literary magazines – Page 13

My ‘new’ short story’s long road to publication

A story 45 years in the making has finally found a home.

Today, a short story I first drafted in the 1990s–and that began as a stubborn idea some 45 years ago–has broken free of its chrysalis and flung itself into the world.

“Shah Mat” makes its long-awaited (for me, anyway) debut in the latest issue of a new literary magazine, The Orange Rose.

“Shah Mat” is one of several writings I drafted in the mid-1990s, in a flurry of creative activity over several months, then set aside as I started to focus more on my career and other writing endeavors. Most of those drafts remain in that form and may never see publication, for good reason.

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.