Adriana Kantcheva

Author of speculative fiction.

Hello, ,

This is the May installment of my newsletter. I skipped April for good and happy reasons, which I'm now itching to share.

So, here I go...

New story out: "Contraction" in Twenty-two Twenty-eight Magazine (free to read)

This is not a speculative story but still very close to my heart. I wrote it a while ago when I was adjusting to my new role as a mother. It has a visceral, raw, and somewhat surrealist quality because motherhood is as much about the body as the mind, bringing a total shift in reality.

Click here or on the image below to read it. There is no paywall.

Forthcoming: "Affinition" on Manawaker Studio's Flash Fiction Podcast (narrated by CB Droege)

I'm so excited to have another audio recording of a story of mine. "Affinition" is from the point of view of an alien and it's perhaps the funkiest thing I've ever written.

Click here or on the thumbnail below to listen to a short preview. CB Droege has done a marvelous job!

(The file is hosted on Dropbox)

"Affinition" will be availble on Podcast Addict, Spotify, or directly from Manawaker's Studio's RSS feed.

What else I've been up to

• Last week, I spent in the seclusion of Gladstone's Library in Wales while attending the Milford retreat. My brain melted from all the writing (read about it on my blog), but also...

• I finished the first draft of the high fantasy novel I started last December. I believe it's the best first draft I've ever written, and I have high hopes that revising it won't be... a mess. Let's see what my first readers tell me.

• Last but not least, I started a novella project (second in a cycle, the first part of which I'm currently shopping around). I've roughly outlined the characters. I can't wait to meet them.

Latest blog post

Milford Retreat’25, finishing a novel’s first draft, my aching but happy brain, and other curiosities.

Last September, I did something I’d been wanting to do for a very long time: go to Milford Conference. It was an absolute eye-opener and resulted in me regaining my confidence as a writer and a story being published (“Vedritsa of the River”). I signed up for the next conference immediately.

So it happened, though, that I ended up at the retreat because of family commitments later in the year. In retrospect, I’m glad fate decided I should experience this very different Milford.

Continue reading

Today's excerpt

Since I was talking about the newly drafted novel... (Not sure if the word "untetheredness" exists, but that's a worry for a later time.)

For three intense heartbeats, I let her fill my vision: my knight, now a mature woman, her back straight, her shoulders strong, her every move honed to beautiful precision that only steadfast training and a life of movement could bring. I still owned her handkerchief, tucked in the same box with Miravian’s drawings. For three heartbeats, I let myself forget who I was, and, instead, I allowed a sensation I had not revisited for far too long take me: a feeling of untetherdness, of openness and possibilities, of being somewhere easy to breathe.

Today's picture

My writing desk at Gladstone's Library. I also wrote in the garden, the common room, and my own room, but nothing beats being inside the library proper.

This picture is my current desktop background in an effort to recreate the feeling of being totally free to write, write, write...

Books and music

• Reading: Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee. This one is non-fiction. It talks about how doing less can be more efficient, and how keeping busy, without making time for the mind to unwind and wander, might be costing us our humanity. Certainly, not everything Headlee suggest is applicable to everyone's circumstances, but I very much recommend the read for a sanity check.

• Music: Not from the past, not for the future by Fabrizio Paterlini. While writing the very last pages of my new novel, I had this mellow piano track on loop. I'm not sure why my brain wanted that (other than the melody is introspective and ephemeral like a fleeting moment of peace), but who am I to argue with what the muse needs.

Until next time!

Adriana

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Read my fiction here.

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