Table of Contents: "Analog Stories"

A guide to the stories, poems, essays, and random musings published on Analog Stories

For more about me and the publication: About Analog Stories.

If you’re unsure where to start, check out this post where I suggest something to read for each section of Analog Stories.

Below I list out my complete publication list, organized by the categories [Short Story], [Poem], [Reverie], [Essay]. There is the tag line and the first line under each post name to give a flavor of what to expect.

[Short Stories]:

• “GONE FISHING” (Feb 11, 2025)

  • An abandoned antique shop, a secret revealed, and swimming with the fishes.

  • “This abandoned building here used to be Wilson’s antique shop. He was a strange one. Kind, but strange.”

• “A lost young man with enormous wings” (Feb 26, 2025)

  • The power of loneliness made manifest.

  • “Let’s call him…K. K awoke that morning with a chasm of a headache and a desire to try something new…”

• “Stay with me” (Mar 10, 2025)

  • A short story inspired by the Tampa Writer's Alliance's Halloween short fiction contest. (Flash fiction)

  • “Frank was careful to close the door quietly when he entered. She usually napped around then. He tiptoed down the hall and into the kitchen. He passed a small table with a picture frame that showed his mother and him standing together, smiling, between two precisely cut rectangles that exposed the backing board of the frame.”

• “The Different Tastes of Creativity” (Apr 18, 2025)

  • Writers writing about writers, writing about writers... trapped in a closed loop.

  • “My head is noisy, cluttered, despite the calm breeze kissing my face, as I dodder down one of my ‘writer’s walks.’”

• “The Gift of a Green Mood” (May 8, 2025)

  • A flash fiction piece (600 words) with the theme of "Birthday" -- from the Tampa Writer's Alliance May workshop.

  • “It ended with him shoving me into the table, and though I had a concussive landing, I still remember all the presents and the cake crashing down with me.”

• “The Spanish Guitar” (July 23, 2025)

  • A husband and wife, after long hiding each’s secretive reminiscences, finally grieve together for the loss of their son. For my Tio Jorge.

  • “It was the fifth-year anniversary — not theirs, but for their son.

    Every year she would start the day gripping the rocking chair, still in the living room, with slow sways and loud cries.”

[Poems]:

• “October Trees” (Feb 13, 2025)

  • A poem about Hurricane Milton and how it hit me.

  • “I drag Dread with me on the old path,\ When the sun's spears pierce low between the leaves…”

• “In a Sentimental Mood (Mama with Me in the NICU)” (Mar 17, 2025)

  • This won a spot in the best poems of the week in Substack’s Top In Fiction Weekly #12

  • A sonnet for Mama

  • “With raspy coos for life, the baby squirms,\ Head heated by a fever in full bloom…”

• “Seizures” (May 21, 2025)

  • A Poem for Mars

  • “It always starts with vomit,\A waving, uncertain retch. \Our anticipation swells…”

[Interviews]:

• Edward Marlo Ruiz (July 11, 2025)

• E. J. Trask (July 18, 2025)

• Jeffrey Cummins (7/25/2025)

• J. L. G. Noga

[Reveries]:

• “Running on hopes and fumes to Albany Poughkeepsie Tampa”

  • Wandering through the incredulous hellscape that was my desperate attempts to get home from a family vacation in New York. A creative non-fiction piece.

[Essays]:

• “On (petty) adversity and the hard solace of choice” (Mar 25, 2025)

  • A personal essay on a petty but consequential choice I made in my high school AP Biology class.

  • “On a walk the other day, I was smacked in the face by a memory. It got me thinking about expectations in life—and our decision to follow or countervail them.”

• “Literary Theorists Need to Reckon with their Failures in the Age of AI” (July 9, 2025)

  • An essay about my frustrations with modern literary theory, and how I think LLMs have shown their arguments to be vapid and useless.

  • “I’ll come right out the gate with my fists swinging: I hate literary theory. What follows is unabashedly an invective, because I have not an ounce of tolerance left.”

• “Fiction on Substack” (July 16, 2025)

  • Compiled observations about reading and writing fiction on Substack, including some suggestions and “Hail Mary”s.

  • “Substack: does fiction have a place here, or is it merely tolerated? Is it like the awkward cousin who nonetheless, through familial obligations, is invited to stand in the corner at the party, permitted to converse only with the corner?”

[Beltrán de Quirós]:

My serialized translations from the Spanish of my grandfather’s two books of short stories from his life in Cuba. The posts are tagged by his pen name, Beltrán de Quirós.

• Book 1: These Ones, Some Others… and the Seibo!

  • Chapter 0: “Prologue” (and an introduction to the project; May 26, 2025)

  • Chapter 1: “The Haitian” (May 30, 2025)

  • Chapter 2: “The Night of Sorrow”

Let me know what you think,

-Ricky