Elena Pavlova lives in Montana, Bulgaria. Her short stories have appeared in various Bulgarian anthologies and magazines, winning awards from national competitions. In 2019, her middle-grade SF novel Камен и пиратите от 5г [Kamen and the Pirates from 5-B] won the Bulgarian national award Konstantin Konstantinov. She has had five other novels, two collections of shorter fiction and more than two dozens of game books published, and has translated into Bulgarian authors as diverse as Robert Howard, Robert R. McCammon, and Peter Watts. “Love in the Time of Con Crud” is her first publication in English. The original first appeared in the 2018 issue of the Bulgarian ФантАstika Almanac.