Springdale Ebook

cover for ebook of in springdale townThe nice people at InfinityPlus have re-issued my novella In Springdale Town as an ebook. It’s available at Amazon in the US, Amazon UK, and in a multitude of formats at Smashwords.

This edition includes a new afterword, with newly-revealed secrets about the making of the story.

Here’s what people said about the PS print edition, which came out in 2003:

Springdale is told in a deceptively muted style and cunningly crafted so that the story appears to assemble itself around the reader like a trap he or she has sprung, yet remains innocent-looking until the end, when a spring-loaded hammer smashes down.—Lucius Shepard, from the introduction to the original print edition

…In a list comprising some of the biggest names in contemporary genre fiction the appearance of a novella by a virtually unknown author causes a certain interest. In Springdale Town represents its author’s first book publication (after only a handful of short stories) and yet it fits into the PS Publishing list with such subtle skill that its presence on the shelf feels as if an invisible gap in the collection has been suddenly filled.—Lavie Tidhar, Dusksite

…Other writers, wiry and wry, as lithe as dragonflies, may seem more vulnerable, but their grace, their maneuverability, becomes its own kind of tensile strength. They can travel farther, faster, and in disguise.—Jeff VanderMeer, Locus Online

…no need for Lovecraftian monsters or rampaging serial killers to transform Springdale into a seriously creepy place. An old ballad suggests that one death haunts this village, but Wexler deviously, almost casually, creates a sense of wrongness that goes well beyond some past saga of jealousy and murder. Don’t read this one right before bedtime–or your next road trip.”—Faren Miller, Locus Magazine

Advertisement

New Springdale Novel


There are days to be endured, days to be celebrated, and the rest, the mundane many that shove us onward through time and space. Every morning I wake up and wonder which kind today will be. The key is to anticipate the unendurable. I’ve yet to manage that. But I survive. Most people do. The unendurable days pass like all the rest, even if they appear to take longer.

This is the beginning of chapter one of the novel I’ve been working on. It’s preceded by a prologue that I’ll post sometime. I first conceived it as another novella set in Springdale, first encountered in In Springdale Town. But after setting it aside to work on a story I decided it had enough to be a novel. Presently called New Springdale Novel.

Springdale Review

And in the googling oneself department…a new-to-me review of In Springdale Town from 2004, in Issue #269 of the  journal of the SFRA (Science Fiction Research Association), available as a pdf.

From Michael Levy’s wrap-up of some small press publications:

“Robert Freeman Wexler’s quietly effective In Springdale Town from PS Publishing, concerns a peaceful New England village with a dark secret. The tale is beautifully written and reminded me a bit of the work of Elizabeth Hand. It received a rather odd mixed review in The NY Review of SF earlier this year which it didn’t really deserve, largely, I think, because the reviewer was offended by Lucius Shepard’s somewhat strange introduction.”

Summer Sale

PS Publishing is running a 60 percent off summer sale.  Which means that remaining copies of In Springdale Town, in jacketed hardcover, are now £10.00 / $16.00. This is a numbered edition of 200 copies, each signed by myself and the introducer, Lucius Shepard.

springdaletown-cov

“Wexler writes of small-town America with the same regard to detail and unnerving surreality as David Lynch. Just when you think you have a grip on what’s happening in Springdale town, its two main characters, and the story’s plot, Wexler rearranges the whole game with, I have to say it again, Lynchian instinct. With footnotes inset to give the page an air of scholarly work, In Springdale Town can’t be neatly fit into the typical contemporary fantasy molds, since as a metafiction, its audience seems to be dwelling outside typical genre boundaries.” Barth Anderson (author of Patron Saint of Plagues and The Magician and the Fool) from the website of the Interstitial Arts Foundation.