Adriana Kantcheva
Catching Words
Dispatches from a writer of speculative fiction.
Hello, ,
The cold season has definitely started over here. I’m now through my second (thankfully relatively mild) cold. The trees have lost most of their leaves, but I’m not complaining. It’s been a lovely fall so far with brilliant colors and sunshine on many days (including today).
Welcome to another installment of Catching Words!
“Freeze, Compute, Revert, Hope” - available for free until 23rd November.
This sci-fi story about quantum medicine and life’s choices (or the occasional lack thereof) is available for ten more days, after which it will go behind a paywall unless someone adopts it.
An excerpt from “Freeze, Compute, Revert, Hope”
I wiggle on my pillow, trying to hide the bright ceiling lights behind Olgmann’s bushy mop of hair. “There must be a catch.”
He doesn’t bat an eye. “Beyond the procedure’s novelty, there are other…possibilities. Literally. We might have to run CiSQER several times, as the quantum process in itself is a probabilistic phenomenon. There’s no way to choose the exact state your body would revert to. And since, in quantum terms, the body is vast, there’s an even vaster number of combinations of particle states it could return to.”
“In patient language, please.”
“We might have to do it several times to get the result we want, each time creating a different possible past version of you.”
“Ah.” I pause as if I have a choice. “Where do I sign?”
My recent reading on Strong Women - Strange Worlds
The event was recorded, and you can access the video here (YouTube).
What I’ve been up to
- I’m about one-third through the first revision of my secondary-world fantasy novel. This revision deals with broader structural changes such as rearranging, removing, or adding plot elements. It took me about ten days to get that far because I needed to do minimal rewriting, but soon I’ll have to add new scenes, and that will slow me down.
- I went through a mini-revision and another round of polishing of my science-fantasy novella (I called it steampunk before, but it is somewhere between steampunk and fantasy and a bit of mild sci-fi). It’s now the best I can make it, so I’m looking for a home for it. Not easy since few markets take that length.
A recent snapshot
It’s been a golden fall here in the southern Schwarzwald. When the weather cools, the Rhein valley often stays buried under a mat of low-lying clouds (called Hochnebel in German: “high fog” if translated directly) that hangs anywhere between 100 and 700 m above sea level. But this year, most of October and November (so far) have been sunny.
Books and music
- Reading: Wayward by Emilia Hart. A beautiful novel about witches. Three women, whose stories intertwine, find triumph in three different ways. This is a story about what love is and what the opposite of that looks like: it’s something more complex than hate.
- Music: “By Now” by VÉRITÉ. That’s one hypnotic song. Very good for writing, so sometimes I’m listening to it on a loop.
Something learned
Too much discipline leads to the opposite of discipline.
One-Sentence Story
A dewdrop fell into my eye, and now I see them—sprites dancing on twigs and grass blades, on branches and stones, atop the anthill and the mole mounds in the witch’s garden.
Until next time!
Adriana
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