All I wanted to do is to publish this book. But I had other books plans before that one. After many years of preparations, testing, trial and error, waiting and burning excitement, Cruel Summer launch day is here, and the eBook is available at Amazon marketplaces! Cruel Summer is a gripping, unexpected, strong, and emotional YA cross-genre story about an abused teenage boy and a poet in New Manhattan, Michael Daniels, who only wants to skate and enter skateboarding contests, and the loyalty of friendship that stands as the shield between those with power and his freedom. Michael's skateboarding friends, Alien and Victor, are his only hope when things go wrong and mysteries and secrets start to unfold, threatening to turn their society into an authoritarian dystopia. Because when there is no hope left, friendship is what remains. All he wants to do is skate. By they have other plans for him. Cruel Summer has elements of family and social issues, extreme sports, conspiracy, murder, mystery, teen romance as a subplot, and even sci-fi and dystopia as a touch of alternative history. It carries a strong message of friendship. Although the main protagonists are three friends, skateboarders from New York City at the end of the millennium, Cruel Summer is not just a novel about extreme sports. It is a deep story of a family and sexual abuse, and the exploitation of power by those who have the means to use it over the individuals and the population in general. Having a strong human rights and environmental message, it will also appeal to those who love reading these books. Originally published as Okrutno ljeto in Croatian in 2014, Cruel Summer is still a hot topic today. Please click on the links below to get your copy where you can also leave your honest review. Thank you for that! Amazon.com Amazon Australia Amazon Canada Amazon UK Goodreads BookBub Cruel Summer is enrolled in KDP Select, where you can read it for free. Through most of March, it will be at the discounted price of $0.99 before it goes up to its regular place. A perfect time to download your eBook! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08X6JZKRM Thank you all who helped me bring this book to life. There are too many of you to mention you here, but you have my eternal thanks in the Acknowledgements in the book. If you are a representative of the media, please click here for the press release. https://www.bernardjan.com/cruel-summer-press Cruel Summer and I are available for reviews, book tours, interviews. Cover design by Dean Cole. BJ Follow me on Twitter. Source: https://www.bernardjan.com/post/cruel-summer-ebook-launch-day-on-amazon

I cannot believe it's already twenty years since I landed at the Newark airport and made my dream come true. As it was yesterday, I still remember the smells and sounds of New York City, a warm breeze blowing through its streets and avenues, dinning in a trattoria or grabbing French fries to go, rollerblading from the Battery Park all the way to the Central Park, enjoying watching friendly squirrels and the liveliness of Washington Square Park. A walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, browsing Manhattan skate shops, and subway rides to and from Jersey City. Buying T-shirts, books, a Tony Hawk baseball cap, a NYPD hoodie, and other souvenirs. Buying a novel in a WTC bookstore. And all that thanks to my friend Lidija. The day I visited New York City was September 11, 2000. The day I was supposed to celebrate my first anniversary never happened. Instead, the day of disbelief, shock and terror took its place on September 11, 2001. Fourteen years later, after that sad and heartbreaking day, I officially went online and launched my website. Through bernardjan.com I wanted to make everything I wrote in Croatian and English available to everyone, to bring my stories closer to you. And to share what I love with those of you who appreciate it, because there is no greater joy for me than that. I launched my website on September 11, 2015. A year after the launch of bernardjan.com, I opened my @BernardJanWorld Twitter account, and I haven't stopped tweeted since. Not a single day has passed without me being active on Twitter. That happened on September 11, 2016. On September 11 last year, I was removed from the register as the owner of my cottage in Tuhelj, which I had sold twenty days before. These are my 911 loves and memories. BJ Original post: https://www.bernardjan.com/post/911-loves-and-memories Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

(Story by Jennifer Cole, OCRed and edited from online images posted, for easy reading.) I lost a patient today. He was not the first, and unfortunately, he's definitely not the last. But he was different. I've been an ER nurse my entire career, but in New York I find myself in the ICU. At this point there's not really anywhere in the hospital that isn't ICU, aII COVID-19 positive. They are desperate for nurses who can titrate critical medication drips and troubleshoot ventilators. I've taken care of this man the last three nights, a first for me. In the ERI rarely keep patients for even one 12-hour shift. His entire two-week stay had been rough for him, but last night was the worst. I spent the first six hours of my shift not really leaving his room. By the end, with so many medications infusing at their maximum, I was begging the doctor to call his family and let them know. "He's not going to make it", I said. The poor doctors are so busy running from code to code, being pulled by emergent patients every minute. All I could think of was the voice of my mom in my head, crying as I got on the plane to leave for this place: "Those people are alone, you take good care of them". I was the only person in that room for three nights in a row, fighting as hard as I could to keep this man alive. The doctor was able to reach the family, update them. It was decided that when his heart inevitably stopped, we wouldn't try to restart it. There just wasn't anything else left to do. Eventually, he gave up. It was just him and me and his intubated roommate in the next bed. The wooden door to the room is shut, containing infection and cutting us off from the rest of the world. I called the doctor to come and mark the time of death. I wished so much that I could let his family know that while they might not have been with him, I was. I shut the pumps down (so horribly many of them), disconnected the vent, took him off the monitor. We didn't extubate him, too much of a risk to staff. Respiratory took the vent as soon as I called. It's just a portable one, but it's life to someone downstairs. The CNA helped me to wash him and place him in a body bag, a luxury afforded only to those who make it out of the ER. Down there the bodies pile up on stretchers, alone, while the patients on vents wait for the golden spot my gentleman just vacated. We'll talk about the ER another time. My patient was obviously healthy in his life. I look at his picture in his chart, the kind they take from a camera over a computer when you aren't really prepared. A head shot, slightly awkward. I see someone's Grandpa, someone's Dad, someone's Husband. They aren't here with him. My heart breaks for them. A bus takes us back to the hotel the disaster staff resides in, through deserted Manhattan. We are a few blocks from Central Park. We pass radio city music hall, NBC studios, times square. There is no traffic. The sidewalks are empty. My room is on the 12th floor. At 7pm you can hear people cheering and banging on and pans for the healthcare workers at change of shift. This city is breaking and stealing my heart simultaneously. I didn't know what I was getting into coming here, but it's turning out to be quite a lot.

There are over 460k cases of coronavirus in the United States, over 16.4k deaths as of today. New York State has the most of 160k cases, 6.8k deaths, most in the New York metropolitan area. New York is the epicenter of Covid-19 for now. Tens of thousands of healthcare workers, first responders, and volunteers are working day and night to save lives. You are on our mind, New Yorkers! Stay strong, and we will win this war against the stupid virus! “I'm make it by any means, I got a pocketful of dreams Baby I'm from New York Concrete jungle where dreams are made of There's nothing you can't do Now you're in New York These streets will make you feel brand new Big lights will inspire you Hear it for New York, New York, New York”

I'm that person who plans the next trip before the current one is over. Not the most budget-friendly habit. Or the healthiest. I started asking, “Is that kind of wanderlust sustainable? Can it really make me happy?” I started looking for another way to treat my travel bug, another way to travel, another way to find what I've been looking for. Wanderlust is never satisfied. New places are like new clothes, one more never makes the collection complete. So I haven't stopped traveling, I've just decided to travel more ...at home. I've had the adventure of making my home in several “touristy” places like New York City, Miami Beach, and Anchorage, Alaska – places that shout “I'm supposed to be explored!” But I've also lived in some quite non-touristy places, like Jundiai, Brazil and Tallahassee, Florida, and found that those places were inviting me to explore too. One habit I've adapted is taking pictures of my own city. Documenting my home and gathering stories makes me feel like I'm on a treasure hunt. Gathering stories can mean journaling a conversation overheard at a coffee shop, snapping street art, adding my neighbors to my novel, or vowing to never forget the inspiring art lady who gave me a free painting at the farmers market. I don't need another continent to do this. Once I get the pictures (and the occasional free painting) from my current home city, I like framing them on the wall next to waterfalls in Iceland or hot air balloons in Myanmar. It's a way of saying “this experience is just as cool, just as formative, just as special.” Exploring at home doesn't make my world smaller, but bigger. Exploring requires a kind of mindset, not a kind of destination. Destinations can sometimes limit what you find, which reminds me of an important part of traveling at home – getting lost. When I lived in New York City and needed “an escape,” my favorite thing to do was let my phone die. Then I was forced to really wander. I found some of my favorite coffee shops that way. Sometimes I charged my phone there, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I just pretended my phone was dead. I wouldn't listen to a podcast if I was taking the tube in London for the first time, so why not take out my earbuds on my daily commute now and then? Earbuds out turned into conversations with other fellow travelers on their way to work. I love asking questions about why people live in my home cities. “What brought you to New York?” is a classic with some surprisingly un-cliché answers. And I also liked, “Is it different than you expected?” “How are you and New York getting along?” One time my friend answered, “Living in New York is like being in a relationship – you're either in an argument or you're at peace.” These questions led to stories of disenchantment, reconciliation, falling in and out of love with the place we called home. Breaking up or making it work. A few years later I was replacing New York with Miami and found the answers just as interesting, answers like: “It's the rawest place I've ever lived.” “It feels like another country to me.” “People always told me I'd stop getting excited about seeing the ocean but it hasn't happened.” “It's breaking my heart.” These were more fulfilling conversations than talking about all the places I hadn't been because I resonated with something shared. Part of the reason I love traveling is coming back with stories. There's something so human about telling stories. It's a way of saying we are alive, we are making a presence on this earth and this is how. I love bringing stories home, and I also love when they bring me closer to home. Stories can come from locals or tourists. As a mostly-pedestrian in New York and South Beach, I found this energizing joy in engaging with tourists. Some of my favorite stories are from helping tourists find their way. It reminds me of how sometimes I still get lost. I imagined I was a link between them and their bucket lists, their high hopes. “Which way is the beach?” just reminded me that we're all just looking for the beach. I reoriented their sense of direction, but they did the same for me. I'll never forget a boy who was about eight emerging from the 34th street subway station and shouting “Look, it's the Empire State Building! We're in New YORK!” It was about 30 degrees and I was carrying about 31 pounds of Trader Joe's, but I stopped being grumpy. Yeah, we were in New York. I want to challenge the idea that adventure is “out there.” Home doesn't have to mean standing still. Home doesn't have to be an interim between adventures. Home can be the biggest trip you'll ever take. And one you can always go back to. Adventure is right here. I'm still almost always planning (or at least dreaming about) the next time I will hop in a plane with my passport. But what I've realized is that traveling and exploring can be a lifestyle, not a series of events. It can be a way of thinking. Home can be a place where wanderlust and contentment meet.

During springtime, if you perchance find a dandelion puff poking out of your lawn, pluck it, blow off the white fluff, and make a wish. If the fluff reaches the other side of the road your wish will come true! This is what I believed during my younger years before I discovered that dandelion puffs hold seeds. Who told me this, you ask? It was probably my father; he always told me strange things. For instance, while I sat on the dewy grass of the green lawn and wiggled my toes in the dirt, I often admired a great Border Collie on the lawn parallel to mine (where I so often hoped my dandelion puffs would reach). At this point, my father would remind me that the Collie was a whopping 100 years old, explaining how this was apparent by the way that she hobbled. I personally could not see the limp in the old dog, and I eventually stopped seeing her across the street. I no longer believe the dog lived for 100 years; that is unless my father was speaking in dog years. When I was not dancing in the grass or picking up black ants, I often preoccupied myself with drawing in the basement. At my plastic white table, in my plastic yellow chair, I scribbled up storms. One night I was drawing what I would later call my masterpiece; a collection of multi-coloured scribbles that rendered a previously blank paper without a trace of white. As I doodled beyond my bedtime, my brother, who is four years my senior, eventually saw me and sent me to bed. “What are you working on? You have to go to bed,” said he. “No! It needs to be done!” I retaliated. He waited a short while for me to finish before losing his patience. “What are you even drawing that it takes that long? The Mona Lisa?” “What's that?” I wondered. “It's the most detailed drawing ever. Now go to bed,” he said. Of my early childhood memories, I possess few that are as vivid as this. I wanted to draw my own Mona Lisa after that. Prior to my first day of junior kindergarten, my twin sister and I revelled in spending our time at the local playground, where our jeans stained green and our hands and fingernails grew dirty with sand. It was there where we first met a pair of fraternal twins our age that we befriended. When one has three years of life up their sleeve, anyone is a friend. The tree is a friend, the bee is a friend, and the ants (in particular) were my friends. When I met the pair of twins I perceived that we were destined to be friends until the end of time. Fourteen years later in my senior year of high school my art class travelled to New York City, by bus I must add, and within the class was my sister and one of the fraternal twins. Enraptured by the city we were. On our final night there I endeavoured with my sister, the fraternal twin, and another friend of mine on a trek from our hotel on 39th street to a diner on 34th street, as we had not yet experienced a classic New York diner. It would not have been so great a trek had we not reached 49th street before realizing we were walking the wrong way in the midst of some of the brutal snowfall I had ever walked through, and keep in mind, us Canadians have seen many a snowfall. Upon entering the diner that was, to our astonishment, quite empty on a Saturday night, our noses were pink and dripping, our fingers frosty, and our hair painted white with snowflakes. There we played cards, drank coffee, and recognized the memorable night as the culmination of something great, though we did not specify whether it was the culmination of the trip, high school, our youth, or of time itself. Time stood still that night. We laughed loudly about the smallest of trifles. In my childhood reverie, I did not see the limp in the Collie across the street. I wanted a Mona Lisa of my own and I plucked dandelions, wishing for little things that I no longer remember. I laughed with my sister and the other twins with the same liberty I laughed with in the diner on 34th street. Even now I can live in that reverie so long as I have appreciation for the Universe. I still remember the first cloudless day of 2018. I relish the first soothing sip of coffee after a restless night. My two-hour commute in my final semester of high school became lovely when I recognized it as an opportunity to read and peer out the window at the Broadview Overpass. I now believe the trip to the American diner was the culmination of the trip and the trip alone; perhaps we thought it more than that because we had not entered the childhood reverie for so long. I now frequent that dream. Sometimes small delights are all that exist and we must make do. It may be trying to find the joys; they like to hide and wear masks. Never stop searching! You will find that you love that reverie.

My life is so weird. It's always been weird. That's probably because I was born in 1949, the 3rd child of a family that wanted to stop at two. I was constantly told that I was worthless and was always costing my family money. In those days, children had no social security numbers and if somebody had the right connections they could sell an unwanted child in a black market adoption or even worse, sexual slavery. I think I was three at the time but my parents left me with the baby-sitter on Christmas. The baby-sitter, I found out later from my older sister was also the contact for back-street abortions and black-market adoptions. The babysitter who was an older woman, left me alone with a book filled with Christmas stickers. In those days, there was no self-stick stickers. You had to lick them glued back to make them work. This was the first time I was away from my parents and I was scared. My anxiety increased as I stuck stickers everywhere, hoping my parents would return soon and be proud of my handiwork. Instead a young couple arrived. I remember the woman had long blonde hair and a red dress under her fur coat. My babysitter picked me up so she could hold me when all that anxiety and glue backed up on me and I threw up all over her red dress. She yelled something like "How dare you give me a sick baby!" and pushed me back into the babysitter's arms. I was put into a crib in a dark room after a lot of angry talk and I stayed there until my parents picked me up. I don't remember much of what happened next, but I was very sick because the next thing I knew was that I was in a hospital, being stuck with needles by angry nurses. The story I heard later in life was that my parents left me with the baby-sitter so they could attend my sister's Christmas pagent and was sick with something that was called "glandular fever." My mother said I spent eight days in the hospital. The first seven days I was given sulfa drugs that had little effect on my sickness. The end of that week, the doctor told my parents that he could give me a new drug that was still largely experimental, but my father would have to sign a permission slip because the new drug could cure me or kill me. My father signed the paper and they gave me another giant needle of the new drug. That night I flew. I flew around the hospital. I saw what looked like a woman having an operation. I saw lines of cars and trucks on the roads outside. Finally, I was back in my crib I was coloring in a coloring book and throwing crayons back and forth over the tops of our cribs which lay head to head with a kid named Mikey. The next day, I stood up in my crib and tried to see over the huge wooden top, but I was too short. When the nurses came in, I asked where Mikey was. The younger nurse burst into tears and said "Mikey's dead!" I went home that day. When my mother told that part of the story to my sister and me, she asked "Guess what that medicine was?" We shook our heads. "Penicillin." Our life was rough after that. My father had a successful machine shop but he drank all his profits. My mother took in ironing. Later, I found out she was also turning tricks. When she wanted to insult me, she'd tell me I was "just like my father." For a long time I wondered what she meant by that because weren't we supposed to be like our parents? It wasn't until much later that I found out about the visiting "insurance men." We had dogs but the one assigned to me suddenly disappeared. My mother said it was all my fault because I didn't take care of her and she ran away. Years later my sister told me that she wasn't going to keep a female dog that wasn't spayed. The male dog was never the same. He always kept to himself and never wanted to play. My mother did some darker things to try to "turn me out" but I was too defensive and would say I'd jump out into traffic before I'd go along with that scheme. And I said it while in a moving car going down the Long Island Expressway. My parents bad habits were backing up on them. I got into constant fights at school. Nobody wanted to be my friend. My mother kept trying to get into the local social scene by joining a church but the gossip got about and she was shunned. I was shunned too. Finally, my father lost his temper one last time and decided to move from New York to Florida. In Florida, he bought a bar and had my mother help him run it. I had always wondered why they stayed together for so long. She said it was because he was the only man who offered to marry her. I always wondered why a man would stay with a woman who fooled around. I found out later, he fooled around, too--with other men. The whole marriage thing was one big made-for-social-acceptance sham. My mother liked playing the diva at the bar and my father spent a lot of his spare time fishing. My brother only stayed for the first month when he turned 21 and flew back to New York to stay with friends until he got a place of his own.