Tag: Short stories

Notebook that has "Year End Review" written on it. Pen is leaning on the notebook and a full coffee mug besides it. On a dark wood background

2025 Year End Eligibility Post

On By A. T. GreenblattIn General Ramblings1 Comment

What a difficult year. We’ll leave it at that.

But I wrote a TON and I am incredibly proud of what was published this year and what is going to come out next year. (Some of which I can’t announce yet.)

Here’s what came out this year.

The Short Stories

In the Shells of Broken Things – Clarkesworld Magazine – June 2025

“Get your hands dirty. The motto of anyone who grew up in the Evergreen Dome, which included my grandparents, my parents, my great aunts and uncles, and all of their friends. When I was a teen, I threatened to have those words tattooed over the backs of my hands and never leave the house. A hollow threat—I’d always been restless.”

Cover of June 2025 Issue of Clarkesworld Magazine
– Short Story -7,000 words

Adventures on the Omega Train at Night – Sunday Morning Transport – April 2025

“Plenty of people navigate the night trains regularly—but you need to have the right constitution for it, a good head on your shoulders, and a firm internal compass to not get lost for days or weeks. Or sometimes, longer.“

– Short Story – 3,600 words

The Wanting – Night & Day Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow – September, 2025

“There was plenty of debris in the road, trash, broken glass everywhere, and other undefinable objects littered about, some of them stretched beyond recognition like old taffy. Shapeless lumps of people twitched under blankets on the sidewalks.“

– Short Story – 2,800 words

The Novelette

View Window – Strange Horizons – June 2025

“In the driftwood and flotsam of his once carefully assembled life, Oliver decided to move in the city. Which was to say, leave his apartment.“

Strange Horizons kickstarter banner. Face in a black background with white stripes over tops
– Novelette – 9,900 words

The Essay

Accessibility Toolkit for When Things Go Wrong – Uncanny Magazine – January 2025

“I’m writing this essay because in recent years, I’ve noticed a gap between accessibility plans and what happens when that plan doesn’t play out as expected.“

Cover of Uncanny Magazine Issue 62
– Essay – 1,600 words

If you’re still here, at the end of this post, thank you! I hope your end of 2025 is full of good things and good company.

May 2026 treat you well.

Wil Wheaton against a blue background with a book and the word "It's Storytime" across the bottom

“If We Make It Through This Alive” is on It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton

On By A. T. GreenblattIn General RamblingsLeave a comment

I think I mentioned that I had a few cool things coming out over the next couple of weeks, right? Yeah, I’m a fiction writer, but I wasn’t lying about this. I’m excited to share that Wil Wheaton has a new podcast where he narrates a short story once a week. It’s call It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton and it’s almost finished its first season. And in that line up is “If We Make It Through This Alive” which was originally published in Slate as part of the Future Tense series.

Now it’s in podcast form!

My nine year old self who loved loved loved The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine is completely beside herself right now. Adult A.T. is pretty thrilled as well.

If you are new to my work, welcome! If you would like to check out more, most of my stories can be found under the “Publications” page on this blog. (May I recommend Waystation City either in print form or over on LeVar Burton Reads?) If you like my work and would like to support me, please consider getting a subscription or supporting a Patreon to a short story magazine. Here’s a list.

Short fiction magazines are really struggling right now and could use any help they can get. They allow me and many other writers to keep telling stories that can find their way to readers like you.

Thanks 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!

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

On By A. T. GreenblattIn Publishing UpdatesLeave a comment

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.

Correction: Reading at Story Hour on 8/30!

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Update: Reading is on Wednesday, 8/30 NOT Thursday 8/31

I hope this blog post finds you well and that these summer months (in the northern hemisphere, at least) has been kind to. you.

It has been an incredible busy season for me. I’ve been working on several writing projects such as a story for this anthology and an essay that is going to be posted online at Fantasy Magazine later this week. I also attended Readercon in July and Fourth Street Fantasy in June. And this year, I was lucky enough to be asked to be a staffer at the Alpha Workshop for Young Writers.

So, yes, I’m both surprised it’s the end of August and also not.

But before the month closes out, I do have one more event. I’ll be doing a live reading this coming Wednesday, August 30th at 7 pm PST for Story Hour! I’ll be reading alongside Jean-Paul Garnier and we will each be sharing a short story. This event will be livestreamed for free over on Zoom and Facebook Live.

Hope you can make it!

New Story Out! “Waystation City” at Uncanny Magazine!

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I’m a few days late in posting this, but it’s still completely true. I have a new story published and free to read at Uncanny Magazine this week!

It’s called “Waystation City” and it’s part of Uncanny’s special 50th issue, chocked full of amazing writers. I’m really honored to have my work among such talented company. This story took inspiration Luxembourg. I never got the chance to travel there before I wrote this story because it was during the height of the pandemic. So, I read travel blogs and quizzed a few friends that had been there instead and used that as a loose basis to create a story that grew stranger in the telling.

I wanted to experiment with using a different type of narrator and a different type of voice in this story, rather than what I was comfortable with, but I completely failed. Which is okay. I tried again with the next story.

As for the music, I listened to “Achilles’ Come Down” by Gang of Youths as my soundtrack as I wrote this.

Hope you enjoy the story! If you can, please consider supporting the magazine. They allow writers like me to keep putting out new stories into the world.

New Story: “The Family in the Adit” in Nightmare Magazine!

On By A. T. GreenblattIn Publishing Updates1 Comment

I’m happy to announce my first horror story is now live in Nightmare Magazine! It’s called “The Family in the Adit“. I’ve never written horror successfully before and this was an experiment in stretching my abilities as a writer. I’m quite pleased with the result. I’m not going to go into too much detail about the history or the process of creating this story, because I do that here.

The song I used as a soundtrack for this story was “Tell Mama” by The Civil Wars.

Hope you enjoy the story!

“RE: Bubble 476” Published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

On By A. T. GreenblattIn Publishing Updates4 Comments

I’m excited to announce that my story “RE: Bubble 476” is now available to read in the March/April issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Unlike nearly all my fiction publications, I can’t provide a link to the story because it’s in print. Like arrived-in-my-mailbox in print. Like it’s a physical thing I can hold and I have the pictures to prove it!

Which means, if you’d like to read it, you’ll need a copy for yourself.

This is the first time I’ve had a story published in one of the Big Three (Analog, Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction), so that’s a good feeling. I’m not going to talk here about my process or the story behind the story because I did an author interview post on Asimov’s blog. (ETA: Interview is now live!)

The song I used as a soundtrack for this story was There is a House by The Holy.

As always, I wouldn’t be able to publish my stories in this fashion without magazines like Asimov’s. So, if you can, please consider buying this issue or a subscription. It helps us all continue to tell stories.

Magic: The Gathering Short Stories

On By A. T. GreenblattIn General Ramblings1 Comment

Hello all! I mentioned on my last post that I was working on a certain project this summer and I’m happy to announce that my first tie-in fiction is now up and free to read on the Magic: The Gathering website!

For those of you who may not be familiar with Magic: The Gathering, it’s a card game that’s set on various fantasy worlds. With each new deck release, there’s a story that goes along with the cards and the characters featured in the deck. The stories I’ve been working on are for the Zendikar Rising deck release. It even has a cool trailer.

I wrote a total of five stories for this project and they will be released every Wednesday in the month of September.

It’s been a fun project and a nice break from hitting my head against all the unfinished stories on my hard drive. This is my first time writing stories in a preexisting fictional universe. Like, seriously – I’ve never even written fan fiction before, though now I understand why my friends enjoy writing it so much.

Don’t worry, SFF fans and editors, my plan is to return to my own short stories in the next few weeks.

But in the meantime, I hope you are having a safe and lovely Labor Day (or just a safe and lovely Monday)!