August 31, 2015

Summer’s Last Stand: September Submissions

Summer’s Last Stand: September Submissions

It’s been a busy month here at the Fictional Café. In case you were on vacation, out at the beach or having a barbecue, here’s a recap. We started our second serial podcast in August. (You can find our first here). Every Saturday morning, we invite you to wake up with Jack – our resident novelist and founding father of the Fictional Café – to hear the next chapter of Nate Flowers and company in our podcast of Madrone. August also marked the second time we published a serial story. We thought Adam Gottfried’s supernatural, Gothic thriller was too good to merely excerpt for the Café. So we chose to post it in three installments, which you can read here. One more shout out before we get to the batting order for September. Last month,…

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August 5, 2015

Erich Griebling’s Typewriter Art

Erich Griebling’s Typewriter Art

Editor’s note: We are excited to bring you Erich Griebling’s sculptures, made almost exclusively from typewriter parts. I first saw these sculptures when I was young, living on Plum Island. His use of items from the shoreline – some organic, some man made – resonated with me as a junior beachcomber. We invite you to enjoy the intricacy of his art: both visual and symbolical, as well as his essay about the typewriter. *** Homage to the Typewriter Underwood, L.C. Smith, Royal, Remington — these were the names of the real authors of the information age. They made it possible to produce a unique printed page (and one that was legible) at the rate of sixty and more original words per minute. This was a feat unparalleled in human history and resulted in a leap…

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August 2, 2015

Poetry by Judith Manzoni Ward

Poetry by Judith Manzoni Ward

  “Sunday Morning Dreamscape”   The silk umbrella that covered her head had a hole in its top, in case of rain. She was meeting her husband for a rendezvous outside a phone booth. Her daughter followed, six steps behind, reciting the only two definitions of sodomy that she knew. An elevated train on the left side of the road stopped; three men fell out onto a steel track below. The daughter ditched her at a fork in the highway, went on alone to the dock to meet an old lover who would take her away on a cruise. She had forgotten her ticket; he said she could share his: number 660266. He asked if she needed a baby sling; she predicted he would marry someone young.   “The Way She Gathered Stones”   She…

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July 31, 2015

August Submissions

August Submissions

As we roll on through the best beach days of the year, we baristas at the Fictional Café have been working hard this month to serve up a sampling of the creative arts’ finest. Here are our fresh brews for August: This month, starts off with the wonderful poetry of Judith Ward – a first-time submitter, long time Coffee Club member. Her imaginative poems feature lighthearted imagery juxtaposed by themes of heartache, as she peeks around dark corners for brief glimpses into the curious bits of life. Next up, we have sculptures made from typewriter parts by Erich Griebling. We think his art is a great blend of what the Fictional Café is all about: writing and art. Although we use computers now, many of us remember a time when the typewriter was a very…

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July 26, 2015

Enter Our 100th Member Contest, Win A Fictional Café Baseball Cap!

Enter Our 100th Member Contest, Win A Fictional Café Baseball Cap!

We’re quickly approaching the century mark in membership at the Fictional Café Coffee Club [WOO HOO!], so we baristas have put together a contest to celebrate the event. We’re asking you Coffee Club members to encourage your friends, family, colleagues, writing class, church, skydiving group and kickball league to join us. Member #100 will receive a Fictional Café baseball cap! [You can see us wearing ours here.] But that’s not all. In appreciation to our loyal and supportive followers for spreading the word, we’ll send the member who refers our hundredth new member a Fictional Café baseball cap too! All you need to do is send us an email with the names of your referrals. We’ll keep track of those who sign up and make sure you both get your just reward. And even if…

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July 5, 2015

Egrets and Herons: The Photography of John Woods

Egrets and Herons: The Photography of John Woods

John Woods has been taking pictures most of his life, but only with the advent of digital photography and the time allowed after his children were grown did he get serious about it. Most of his work includes travel photography, especially from Europe and Mexico, as well as his home state of Wisconsin. He loves to take pictures of egrets and blue herons, mostly during his annual visits to Los Cabos, Mexico. All these pictures were taken at the estuary in San Jose Del Cabo. The ones shown here are among his best from hundreds and hundreds of pictures taken. Although photography is his love these days, John made his career in book publishing for over 40 years. If you like what you see here, you can see more of his work at his Facebook…

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June 29, 2015

July ‘Zine Features and A Personal Message from your Baristas

July ‘Zine Features and A Personal Message from your Baristas

We’d like to thank all of our loyal patrons – new and seasoned – for your support this month in our relaunch of the Fictional Café. We hope you’ll enjoy our upcoming July ‘zine Member Writing offerings. As we’re sure you have already figured out, we publish new fiction, poetry, photography and art in the early days of each month, along with occasional news, interviews and book reviews throughout the rest of the month. July features an intense short story from Jane Ward, one of our returning writers, a photo essay of egrets by John Woods, a wildlife photographer, and the third installment of Ward Parmentieri’s crazed, sexy, often funny mystery about a missing rockstar. We have no idea where this one is going, since Ward won’t tell us, but we think the journey is well worth taking. As a member of the…

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June 19, 2015

Book Review: The Angel Esmeralda (Part 1 of 2)

Book Review: The Angel Esmeralda (Part 1 of 2)

The Angel Esmeralda spans 30-plus years of writing from Don DeLillo over nine short stories. In typical DeLillo form, The Angel Esmeralda harnesses the fundamental humanity of his characters – whether the situation is monotonous everyday life or spectacularly distant moments in time and space – to create a vivid patchwork of submission, heartache and paranoia. These are not feel-good stories, but cautionary tales told by a writer with the gift of seeing the world as it really is and who is deeply disturbed by these visions. The collection begins, fittingly, with “Creation,” a story about those dark endeavors that occur when love has left a relationship. The narrator and his wife, Jill, are on vacation on a tiny Caribbean island near St. Vincent. We instantly see that things are not right because even though…

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June 9, 2015

Opening Night: Ojos de Tango

I walk up and down Harrison Avenue, looking for number 450. Google maps is no help. Art galleries are scattered about this tiny section of the south end between the residential neighborhoods and the Mass Pike. Eventually, I notice throngs of people coming and going from a pedestrian walkway between two buildings. This is in fact Thayer Street, the heart of the SoWa art district of Boston. As I make my way through the wonderland of galleries, each one filled with the liveliness that a warm June Friday night in the city elicits, I am swept up in the enthusiasm and passion of the surrounding creative endeavors. I come up to a rust-colored sheet metal sign hanging above a small gallery. It reads Movimiento. I’m here. Inside, the space is industrial with a brick ceiling,…

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June 1, 2015

“Elle Burton and the Reflective Portals” by Peggy McAloon

Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from the young-adult novel Elle Burton and the Reflective Portals, by Peggy McAloon, published by Wheatmark.   Elle Burton stopped at Lake Menomin on her way to school. It was her birthday. A sudden splash shattered her reflection in the water. Her hands flew out to protect her face from whatever exploded upward and she felt . . . something. A butterfly’s wings? She cupped her hands together, lacing her fingers tightly. “Let me go!” Elle’s dark eyes widened in amazement, but she didn’t loosen her grip. “Let me go! I have to be there when he’s born.” “What are you talking about?” Elle whispered, afraid she might break the spell. “I can’t talk to you . . . it’s against the rules.” The creature was now trembling in…

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