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Mostly Made up Stories from a Small Town Nobody
Paperback
Publisher Price: $17.99
Publisher: Inkblotz Press
Published: Jul 6 2026
Pages: 216
Weight: 0.59
Height: 0.54 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A nostalgic, heartfelt collection of coming-of-age short stories set in a dusty border town where imagination was everything and childhood never followed the rules.
In Mostly Made-Up Stories from a Small Town Nobody, writer and storyteller Mariano Velez takes us back to 1970s and '80s Calexico, California-a small desert town full of loud music, tighter families, and slower summers. It's a place where broomsticks stood in for baseball bats, cardboard boxes became castles, and the neighborhood became your playground (and sometimes your battlefield).
These funny, warm, and deeply personal short stories capture the spirit of a generation raised between cultures, between languages, and between homemade adventures. Velez brings to life the universal magic of growing up with nothing but a backyard, a few hand-me-downs, and an imagination that could turn a dirt lot into a big-league stadium.
Whether you grew up in a small town or just remember what it was like to be a kid with scraped knees and big dreams, this collection will make you laugh, nod in recognition, and maybe even tear up at the memory of a world that moved just a little slower-and felt a whole lot bigger.
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