April 4, 2023

“Spring in Siberia” – A Novel by Artem Mozgovoy

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Book Reviews, Guest Posts, Writing

Red Hen Press and Fictional Cafe celebrate today the publication of Spring in Siberia, the first novel by a young writer named Artem Mozgovoy. Born in Central Siberia, he finds solace in the literature he reads and begins to write. Spring in Siberia is his coming of age story, told in fiction. This excerpt is from Chapter 16. An interview with Kate Gale, Managing Editorand Executive Director at Red Hen Press, follows it. ‘I’m afraid that I love you,’ my classmate spoke quickly and quietly, but I managed to catch his words before they melted in the evening smoke. We were standing on the sixteenth-story balcony, on the top floor of the tallest building in our city. Neither he nor I lived in that block, but we knew that each level gave access to a…

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March 6, 2023

An Interview with Artemisia’s Founder

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Interviews, Writing

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…

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March 6, 2023

“The Painter’s Butterfly” – A Novel

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Book Reviews, Writing

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…

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February 16, 2023

“The Sixty-Five Percent”

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in News

An Excerpt From Derrick Lafayette’s Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales We continue to celebrate the publication this new collection of stories by Derrick R. Lafayette, published this week by Fictional Cafe Press. It’s five short works and a novella, each as different and original and evocative as can be. You’ve never read anything quite like these – well, a close perhaps if you’ve read Robert Coover. Here is an excerpt from Derrick’s story, “The Sixty-Five Percent” to tantalize you into buying a copy of his book – which we’ll be announcing at any moment. Come on, Ingram, Come on, Amazon, let’s go! “It’s filthy down here,” Abbot complained, hunching his body into the sewer pipe. A rivulet of brown water soaked his socks. Insects of unknown origin slithered above him. He adjusted his lab coat, pulled up…

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February 14, 2023

“Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales” by Derrick R. Lafayette

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Book Reviews, Writing

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 . ….

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