How It Came About that "The Burgas Affair" Was First Published in Bulgarian

The first blog article I published on The Huffington Post was entitled “10 Amazing Things You Don’t Know about Bulgaria.” The article went viral. It received more than 27,000 likes and was translated three times into Bulgarian (two of them without my permission). I gained a reputation as a Westerner who writes very positively about Bulgaria.

I love to read and I write many book reviews. I began specializing in writing reviews of books written by Bulgarian authors who have been translated into English. As a result, I established many connections with Bulgarian authors, publishers, and media.

My novel The Burgas Affair was published as Бургаската афера in May 2016 by Ciela, the leading publishing house in Bulgaria. It was strange, and exciting, to attend the book launch and a book signing for the novel in Sofia, when the book had yet to be published in English. The book was well received in Bulgaria, but it certainly didn’t become a bestseller.


Excerpt from an interview in the January-February issue of Doorway to Art.