Marie Lavender's Writing in the Modern Age Blog
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog Policy
  • Schedule
  • Contact Us
  • Blog Posts

Writing in the Modern Age


Writing & Guest Author Blog

Guest Book Review: V.B.’s Take on Requiem for Barbara by Branka Čubrilo

9/16/2023

0 Comments

 
Please welcome our guest reviewer today! Let’s see what she has to say. Take it away, V.B…
 
Thank you! ♥
Requiem for Barbara by Branka Čubrilo
Picture
https://books2read.com/u/3JelNA
This book tells the story of a daughter’s journey to understand her impressively complex mother who died too young, and frankly lived life too hard. Through a series of letters and visits with her father, her mother’s parents, and her mother’s lost love, Lora gets a taste of her mother as a person. But, getting her questions answered didn’t help her as much as she’d hoped.
 
The writing enabled me to take the journey with Lora in an never ending pursuit of truth through knowledge. At the end, she got what she thought she wanted, only to learn this did not give her the results she’d hoped for. 
 
Finding our place in this world is hard. And the only way to get there is to experience situations like Lora’s. I found the book cathartic and confusing at times…which was how I think Lora must have felt. Meanwhile, it helped define what a true identity crisis can feel like. And it gave me a taste of the immigrant experience. 
 
NOTE: I was provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 
 
I give this book 4 stars because it was full of complex people and reflected true living.
Picture
Image by Tammy Osaokia from Pixabay.
Book Blurb:
​

When Barbara dies in Sydney, Australia, her daughter Lora finds a series of hidden letters addressed to her estranged father, Ted. Upon reading the letters, Lora realizes that she never really knew Barbara, except as a mother. She uncovers family secrets, sad and hurtful lies, and an array of fascinating people she never knew had made an impact on her mother’s life.
Spurred by these new facts and discoveries, Lora decides to travel to Europe, to her mother’s hometown. In a chance encounter, she meets Davor—a world-famous, yet mysterious figure who was the cause of both Barbara and Lora’s happiness and sadness, as these emotions emerge entangled, intertwined by his story and fascinating past.
The novel traverses Sydney, London and Düsseldorf, where the characters grapple with identity, belonging, and how we find solace amongst life’s biggest challenges and questions.


​Universal Reader link:  https://books2read.com/u/3JelNA
 
Here’s an excerpt from the book…

My mother has died. For days after her burial, I did not know where to turn to. I am eighteen years old. I only had her; she died believing so.
She left me a small apartment, furniture, paintings on the walls, a computer desk,  and the computer on it. My first thought, my first impulse, was to sell all her belongings, to liberate myself from the unbearable pain. The pain sat on my chest and shoulders and in each moment, it seemed to me that mother was going to step into the living room from her study, deprived of sleep. The pain never lessened, but I understood that all around me was what was left to me after her passing away. Whatever I looked at, it spoke of her.
Soon after her death, I sat at her desk in her study. My mother was a writer, and that was the way she tried to make our living. I always believed she was the best writer in the whole wide world . . . but she didn’t have much success. She published several short stories in women’s periodicals, a collection of poetry . . . she was far ahead of her time.
Sitting there at her desk, I started to pull the drawers out to examine their contents. The contents in the drawers were in perfect order―which was not typical of my mother. She was not the victim of any kind of order.
In the lowest and widest drawer, I found a cardboard folder tied up with a yellow ribbon. On the folder was written ‘Letters to Ted’.
So, it looked like―she still remembered Ted. It was quite a thick folder as it contained numerous sheets of paper. I started to read the papers in the order they were placed.

Hi Ted,

It was raining on the day you walked out. Miserable, it looks like rain accompanies all separations. I can’t even call it separation, as you left without a word. Lora came in and asked me what was written in the letter I was holding in my hand. I said, “Ted’s gone”. She fell silent. In her angelic eyes, I saw sadness. She did not cry, her petite, narrow face battled with a wild storm of emotions. Then, she said quietly, “He’s gone for good.”
She knew that you had gone forever this time. I nodded my head. I could not utter a word, I was afraid of my own voice. She never cried for you, Ted. You coached her how to handle her emotions. After a while, they called me from her school. They told me her marks had dropped; her eyes were red and teary, often. I explained that her father had left us. Her father, Ted. You (who would doubt it often), you are her father. There were too many discrepancies between us, Ted.
When we got married, I was already pregnant. I conceived a child with you. When you left, I did not know whether that was better or worse for Lora. We were teaching her different things, constantly. The things that were valuable and honorable in my culture and tradition were unimportant and cheap to you. You had contempt for tenderness, calling it weakness; you mocked sincerity, calling it indiscretion. The things she had to hide from you she would whisper in my ear at night when I would come into her room to tuck her in.
You would say, “Why are you covering her five times every night? You will spoil her, make her weak. Let her toughen up.”
Why did you allow her to walk the streets barefoot in winter? It used to horrify me. It used to horrify me!
You never asked me anything about my country nor about my past. Why? Were you afraid I might ask you the same questions? It all was below your interest, below your level. And so, my own past was suppressed in some strange liminal space where I had sealed the doors tightly shut. (They were sealed with padlocks, one thousand tons heavy, a thousand tons of silence, a thousand tons of concrete . . . with padlocks that seemed as if they would never be unlocked, or broken, with padlocks rusted like the ones in the stories of locked princesses . . . like the ones in the stories with a tragic end, because the main protagonist fell ill of a rare illness that came from a silence weighing one thousand tons . . .)
But look, now I want to tell you: I had my country, and I had my past. Even though it looks like a dream now, dreamt long ago (which I dreamt when I was very young), but the one I still remember. You hid your past, for you were not proud of it; it was not ‘good enough’ for you; therefore, you narrated a different one. I could not talk about my past because you were not interested in it (as if it were shameful). But I was proud of it.
My first and only love was a painful affair. I left because of him, believing (still too young to understand) that I would forget him.
Six months have passed since you left. Lora has never asked about you. Since you left, she has been very quiet, her self-esteem has been very fragile. She has completely lost interest in the violin. When I ask her, what would make her happy, she only shrugs her shoulders and says, “I don’t know.”’

​That’s how the first letter my mother wrote to Ted ended. I did not know were these copies of the letters she sent to Ted, or were they letters Ted never received? Letters never sent.
My mother was unhappy. I understood that from the first letter. Anyway, I always felt her sadness. (She carried me inside her!). I believed that her sadness came from Ted’s departure and the difficulties of finding a publisher for her novels. But I was wrong. She was not sad because of Ted’s leaving. I was sad because of it. I felt that in these letters, all her life was contained―the history of her hometown, her family, and the history of one love. I put down that letter and with trembling fingers, I took another.
I slid my fingers down the sheet of paper. All her letters were written on the same date―on the second day of June every year until the last one. Every year on my birthday, she wrote him a letter about me and about her. And about Dado – her first love. Why did she do it?
Barbara was sad. Her sentences were heavily colored with cynicism. I never knew her being cynical. If she did not love him, why did she reproach his departure so much? Wounded ego? Or was it because he left her without any money? Or was she so sad because of me?
Tears were rolling down my cheeks while I picked up a new letter. The letters danced in front of my teary eyes.


BOOK INFO:

AUTHOR: Branka Čubrilo
TITLE: Requiem for Barbara 
GENRE: Literary Fiction, Drama, Family Literature
RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2023
PUBLISHER: Speaking Volumes
ISBN/ASIN: ‎B0C6FSWFDD
OUR RATING:  4 stars
REVIEWED BY: V.B. “Can Do Indie Author”


Guest Blogger/Reviewer Bio:
Picture

​V.B. is an indie author who writes romance and Sci-Fi, and voraciously reads anything (with some limits). When she’s not reading and writing, she’s working a day job to pay for her truck habit and puttering around her house.
 



Great! Thanks for this review, Virginia, and for stopping by the blog! :)

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age blog post here.
Picture
0 Comments

What and Why Do I Write by Branka Čubrilo

8/5/2023

0 Comments

 
What and Why Do I Write:  
 a guest post by Branka Čubrilo
On June 17, 2023, in a spacious and architecturally appealing rooftop ambience of Mosman’s Fernery function room (Sydney, Australia), I had for the third time (over a period of 23 years) a book launch for my novel, Requiem for Barbara, published in May 2023 by my American publisher, Speaking Volumes. The event was well attended by about 60-70 people, just the right number to completely fill the space. The special honor this time was to be introduced to the crowd full of anticipation by my one and only daughter Althea. It was a three-hour event, and in her speech, Althea explained her experiences of living and understanding a mother who is an author. She detailed the differences of comprehension from a child, to her adolescence and finally adulthood. For me, I believe for all present alike, it was a revealing, touching, and humorous account. After her speech, she read the poem “Barbara” by Jacques Prévert, accompanied by classical guitar, “Preludio de Adios” by Alfonso Montes. This piece of music was chosen by the performing guitarist Su Keong, because he said, “It is a sad and nostalgic composition by Montes written at the time he defected from Venezuela to Germany”. The guitarist, Su Keong, found it “to be the appropriate piece for the ‘Requiem’ title theme of the book”. For the occasion, I wrote a speech, my address to the audience to make them understand what I write, why I write, and what writing means to me or to a writer in general. I’d like to share this speech with a wider audience because I received many congratulations for it, learning from the audience that this speech might interest and enlighten many...
 
Very often, in interviews or privately, I get asked - what do I write about? Or what is my genre? I don’t have a genre. I write about life. How do you deal with what you’ve been dealt by life?  Especially, if you have been dealt a mess. Mess varies from person to person, from culture to culture, from family to family. So, the question is - what do we do about it, if the only freedom we have is what we do with the life and the mess we were born into?
Picture
Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash.
I develop well-structured, many-layered characters who grapple with the big and small questions of life. They are always in search of meaning, of reason, love, beauty, in search of home and ultimately of God. I write about love, but I don’t write love stories. I write about human suffering, about wars, migrations, broken homes, broken hearts, and broken countries. About broken souls and broken promises. I am concerned with the big questions of human existence - the meaning of suffering; about pride, overzealous and unnecessary national pride that often leads people astray; about freedom, the shadow self and all of the ​shades in between two extreme emotions.
 
My characters are lost, often in moral dilemmas during various life crises, searching for truth.

I was, and I am a person, a writer who has always been in search of that elusive bird,  the Truth - it can show us how insufficient our knowledge is, be it academic knowledge, intuitive or spiritual. We are always floating on the surface of the truth, a partial truth learned in our family, educational institutions, or through mainstream media. Truth is elsewhere - that is the reason why we can’t grasp the meaning of complex but simple questions as well. My interests are psychology, though not popular psychology of the New Age, but rather my amazement with what lies deep down in the human psyche that governs our behavior, our choices, and ultimately our deeds that we are not proud of; then my interest lies in philosophy, not particularly of any philosophical school, but rather the personal philosophy of characters that they develop over the course of their lives; and my personal interest lies in exploring religion, Christianity, and often my characters grapple with never reaching the truth about the existence of a benevolent being that runs the universe or their small lives.
 
I write how much we need love, yet how elusive this notion is, how it is hiding from us, how it is leading us through mud and thorns – per aspera ad astra - in the simple human need and wish for always more -- love. Love, such a desirable companion, shows its face and then it hides, dragging you through tremendous experiences and the sharpest pains to show you that it needs a life-long dedication to master the art of loving. How can we find and keep love when we are unable to participate honestly and without fear? How?


If I talk about suffering, how many people would lift their hand up if I asked them - have they suffered in their lives any kind of heartache, hardship, loss, depression, et cetera? ​
Picture
Photo by Pure Julia on Unsplash.
Picture
Photo by Simran Sood on Unsplash.
Unfortunately, life is about suffering, about search, about growth. Look, I don’t want to scare you, to put you off, believing that I am a depressing writer who like a vivisector with a sharp razor cuts through life’s miseries.
 
I show life in all its glory: the bad and the beautiful.

Therefore, I write about kindness, where it can take you if you are committed to doing noble deeds; I write about lost but found happiness, even when the tunnel looks like a never-ending black hole. I write about random, destiny orchestrated, encounters which change one’s life. I write about injustice and justice.


I write about beauty, governed from my inner need for beautiful art, beautiful scenery, or the beauty of someone’s soul or character. I don’t paint black and white pictures, I always look for balance in my life and in my writing. I aim to be an objective observer. ​
Picture
Image by John Hain from Pixabay.
I observe people, listen attentively to conversations. I soak the atmosphere of a place, of a mentality, observing everything around me, thirsty to know and to use all of my feelings to enrich my mind, hence, to enrich minds and souls of my characters when I sit at my laptop for a new story.
 
I write about you. My readers find themselves in my characters, in certain situations. In difficult times, they get hope, they laugh and cry with my characters, and I write for me, too, in order to understand my inner world better.
 
I write about human goodness, advancement, courage, hope and redemption. I impart hope and faith. I stir emotions, so you cry and you fear my characters, you pray and laugh with me.
Picture
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.
I like my brutes, the horrible characters, the ones that you dislike (perhaps just because they have some hidden traits of your own character, so they irritate you).  They commit unimaginable deeds, war crimes, their lessons bitter and hard, but eventually justice comes and you sigh the sigh of relief, promising yourself that you won’t ever again have a certain thought, deed or, shall I say, a misdeed.
 
Usually, my leading female characters are physically beautiful women; I show the price of female beauty, the suffering of beauty, not the shallowness of it. My female characters are as well in constant search - with the need to better themselves, they study life through different lessons, through shallow clichés of the fashion world, through the New Age movement, through too many lovers, through art, or again, simply through personal suffering. Many of my female characters are sharp and self-sufficient women, while those that are not yet, are subconsciously yearning to be ‘elsewhere’ or someone better to achieve what they ultimately will become. 
Picture
Photo by Richard Jaimes on Unsplash.
In my short stories, I introduce humorous, spontaneous larrikins, naïve or care-free people who visit my vignettes just to make you laugh, or open your mouth wide with astonishment with how direct, rude, or quirky the human mind and behavior can be.
 
Therefore, I cover a variety of characters, in different lands, of different nationalities, showing that nationality or culture doesn’t necessarily form the character, the good and the evil, kindness or rudeness, that all human characteristics and deeds belong to all of us, that our creator mixed and spread us equally on this earth in His need to encourage humans for the betterment of oneself and of society as such.
 
And let me finish now with a few more words about the book we are launching, as it has a long life and history.
Picture
https://books2read.com/u/47dxqA
I published Requiem for Barbara a long time ago. Precisely 23 years ago, in 2000 in my native country of Croatia. The book received good reviews and an interested readership; the Ministry of Education purchased it and placed the book in all  libraries across the country.
 
The more people that read it, the more often I was asked if there were hidden parts of my own life embedded within the story. People who know me well - my family and close friends
 - were all convinced that it was a loose memoir about my life. A life that I was in fact living on another continent and feeling all the struggles as a foreigner and young, unknown writer, building their life from scratch. It is an elegy, a sad story about a young female writer who struggles as a single mother in Sydney, without having any kind of help or any family. And after the heavy burden of trying and unfavorable circumstances, she breaks down and ultimately falls terminally ill. When I was writing the story, I was absolutely unaware that a similar destiny was going to befall me. Barbara was a neurotic, artistic woman who utterly adored her daughter; she led a very hermetic life where she never let other people participate. When people used to tell me that I was Barbara, that they could recognize me in her every word, or every deed or emotion, I would just shrug my shoulders, saying, “No, I am not Barbara, she is just a character who happens to be a sensitive writer locked in her own world.”
 
I think a writer writes about experiences they have lived through and people they have encountered, as this is the ground where they feel the most familiar, hence the most competent. Even when the story is set elsewhere, or in a different historical period, the characters will still have traits of the writer or some of their experiences – real experiences or psychological structures in their mind.
 
The majority of readers had believed that it was my own story, many even calling me Barbara, but with the passage of time the book slowly went into history, and I was called by the various names of my other female characters. In 2020, exactly 20 years after the first publication of Requiem for Barbara, I got asked to publish it again in a different language, in a different country, so, the book was published in Belgrade, Serbia. My friends and acquaintances who read Requiem for Barbara 20 years ago, re-read the book, and I received emails or messages from people asking the same question: “When are you going to translate this book into English?”
Picture
Photo by Caleb George on Unsplash.
I was never sure if I wanted to translate it, as this story somehow always brought me a profound sadness, for it reflected a time of my life when I was living under lots of emotional stress and adversity. Besides, I had the feeling that I had finished all my dealings with this story and with Barbara herself. But she was a part of me, part of my psyche for many years, and I understood that she needed to live again through new readership. I understood that she was destined to be published and re-published over and over and get a new audience, as if she would gain a new life, a prolonged one, or that she yearned to live forever accessible to many people, in many languages.
 
In this elegy of mine, each chapter starts with a stanza from the poem ‘Barbara’ by
Jacques Prévert, setting the atmosphere where Barbara shows parts of her personality to the reader - being a writer herself, she is a poetic, other-worldly soul who struggles with everyday living in a common world, among the people who don’t have the time to listen to the song of her soul nor hear verses of her poetry.
 
The rest
you will find in the book that has been published for the third time, and hopefully many more times in many more languages.
Guest Blogger Bio
Picture
Branka Čubrilo is an international author of eight novels and two short story collections. Branka has lived in Australia, Spain, and Croatia, and has also worked as a radio producer and presenter on SBS Australia, as well as working as an interpreter and translator of several languages. Branka's latest book, Requiem for Barbara, was published in May 2023. Branka's articles and essays and short stories have been published in many online and print magazines. Two years ago, Branka was named one of the top ten writers of literary fiction by her American colleagues in a literary magazine run by the author Caleb Pirtle. All of Branka Čubrilo's work is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, both in ebook and print editions. Branka's novels published in English include: The Mosaic of the Broken Soul, Flume - The Lost River, Dethroned, Three to Tango & Other Stories, and Requiem for Barbara.
 
Links
https://speakingvolumes.us/author/branka-cubrilo/
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Branka-Cubrilo/author/B0052Y00I6
https://medium.com/@brankacubrilo
https://www.instagram.com/branka_cubrilo_author/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/@brankacubrilo4072

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age post here.
Picture
0 Comments

Interview with Author Branka Čubrilo

6/10/2013

0 Comments

 

My guest today is Branka Čubrilo. Hello, Branka! Welcome to Writing in the Modern Age! It’s such a pleasure to have you here.

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book? When did it come out? Where can we get it?


  book cover for Mosaic of the Broken Soul by Branka Cubrilo depicting a jumbled artistic mass in the shape of a book cover along with the title

The Mosaic of the Broken Soul talks about love, betrayal, displacement and longing for the meaning in modern society, surviving a variety of adversity in human existence and ultimately – forgiveness as a tool of healing and embracing life.  As the title says it is a book of one soul’s ache, to simplify it.

I don’t know if the statement that ‘life is not meant to be easy’ is true, but I surely know that I had a very difficult period in my life and it forced me to look honestly into myself. Who am I and why am I that person? Do I, and to what extent, respect and love that person? The working fabric of my novel consisted of questions asking for answers, the questions each of us asks in time of crises or adversity, questions of life’s meaning and worthiness of it. As I was writing it, the characters from my life appeared on the stage and asked me to integrate them into the tale. The characters from the shores of the Adriatic Sea, the characters from the Italian Alps, the characters from the Isle of Man, London and Dublin…Sydney…and my life story started to take shape and to be woven into that fabric.

The book was published in the USA in 2011 (Speaking Volumes) and it attracted very positive reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1612320589

It was voted as a book of the month (September 2012) in Angie’s Diary, the largest online literary publication. http://angiesdiary.com/bookoftheweek-web/014-botwseptember232012.html

The book can be purchased at Amazon and all online booksellers, as well as my publisher advertizes ‘everywhere where books are sold’.  http://speakingvolumes.us/detail_ebooks.asp?pid=382

I’d like to add that the forthcoming novel is titled Fiume – The Lost River and is going to be published towards the end of the year.

Great! Is there anything that prompted your latest book? Something that inspired you?

Oh, yes! Both – prompted and inspired! It was a sudden, out of the blue illness that made me think about my life, my place in this world as a woman, as a mother, a friend and as a writer. I felt a strong need, almost to be obliged to tell the story of survival, courage, friendship, motherhood and in particular – love, as the ultimate healer and the most important ingredient in sustaining health, or in facing adversity. The inspiration for my book was my own insight into the mind’s formulations of reality, how easily depression can take over and how to respond to difficult situations, thoughts, emotions. I’ve never said that I have found the ultimate tools in healing oneself be it body or soul, but I have found my way out through cultivating thoughts that open heart and mind to new ways of perceiving life, thus allowing new possibilities. I wanted to share those experiences and insights with many people faced with life’s crossroads.

So, when did you know you wanted to write? Or has it always been a pastime of yours?

I would never call my writings a ‘pastime’ because there are much easier ways to choose as a pastime. I am a deep thinker, so my writings come with a ‘sweat and tears’ rather than some light entertainment for me and for my readers. Well, I knew I wanted to write really early in my life as I was always awarded for my work as a young student, right from primary school onwards.  My ‘little quirky stories and poems’ were published in school magazines and in a local youth press.

I always felt as if I had lived in parallel worlds, my daily life was so different from my inner world, and I was mixing them often with ease (for me) and sometimes with astonishment to my family and the environment, hence I started to write a novel to, somehow, separate those two parallel stories. I Knew Jane Eyre was born, based on my, at the time, need to ‘figure out how it would be if…' I was inclined to know about or figure out life’s ‘ifs’. While I was finishing the novel, I saw in the papers an advertisement – Young Writer’s Award Competition and hurried to finish my novel to send it off. There were three winners announced and I was, to my astonishment, one of them - the youngest one, with little experience in professional writing and publishing.

Writing is in my blood, it has never left me: subtle conversations I hear in the rain, the rustling of the leaves, the wind…those subtle whispers took me to the various trips around Europe and led me to various interesting people. The knowledge of languages, my curiosity and adaptability helped to easily penetrate into the cultural settings of Italy, Spain, England and Australia. Since then I have written eight novels, published six in two languages. I write in English and Croatian language. I write short stories too, that is, what I would call a ‘pastime’:  Short stories, little poems…sometimes in between writing a novel I am having a ‘little bit of fun’ with shorter expressions. My work has been published in various literary journals, in print and online, in various countries in Europe, then in the USA and Australia.

 
Do you have any favorite authors?

Sure! And the list is quite longish. I grew up on and was fed by classic literature so my heart is still there. I like very much Postmodernism and the writers I love to read are certainly the great example of postmodernism, like Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino (when talking about Italo, I love Italo Svevo too), Umberto Ecco, to name just a few. As I said, classic literature is where I go back to over and over again. I can’t say that those writers influenced my own work but I read and re-read Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexander Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac. I can’t miss Marcel Proust and Jean Paul Sartre and name them as my favourite authors. Just recently I have discovered a great contemporary writer Michael Arditti. Whether those writers inspired and influenced my work is hard to say, but it is enough to say that I’ve spent hours, days and years in reading and often go back to the same source for nourishment.

Do you write in a specific place?  Time of day?

Location influences my work absolutely. That’s why writers travel – in search of original characters or plots. In all of my novels I travel throughout the world. I start my story in a certain location with its cultural and historical settings and I take my characters across Europe, the UK, the USA and Australia. My characters are well-traveled people, always in search of a ‘greener grass’, ‘better opportunity’, ‘bigger love’, or purely more extravagant adventure…

I can’t escape (and why would I?) those locations: I was born in Croatia, I still carry the salty air of the Adriatic in my soul, Italy was a weekly experience and Italian’s my second language, sometimes I miss Italy more than any other location. I lived in Andalucia with my daughter and the sounds, the wind – the levante, the flamenco, the warmth of Andalusian people lives in me…of course those locations influence my novels. I have written a trilogy called Spanish Stories and the trilogy was situated, with a good part, in Spain, but then, while writing, I heard someone from my hometown calling my name, calling my attention, so I got to chuck him in, to silence his cries, to add colour to the Andalucian grey land. I have lived in Sydney since 1992; it is only natural that this city influences my writings, the city where my daughter was born, made her first steps. It is such a multicultural place that it is a great source of constant inspiration when it comes to experimenting with different cultures and customs.

My novels Fiume – The Lost River, Requiem for Barbara, Little Lies, Big Lies and Visconti’s Stories are all set in three or four different countries on two different continents. My characters are often displaced, sometimes confused, often in search of themselves, surely preoccupied with many questions.

What I want to say is that traveling is essential for my writings. I can’t lock myself in my Sydney house and look at the ocean. Some authors need solitude to write. I need life to be presented to me in all its variations and imperfections, with the range of emotions and experiences, as I like to experience things first hand.

I used to write at night for many years, but as the time passes I need more night rest, good sound sleep, but then, early in the morning, I hear that whisper in my ear – time to get up and sit at my desk. Early mornings are quiet and my mind is very alert in the morning.

Are there any words you'd like to impart to fellow writers. Any advice?

The publishing industry isn’t the easiest one; a writer needs sound knowledge of the topic he is writing about, hence good research is needed, a talent, a daily practice of his art and lots of discipline. If you put all those ingredients together, still you need a good portion of luck. Well-established writers follow their own pattern and associations, while new, aspiring writers, probably need some advice. It isn’t easy to give advice to anyone - as there are so many aspiring writers that believe writing to be an easy task, but it isn’t, indeed. Especially when it comes to something ‘deep and meaningful’, one has to be in tune with one’s own being, well read, well informed and equipped with all sorts of worldly experiences not to mention to possess a great imagination.

If someone really aches to be a writer, then one has to count on many rejections, which means to develop a strong, steady character, not to take everything too personally; to understand that their own friends will fall in number and whose comments might be hurtful purposely.  With the wonders of the internet anyone can write anything about your book – hate reviews or even hate mail. On the other, positive side, there are a number of rewards: when good reviews from literary critiques or competent colleagues come your way, when a reader, a person you’ve never met and never will meet, sends you an e-mail telling you that your book has made a lasting impression on them, when you receive an award or just a card from a random person encouraging you to ‘continue to deliver great work.’

For the novice: weigh it, then put your heart where you think it yearns to be and sharpen your tools; we are always delighted when a new, well written story or writer dawns.

Here is the blurb for The Mosaic of the Broken Soul.

She called the lump in Her breast ‘a black pearl’, She called her Mother to nurse Her in the darkest hours, She called memories of the three men She loved at different times of Her life to draw the parallels between seemingly similar situations of betrayal. Who is going to betray Her, who is going to stay...?

She struggles with the meaning of life trying to find it through themes of motherhood, friendship, betrayal, displacement, illness, pain, grief and loss.

She traveled to Andalucia, London, The Isle of Man, where She met colourful characters believing that the unknown can reverse the fragmentation and change reality, believing that all the little broken selves can once again bring the broken pieces into a cohesive mosaic.

This is an excerpt from The Mosaic of the Broken Soul.


Listen to this now:

Some might say it was early in the morning but as I got up with the song of the first birds, ten o’ clock was almost midday for me.

We were sitting on the sun-lit veranda sipping our second cup of coffee.

The day started lazily as all days do on this Earthly quota. I decided to stroll down to the main, cobbled piazza where I was familiar with the sounds of my heels and my heart, and start my search for inspiration in the quick and changing slides produced by casual protagonists.

The doorbell rang.

My Mother asked: “Can you get the door?”

She always gets up first. She always gets the door.

I looked at her again, as if I needed to confirm what I heard, and the doorbell rang again, and again she said in her calm tone: “Get the door, please,” with the clear intention of staying right where she was.  Knowing her ever-accommodating attitude I hesitated a while, then she said: “Hurry up.”

She had a strange expression on her calm face, the one of secret conspiracy - that was what I thought while I was going to answer the door.

I opened the door and a tall man, with dark but mellow eyes, was standing in front of me.

When I recognized his face, or shall I say, his mellow eyes, I thought it was a mirage, for the day was bright and hot already and the air was tremulous and I thought of his tremulous fingers that would gently put away
a strand of my untamed hair.

All my words deserted me at once, especially those that would best accompany my feelings, so he was the one who said: “Will you let me in, or….”

“Of course, of course,” I said, and he walked in.

I took the lead and walked him to the sun-lit veranda where I was sipping the second cup of coffee with my Mother, but as if it was just a dream, the veranda was empty, the table was bare and all I said was:  “Shall we sit?” 

He sat down and crossed his legs.


He crossed his fingers and I crossed my heart.

He smiled.

I asked: “Is this a mirage?”

He said: “I told you, you were my dream.”

I said: “So, we woke in the same dream this morning.”

All he said was: “We did.”

We did not need a lot of words. He looked at the calm surface of the sea and said “So peaceful,” and I repeated “So peaceful.”...

Universal Purchase Link:  https://books2read.com/u/3keegN

 

Author Bio

an image of author Branka Cubrilo smiling

Branka Čubrilo was born in 1961 in Croatia. At the age of eighteen, she wrote her first novel, I Knew Jane Eyre, and in 1982 it won the Young Writers Award. Soon after, she wrote a sequel to this story called Looking for Jane Eyre. In 1992, Čubrilo moved to Sydney and continued to write short stories and novels. In 1999 the novel As a River (Fiume Corre–Rijeka Tece) was published by Croatian publisher Adamic in her native town of Rijeka. The book received good critiques in Croatian and Italian press. After the Croatian book launch, an Australian one followed. In 2000, the next novel was published, Requiem for Barbara. The book was launched in both Croatia and Sydney. In 2001, a new novel, Little Lies, Big Lies, was published by the same publisher. This was the first volume of a trilogy called Spanish Stories. Čubrilo had obtained a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to travel to Andalucia to research the cultural and historical settings of Cadiz. 

Čubrilo has written two more novels but she stopped writing and publishing when she encountered serious health issues and the disintegration of her marriage. When she recovered she was able to translate her experiences into a new novel, The Mosaic of the Broken Soul. Over the last 20 years,

Čubrilo has worked as a journalist for various local newspapers in Sydney, writing articles and short stories and conducting interviews. One of her novels was serialized in the magazine Women 21. Čubrilo also worked as a radio producer in Eastside Radios Sydney and Special Broadcasting Services—SBS Sydney, where she has produced a number of programs and series, conducted many interviews and written short stories.

Čubrilo now writes in English and is also translating her earlier novels into English. She lives in Sydney with her daughter Althea.

The Mosaic of the Broken Soul was awarded with "The Book of the Week" and Branka Čubrilo "The Author of the Month" award by Angie's Dairy 2012.  http://angiesdiary.com/bookoftheweek-web/014-botwseptember232012.html

Links:

Website:  http://www.brankacubriloauthor.co.uk/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/branka.cubrilo

Interview:  http://hpub.org/presenting-branka-cubrilo-author-of-the-mosaic-of-the-broken-soul/

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age blog article here.

Picture
0 Comments
    WritModAge logo

    Blog Archives

    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    March 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    December 2020
    December 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    December 2017
    December 2016
    July 2016
    December 2015
    July 2015
    December 2014
    December 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    Get new posts by email:
    Powered by follow.it
    Visit our old posts on Blogger instead.

    RSS Feed

    Site Admin - Author Marie Lavender

    Picture
    Exploring worlds one page at a time...

    A glance at Marie's books

    Coming Soon

    Picture
    Picture
    See more of this writer's work on her official website or Amazon author page.

    Blog Awards

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Contribute

    Picture

    Cool new feature!

    Picture

    Attention

    The fact is…our policy has changed considerably, at least for a while. Check out our 'Blog Policy' for more information about the types of features offered, how you can purchase a guest spot, my policy on review requests, and rules for guest writers. Starting from 2021, I was charging for some types of posts. Of course, there is never a fee for a guest article, as long as you adhere to the blog's theme. I also will not charge for big multi-author events which I host (these are giveaways or participation questions, and it's obvious what materials you're providing). If you'd like to submit a guest book review (no, I don't write book reviews, please don't ask me), I will always accept those and not charge you a fee at all. Starting in 2022, I WILL NO LONGER BE posting new release features, cover reveals, Author's Bookshelf features, author interviews, character interviews, and poetry spotlights. I am far too overwhelmed with other work to do constant blog posts. I'll still be writing my own articles sometimes and hosting multi-author special features. For companies that can afford a sponsored post, I'm willing to discuss a reasonable quote for a specialized article which fits within the blog's theme (No blatant promotions). Email me at

    marieannlavender@

    gmail.com 

    if you wish to participate in a unique post. Feel free to approach me with your creative ideas about a blog post. Slots at Writing in the Modern Age are always first come, first served. Contact us and reserve a spot! Refer to the 'guest schedule' at the top of the screen for further clarification about availability. Thanks for understanding.


    Disclaimer


    Thoughts and opinions by guest authors do not necessarily represent any thoughts and opinions by this website's administrator, nor are they directly endorsed. All writings on the blog are subject to review and editing. Please visit our blog policy to understand the site's theme a little better.

    Use our hashtag #WritModAge when you mention us!

    bit.ly/1ONs85B

    Should you edit your own work? Definitely! - The Ultimate Guide to Editing a Book

    Picture

    Are you a technical writer? Look no further for some tools of the trade!

    Picture

    Love physical books like me? Check out this cool DIY link!

    Picture

    Sign up for Marie's author newsletter! Get on her mailing list @

    bit.ly/1g3wO13

    Blog Categories

    All
    2013
    2014
    2015
    2016
    2017
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021
    2023
    99 Cents
    Accidental Marriage
    Achievements
    Adult
    Advice
    Amazon Gift Card
    Angela Terry
    Annual
    Anthology
    Article
    Articles
    Author Interview
    Authors
    Authors Helping Authors
    Authors Helping Writers
    Author Website
    Autumn Bardot
    Avoiding Burnout
    BDSM
    Behind The Scenes
    Blog
    Blog Post
    Blog Tour
    Book
    Book Covers
    Book Interview
    Book Lovers
    Book Review
    Books
    Bookshelf
    Branka Čubrilo
    Challenges
    Characterization
    Chick Lit
    Children's Books
    Clean Romance
    Collection
    Coming Soon
    Contemporary
    Contemporary Romance
    Cover Design
    Cozy Mystery
    Creative Solutions
    Creativity
    Crime
    Dark Fantasy
    Dave Chesson
    Day In The Life
    Deadly Deceit
    Description
    Discount
    DIY
    DJ Swykert
    Drama
    Drinking
    Editing
    Emilia Ares
    Enemies To Lovers
    Erotica
    Erotic Romance
    Evelyn Sola
    Event
    Family Life
    Fantasy
    Fantasy Romance
    Feature
    Features
    Fiction
    Finding A Good Editor
    Fiona Tarr
    Forever
    Francis H. Powell
    Freelance
    Friday Abumere
    Friends To Lovers
    Genre
    Genres
    Gentle Sensuality
    George Veck
    Giveaway
    Gothic Novel
    Guest Authors
    Guest List
    Guest Post
    Guest Writer
    Haunting In Hartley
    Helpful
    Heroes And Villains
    Historical Fiction
    Historical Romance
    Holidays
    Hope
    Horoscope
    Horror
    Human Condition
    Humorous Fiction
    Inspirational
    Interview
    Interviews
    Isobelle Cate
    Ivy Nelson
    Jaime Martinez-Tolentino
    Janice Tremayne
    Journaling
    KateMarie Collins
    Laura Graham
    Legends Of Lust
    Lessons
    LGBT
    Linda Heavner Gerald
    List
    Literary Fiction
    Love
    Love And Other Sins
    Marketing
    Mary Maddox
    Memoir
    Message
    Michael Aronovitz
    Mindset
    Morality
    Multicultural Fiction
    Multicultural Romance
    Mystery
    Mythology
    New Adult
    New Author Tips
    New Book
    New Release
    New Year
    Non-fiction
    Novella
    Novels
    One Visit
    Optimism
    Paranormal
    Poems
    Poetry
    POV
    Promo
    Promotion
    Psychological
    PTSD
    Publishing
    Raising Kane
    Rating
    Readers
    Reading Preferences
    Reality
    Recommended Reads
    Reference
    Reposted Book Review
    Requiem For Barbara
    Research
    Resources
    Reverse Harem
    Review
    Reviews
    Robin Reviewer
    Romance
    Romance Novel
    Romance Writing
    Romantic
    Romantic Comedy
    Romantic Drama
    Romantic Fiction
    Romantic Suspense
    Rose Atkinson-Carter
    Rosemarys Beach House
    Sale
    Science Fiction
    Score
    Self Help
    Self-help
    Sensitive Topics
    Serial Killer
    Service
    Sexy
    Signs
    Small Town
    Social Media
    Sophia Zaccaria
    Spotlight
    Spring
    Steamy Romance
    Story Elements
    Straight
    Structure
    Style
    Subscribers
    Subscription
    Supernatural
    Susan Lynn Solomon
    Suspense
    Takedown
    Teaser
    Techniques
    Teen Issues
    The Indie Pen PR
    Theme
    The Trials Of Adeline Turner
    Thoughts On Writing
    Thriller
    Time Travel
    T.J. Banks
    Travel Fiction
    Truth In Fiction
    Tuscany
    Update
    Urban Fantasy
    Valentines
    VB Book Reviewer
    Womens Fiction
    Writers
    Writer's Block
    Writer's Life
    Writing
    Writing In The Modern Age
    Writing Process
    Writing Rules
    Writing Tips
    #WritModAge
    Xpresso Book Tours
    YA Romance
    Young Adult
    Zodiac Chart

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog Policy
  • Schedule
  • Contact Us
  • Blog Posts