for Sister Monica Joan I’ve sort of lost track of time, but it must have been, oh, a dozen or so years ago that I put a rear-view mirror on my medicine chest, so that now when I shave of a morning I can only see myself in the past. And therefore, by a process I cannot pretend to understand, do I grow one day younger every day. As long as I keep shaving, I’m slipping backwards twenty-four hours at a time, growing gradually more limber, my synapses finger-popping like Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, my beard no longer bristling with silver but turning to a burr of golden blond. When I remember how to move the appropriate muscles in my face, I catch the reflection of something resembling a smile, teeth sparkling, eyes bright….
An Interview with Artemisia’s Founder
Geoff Habiger Talks About Life As An Indie Publisher with Lorraine Martindale, FC’s Editor At Large Fictional Cafe is launching a new series, for which we don’t yet have a name . Maybe you can help? It’s a tandem publication, probably once a month, likely on a Tuesday. We’ll feaure a new novel from an indie author, the tandem aspect being an interview or a profile of the author’s indie publisher. The author’s book excerpt appears as a regular post, and the interview or feature appears in our Creative Nonfiction section (which is titled News, Reviews and Interviews on the home page). Our goal is to recognize – indeed, to celebrate – the relationship between an author and their publisher. To accomplish this, Jack and Lorraine are working as a team within Fictional Cafe. Lorraine…
“The Painter’s Butterfly” – A Novel
A mystical adventure by Rebecca Weber I love butterflies. My mother-in-law absolutely adored butterflies, so when we published the 2-disc CD of her musical works, a butterfly was the cover image. We have a big hand-painted Talavera pottery butterfly adorning our home. Last year, we published an excerpt from Sara Dykman’s book, Bicycling with Butterflies adventure with the monarch butterfly migration here at FC. So yeah, we like butterflies, including those in this youth novel, and we hope you will, too. This is Rebecca’s first novel! ** from Chapter 3 Chapter Three First Impressions Nova swiftly opened the white wooden door and a happy silver bell chimed out to say hello. Inside the place was cozy and welcoming, and her head pivoted around like a swivel chair as she took it all in. There were…
“His Name’s Not Ben”
A Mystery by Paul Perilli It often feels like we’re living in an age of identity obfuscation. People choose alias, noms de plume, stage names, nicknames . . . sometimes it must be hard to remember exactly who you are. Or, in the case of Ben, whom this story is about, how you ever got yourself into such a mess that you had to change your name and . . .. But let’s let author Paul Perilli open the creaking door to tell us Ben’s story. ** THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CHANGE as often as the seasons. Each year businesses come and go. For the most part their opening and closing have little effect on me. The Mexican restaurant on Manhattan Ave. I ordered from once or twice a year is now an empty…
“Chocolates From Majorca” By Ewa Mazierska
The British, for as long as anyone cares to remember, have loved vacationing on the island of Majorca, one of four Spanish isles in the Mediterranean Sea. The history of making marvelous chocolates in Spain dates back to the days of Christopher Columbus. Today’s story is about thoughtfulness, and perhaps an absence thereof . . . (Featured Image courtesy of Spanish Abores.com) ** It took Robert almost five hours to travel from his house on the outskirts of Dunfermline to his old house in Lancashire. By the time he reached the house, he was exhausted and in a bad mood, not least because his favourite restaurant, where he used to have brunch, was closed due to a broken pipe. He felt that Justine, his ex-wife, would immediately sense his bad mood and react with her…
Max Orkis’s Stunning Poetic Visions
Eight poems you won’t soon forget. Poems you’ll want to read again and again. Each reading reveals new layers, depths, insights, poetic visions, and an overwhelming desire to understand the heart and the mind of a true poet. Missing Fold, collapse, telescope. How piercing glows a ray — if The star rolls round once every so many Forevers while night falls daily? So cold to hope, In an ice age, for global warming As streams Grow stiff, Like a bay leaf, Harden, Fossilize, like a trope, Like the uncanny Flower that buds more Slowly than Death blooms — so, grow wild, bow, garden. How real are dreams If even after brainstorming One can hardly recall one or Forget disbelief Again? ~ ~ Divine Dream I often wonder why my dreams so seldom Remember me in…
“Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales” by Derrick R. Lafayette
Just Published: A Provocative Short Story Collection by Our Own Writer-in-Residence It’s Valentine’s Day and Publication Day for Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales, Derrick R. Lafayette’s newest book. AND we’re excited to anounce Kaleidoscope as our first Fictional Café Press book of 2023. Derrick is a prolific writer who was our Fiction Writer-in-Residence for 2021-2022. He’s had several works published here at the Café, which you can read here. (Several are included in his collection but others are exclusive FC publications.) As the French author Marcel Proust once remarked, the mind evokes endlessly changing thought patterns, much like a kaleidoscope. And so reading Derrick R. Lafayette’s Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales, a genuinely extraordinary collection of five short stories and a novella, is like seeing the world anew through bits of colored glass. Here’s a preview. What if . ….
“Stuckey’s,” by Michael Lloyd Gray
His father had warned him not to go out too far. “One step at a time, boy,” his father had said sternly. “No need to pop a gasket right off the bat.” It was mid-summer on Lake Argus, Illinois, where Billy Ray’s family summered. He nodded at his father but stole glances at the motorbike, a 60 cc Harley. He didn’t know they even made them that small, but that was okay since he’d just turned sixteen and really had nothing to compare it with, certainly not the family Plymouth station wagon. His old man had taken the bike in on trade and fixed the fuel line, brakes, and patched the leaky tires. With the throttle thrown wide open, it might hit forty-five mph, but to Billy Ray, it was downright supersonic. The motorbike was—freedom. …
“Mother,” Poetry by Bharti Bansal
Mother Sometimes I look at the regrets of my mother trailing along the corners of her eyes As she wonders about her place in the world too often There is no secret to motherhood, I suppose Just a constant feeling of doing it wrong My father consoles her, calls her beloved A sincere way of reminding her of their own vows Yet when she wakes up at night, feeling the clutches of past on her throat, she simply lets him sleep without saying a single word I believe it is when a relationship turns into partnership as time moves along the edges of their bodies, Sometimes becoming a game, as they team up together, shake hands, pat each other’s back, constantly reminding themselves about the love that blossomed years ago This is how I see…
“Monsters Like Us,” by Sarah Normandie
The New England mid-October air, sharp and crisp, presented itself in a way that said goodbye to summer while promising winter soon. Detective Thicket trudged his feet through the carpet of red and gold fallen leaves as he breathed in the wet, musty smell of the woods. He couldn’t help but notice that nothing had changed since the last time he was here. The trees stood the way they stood each day before, just some taller and stronger while others stood with lost branches from heavy winds or were dying from disease. The squirrels and the birds went about their business on this day, the same way other squirrels and birds went about their business in 1995. If only the forest could talk, he thought, the stories it would tell. Somewhere in Thicket’s mind he…