Friday Five: ‘All Our Tomorrows’ author Amy DeBellis

‘Don’t be afraid to write stuff that’s mediocre. If you don’t write the mediocre, you can’t build up to the good and the great.’

For Amy DeBellis, “writing is a way to express negative emotions: fear, grief, rage,” she says. “I also find that makes for more interesting stories.”

To call Amy’s stories interesting is like calling Stephen King’s novel Christine a book about an old clunker. Her short stories may glimmer on the surface, but beneath that veneer, the gruesome and bizarre are exposed, but not in an overt, obvious horror-genre way. She also sets many of her writings in a dystopian near future–one not so far off from our current world and circumstances, just enough to help us imagine what those current circumstances can lead to.

Amy’s astounding debut novel, All Our Tomorrows (CLASH Books, 2025), explores the lives of three Gen Z women navigating late-stage capitalism in a near-future New York City.

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Friday Five: Tommy Dean on five ways to open any story (but especially a novel)

Advice from an exceptional writer, editor, and literary agent, with real-life examples.

Today’s Friday Five is cones courtesy of Tommy Dean, a talented writer, editor, and literary agent who shares his writing wisdom regularly via his Substack, where today’s post originally appeared. It is reprinted here today with permission.

Portrait photo of Tommy Dean, writer, editor, literary agent
Tommy Dean

Tommy is editor of the popular flash fiction literary magazine Fractured Lit and Uncharted, a writing coach who offers editing services and writing workshops, and an associate literary agent with Rosecliff Literary. He is the author of Hollows, a collection of flash stories, and two flash fiction chapbooks, Special Like the People on TV and Covenants. Tommy has also appeared on this blog before as the subject of an April 2024 Friday Five interview.

What I love most about this post from Tommy is how he draws from actual examples–actual novels–to support his points. This approach makes me want to dive deeper into my reading to see what other novels follow similar paths.

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