#Immigration interviews | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

audreycecilemoore · 1 year ago

Text

An Interview with Genoveva Dimova, Author of Foul Days

Genoveva is a Bulgarian archeologist living in Scotland and loves void cats, metal music, cheese, and Voice-y fast-paced books

Read here or on my substack

AC: Where did the inspiration for the witches’ shadows being linked to magic come from?

GD: Shadows are a common motif in Bulgarian folklore, and the idea that a person’s soul (or power, or essence) resides inside their shadow appears again and again. It is believed, for example, that stepping on someone’s shadow would bring the person ill health. If you’d like to get rid of an unwanted guest, a surefire way to do this is to sweep their shadow through the door. One of my favourite folkloric beliefs is the ritual of embedding, which is something that features prominently in Foul Days: the idea is that in order to make a structure, like a bridge or a wall, as solid and long lasting as possible, you need to embed someone in it, so that their spirit would protect it from evil. In some folk stories, the builders embed a living person, and in others—only the person’s shadow. It doesn’t matter which one of the two they choose, as a person without a shadow would grow ill and die within 40 days.

AC: The Foul Days are linked to the veil between worlds growing thin, which is present in Japanese, Irish, and Mexican traditions. Are there any cultural traditions in Bulgaria with similar ideas?

GD: I love this question! The short answer is—yes, absolutely. The long answer is that Foul Days is based around a real belief: in Bulgarian folklore, the Foul Days are the twelve days between Christmas and St John the Baptist’s Day, after the new year has been born but before it has been baptised, when the barriers between our world and the supernatural realm are thinnest, and therefore, evil spirits are free to roam the land. It was believed that during those twelve days, people should keep away from anything that would function as a doorway between worlds—all the mirrors in the house had to be covered, and washing had to be avoided, as water is a well-known method for transportation between realms. People also had to avoid going out after dark, hosting weddings or funerals, or conceiving, as any baby conceived during the Foul Days was sure to become a drunk or a rascal.

AC: Are there any writers writing Balkan speculative fiction you wanna give a shout-out to?

GD: This is a difficult question as very few Balkan authors have been translated into different languages, and their works are therefore inaccessible not only in the West, but within the Balkans themselves. There are more than a dozen languages spoken on this fairly small piece of land (Google tells me it’s roughly the same size as Texas), which means that we, too, have to rely on translations to read authors from other Balkan countries or cultures.

Anyway, with this caveat, here are some of my favourites:

For people who like literary fiction with a speculative twist, I’d recommend Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov. For a book that reads like a folk tale, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugrešić. There is a new Croatian publishing house called Shtriga, which specialises in sharing speculative literature by Croatian authors with the rest of the world—they have a great selection of ebooks, some of which are free, so definitely check them out. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a novel about vampires that takes us on a journey through the Balkans. Finally, Dark Woods, Deep Water by Jelena Dunato is a dark fantasy blending folklore and gothic horror in a setting inspired by the Eastern Adriatic, and I can’t recommend it enough.

When it comes to short stories, I loved the collections Mars by Asja Bakić and Impossibly Blue by Zdravka Evtimova, as well as the individual short stories 'The Language of Knives' by Haralambi Markov and 'The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reporter' by Daniela Tomova.

AC: I will second the shout-out for Dark Woods, Deep Water by Jelena Dunato. A strong fantasy-horror debut that deserves way more love.

AC: Is the hair being connected to a witch's power also connected to Bulgarian folklore?

GD: Yes, definitely – like in many traditional societies, a woman’s hair was a way to communicate her status. A respectable unmarried woman would always wear her hair braided in public, and a woman who was married would not only braid hers, but also cover it. Female mythical creatures, on the other hand, like samodivas and yudas (forest spirits) or chumas (the personification of the plague) were often depicted with long, loose hair, indicating that they were wild and dangerous. There are a lot of rules surrounding women’s hair: in some parts of the country, cutting it with scissors is forbidden, and a flint has to be used instead. Hair that was cut was never disposed of lightly—it was collected, made into braids, and either burnt, hidden within the walls, or buried with the woman after her death. I’ve also heard of a belief that if a woman lets her hair grow too long, she’s tempting the evil spirits from the underworld to pull her down by it. Essentially, hair was seen as a symbol of the woman’s femininity, which, when uncontained (braided) can be dangerous to the social order.

AC: Growing up in the US, we so strongly associate the Berlin Wall with Germany and perhaps not how the Iron Curtain impacted the Balkans. When you sat down to write this book about Bulgarian folklore, was it a personal goal to connect it to Bulgaria's more recent past?

GD: I suppose, in a way. I grew up with my grandparents’ stories from the early years after the Berlin Wall was built, and for them, it was always a symbol of division, loss, and entrapment. It was essentially the physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain, and therefore, of the totalitarian regime. It was not only a physical barrier, but because of the strict censorship and the ban on anything too Western on the Eastern side of the Wall, it became an intellectual prison, too. I come from a family that had a lot of friction with the regime—one of my great grandfathers was sent to a working camp, another lost his job shortly after the communists came to power, for no other reason than the fact he was educated in Germany. My grandmother, whose mother and grandmother both went to university in France, and who spoke fluent French, was never allowed to travel close to the Bulgarian border—they were so scared she’d defect. It was her dream to see Paris, and she finally got to do it after the Wall fell. This was what I tried to do with the Wall in my book: recreate that feeling of being trapped, of having nowhere to go, no matter how bad things got. I thought it fit nicely with my folklore-inspired setting, because what is worse than having your city attacked by monsters every year than having your city attacked by monsters every year and having nowhere to escape.

AC: Kosara and Roksana's names almost mirror each other and contain almost all of the same letters. Was that an intentional way to signal that they are foils?

GD: The short answer is ��no’. The long answer is that the naming convention of Foul Days is a bit of an Easter Egg that would only register to Bulgarian readers. Most characters from Chernograd are given Bulgar names (the Bulgars were a tribe that settled on the territory of what is now Bulgaria in the 7th century, establishing the First Bulgarian Empire – prior to this, they were semi-nomadic, living in the steppes of Central Asia). During this period, Bulgaria was pagan, with the Bulgars known for being excellent horse riders and fearsome warriors—and, according to sources from neighbouring Byzantium, barbaric and bloodthirsty.

The characters from neighbouring Belograd have names associated with the Second Bulgarian Empire (established in the 12th century), which was Christian, deeply influenced by Byzantine culture, and in general, seen as prosperous and civilized.

Anyway, the issue with this is that while we know of plenty of male Bulgar names, since historical sources have recorded rulers and nobles, there are only a few female names preserved, mostly from a slightly later historical period: most contain an ‘r’ sound, many contain a ‘k’ sound, and they all end in a vowel. This is why the two names sound similar.

AC: Foul Days has zmey, kikimora, houses with feet, witches, and more. What was your favorite part of Balkan folklore to bring into the story/world?

GD: It has got to be the zmey! I'm a dragon girl at heart (like some people are horse girls, I suppose) and I think zmeys are so cool, especially with their dual nature of both friend/lover and foe. In Bulgarian folklore, zmeys are often presented as benevolent creatures, guarding villages against other, evil types of dragons, like halas and lamias. Despite their generally nice demeanour, they have the habit of taking on their human form of handsome, blond men with blue eyes, and using it to seduce women, marrying them, and taking them to their underworld kingdom. It is believed that when a zmey falls in love with a woman, she'll grow ill, pale, and sad, which is seen as a folkloric allegory for depression. The trick to avoiding marrying a zmey is checking your handsome blond lover's armpits, as it's believed that even in their human form, zmeys have tiny wings under them.

AC: Dragon Girls unite!

AC: There's all kinds of advice out there in regards to the writing process, but I've found that the best thing to do is experiment with a lot of authors' processes until you find a combination that works for you. What's your drafting process like?

GD: I agree with you completely, and I’m actually still in the process of experimentation to try to find a process that works best for me. My drafting process for Foul Days was fairly chaotic, especially since it started with drafting the book in Bulgarian before half-translating, half-rewriting it in English for the second draft! I don’t do that anymore, even if it’s an excellent way to see the text through “fresh eyes” – it’s way too time consuming. What I do nowadays is:

1) Come up with a pitch, in the style of a back cover blurb or a query letter, to make sure the fundamentals of the idea are there;

2) Note down a handful of scenes I’m excited to write – those are usually the midpoint, the ending, and a scattering of fun scenes in between. I use those as motivation to push myself to draft, since it’s not my favourite part of the process (that’s revision)

3) Start drafting!

4) Get to the end of the first act, pause, and revise until it makes for a good foundation on which to continue building the narrative;

5) Finish drafting!

6) Revise, revise revise;

7) Send the manuscript to a handful of trusted beta readers (usually 3-5)

8) Revise, revise, revise;

9) Send the manuscript over to my agent or editor;

10) Revise, revise, revise;

11) The end?

AC: Is it ever the end?

AC: Can we expect more dragon or shadow magic books in the future?

GD: Probably! I have a few ideas for books inspired by various other aspects of Bulgarian folklore, so I think I’m going to take a wee break from dragons and shadows, but given how much I love both concepts, I suspect they’ll continue to creep into my writing in the future.

AC: What's next on the horizon for you?

GD: So, Foul Days is completely done and out of my hair for the first time in six years, and I’m currently finishing up the revisions for the sequel, Monstrous Nights. Both are coming out within a few months of each other, Foul Days in June and Monstrous Nights in October, so I suspect I’ll be quite busy during that period. In the meantime, I’m working on a new story, which is likely going to be a standalone, set in a world inspired by the myths and legends of my hometown of Varna on the Black Sea coast – I don’t know if you find that where you’re from, but I always think coastal communities have their own separate culture, different from the in-landers, that comes with its own quirks, beliefs, and, of course, a tonne of sea monsters. So, I’m hoping that will become my next book—fingers crossed.

AC: Not sea monsters, for me, but aliens. And Big Foot. We love Big Foot in West Coast parts of the US.

AC: Some authors focus on food, others on clothes. What's your favorite way to worldbuild?

GD: You’re going to hate me for that answer – but it’s the vibes. Or, to use less wishy-washy terminology, it’s the atmosphere. I take a lot of inspiration from real-world places, and I like to stop and think about how they made me feel, and what I can do to translate this onto the page. As I’ve said above, for Foul Days, I really wanted to recreate the gritty, oppressive atmosphere of Cold War Eastern Europe, so I chose clothing, food, technology, celebrations, traditions—even weather—that in my mind, calls back to it. As an archaeologist, I’m very aware of how interconnected every element of a culture is with each other—how certain elements of clothing develop in tandem with access to certain foods, which is all related to trade, contact, technology level, and environment. So, when I worldbuild, I tend to start with a single high concept idea – like “fantasy Berlin Wall” – and attempt to find the elements that go together with that.

AC: Author as Brand gets thrown around a lot in some circles and not everyone likes it but it's impossible to stop the train at this point. What do you want your Brand to be?

GD: I’m in two minds about ‘author as a brand’, because I think it’s a phrase that gets used to mean two very different things. The first is, the brand of your writing, and I’m all for that – I’d like it if when readers see my name, they expect something based on Balkan folklore, with magic and witches, and probably monsters and murder, with flawed characters and lived-in settings. The second way I’ve seen ‘author as a brand’, used, however, is more like ‘author as an influencer’, and that is something I can’t get on board with, I’m afraid—it comes with an awful lot of expectations about you “curating” your online presence, and it also involves a lot of hard work and time, which is time that is ultimately spent not writing. So, I suppose what I’m saying is, I’d like my “brand” to come across through my writing, not through me as an individual.

AC: I couldn't agree more. Writers need time to actually write and edit and make the best books they possibly can. If they like social media, that's great, but if they don't, then it becomes a chore and perhaps a source of anxiety.

AC: Is Kosara a metal fan or does she listen to bubblegum pop?

GD: What a cool question! As someone who’s really into music (I am, in fact, a metal fan), I actually spend quite a bit of time coming up with what kind of music various characters would be into – so I can tell you with absolute certainty that Kosara would tell you she only listens to old-school punk, but if you go searching around her record collection, you’ll discover she’s more into pop rock.

AC: We talk a lot in writers spaces about how you have to read modern authors to be part of the conversation going on in our genres. What books is your book in conversation with?

GD: I love reading recent books - I truly believe we're currently in the golden age of fantasy, when so many different voices are finally getting the chance to add their contributions to the genre. Some of the books Foul Days is in conversation with are recent novels inspired by various Eastern European folklores, like Naomi Novik's Uprooted and Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale. These books showed me that Slavic folklore is something readers enjoy which, as silly as it sounds, I previously wasn't sure about. They inspired me to write my own take, shining light on the folklore of smaller, South Slavic Bulgaria, and I really enjoyed playing with similar tropes, but adding my own twists to them, inspired by my own culture. One of the things I noticed about that modern "Slavic fantasy" movement is that it often features a romantic subplot between a young woman and an older, supernatural being - so, I couldn't resist but to turn this trope on its head, making my book also include such a romance, except it occurred in the past, the supernatural being never redeemed himself, and the relationship ended badly. Another book inspired by Eastern Europe I recently read and loved was The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin, which similarly looks at the fallout at the end of an abusive relationship and the way some people become monsters.

AC: The Sins Upon Their Bones was wonderful. I think it's the first book I ever read exploring Ashkenazi Jewish folklore and I've recommended it to all my friends at this point.

AC: Thank you so much for your time, Gen!

Where to buy:

Mysterious Galaxy (and get a signed book plate while supplies last)

Waterstones

Amazon

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

Macmillan

Preorder Monstrous Nights:

Amazon

Kobo

Macmillan

#balkan fantasy #bulgarian fantasy #bulgarian author #immigrant fantasy #genoveva dimova #foul days #adult fantasy #author interview

15 notes · View notes