Today Notepad Stories turns 1! This time last year we decided to launch Notepad Stories – https://notepadstories.co.uk – as a subsidiary of Yanagi Studios. It has served as an online catalogue for poems, short stories, and instalments of longer pieces. The site welcomes fiction of all kinds. Over the past year we’ve had stories of tribal initiations, time travelling lovers, demonic stuffed toys, human sacrifice, hedonistic monks, and visitations of avatars of death. Themes have ranged from spiritual adventures to tales of bloodthirsty revenge, from acceptance of loss to revelations of one’s own divinity within the ever revolving kaleidoscopic cycle of life, love, and death. It’s been great fun to both write for the site, and curate the fascinating and inspiring submissions from other writers. We look forward to another year of seeing the site grow, and embarking on more literary adventures through the words of our writers! At the bottom of this post is a full list of all the works contributed by each writer so far. Please feel free to send any work you would like to be considered for publication on the site to – notepadstories@hotmail.com.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank A. O. Wallat, one of our writers, for his diligent and thoughtful feedback and proof-reading. It’s been a thoroughly professional job he’s performed free of charge! Well free of any monetary charge anyway. One can only assume he has operated some kind of karmic vacuum to drain from me the good karma aggregated over the course of my various good deeds, as a well-deserved gratuity! He and his co-host, Holt, have a great podcast of the amusing, rambly variety (https://holtandwallt.com). Recommended for those interested in learning more about mushrooms or stealing their board game ideas before they patent them. Goes down nice with a cuppa tea missus. Like a big hug in a mug.

We’ve had a couple of publishing success stories for Notepad writers this year already. My short story, In the Shadow of the Sun God has been published by Spillwords Press (https://spillwords.com/in-the-shadow-of-the-sun-god). A. O. Wallat’s Company has been published in Bloom magazine. We insist you download a copy here – https://redpenguinbooks.com/bloom-lit-magazine. Meanwhile another of our contributor’s Ernest M. Judd, has been writing for history and travel sites, sharing his knowledge of East Asia and its history. Here you can read a fascinating article about Korean repatriation from Japan following the Pacific War – https://www.historyhit.com/how-is-korean-repatriation-important-to-cold-war-history/. Meanwhile here you can learn more about one of South Korea’s moving and introspective war films – https://whattodoinkorea.com/taegukgi-the-greatest-war-movie-ever-made/.

Other Yanagi projects in the works for 2021 include Twitching Wilbur, and Notepad Audiobooks. The former is in pandemic lockdown limbo currently, along with my soul… Anyhow, the remaining shots to be filmed should be wrapped up soon after restrictions are eased. Also, we are launching Notepad Audiobooks as a new category on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtQoNe4Caf12D62lP_s0gww) later this year. We hope to bring our stories to as much of a wide audience as possible. There are many fans of literature out there who are either visually impaired or simply prefer the oral tradition of story-telling to reading, we hope that converting our poems and stories to an audiobook format will allow us to reach more people with our works, while also providing a new way to enjoy these stories to those who have already read them.

Thank you to all our readers/viewers/listeners for your continued support!
Peace and love xxx
– Yanagi Studios

Notepad Stories:

Thomas Caterer:

• The Toymaker
• Twins
• Sleep-walking
• Seven Years
• Trying to Wake Up
• Things Change
• Many Things Are Disgusting
• In Hope of a Good Harvest
• A Place Where He Speaks
• In the Shadow of the Sun God
• Confession of a Drainer
• The Teddy Bear Principle

D. S. Johnson:

• The Vampire
• Lost
• November Twelfth, 2120

A. O. Wallat:

• Dreams Are the Opposite to Reality
• Company

Ernest M. Judd:

• Worse Things
• Confessions in Time
• Nothing Remains

Gareth Godliman:

• Our World
• The Spirit of Grandfather Herber
• I Said Stop! Not Stomp!
• Well Played
• The Dorian Falls
• John’s Task
• Gareth’s Idea
• He Couldn’t

Robert Artisan:

• Twin Stories
• A Helping Hand
• The Vitamin D Army
• Grandpa’s Advice
• Dissy’s Day Out
• Panda’s Painting
• A Collie and a Wally