Just a General Update

On November 13, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn General RamblingsLeave a comment

Because it’s been a while.

The last five months been some of the most stressful months of my life and I’m finally getting a chance catch up on the things I’ve missed. I’m writing more again and trying to reengage with the SFF community. I’m slowly responding to overdo emails and tackling some of the less urgent things on my to-do list. I’m noticing the less urgent things too, like how I moved my Tupperware containers into my new apartment, but not all of the lids.

I had a great time in World Fantasy Convention last weekend – it was a last minute decision to go and I’m glad I did. For me, it’s always a revitalizing to go to cons. So much of writing is done alone and for me, going to a con is always a reminder that there’s a whole community of people creating and writing, geeking out about stories and stressing out about the industry too.

I’m currently working on some solicited stories and have been trying my hand at writing more personal essays. Some things I can’t talk about publicly yet, but I can share that my story “Waystation City” will be published in Uncanny Magazine early 2023! If all goes to plan, I should have a few more things coming out in early 2023. Until then, I’ll remain cryptic

One bit of exciting news is that I will be doing a reading at the KGB Fantastic Reading Series on January 11th with Chris Cevasco! I’ve been a fan of this reading series for a while and am super excited to get to be a part of it!

I’m going to try to update this blog more often now that Twitter seems to be imploding. I’m aiming for once a week, but maybe that means only posting a recipe I tried or what I’ve been reading.

It’ll be an experiment.

Where I’ll be at Chicon 8 (Virtually)

On August 29, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn Convention SightingsLeave a comment

Sadly, I won’t be able to make it in person to Worldcon this year. I have an important family event the next weekend and decided to try to avoid big social gatherings beforehand. I’m sad that I won’t be able to see friends and meet new people in person, but I am hoping to make it to World Fantasy Con in November.

However, I will be doing some online programming, including a virtual table talk, and would love to see people virtually. Here’s my schedule:

Virtual Table Talk – Friday, September 2 at 4:00pm CDT

Where: Airmeet Table Talk

Who: A. T. Greenblatt

Blending, Blurring, Evaporating Genres – Saturday, September 3 at 10:00am CDT

Where: Airmeet 4

Who: A. T. Greenblatt , Cassandra Rose Clarke (moderator), Julia Meitov Hersey , L. Marie Wood , Sherwood Smith

Description: Dragons in space? Magic robots? Speculative fiction has always refused to be confined between strict boundaries, and genre mashups and crossovers are now a common feature. How have our expectations for each genre changed over the years? How will they continue to change when “shelf space on a bookstore” is no longer a main concern?

One Hero to Save Them All – Saturday, September 3 at 2:30pm CDT

Where: Airmeet 3

Who: A. T. Greenblatt , Auston Habershaw , C.L. Clark Colin Alexander , John Appel (moderator), PJ Manney

Description: Many stories set in dystopias or featuring a revolution focus the narrative on a single, solitary hero. But is this realistic? Is it fair, either to the hero who must do all the work or to the secondary characters? Is it fair to readers, looking to effect changes in their own societies, to read about competent characters who can do it all? Come join the panelists as they explore and question examples of solitary heroes.

Hope to see you virtually this weekend!

4th Street Fantasy 2022

On June 16, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn Convention SightingsLeave a comment

I totally forgot to write this post and the conference is starting tomorrow. And, if all the flying goes smoothly, I will be in Minneapolis tonight. Also, I’m going to be on some panels. Additionally, I’m very excited to see people again in person and might not have finished my cup of coffee this morning yet, hence stream of consciousness-like wording of this post.

Anyway, here’s my schedule for 4th Street Fantasy:

Designing Worlds for Everyone – 4:00 PM Friday

Stella Evans (M), Avani Gadani, A.T. Greenblatt, Benjamin C. Kinney, Michael Merriam.

From airport scanners with only two body type defaults to facial recognition systems that can’t recognize BIPOC, unconscious—or conscious—design decisions from our world that treat people unequally seep into our fantasy worlds. Authors create fantastic worlds full of stairs wheelchair users can’t access or magic systems designed to erase disabilities. But there also exist magic writing systems that dyslexic users excel at and blind earthbenders who don’t have to overcome their disabilities in order to thrive. What are broad principles or specific ways of approaching world-building to include as many people in the fantasy as possible?

Ambiguous Narrative Stances – 11:30 AM Sunday

A.T. Greenblatt, Marissa Lingen, Jenn Lyons, Aja McCullough (M), Abra Staffin-Wiebe.

What kind of ambiguity serves a story, in endings and in narrative support? Raising complicated questions with no easy answers is all well and good; avoiding dealing with what they mean entirely is an abnegation of responsibility. We can’t control reader interpretations, and there can be power in letting readers fill in for themselves what goes, but when is failing to take an explicit stance a disservice to the reader, and how explicit is it important to be? Where is the line between an ambiguous ending that fails the reader by failing to take a stance, or that serves the reader in forcing them to think through implications to their logical conclusion and intentionally decide on their own reading?

As I said, very excited for this and if you’re there, please feel free to come say hello.

Comings and Goings – Late May & Early June 2022

On May 15, 2022May 15, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn Convention SightingsLeave a comment

I can’t remember when I posted here last and honestly, I’m a little too lazy right now to check, but I think it’s been a while. I’m slowly getting used to living in a new city. Or at least getting a little less lost, which is nice. I’m really enjoying the springtime greenery and looking forward to summer.

Speaking of upcoming things, I will be at the virtual Nebula Convention next weekend (May 19th-May 22nd). I also have a virtual reading at NYRSF on June 7th. Here’s the information for both:

At the Nebulas, I’ll be on two panels:

The Future of Disability Representation – May 20th at 3pm PST – with Effie Seiberg, Andi C. Buchanan, Nicola Griffith, A. T. Greenblatt, and Nalini Haynes

Description: Writers with disabilities prop up excellent examples of representation, discuss how to overcome harmful tropes and stereotypes, and explore, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the future of portraying disability in SFF.

The Second Person and You – May 22nd at 10:30am – P H Lee, Suzan Palumbo, Lauren Ring, Eden Royce, and A. T. Greenblatt

Description: The second person is often regarded as difficult, complex, or experimental. But it doesn’t need to be! Explore how your work could benefit from this technique with authors who have intentionally and successfully written from this perspective.

My second event is an author reading at the NYRSF series. It will be streamed on the internet free for all on June 7th at 7pm!

Hope to see you virtually!

Where I’ll Be (Virtually) April 9th and 10th!

On April 3, 2022April 3, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn Convention Sightings, General RamblingsLeave a comment

Hope this post finds you all healthy and safe. I’m going to keep this quick today because I’m not feeling well and am quite tired, but I wanted to let you know that I have some exciting things going on next weekend. And it will all be online!

First up, I’ll be on a panel at Luxcon 2022. Troubling Tropes: Depicting Disability – Saturday at 9:00am ET
Next, I have a reading at Flights of Foundry. Reading – 10:00am-11:00am EST in The Eyre. (Note: An hour is a long time to read, so I probably read for 20-30 minutes and host a kaffeeklatsch-like Q&A the rest of the time.)
Lastly, I’ll be teaching a class for Clarion West Online called “Persisting as a Short Story Writer” from 4:00pm-5:00pm. Here’s the details. There’s still a few spots available!

Hope to see you (virtually) next weekend!

New Story “A Record of Our Meeting with the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries, Revised” at Beneath Ceaseless Skies!

On March 7, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn Publishing UpdatesLeave a comment

I’m a little late to posting about this new story because my life has been a bit insane. A little over a month ago I accepted a new engineering position and now, a handful of weeks later, I’m sitting in an apartment in Brooklyn with my laptop and other essentials, but with most of my belongings in storage.

I’m still reeling from all the changes, but I’m also excited.

But right before I decided to upend my life, I wrote this story. I created it very quickly – when I was extremely tired and my exercise schedule was messed up (hence my writing productivity was also messed up.) I wanted to tell a time-looping story, but I all my initial ideas feel too much like Groundhog Day. The idea of revisions and how a story can change over time has always fascinated me. How you can redirect a story by adding little details here or reframing a moment there. So I decided to try that on an extreme scale with this story.

“A Record of Our Meeting with the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Possibilities, Revised” is one of the most difficult stories I have ever written.

At some point, I wasn’t even sure it made sense to anyone but myself – that’s how zoomed in I was to each sentence and every worldbuilding detail. I couldn’t see the larger picture anymore. So I’m eternally grateful to Beneath Ceaseless Skies editor Scott Andrews and my beta readers for their help on this one.

I figured a time-looping story needed a looping song as its soundtrack, so I was listening to Zoë Keating “Possible” on repeat as I wrote and rewrote this story.

Hope you enjoy this science-fantasy story!

New Story: “If We Make It Through This Alive” Up at Future Tense Fiction

On January 29, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn Publishing UpdatesLeave a comment

New story days are the best days. And I’m thrilled to say that my story “If We Make It Through This Alive” is now free to read over at Slate.com’s Future Tense!

I’m so excited to share this story with the world! It’s about a road race across America in a climate-wrecked future where the highway system has been abandoned and trains are the main mode of transportation. I’ve been working on this piece for several months now and it was definitely a challenge to keep it in the short-story word range. There’s a wonderful companion essay to the story “How Heeding Disabled People Can Help Everyone Survive a Crisis” by Damien P. Williams.

This story has several point-of-view characters, each with her own history and goals. One of the biggest challenges was to make sure each character had a chance to tell her piece of the story and to make sure she came alive against the backdrop of where she came from. So, it made sense for Sabrina, Jody, and Fern to have their own theme songs while I was writing this story.

For Sabrina, the song was “Artificial Nocturne” by Metric. For Jody, it was “I Need My Girl” by The National. And for Fern, it was “No Lights, No Lights” by Florence + The Machine.

As always, I hope you enjoy the story and the essay!

It’s 2022 and Things are Happening

On January 19, 2022 By A. T. GreenblattIn General Ramblings, Publishing Updates1 Comment

Is it too late to still be wishing everyone Happy New Year? I think January 19th is riding that edge, but since this my first post of the 2022, I feel like I can get away with it. So anyway, Happy New Year! May 2022 be full of happiness, success, and relaxation for you. Because what’s the point in welcoming a new year if not to hope for something a little better than the year before?

Anyway, the end of 2021 was crazy busy for me – full of projects I couldn’t talk about yet. I still can’t talk about a few of them, but I share a few things.

First off, I have a story coming out later this month in Future Tense Fiction! The theme was the future of transportation, so I reimagined the Great American Road Trip. It was a fun project to work on.

If all goes to plan, I’ll have another story out in February in one of my favorite magazines, but the details are still being worked out for that.

In addition, I have two stories coming out in two different anthology projects. The first of which is Bridge to Elsewhere by Outland Entertainment which is to be released in June. This anthology is all about spaceships and their crews. The second one is Luxcon Anthology with speculative stories based or inspired by Luxembourg. The anthology should be coming out in spring or summer 2022.

Lastly, I’m going to be teaching another class for Clarion West Online this spring. It’s called “Persisting as a Short Story Writer” and it’ll be held on April 10th, at 1pm PST. Spots are still available if you’re interested.

I’m not sure what my conference schedule looks like for this year yet. Honestly, any and all travel plans I had for 2022 are being reevaluated in the face of this never ending pandemic.

More news to come soon!

Worldcon 2021 Schedule

On December 15, 2021 By A. T. GreenblattIn Convention SightingsLeave a comment

I’ve been under deadlines for the last few weeks and I’m only just getting to this post now. I’m literally sitting in the hotel lobby as I write this. Which is to say I’ll be at Discon III (aka WorldCon 2021) this weekend! In person! I’m excited to see people in real life again.

Here’s my schedule:

Thursday, Dec 16th, 11:30 AM – Kaffeeklatsch with A. T. Greenblatt – Suite 325 Side Room
Thursday, Dec 16th, 1:00 PM – Signing – A.T. Greenblatt – Autograph 3

Friday, Dec 17th, 7:00 PM – Panel – Writing Short Fiction – Blue Room

Saturday, Dec 18th, 10:00 AM – Panel – Story Structures Besides the Hero’s Journey – Older
Saturday, Dec 18th, 4:00 PM – Panel – Why Do We Love Novellas and Novelettes? – Cabinet Room
Saturday, Dec 18th, 8:00 PM – Hugo Award Ceremonies!

The Hugo will be streamed on Saturday night and I’ll update this post with the link when I have it.

In the meantime, please feel free to come say hello to me if you are at the convention. Apologies in advance – I’m terrible with faces in the best of times, so if I don’t recognize you, it’s not personal.

Year End Eligibility Post 2021

On November 7, 2021November 7, 2021 By A. T. GreenblattIn General RamblingsLeave a comment

I’m not sure what happened to 2021. Where 2020 seemed to drag on and on, 2021 flew by. I suspect the pandemic has truly warped my sense of time. It’s a little frightening.

In terms of writing though, 2021 was another amazing year. I had one novelette, four short stories, and one essay published. One of my stories from last year was a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards. My work has been translated into a half dozen different languages, including Klingon. I got an agent and I taught my first writing related class.

I’m still stunned to be honest.

Anyway, if you’re catching up on reading from 2021, here’s my work that came out this year:

1. Qu estions Asked in the Belly of the World