Award Eligibility Post 2024 and Looking Forward

On By A. T. GreenblattIn General Ramblings2 Comments

I’m sitting in my Brooklyn apartment, watching the remaining snow drip off the buildings. It’s a good metaphor for an in-between state. For transitions. Going back over my year-end post from last year, I described 2023 as a rollercoaster. There was definitely some of ups and downs in 2024, but I think this year was more about waiting. Waiting to see if a major expansion of a short story to a novella would work as I rewrote it one chapter at a time. Waiting to see if my engineering company would right itself and stabilize after a year of extreme uncertainty. Waiting to see how the US election would shake out.

I don’t want to talk about the election. I’m cleaning up my novella as we speak and my company ended up collapsing in the beginning of November, leaving me unemployed for the first time in my career. Which is an uncomfortable feeling, but I have been writing more than ever, and that has been a wonderful gift.

Not too many of my stories came out this year, but that’s how publishing shakes out sometimes. (By comparison 2025 is shaping up to be a windfall.) But in terms of writing, it was a good year. I taught some online classes for Clarion West, was on some fun panels at conventions, and staffed at the Alpha’s Workshop for Young Writers over the summer. I wrote a guest editorial for Asimov’s and for the first time, a story of mine was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award!

Anyway, these are the stories that were published this year and I would love if you gave them a read!

The Stories

If it were not for the stowaway, the soul retrieval would have been as easy as dreaming. Mika would go to her grave swearing this. (“Stealing, not retrieval,” Burt countered. “Let’s call it what it is.”)

– Short story, 6,800 words

There’s no one else on this unassuming highway, level for miles, hiding nothing among the wide flat boulders and bent grassland. But you know emptiness is sometimes an illusion, especially on this lick of road. Your knuckles are white on the steering wheel as you wait. For God knows what.

-Short story, 4,100 words

Upcoming in 2025

I have a growing list of works and events coming out or occurring in 2025. There’s a few things where the contracts have been signed, but I can’t announce them yet. Here’s what I can share:

  • Essay: Accessibility Toolkit For When Things Go Wrong – Uncanny Magazine, January 2025
  • Novelette: View Window – Strange Horizons – Summer 2025
  • Online Class: How to Get Unstuck with A. T. Greenblatt – Clarion West Online – April 5th, 2025 (open to enrollment now!)

If you’re still here, at the end of this post, thank you! I hope you have a wonderful New Years and, as always, thank you for reading!

“Waystation City” Finalist for World Fantasy Award!

On By A. T. GreenblattIn General RamblingsLeave a comment

Sometimes you find delightful news in your inbox. Last Sunday, among the marketing emails and newsletters, there was a email titled “World Fantasy Award Nomination” and it began with “Congratulations.”

I’m delighted to share that “Waystation City“, first published in Uncanny Magazine, and then featured on LeVar Burton Reads, is a finalist in the short fiction category of the World Fantasy Awards! I truly couldn’t be more thrilled that this story is on this list.

Especially because there are some amazing writers and stories on the ballot this year.

The awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention in Niagara Falls, October 17th-20th. I’m planning on being there!

Readercon 2024 and Event at Pandemonium

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I’m so excited to be going to Readercon in person again this year! As I’ve said in the past, it’s one of my favorite conventions. But what makes this year noteworthy is that on Sunday, July 14th, I’ll be doing a special panel at Pandemonium Bookstore with John Wiswell, Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, and Max Gladstone! (How cool is that?)

Here’s my Readercon schedule:

The Pandemonium Book store event is totally separate from Readercon and is open to everyone. It’s at 6:30pm on Sunday, July 14th. We’ll be having a Readercon-like panel, which basically means we’ll be geeking out about books and story craft for an hour. More information for that can be found here.

As always, I hope to see you at one of these events. Or if you run into me in the hallway or at the bookstore, please don’t hesitate to say hi.

My short story recommendation this time is The Spindle of Necessity by B. Pladek over at Strange Horizons!

New Story “Between Home and a House on Fire”

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Technically, this came out yesterday, but yesterday I was busy. Fortunately, the story hasn’t changed since then.

Thrilled to share that “Between Home and a House on Fire” is now published on Reactor (formally Tor.com

This is a special one to me. It’s about the strange complexity of emotions you have as look back at your past self. It was originally based off a failed Choose Your Own Adventure style flash piece I tried a few years ago, but it became much more in the reshaping and combination of other ideas.

I’m very grateful to Jonathan Strahan and the Tor.com team for giving this one a good home.

My soundtrack for this story was “The Fall” by Gregory Alan Isakov

Asimov’s Guest Editorial and Locus Award Voting

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This is going to be a very quick post because I really want to finish revising a chapter of my novella this morning. So, two speedy, but exciting announcements!

  1. I wrote about what it’s like to be an engineer at a vertical farm for a guest editorial in Asimov’s Magazine May/June 2024 issue! You can read it here. This is the first time my engineering career and my writing career have crossed paths.
  2. “Waystation City” is on the Locus Awards Reading List and you can vote for it here until April 15th! This story was originally published in Uncanny Magazine and was picked up for podcast by LeVar Burton Reads last December. There’s so much great work on this list and I’m thrilled to have this story among them.

Okay, I’m heading back to my imaginary world. Have a wonderful Sunday!

Locus Magazine Needs Some Help

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I’ve written before about how speculative magazines are struggling to survive right now because of the double punch of the Amazon ending its Kindle Newstand Services, which reduced subscriptions, and Twitter’s collapse which reduced outreach.

Though while not a fiction magazine, Locus Magazine has been a vital part of the SFFH publishing industry and they are struggle to reaching their fund raising goals this year. Locus is a magazine focused on publishing news in the genre with monthly issues that have interviews, essays, reviews, and spotlights on new and established writers. Last November they published my essay “Writing Short Stories in the Margins” in their special short fiction issue. They are like no other magazine in the genre and their absence would leave a large and gaping hole not easily, if ever, filled.

They are currently in the last days of their Indiegogo Campaign and there’s a lot of cool things up for grabs like signed books, art, and author chats. So if you can, please consider helping Locus out. It would not only be helping the magazine, but many, many writers and editors in the industry.

New Story: “A Black Spot Among the Chaos” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies!

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I’m excited to share that a new story is now online and free to read. It’s called “A Black Spot Among the Chaos” and it’s part of Beneath Ceaseless Skies’ science fantasy issue.

For those who don’t know, BCS is a fantasy magazine that specializes in stories set in imagined worlds (what’s often called secondary world fantasy). But every two years, they put out a special double issue of stories that blend science fiction, fantasy, and that other worldliness. Back in 2022, they published my story “A Record of Our Meeting with the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries, Revised” which was a huge experiment in voice and complexity.

This time around, I took some of the core set pieces of “A Record of Our Meeting” – space ships, spirits/faeries, and jumbled, chaotic places and challenged myself to write a story where everything in that world went sour, including the characters. It was also my first time attempting an omniscient-like point of view, which was quite a learning curve for me. It took a couple of drafts to get this story right.

My writing soundtrack through the drafts was Eluvium’s Phantasia Telephonics, which always felt a little too hopeful for the story’s mood, but whatever, it worked. The process of creating a story on a blank page is still a mystery to me, even after all these years.

As always, if you like this story and want to support myself and other writers, please consider subscribing or sending a few dollars to Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

My short story recommendation also comes from this issue: “Doctor Souvenir” by Elly Bangs.

Hope you enjoy!

New Story “Mindfulness and the Machine” in Lightspeed Magazine

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One last post in 2023 to wrap up an exciting month of publishing news. I’m happy to share that a new short story is now up and free to read over at Lightspeed Magazine. It’s called “Mindfulness and the Machine” and it was one of the only things I was able to write in my first six months in NYC. I talk a little more about that in this essay and I also have an Author Spotlight interview to go along with the story.

My short fiction recommendation this time is a story from the same issue To The Waters and the Wild by Izzy Wasserstein.

I hope 2024 will be a safe, healthy year for you, and a little more joyful too. Happy New Year and as always, thank you for reading.

Story on LeVar Burton Reads and New Essay Up at Locus!

On By A. T. GreenblattIn Publishing Updates3 Comments

I’ve been sharing this news on social media this week, but am only now getting around to writing a blog post about it.

First, I’m thrilled to share that my story “Waystation City” is featured on the latest episode of LeVar Burton Reads! For those who aren’t familiar with this podcast, Mr. Burton handpicks and reads twelve different short stories every season. As someone who has been a longtime fan of the podcast and of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was absolutely floored when I found out this story was selected for Season 12 of the show.

“Waystation City” was originally published in Uncanny Magazine earlier this year.

Second, I’m also happy to share that the essay I wrote for Locus Magazine’s special short fiction issue is now free to read online. It’s called “Writing Short Stories in the Margins“. It’s about how short stories were the perfect art form for me when I started writing and how that opportunity is under threat for newer writers. Unfortunately, many SFF magazines can still use some help staying afloat and if you’d like to do so, here’s a good list to start from.

I’ve fallen off the wagon with adding these to the end of my posts lately, but my short fiction recommendation this time is The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K. Jones. (Warning it’s seriously dark, but timely and potent. CW:  Gun violence, child death, child endangerment.)

Thanks for reading!

Award Eligibility Post 2023!

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I finally decided just to post this sucker. I was originally waiting for a story and an essay to become available online, but I’ll just update this post when they do.

This year has been a bit of a rollercoaster, both in writing and in life, with some really cool moments, experiences, and opportunities, as well as some really low ones where I seriously questioned if all the work I was doing was worth it.

I think it is worth it. But I’ve also cut back on social media and have been trying to spend more time with friends and outdoors.

Which is all to say, I wrote some things this year that I probably haven’t talked about enough online. Some of which I’m very proud of, including a few essays, which I’ve been writing more of lately and have been enjoying.

So, if you’re still with me and are reading for the Nebulas, Hugos, or just want to check out more of what I published this year, here’s what I got:

The Stories

I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance.

– Short story, 4500 words

The slender ones are tapping on the dividing glass. It sounds like rain – if rain was sharp, insistent, and determined.

-Short story, 3700 words

You ran alongside the ever-moving Dragon, carrying nothing but an oversized tote bag with lunch’s leftovers and rarely used lip balms, grabbed onto one of its massive legs and called up “Need some help?”

-Short story, 1700 words

The Essays

Whatever the reason you find yourself here, I hope you check out something on this list. And as always, thank you for reading!