July 9. 2026 “Upon a Time … Ever After” accepted https://iexile.com/
“Upon a Time…” was inspired by the 1979 Manhattan kidnapping of Etan Patz
– his story never left me. It was the second act in a full-length play titled THE 14th FLOOR that was a 1996 contest winner in Canada and published there [out of print, of course]. Recently, I revised the 4 scene 2nd act, and that became “Upon a Time…Ever After.” Set on the day after Thanksgiving in 1995, DYLAN has just returned home after 24 years as a [kidnapped] boy prostitute. In his scientist father’s NYC apartment, DYLAN meets his younger sister, JILL, her husband JACOB, his grandmother PRISCILLA, and learning-disabled AUNT LUCY whose favorite fairytale is The Snow Queen, which threads through the play. JILL and JACOB have lived a mostly agoraphobic life that DYLAN upsets, but that’s just part of how, for all the characters, darkness moves toward light.
Well, since the last update in September, ’25, much water/blood under the bridge for US all. My eyes have just been lasered, and both novels published last fall are available at
https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=L.+Shapley+Bassen and look great there!
The publisher of HOW SHE CAME TO KNOW even posted a short musical video for that book; I sent her a note about how a character appears: This GREAT reel from the publisher – only caveat: Denim Prix isn’t blue-eyed: he’s got “curly blond hair and green eyes in an otherwise African face.”
Some reviews even appeared at Goodreads!
I’ve been sending out queries for FIRST FIFTH OF THE 21st
a 3rd collection of the best of my stories published in literary magazines in the first fifth of the 20th century. The stories in FIRST FIFTH sometimes veer into the surreal — as has that fraction of the new century. The 15 stories are blended together in a strong, summary cocktail of the first 20 years of the 21st century.
The immigrant-daughter, lapsing Muslim Marwa reappears in four of them, and one [“Denatural Selections”] was published by the creator of Ploughshares who said it was “Borgesian’ – must be zeitgeist because it wasn’t intentional! In other stories, an archeological artist on a dig at Akrotiri loses a tooth, a comedienne loses her wallet, but a hidden love letter to a major artist is found by her grandson. “What Can the Matter Be?” is the coda chapter to a third story published in The Kenyon Review special Poetics of Science issue. https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2016-fall/selections/l-shapley-bassen-342846/ We could all use at least two whiskey fingers of that FIRST FIFTH now. Probably the whole damn bottle!
Some short stories and poems have also been published in the past many months.
It looks like the story “Probabilities” listed in the September, ’25 update appeared in print in February/March ’26 https://www.amazon.com/Heartland-Review-Amy-Fox-Angerer/dp/B0GNYZ7GW6/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title . Several other stories are out now, but no news so far. I’ve been concentrating on the story collection and reminders about the two novels at Bookshop.org and elsewhere.
As for poetry, two poems appeared in May and June of ’26 so far.
June 27, 2026 “Apparition in Autumn” publication in Rhode Island Bards Poetry Review 2026. Book launch event for the anthology probably in July.
5/15/26 [4/13/26] “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle” – https://www.orenaugmountainpoetry.net/2026/05/heisenberg-uncertainty-principle.html in the Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal.
After the years of work on the novels, I don’t feel like I’m slowing down, but in terms of product, okay. I’ve kept a random journal titled ONGOING for decades., had 3 ‘volumes’ printed bound/printed out at Staples. I wasn’t sure I was even going to begin #4, but I had an empty journal book, and it’s turned out that it’s good to have available. I’m not entirely sure what I’ve been doing all this time … a lot of reading and welcome routine.
Still glad to read stories, etc., for https://www.craftliterary.com/. Great to see writing from people around the world and in US, different ages, voices, concerns. I do spend time at Facebook and BlueSky and keep in touch [email] far more widely than ever before. LinkedIn reminds me often of notices my posts receive, mostly for sharing pages from SCENE & SAID that good friend stankoart.com created in the past. Publishers always said color was too costly [though they loved the collection], but so many of the individual poem/paintings have been published. My favorite, usually is Fortunate Fall, seen below in 2021, so here’s another good one:
I rely upon scientific breakthroughs I read about [and try to understand] to balance deplorable current events. Music and art are balms in Gilead. Ditto friends & family. The definition of ‘creativity’ contracts and expands. I follow daily postings of Buffalo, NY’s museum, https://burchfieldpenney.org/ that include not only his paintings but also Charles Burkfield’s diary entries for their dates. We see the world the same way.
L. Shapley Bassen 