The Author
Iva Lazarova
Writer · Visual artist · Creator of „Zemyata Zhivee“
Iva Lazarova is a multifaceted creator whose professional life weaves together the visual arts, digital marketing, and content creation for the „Zemyata Zhivee“ project. Beyond all her artistic range, her deepest passion, rooted as far back as her humanities studies, remains literature, the written word, and her homeland's history.
This synthesis of visual aesthetics, modern thinking, and a profound reverence for antiquity became the foundation of her most significant work. After more than a year of devoted creation, her debut historical novel „To the Last Breath“ was born.
„One of the most important things for me while writing was maximum historical accuracy, without letting it smother the human drama. I wanted to show the characters not through my own eyes, but to let them breathe and act on their own. My goal as a writer isn't to point fingers or decide what's right or wrong. I simply opened the door to their world and gave the reader the chance to walk the path alongside the characters, feeling the weight of every choice they make.“
When she is not writing, Iva is among the creators of „Zemyata Zhivee“ - the YouTube channel about rural life, nature, and a return to roots. Through the story of Kelara and Bayan she explores the essence of human choice, duty, and love.
How the book came to be
From manuscript to your hands
The novel took over a year to write. Before that came the research: sources, chronicles, archaeology, everything available on the 9th century and on what people believed before they were required to believe something else. A closing essay in the book covers those sources - what is documented and what is imagined. Iva chose to say it plainly rather than leave the reader guessing.
The cover is hers. It was not commissioned from a studio or picked from a catalogue - Iva is an artist and painted it herself while writing the novel. That is why the image on it is not an illustration of the story, but part of it.
“To the Last Breath” is published without a publishing house. Iva handles all of it - the editing, the prepress, the printer, the print run, the packing, the shipping. The first hundred copies are numbered and signed by hand, one at a time, and packed at home before they set out. No warehouse, no packing line, no other hands along the way.
That is also why the run is a hundred. That is how many fit in one pair of hands.
Why this story
"To the Last Breath" is a novel about the revolt of those who believe in Son, the clash of worlds and truths, the longing for freedom, and the power of choice - the kind of choice that can rewrite the fate of not just two people, but of an entire people.
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