Today we talk about The Return of Ferion, The Forgotten Kingdom, a book by Pavle Petrovic published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author Pavle Petrovic to get to know him better, if there was a particular moment in his life that led him to the writing of his book The Return of Ferion, The Forgotten Kingdom, as well as how he felt to see is books published.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- Is there a particular moment in your life that led you to the writing of your book? What was it?
Aside from my wish to write since I was 8 years old – I use to write on the back pages of notebooks during my elementary schooling – the moment that gave me an idea for this particular book was while playing a video game. I use to create maps for WarCraft 3 and when I was 14, I decided to create one based solely on my own story, which quickly developed into what’s being read right now. I started off when I was 15 in high school. While others were closely following what the teachers were saying and took notes, I wrote the first edition of the book in 2 red notebooks. It was in the format of a video game script and my attempts were to contact video game producers, wanting to sell them my idea for a potential new series. Normally, I wasn’t aware that much what I was doing and it led to no results but it laid down the groundwork for the current version of the book which I wrote from scratch when I was 21.
- What would like to hear from you readers?
I’m definitely interested in reading some reviews about the structure of the story, the setting, characters and overall writing, including formatting. I’m particularly interested in the overall writing and any plot holes/errors spotted so I can improve upon them. Another point of interest is the genre, if I correctly matched the expectations of fantasy fans and how epic and/or shockingly interesting the story is. But generally, any feedback is greatly appreciated. Please also note I was 21 when I wrote about 90% of the book, the other 10% were edits 6 months before I contacted Europe Books for publishing. On top of that – even though I consider English as my second native language – English is still a second language to me. So, I’m definitely aware a potential new edition is needed to improve the writing – not the ideas – of the book but any feedback is extremely useful in my efforts to make not only the Forgotten Kingdom better but also all other sequels and books in the series, not to mention books in other series I’m planning to write in the future.
- Is there a book you are particularly attached to and that has taught you something?
Those who read the Forgotten Kingdom and have read either Harry Potter or Tolkien’s works before can see some correlations between them. I’m definitely a fan of both authors – and many more – so to answer this from a fantasy fiction standpoint, I’d say: the Hobbit. Quick, interesting to read with a lot of ideas, impressive opening, etc. a book from which you can generally get all sorts of inspirations, how a fantasy story should be structured and a journey with a lot of real-life references. But my inspirations were both from books, and from video games. I learnt to structure and format books from books, but video game gave me this additional layer of epic writing and story structure from producers like BioWare and Blizzard, amongst others. Additionally, I’d like to add another, local author that helped quite a bit: Ivo Andrić. His works like the Bridge on Drina – for which he won the Nobel Prize – and Mistress, helped me deepen my writing style and approach writing on a different level. Note: My grandmother uses to work for him as a housemaid and lived with Andrić for 13 years, one of a few reasons I read his books.
- How did it feel to see your novel published?
A dream come true, for sure. Imagine wanting to get published and have your work read by fans in the genre you love the most, and it becomes a reality. So, I was happy, excited, and proud, amongst other positive feelings the moment I saw it published. I actually expected it to come out in December but after Google-ing it somewhere at the beginning of November, I’ve seen Europe Books decided to publish it slightly sooner, which emotionally caught me off-guard. What deepened these emotions was the extent and number of placed the book got available at. Logically, I knew this will happened but when it actually happened, the feeling was extremely different. I started getting feedback, like follows on social medias and messages on some platform, which further elevated it all from great to awesome. And it’s been slightly less than a month and it’s the first book I published. I have no doubt the feeling will be even greater as things move forward.
- Are you planning to write more books? Can you tell us more about it?
Yes. The Return of Ferion is a fantasy fiction series. I’m planning 7 books total and I’m already done with 60% of the sequel, titled: Somewhere In-Between. I structured the series as two trilogies – each concentrating on a specific period of the world’s history – and a 7th part which is a connector between them. The first 3 books are actually the last 3 books in the series, but they follow the most important and interesting chapter: Ferion’s return and the Protagonist’s struggle to stop him. But my plans aren’t strictly focused on this single series, I’m also planning to write 2 additional series – one is a psychological thriller while the other science fiction – each having more than 3 books. Ideal scenario is that I’ll write 1 book per series a year – 3 total yearly – and have many more standalone books I’m also planning to write, so there will be many more tittles coming out from me in the following years.
Europe Books thanks the author Pavle Petrovic once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside him on the editorial path that led to the publication of his book The Return of Ferion, The Forgotten Kingdom. We wish him the best of luck for his book and for his future works.
To you, my dear reader, may this fantasy story be of great interest to you and strongly strike your curiosity, to the point that you can’t wait to read the sequels and the other books of the series.
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is to enjoy your reading!
Your editor!