim Lebbon, Subterranean Press
  • “The Master Miller’s Tale,” Ian MacLeod, F&SF, May 2007
  • Under My Roof, Nick Mamatas, Soft Skull Press
  • Time Hunter 11: Child Of Time, George Mann and David J Howe, Telos Publishing
  • All Your Gods Are Dead, Gary McMahon, Humdrumming
  • Hereafter and After, Richard Parks, PS Publishing
  • “The Palace,” Barbara Roden, At Ease with the Dead, Ash-Tress Press
  • Strawberry Man, Eric Shapiro, Insidious Publications
  • “Stars Seen Through Stone,” Lucius Shepard, F&SF, July 2007 & Dagger Key & Other Stories
  • “Dead Money,” Lucius Shepard, Asimov’s, April 2007 & Dagger Key & Other Stories
  • Black Tide, Del Stone Jr, Telos Publishing
  • Rain, Conrad Williams, Gray Friar Press
  • The Scalding Rooms, Conrad Williams, PS Publishing
  • Twelve Collections and the Teashop, Zoran Zivkovic, PS Publishing

Link to the complete longlist for each category.

Escher’s Loops Sold to PS Publishing

I am very happy to announce that my agent, John Jarrold, has sold World English-language limited-edition rights of my new full-length novel Escher’s Loops to Peter Crowther of PS Publishing, for publication in 2009.

“The novel is subtle and fascinating,” said Jarrold. “It’s a true classic.”

Contact John Jarrold for further information, by e-mail at j.jarrold@btinternet.com or by phone at 01522 510544.

Extracts from Escher’s Loops

Geopoetika will be releasing my new novel, Escher’s Loops, in both Serbian and English in late June. However, my Serbian-reading audience can get a preview before publication (apologies to my English-reading audience, who will have to remain patient for a bit longer). Glossy magazine Fame has extracted two chapters from “The Fourth Loop,” and I provide the PDFs for those chapters below. Please enjoy.

Chapter 2 of “The Fourth Loop,” (PDF) from Fame #4, February 2008.

Chapter 3 of “The Fourth Loop,” (PDF) from Fame #5, March 2008.