BulgaCon 2024 will take place in Sofia this weekend. It’s the first lit conference I’ll be attending, and while I’m super excited to meet new people in the world of speculative fiction, I’m also nervous. I have very little idea of what to expect — partly because I’ve never attended a con, but also because there is so little information about the event. The official website was finally updated this past week, but I have no clue what to expect in terms of crowds or number of people (something super important for someone with social anxiety). But, the people I’ve talked to through email have been nice so far, and I am hoping that all of this is just a sign that the event will be small and casual. I am choosing to believe there will be open people who want to talk about books with me. That’s what this is all about, after all, right?
Presenting Mazi
I’ll admit that one of the things that has me nervous is I signed up to present Mazi, my erotic horror novella about a woman who returns to Bulgaria after years in the US and embarks on a harrowing psychological journey while vacationing in the mountains with her American boyfriend. Presenting a horror novella at a speculative con is intimidating to say the least. Although the conference says that it is a gathering of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, alternative history, horror), it elsewhere says that it is the annual meeting of fantasy lovers, and the schedule definitely leans heavy towards fantasy and science fiction. Over the past two years, I’ve fallen into very horror-focused crowds, and it is easy to forget that at most events, horror is an afterthought, tacked onto the world of speculative, but not really part of it. Add in that Mazi is erotic horror — an outcast even in horror circles — and I wonder if people will be interested in my work at all.
But even if Mazi wasn’t erotic horror, I am nervous because this will be the first time I present the book to Bulgarian audiences. Until now, few Bulgarians have read Mazi. I’ve concentrated on sharing the book, written in English, with people in the US and UK. But Mazi takes place in Bulgaria, holds a lot of Bulgarian mythology, and even has a debatable Bulgarian word as the title. When I’ve shared the title with Bulgarians, they have often been confused, most of all because mazi is not a word that is often used in Bulgarian. Although it is technically the plural of cellars, the word is complicated. This article (in Bulgarian) explains the shift from using maza to maze. The plural of maza is mazi, and the plural of maze is mazeta. Although many Bulgarians still use maza and maze interchangeably, the only plural form I’ve heard spoken is mazeta. Let’s be honest, how often are we actually speaking of cellars in plural? We are usually talking about THE cellar… which for maza is mazata and for maze is mazeto. Want to know what’s strange? Is I hear mazata more often than mazeto, even though maze is more common than maza. Language is a funny thing. The choice of Mazi was quite intentional, representing the evolution of language, a word changing from the past of folklore into the modern, and then forgotten altogether, to the point that the word feels wrong, and what happens when a modern woman clings to the old variant. It was meant to spark that unease that my friends seemed to feel when I asked them “What’s the plural of cellar in Bulgarian?” and they realized they weren’t quite sure. But as a foreigner, I’m terrified that people will just assume I made a mistake.
Still, Optimistic for Connection and a Good Time
Mazi aside, BulgaCon is more about meeting other authors, readers, and publishers for me. I want to see what the spec world is like in Bulgaria. I want to get an idea of what I should be reading (even though speculative Bulgarian language books are still hard for me to read). I’m looking forward to attending some of the sessions, but my main hope is to make some speculative friends in Bulgaria, especially writers that I can meet up with from time to time!
