Recently, at Troubadours Magazine, we announced a call for submissions of micro SF stories from Bulgarian authors. We are aiming for 50 shorts, which we would very much like to publish online in the magazine’s website not only in the original Bulgarian but also translated into English, the end game being the eventuality of anthologizing two separate collections with The Best Bulgarian Micro SF Short Stories selected in the span of one or two years.
It’s hard to describe how stressful it is to reject stories that don’t make the cut, submitted either by young hopefuls or heavy artillery veterans. Yes, it’s quite normal to receive perfectly good stories that don’t align with what we are looking for, but still–definitely not my favourite part. The good thing is that I am trying to give the exact reasons and some sparse directions in these rejections, and it seems to help the authors, or at least, so far, they’ve never been mad at me for doing so!
Now that the first two micro SF shorts have been translated by myself and author and translator Vladimir Poleganov, you can read them on Troubadours Magazine’s website:
Both authors have previous publications with us and have participated in our regular short story contests throughout the years. And the first round of submissions we are currently reading shows promise and potential, aspiration and experience.
You already know what’s the good, but do you know what’s the best thing in all this, particularly for me? I am secretly rooting for every short that I start reading, and when I read the last sentence that “works” in terms of “what we are looking for,” I am the happiest busy editor, slash translator, slash SF reader in the whole wide world! It’s all worth it, man.