Welcome back to Worlds Without Warning. This week, Jon Negroni reads aloud his new contemporary romance, "Texts after 3." Told entirely through late-night text messages over the course of a year, this story follows Nina, a coffee shop manager who can't sleep, and Adam, a middle school English teacher who can't either. What starts as a post–New Year's check-in between strangers slowly becomes the most honest conversation either of them has ever had, but complicated by the fact that Nina is dating Adam's best friend.

You can find the written version right here.

About the Author

Jon Negroni is a Puerto Rican author and illustrator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His published books include The Pixar Theory (Slimbooks, 2015) and his debut fantasy novel Killerjoy (5050 Press, 2017). He's published short fiction for IHRAM Press, The Fairy Tale Magazine, The Vanity Papers, Discretionary Love, and many more. He’s the chief editor of Cetera Magazine, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in several anthologies, including Neon Hemlock, Oddity Prodigies, Sinister Smile Press, Inked in Gray, and Speculation Publications. He was a finalist for the 2025 BCLF Elizabeth Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize, received an honorable mention for the Rhonda Gail Williford Award for Poetry, and is a Best American Short Stories 2025–nominated writer.

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About Cetera Magazine

We publish original short fiction every Thursday. Our stories span literary fiction, speculative tales, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and weird fiction. All written without AI assistance and curated by editor Natalia Emmons.

Credits

• Author/Narrator: Jon Negroni
• Editor: Natalia Emmons
• Artwork: Jon Negroni
• Music: "Magic Escape Room" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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