Since I live in Germany, Eastercon in the UK is not my usual haunt. But this year, I have a short story coming out in Milford’s second anthology Hidden Shadows, so I’ll finally make the trip for the first time to be at the launch. The story in questi...
Adriana KantchevaCatching WordsDispatches from a writer of speculative fiction.Hello, ,On Sunday, it was International Women's Day, so I've been having a lot of thoughts swirling in my head about the erasure of older women from society, about how wom...
Adriana KantchevaCatching WordsDispatches from a writer of speculative fiction.Hello, ,It’s deep winter over here, and everybody around me is succumbing to a bad cold one by one. As I’m writing this, I’ve got two sick kids on the couch, hoping I’m no...
Adriana KantchevaCatching WordsDispatches from a writer of speculative fiction.Hello, ,Look at that: 2026 is already here. Happy New Year, everybody! Now that I'm gearing to take down the lights and pack away the Christmas tree (I have an artificial...
Adriana KantchevaCatching WordsDispatches from a writer of speculative fiction.Hello, ,Astronomically, it might not yet be winter in the northern hemisphere, but the mood is definitely wintry and festive here in Germany. After a couple of weeks of be...
It’s time for my yearly overview and reckoning. 2025 has been anything but uneventful — a mandala of experiences, choices, and revelations. In May, I gave up my beloved flight attendant job. I’m still sad about it, but I don’t regret the decision. It...
Adriana KantchevaCatching WordsDispatches 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 no...
A statement in Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee stayed with me. Headlee maintains we choose to use our voices less and less when we want to reach out to others, falling back instead on written communication through texts, emails, and blogs (heh!). This,...
On 2nd of July, I read two stories on Story Hour (click here for the recording). It was fun. It was wonderful. It was nerve-racking. Why? Because I have a tiny issue with public speaking. Though I don’t always thrive when immersed in a crowd for a lo...
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 signe...
Last month, I recapped the best and worst of 2024. Now I’m moving on to what I hope 2025 will bring. Dare I hope for a completed first draft of a novel? Dare I hope for a submission-ready manuscript of my long-worked-on epic fantasy novel? These are...
Each year, as December comes around, I look back at the year that is about to finish and take stock of how I feel about it. Am I left bewildered by how time has slipped between my fingers so? Or does it feel like I’ve taken my time to live through ea...
It’s Halloween today. Though traditions involving dressing up and knocking on doors for treats have existed all over Europe for centuries, Halloween—as is today—was just an overseas echo when I was growing up in Bulgaria in the ‘90s. In Germany, wher...
In May, I mentioned that I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I was coming close to finishing a long-standing novel project. By long standing, I mean 12 years. Now that I’ve admitted it, I’m cringing. Dear future agent, it’s not how long I...
Recently, my short story “Salvaged”, originally published in Escape Pod in October 2022, was translated into Bulgarian (by me) and published on Valentin D. Ivanov’s podcast “Българска Фантастика”, a podcast for Bulgarian SFF. This was a milestone for...
