Linda and Bozidar Nikcevich – Authors of the Week
Hello Linda and Bozidar, Welcome to BrandEducation! How do you choose the titles for your books?
Linda: Bozidar wrote the books and they had pretty clear titles. As he was developing the story, I had to edit them down in critique groups. Some titles weren’t playing very clearly. So then we edited them down but overall, the story theme is clearly stated in the title.
Bozidar: Every book is different. So titles are what the story is about. Storytelling about clouds and the animals you see. So that’s basically how I look at it. The first book I wrote was a Mat, Pat, and his Cat. A rhyming book, I haven’t published it yet, but it’s coming up. The first book we published was The Moon with the Crooked Smile. It’s about a child looking at the moon before he goes to bed and thinking about how the moon looks so nice and shiny. He looks closely and it looks like a moon with a smile.
What themes and messages do you hope the readers take away from your work?
Linda: I enjoy the writing that my husband has done. It’s creative, it’s imaginative, and they are lots of fun. The first book that we published The Moon with a Crooked Smile has multicultural themes that talk about children around the world as they all see the moon. It portrays the moon, the sun, the earth, and all the planets as friends. It has a great theme. Some of the other books are about adventure. That was caught in the book I Want to Catch the Clouds. The little girl is adventuring up a mountainside to catch clouds. You can see her looking for the answers by asking the woodland creatures, how do I catch the clouds? The other two books I Love Clouds and I Went to the Zoo to See Woo are both about imagination. They are about looking at the clouds and imagining the shapes or pretending to be a bird. The kids pretend that they’re flying. It’s a lot of great imaginative stories that are colorfully illustrated.
Bozidar: I hope everybody can get ideas from my books. The Moon with the Crooked Smile is a multi-culture theme. I Want to Catch the Clouds is more about adventure as she wanders the mountainside to find the answer to how to catch clouds. I Love is about a young girl using her imagination as she looks at the clouds and sees animals. I Went to the Zoo to See Woo is also about imagination, what kind of birds are in the zoo, and where they come from.
What challenges have you faced as a writer and how have you overcome them?
Linda: I’m not the writer but the editor and business manager for my husband’s work. I had a couple of good mentors to help me through. Bozidar has an Montenegrin accent. He learned English when he was 20 years old. So we had to kind of find that happy medium of the language about the character and story that came from his words. It was so hard to edit correctly and make it a good readable story. A clean story that could be easily be read. It was kind of a dilemma going back and forth on how to edit the story the best way.
Bozidar: Every writer can tell you around the world that they have challenges. The challenges come and go but you have to find a way to create things for the public to read. I don’t like it when it happens. The hardest part you don’t see the answer until the last minute.
Can you give insights into the creative process?
I watched Bozidar just writing away. I could see he was really into it. He had focus and I think it’s kind of a hot and cold thing. For some people, you’ve got the drive and you want to make a difference and accomplish your task. You want to get this written so you can tell the story. Otherwise, it’s blocked and you can’t get it out. For my part, I just took his information. He had to dictate what he had written in his language. Then I would type it up. Fortunately, there were children’s books, so they were 500-word stories. So it made it easier than bigger ones that have 2000 words. He would write it and then I would run it through Grammarling. We belonged to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and there were critique groups that, worked with.
Are there any particular genres or topics you enjoy writing about the most?
Linda: Initially, we centered on children’s books, he wrote eight children’s story books. I self-published the first four books and holding the other ones. One book is illustrated, but not ready to be published yet.
His main goal is to be writing his memoir. Bozidar tells some incredible stories, I have listened to over the years. I said you’ve got to get this out there you know, at a time now with war in Ukraine and understanding communism. It happened in Eastern Europe and shows the confines of those societies. He’s got the stories that clarify and help you understand the situation more clearly. He was a rascal and his stories are hysterical at certain points and sometimes painful.
Bozidar: I love children’s books. They’re just amazing and fun to write. I love children. So writing books for children is a good thing to start with. That’s why I wrote the children’s books.
Do you have a favorite character?
Linda: You know, that’s tough. I would say that I Want to Catch the Clouds is probably the best because of the adventure that she goes on while she’s talking to all the different woodland characters and getting. Some animals don’t like clouds because they bring rain. It was really cute but the ending wasn’t compelling. That was where a critique group helped finish the book the right way. And I’m not going to give it away but it has a great ending.
Bozidar: All the characters are different. For instance, The Moon with the Crooke Smile is me as a child looking out the window to see the moon and clouds passing. As I look up it looks like a smile on its face. Secondary is the young girl who wants to go catch the cloud. So she goes all to the mountainside talks to the animals and asks them how do I catch clouds. Some of animals tell how you can and others say no you can’t. They don’t like clouds because they rain on them.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors who are looking to get their first book published?
Linda: Well, depending on what genre the book is written in, there are a lot of options. We went the self-publishing route because, to be honest, there is not a lot of money when comes to children’s books. It has to be that you want to share these stories. You want to make children laugh and smile, to get those stories out there.
But if you seriously have like a great nonfiction or fiction book or something like that, then you have to start looking for agents or publishers, and that is a huge, huge task.
There are a lot of different services out there that will help you but you have to be careful who you’re contacting. Who you’re working with can make a huge difference. With the self-publishing industry, some say, I’ll help you publish your book. They are really printing 1000, 2000, … books and then ship them to you, and then you have to figure out how to distribute them. The technology has changed in the last 15-20 years to print on demand or POD, which is a much easier way you print the book as you sell them. It also makes it easier to adapt, you now can change easily and do what you want in the book, and it’s a lot easier and less expensive. There is a cost burden up front, your production costs. With these two very different styles, the process is laden with a lot of work to get the pieces edited. In the case of children’s books, we had to find an illustrator. We found a very gifted illustrator very special lady who was wheelchair-bound with a very severe case of MS. She is a cousin’s cousin, that I got introduced to, and we had just a wonderful time working with Sue. The trade was she had two books and we helped her publish them. She illustrated our books and she said it just gave her a reason to get up every day. It was a great experience. She’s done some great, great work.
Bozidar: Well, publishing is not easy. It’s very hard. First of all, my wife usually advised me and helped show me how to do stuff. She’s better at the production and I just write. We self-published our children’s books. You have to find an agent, find if you are writing a novel or nonfiction book. Some people are knowledgeable about promotion or help you get the books to market.
Do we have any upcoming projects?
Linda: Yes, the memoir. He was supposed to be writing the memoir in the first place, but he didn’t. We have the memoir outlined and the Table of Contents. We’ve had three chapters, edited per our understanding of publishing a memoir. You send a proposal to prospective agents. You don’t write the whole thing. A lot of times the agents want to either specifically write it in a certain way or edit it in a certain way. And so we’ve left that up to them.
Yes, I like to release the Family and Friends series. The stories are all written and one is illustrated but not published yet. My wife feels the memoir needs to get published first.
Bozidar: Speaking of my memoir I have written or dictated about 7 hours of stories about my life. Some of it is edited and it is in a proposal we are sending out to potential agents. I also need to finish my second part of the memoir – Coming to America.
What role does literature play in shaping society and culture?
Linda: It is vitally important, the written word, either in a creative nature or a historical documentary context. Literature helps us understand the world around us and better understand ourselves. It helps shape the world you know, religious texts have shaped religions. Historical texts have given us reference to what has happened in the past and not let it happen again. It is vitally important for each culture to have its written word. I think that seeing, hearing, and looking at other people’s stories and histories help all of us to become more well-rounded, accepting, and understanding of others.
Bozidar: I believe it has impacted our society 100%. Because without literature I don’t think the world exists. I think literature is a fundamental aspect of life period. Literature has been written for 1000’s of years. All the information is written down. so we can experience it. We cannot stop reading, writing, and informing ourselves with the creativity of fiction and the information of nonfiction in literature.
Find out more about Linda and Bozidar at: fun@bobolinmedia.com
http://www.bobolinmedia.com