Writer

Stevan V. Nikolic grew up in Belgrade, Serbia, and moved to New York in 1987. Over the past twenty years, he has written nine narrative nonfiction books on various esoteric teachings before transitioning to fiction. Stevan’s debut novel, Weekend in Faro, is the first in the “Michael Nicolau Series,” and was published in 2014. Truth According to Michael (2016) is the second book in the same series. The follow-up, Seven Days to Santiago, is set to be released by March 2025. His memoir, In the Beginning Was the Word: Musings of the Incurable Bookaholic, was released in December 2024. His books have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Serbian and published worldwide.

Stevan is a co-founder and editor-in-chief of the international independent publication, Adelaide Literary Magazine. Over the past 9 years, the magazine has released 72 issues featuring over 3000 published poems, short stories, and essays by authors from around the world.

Editor & Publisher

Graphic Artist

Bookseller

Over the years, while working in book publishing, Stevan has designed book covers and formatted interiors for almost one thousand books, magazines, and other publications by various authors. Passionate about typography and the art of bookmaking, he also delves into producing and printing limited editions of art prints inspired by books he writes.

An avid bibliophile, he collects and deals in rare and antique books, as well as medieval manuscripts. Books from his collections are available for purchase at abebooks.com, iberlibro.com, biblio.com, livrariamiosotis.pt, svnrarebooks.com, and casadolivreiro.pt. You can often find him at various book fairs in New York, Frankfurt, London, Lisbon, and Porto.

Quotes from Stevan V. Nikolic's books

“... for miracles to happen, God, need our cooperation. As Pastor Charles once told me, God can throw us a rope to save us, but we have to hold to it.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael

“You know Pastor, baking is a real art. Especially bread baking. There is something so divine about it. It is a pure alchemy. And all alchemical elements are there: flour that comes from the earth and represents material, water that you mix with flour to make the dough, air released by the yeast fermentation that makes dough rise, fire that bakes the bread. It is fantastic. And the aroma of hot bread released during baking is the most pleasant fragrance for our senses. Think about that for a moment, Pastor. Any food aroma that we like, no matter how much we like it, gets overwhelming after a while, and we open the kitchen windows and close kitchen doors so the smell doesn’t get into the living room. Any smell, but the smell of freshly baked bread. Did you ever hear anybody complain about the smell of baked bread? Nobody, Pastor! Nobody. You hear people complaining about their neighbors frying fish, roasting pork, barbecuing sausages, but nobody ever complains about the smell of baked bread. And you know why? Because it is divine. It is magic – the magic of the craft.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael

“The only truly beautiful dreams are those we convert into reality. Everything else is just a nightmare.”-  Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend in Faro

“Freemasonry is relevant as much as the actions of Freemasons are meaningful.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, On the Square: Three Hundred Years Later

“For a dream to come true, you have to wake up first.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend In Faro

“We perceive things differently. For you receiving Jesus means shouting from the hill praises to the Lord. For me, it is a deep and intimate mystical experience. For you living by the Word of God means having leveled and measured life, not smoking, not drinking, and obeying to His Biblical commands as strict as possible. For me, living by the Word of God means trying to find my true path and destiny. Learning who I am, why I am here and what God wants me to do. To find that out, sometimes I have to dig deep into those magical and occult books, which you dismiss so easily.”
        “The only book you need Michael is the Holy Bible. Everything is written in there. All the answers you are searching for. But you have to read with your heart, not your mind. All those other books will just confuse you and blur your mind.”
         “I disagree. I can’t believe I am hearing this from the Pastor of the church in the twenty -first century. Are you sure you didn’t fly in with some time machine from the inquisition age.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael

“…leaving a book behind keeps your thoughts alive in this world forever. So, in some ways, your spirit never dies. It is the best way to achieve immortality.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael

“I thin​k​ that both our lives and the potential directions our lives may go are predestined. By using our free will in making our life choices, we do nothing else but picking up one of many already predestined options. To us, it seems like we were making the decision, while in reality, we just selected one of many possibilities that were already a part of our destiny.”
         “Don’t you think God is so powerful that he can make us believe that we made some choices, when in actuality, he had made a choice for us?” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael

“Your mind always follows your heart. That will never change. The one good thing about you is that you are a survivor. You can survive and get out of any situation. The bad part about it is that in the process you always unintentionally hurt others as well as yourself. Did you ever ask yourself how long you will be able to go this way? Whatever you are after in your life, is it worth it?” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend In Faro

“Sometimes, he thought of himself as an elephant walking through the china store, breaking everything in his path and still expecting people not to be angry with the damage he made, but rather to admire his strength and his endurance.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Truth According to Michael

“Many legends were made, stories written, monuments built—all witnessing the efforts of men to secure the successful voyage of their souls into the world of eternal dreams.”- Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend in Faro

“As human beings, we are connected in many ways to each other, to the nature that surrounds us and to the outermost parts of the Universe. Our existence is not manifested only on the visible physical level, but on many other levels. In the occasional excursions to our collective unconscious through dreams and altered states of mind, we realize that there is much more to our destiny than what we see when we open our eyes in the morning. The whole universe lives one life, breaths at the same speed the air of Divine Creation.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, On the Square: Three Hundred Years Later

“The hardest stone to cut and carve is one within us.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Royal Art of Freemasonry

“…there are simply no words that would be worthy of describing their encounter. And if any narrator ever tries to come up with some details, it would be only to arouse the readers’ lust, and would not do justice to what happened that night between Nini and the young woman whose dream he invaded. It was just a glorious experience of two bodies melting in one, two souls uniting in one, two hearts beating with the same beat, and two spirits becoming one. Yes, it was a dream.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend In Faro

“…these books have their own integrity, their own identity. It is not about the words in there. You don’t need to read these books. Words are there to confuse you. They are just messing around with your mind. You have to look beyond words. There is a big secret somewhere in these books and I am going to find it. And you know that, but you are afraid to admit it. It is dangerous.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend In Faro

“You say, you can’t live without hope? My friend, hope is our biggest enemy. It does not bring realization. It just prolongs suffering.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend In Faro

“There is something called positive thinking that people often confuse with hope. But it is different. Positive thinking is a state of mind, while hope is a useless state of the heart. Positive thinking is about doing and hope is about feeling. So, positive thinking is what you need.” - Stevan V. Nikolic, Weekend In Faro