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David Meischen in the News

The Wapshott Press is very please to share with you that last week, Storylandia 34, “The Distance Between Here and Elsewhere: Three Stories,” author, David Meischen learned that his Anyone’s Son: Poems has won the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry—from the Texas Institute of Letters.

AND: “Crossing at the Light,” the first of the three stories published last summer in Storylandia 34, has won the Kay Catarulla Award for Best Short Story—also from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Storylandia 37, The Key, is now on sale, and this site is moving to WapshottPress.org

Please check the sidebar for new Storylandia titles at the WapshottPress.org. Thanks.

Storylandia 37, The Key, is now on sale, and this site is moving to WapshottPress.org

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle.

In downtown LA, many worlds collide without interacting. There are the stock brokers and bankers cloistered within their shiny high-rises. There is the almost invisible working class that keeps them clean and fed. There are the totally lost: the homeless, the mad, the addicted. And there are those self-chosen to try and keep it all together: the teachers, the priests, the parole officers, and social workers, but who often see merely the forest, and not the trees. Only a 5-year old girl walks unafraid among all of them. And a broken ex-con and a hardworking doughnut-maker find their lives changed by this orphan who loves them both.

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle.

Available on Amazon:
ISBN: 978-1-942007-36-4
Ronni Kern
The Key
Storylandia 37

Storylandia 36 now on sale

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle; ePub available upon request.

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle; ePub available upon request.

“The Ear is the way to the Soul,” by Bob Ritchie. A challenge, being a teen. Just when you think you have a handle on life, you discover this awful (for a teen boy) thing called “virginity.”

“The School’s on Fire!” by Gordon J. Stirling. A boy makes a mistake and runs away when he learns something about himself his folks never told him.

“Alchemy,” by John O’Kane. Fleeting relationships in a beach community where everyday situations can lead to euphoric experiences.

“Red Wings,” by Evan Howell. At school Lionel is getting bullied and at home he can barely tolerate Randy, his mother’s annoying boyfriend.

“The DiDramifi,” by Jhon Sánchez. In this USA, everyone owns the DeDramafi, which is a device that might seem harmless, perhaps even beneficial, but fosters its own type of tyranny.

ISBN: 978-1-942007-35-7
Evan Howell
John O’Kane
Bob Ritchie
Jhon Sánchez
Gordon J. Stirling
Storylandia 36

“Odd Goings-on at Ferndell Farm and other Stories” now on sale

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle; ePub and other formats available upon request.

Odd Goings-on at Ferndell Farm and Other Stories

by Kathryn L. Ramage


Sample pages

Finding the late Mrs. Taggart’s missing jewels had made Freddie Babington famous. People with problems began to come to him, hoping to engage his services as a private detective. Freddie expected his new career to involve thrilling cases such as restoring diamond necklaces to Duchesses and secret plans to government ministers, perhaps rescuing a kidnapped heiress or two. Most of his cases were more mundane–but every once in a while, a client with a truly strange and interesting problem came to his door.

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle; ePub and other formats available upon request.

Excerpt:

The Family Jewels

1

It was a beautiful, crisp, and colorful autumn afternoon. Frederick Babington, who was visiting his aunt in the Suffolk village of Abbotshill, decided to take a walk. Though the injuries he’d received during the Great War had taken a long time to heal, he was beginning to feel truly well again. His leg no longer pained him and he’d discarded his cane.
Billy Watkins, Freddie’s manservant who had saved his life during the war and looked after him diligently since, insisted that he take a coat in case the evening grew chilly and not tire himself by going too far. Freddie promised to be back in time for dinner and grabbed his tweed coat down from the rack by the front door on his way out.
He had a delightful time wandering the country lanes around Abbotshill, climbing the green hills and kicking up piles of golden and russet leaves that had fallen under the trees. At dusk, he headed back toward his aunt’s house by way of the Rose and Crown pub; a pint of the local beer seemed just the thing to complete his outing.
The taproom was crowded, but the girl at the bar smiled when she saw him. “We’ve been hearing some talk about you tonight, Mr. Freddie,” she told him as she filled a mug from the tap. Freddie didn’t understand this remark, until she lifted her chin to indicate a table in the corner behind him. “Bill’s been here near an hour, telling everybody what a fine detective you are. Our constable was interested in particular.”
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The wonder/nightmare of social media

Here! All you can do is here!

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/storylandia

Freaking Twitter (I’m NOT the problem, Twitter)

Tumblr! Yay!
https://storylandiajournal.tumblr.com/

LinkedIn (yes, why not)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/storylandia-fiction-journal-33387a1ba/

Gah!

So this should be working. We shall see.

Storylandia 34 now on sale

Where to buy: Where to buy: Amazon ; Kindle ; Other formats available upon request to contactATwapshottpressDOTorg.

Storylandia 34
Sample pages

Where to buy: Where to buy: Amazon ; Kindle ; Other formats available upon request to contactATwapshottpressDOTorg.

The Distance Between Here
and Elsewhere: Three Stories

by David Meischen

Crossing at the Light

Albert Decker and Grady Smith, July 14–15, 1965

Albert woke at 6:30, aware in the instant that it was Claude’s birthday. He made up the Murphy bed he’d slept in since 1934 and folded it back into the wall, bands of summer sun along the seams of the closed window blinds suspending the room in a glow that brightened perceptibly as he stood watching. He shared the little apartment—and the package store below—with his mother, his days dispensed behind the counter, selling liquor to the locals, inhaling the dust they trailed behind them as they browsed these narrow aisles, five thousand miles from the one place he could imagine inhabiting. Still, each morning until Mrs. Decker woke—each morning was his.

After a quick breakfast of toast and jam, Albert fetched his cosmetics case from the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink and flipped the switch for the makeup lights he’d had installed around the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw. He’d always enjoyed being slim, but the skin at his throat had begun to let go, a sag at his Adam’s apple the brightness exaggerated. Before attending to his face, he unfastened the top shirt button and laid his collar open to the burn scar—like the negative of a shadow across the left collarbone—a private reminder of his mother’s skillet, the frying grease splashed from it so many years ago that without the scar he might not credit memory.
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Wapshott Press book club: Storylandia 33

2nd Wapshott Press Book Club! Click here for details. Thanks.

Storylandia 33 now on sale!

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle.

Storylandia, Issue 33, Spring 2020


Sample pages

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle.

“Brexit Swan” bittersweet tale about two sisters coming to terms with their opposing personalities. A darkly comic story set in London, UK during the pre-Brexit years. The title symbolises the conflict within the narrator as she establishes her identity outside the restrictive bonds of blood sisterhood.

“Curse of the Lighthouse” “It’s all common sense, and caution,” he was told. Finally, an assignment at a lighthouse on an island sanctuary where peace and quiet would allow him to piece his life back together. If only he had taken the signs seriously. If only he hadn’t gone deaf to the obvious. If only….

“Of Cows and Corn” Best friends Jason and Bill drive from Pittsburgh to Stanford to deliver Bill to graduate school. It’s the end of their friendship, and Jason counts down the days until they part, and he goes home. Driving west, Jason ponders the coming loss to understand it and reconcile himself to it.

“Girl in the TV” In this story about a man’s perception of time and the memories that comprise his life, he learns that a girl he once knew has been strangely erased from existence. He discovers that the same fate might soon befall him.

“Two Wrongs and a Right” Forbidden love. An abusive past. Promises and murder among friends. Christopher made a vow to the woman he can’t forget and to the woman who stole her heart. Their past returns to test the strength of friendship in a world that forces choices that should never have to be made.

Where to buy: Amazon; Kindle.

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Drunk on Time! Storylandia 32!

Where to buy: Amazon and Kindle. The Wapshott Press is an Amazon Smile charity. Please remember us when you’re shopping there. Thank you.


sample pages

Drunk on Time

Past, present, and future on view in a wondrous machine. Everything everywhere in every universe. Better than YouTube, but can this device bring happiness to a young slacker looking for love and life’s meaning?

J. H. Malone has had three careers: High energy particle research in Boston and Los Alamos, social work in San Francisco, and tech writing for startups in Silicon Valley. Over the past years Malone has placed science fiction, crime, romance, and other stories, as well as movie reviews, in two dozen Internet and print publications.

Where to buy: Amazon and Kindle. The Wapshott Press is an Amazon Smile charity. Please remember us when you’re shopping there. Thank you.

2020 Storylandia 2020

2019 was awesome! On to 2020! Please click here for a page with more links and images. Thanks!

And this year the Wapshott Press has an Angel! Our Angel will match each donation up to a total of $1,000. So your donation to the Wapshott Press will go twice as far in 2020!


www.Donate.WapshottPress.org

where paypal charges no fees to either of us, and until December 31, 2019, will add 1% to each donation

2019 was a great year at the Wapshott Press! Here’s what we did that we said we were going to do, thanks to you:
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