It’s that time of year again and I’m not talking about the holidays, though I’m excited for American Thanksgiving next week. (Four day weekend and homemade cranberry sauce!) Award season for the science fiction, fantasy, and horror community has begun, and it’s good practice to post a year end round up of your work and where to find it.
Also, since Twitter seems on the verge of collapse, I thought I’d mention that you can find me on Mastodon at @atgreenblatt@wandering.shop.
Also, I’m hoping to post on this blog weekly.
Okay, onto the stories. It’s been a bit of a rocky year for me in terms of writing, but three stories of mine were published and in some excellent venues.
Published March 2022 in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. 7,600 words (novelette)
“It should be noted here, at the beginning of the record, that the decision to invite such an esteemed and unknowable entity was not made lightly nor without a great deal of heated debate among the crew. [Addition: Upon reflection, Pilot Uma and Navigator Wilson conducted most of the debate and, ultimately, made the decision. The events that followed could have perhaps been avoided had they sought wider counsel.] However, it was agreed by all that the potential results were worth the risk. The crew was eager to
Published January 2022 in Slate Magazine. 7,000 words (short story)
“The open road is just potholes and misery, but Sabrina loves it anyway. Not that she has anything against the national train system, trains are great. But it’s the challenge, the potential to rebuild everything, that has her doing final checks on Gran’s old Jeep at the starting line of the Great American Road Race.
Not that Gran would’ve recognized her beloved car.”
Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo/Slate. Photos by Ruben Hanssen/Unsplash, Ravi Sharma/Unsplash, Brandon Green/Unsplash
Published June 2022 in the Bridge to Elsewhere Anthology. 4,000 words (short story)
“Tessa rubbed her face. Click, click went her teeth, but now, her only accompaniment was the ship’s deep hum. The junkyard man had warned her she was on borrowed time with The Castaway when she’d bought it, but there was something, something that Tessa couldn’t quite name, that whispered, Don’t give up on the ship. Not yet“
That’s it! What have you read this year that you’ve loved? Have you published something that you’re proud of? Please feel free to leave 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.
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.
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.
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:
I need you to keep me honest. In the next story I write I’m not allowed to use my favorite props, i.e. body-less voices, ghosts, and characters whose lives revolve around making things. Bonus points if no one gets eaten.
In the meantime, I’ve created a monster.
This was an email I sent to my friends in November 2015 when I asked them to read a very early and very rough draft of this story. It was only a shadow of what this story would become, but I knew even then that there was something in it worth telling.
This is a story that took me five years to get right, partly because it was outside my skill level to tell until recently and partly because it took me a while to figure out what the story was actually about. It is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever written and one of my most ambitious ones to date.
It’s that time of year again where writers and readers start looking back at what’s been published in the last 12 months. I think I say this every year, but I really mean it this time: 2019 was an INCREDIBLE year for me in terms of publishing. I had 6 short stories come out in professional markets and my first nonfiction essay, as well as a handful of reprints.
Here’s the list. Some stories have an audio version too. They can be found at the link.
The lakeside painter is lying, but no one seems to care.
It’s a beautiful lie, even Elodie will admit that. There are two lovers on the pier with the painter, sitting for their portrait, and she’s honest about the way the light of the setting sun catches their hair, the way the breeze ripples their clothes, how they lean into each other. She gets so many details right that even Elodie doesn’t notice what’s missing at first.
I lost my favorite fingers as I was walking to the library. Spotting it first from the corner of my eye, I glanced down. A gasp seized up in my throat. Instead of the long, beautiful, expertly manicured prosthetics that Sonya made me, there were ten empty nubs. And the grief I’d been carrying these last few months grew heavier
Team Work – Fireside Magazine (with an audio version available) – 1,000 words.
I was never an amazing Super. I only joined the team because I wanted to be with people like me. I never thought I’d, you know, try to save anyone.
This isn’t a happy story, but it’s one I felt I needed to write. It was fueled by loss and the looming grimness of our future. It was heavily influenced by some traveling I did where there was an international fence line and witnessing people on the other side standing of it, staring through the wires.
It’s not a happy story, but I’m happy with the way it turned out.
The dog in the story is based on a real one. He name was Tiger and he was the best. We lost him over a year ago and I still miss him dearly.
Picture of Tiger
Oh! I almost forgot. The song I listened to on repeat while writing and editing this story was Now and Not Yet by Hammock.
2019, so far, has been a good year for me in terms of writing. Like an extremely good year. Like, I haven’t been doing a proper job of talking about which stories have come out, which ones have audio links, what’s been reprinted, etc.
So, this is a post to recap what’s out and what’s coming out soon!
A new story is up and free to read online over at Uncanny Magazine! “Before the World Crumbles Away” is a bit different from most of my other stories. It’s near future focused and centered around a relationship of two people with different world views. There’s also an interview posted where I discuss the story in more detail and talk about its influences.
I listened to two different songs on repeat as I wrote this story. The first was “Gone” by My Bubba and the second was “Forgive Me” by Sky Gienger.
This is the third(!) story of mine that Uncanny Magazine has published. Uncanny and other magazines rely on readership support to continue publishing short fiction. If you like this story or any story they have published, please consider supporting them.
Lastly, a podcast of “And Yet” should be up later this week at Escape Pod. I’ll post an update here when it is!
I’m please to say that my short story “Team Work” is now up and free to read (or listen to) at Fireside Magazine!
My goal for this story was to get better at writing flash fiction – stories that are 1,000 words or less. You’d think that after spending so many years as an editor assistant for Every Day Fiction and Flash Fiction Online, I could put together a flash story, no problem. But unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Writing them still takes tons of practice.
Anyway, in this story I wanted to combine my love of weird, almost useless superhero powers with anxiety and acceptance. I listened to tunnels pt.2 by Joshua Burnside on repeat while I was writing and editing this story. For me, the song captured a sense of urgency and anxiety.
I also want to add that if you’ve enjoyed my stories or the magazines that published them, please consider getting a subscription or supporting them on Patreon. Most fiction magazines run on razor thin margins and need the support of readers to survive. Fireside Magazine makes both ebooks and print books for their subscribers. I get the print books quarterly and they’re beautiful!
That’s it for now. Next week my story “Before the World Crumbles Away” will be live at Uncanny Magazine and an audio version of “And Yet” will be podcasted in Escape Pod. I’ll post updates here when they’re available, so stay tuned!
Curiosity Sometimes Pays Off 