February 28, 2016

“We Have a Particular Relationship with Vowels” The BreakBeat Poets Experience

I had no idea what to expect when I decided to attend a poetry reading called “The BreakBeat Poets” at an art gallery. So even though everything that followed was, by definition, “not what I’d expected,” that phrase did little justice to my actual experience. As I entered Uforge Gallery on a balmy Thursday night, I was greeted with the aroma of wine and the sounds of hip-hop music echoing off paintings of men without faces and photographs of women sitting on the floor. A panorama of bodies in motion, buzzing, stretched from wall to wall. The organizers of the event, Papercuts J.P., had a table with the anthology of poems by The BreakBeat Poets and the poets’ individual books for purchase along with tote bags, bookmarks and free wine. I found a singular seat along…

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February 22, 2016

“To Write, To Grow Up” by Rachael Allen

Posted by Mike Rochester in Guest Posts, News

Editor’s Note: Guest Blogger Rachael Allen talks about her experience in Creative Writing Classes. * * * A good creative writing class feels a bit like growing up. You arrive eager and breathy, whipping out efforts that while earnest are lacking. You listen and admire and emulate. You judge and then learn to empathize. You make friends and feel vulnerable and must continually prove yourself. Through these efforts, if you write and write and write, you hopefully come out with a better sense of yourself and a fat folder of writing on your desktop. I started taking creative writing classes in high school, my school luckily being one with the funds and interest to have an arts program. That class didn’t feel like an academic space; rather, it was a space for me and…

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February 22, 2016

50 Ways to Sell Your Writing — #5: Anthologies

Posted by Jason Brick in News

Part 5 of a multi-blog series on how many ways there are for writers of all stripes to make a living doing what they love. Check out #1 here on Fictional Cafe, and #4 on my own blog. Anthologies Anthologies are collections of short stories by several authors, compiled by everybody from major publishing houses to simple Kickstarted projects leveraging the fundraising power of multiple authors. As a reader, chances are you’ve discovered at least one of your favorite writers by encountering her first in an anthology of one kind or another. In a lot of ways, writing a story for an anthology is a lot like writing for a magazine. You find out it exists, you pitch the project, and if they accept you they publish your story in a volume along with several…

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February 16, 2016

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 3, by Christof Laputka

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Audio Arts, Podcasts

This is the third and last excerpt episode of “The Leviathan Chronicles.” If you like what you’ve heard so far [and we’ve been getting rave reviews from other listeners already!], we encourage you to go to Podiobooks and download the entire podcast. The story [so far] is a total of 26 episodes. It’s an easy download to iTunes, with one caveat: the episodes may download for play in reverse order. This is a shortcoming of iTunes – we’re still trying to find the workaround for this. If you do, please let us know so we can share it with other listeners! A final word: The author, Christof Laputka, clearly spent an immense amount of his own money producing “The Leviathan Chronicles.” Please, please tip him. You’ll be hard pressed getting more enjoyment from your five bucks. And…

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February 16, 2016

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 2, by Christof Laputka

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Audio Arts, Podcasts

As promised, here is episode 2 a three-part excerpt from “The Leviathan Chronicles,” a full blown media extravaganza of a podcast. You really won’t believe your ears. We’re posting the first three episodes this week, Monday through Wednesday. If you find yourself hooked, as we did, you’ll want to go to Podiobooks.com to get the rest of the episodes. Here’s an overview from the podcaast website: “The Leviathan Chronicles is a revolutionary science fiction audio drama podcast featuring the voices of over 60 actors, professional sound effects and an original music soundtrack. Think of it as a blockbuster movie for your ears! There are 25 episodes in Season 1, and 13 episodes in Season 2 as well as several Special Edition Episodes – all available for FREE. You can download each episode here on the website or on iTunes….

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February 14, 2016

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 1, by Christof Laputka

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Audio Arts, Podcasts

As promised, today we begin a three-part excerpt from “The Leviathan Chronicles,” a full blown media extravaganza of a podcast. You really won’t believe your ears. We’ll put up the first three episodes this week, Monday through Wednesday. If you find yourself hooked, as we did, you’ll want to go to Podiobooks.com to get the rest of the episodes. Here’s an overview from the podcast website: “The Leviathan Chronicles is a revolutionary science fiction audio drama podcast featuring the voices of over 60 actors, professional sound effects and an original music soundtrack. Think of it as a blockbuster movie for your ears! There are 25 episodes in Season 1, and 13 episodes in Season 2 as well as several Special Edition Episodes – all available for FREE. You can download each episode here on the website or on…

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February 12, 2016

The New World of Podcasting

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Audio Arts, News, Podcasts

As we conclude the podcasts of my two novels, Wild Blue Yonder and its sequel, Madrone, we enter into a brave new world: a podcast with extraordinary production values. By that I mean what we call in the business “FX” or special effects. A multi-faceted soundtrack to accompany voices, possessing all the sounds you’d expect to accompany a movie but in a sound-only broadcast: in other words, a podcast. What you’re about to hear, beginning next Monday, February 15, is “The Leviathan Chronicles,” a podcast with the most sophisticated soundtrack I’ve yet to hear in all my days and years of listening to podcasts. Nothing even comes close. I would love to share with you all kinds of details about the many people in the cast, the sound engineering, the energy of the script itself, but the creator,…

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February 9, 2016

A. J. Sidransky On Writing: Crime Fiction or Otherwise

Posted by Mike Rochester in Guest Posts, News

Editor’s Note: Fictional Café member A. J. Sidransky shares some stories and wisdom from his writing experience. Enjoy! * * * From the time I was a teenager I wanted to be a writer. When I was 17 years old, graduating high school and heading off to college, my parents asked me, “What do you want to do? What do you want to study?” I said I wanted to study English and I wanted to be a writer. “No, no, no, no,” they said. “You need to be able to earn a living and support a family.” I spent more than thirty miserable years in the real estate finance business. Thank god for the great recession. The first thing I will tell you is that a writer, regardless of genre, has to write. If you…

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February 4, 2016

Holly Guran’s “19th Century Mill Life” Poetry

Posted by Mike Rochester in Member Writing & Art

Editor’s Note: I met Holly Guran at a poetry reading one chilly night in December. She told me that she had heard of The Fictional Café because her friend Maria Termini told her about the site. Now, for a literary magazine as small as ours, meeting someone who’s heard of your publication is a pretty big deal. Needless to say, I was flattered and encouraged upon hearing this news. Well it turns out that Holly is a darn good poet herself! After reading some of her work online, I was struck by one of her poems about yesteryear. It was part historical fiction, part lyrical voyage. I was enticed by the visuals her poetry created – of a life so much different than mine in an area I have visited a dozen times (mostly for…

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February 1, 2016

A. J. Sidransky’s “A Glint of Metal” Part 2

Posted by Mike Rochester in Member Writing & Art

Editor’s Note: This story is a lead-in for A. J.’s latest novel, Forgiving Mariela Camacho, which is the follow-up to his first novel, Forgiving Maximo Rothman. If you enjoy “A Glint of Metal,” you can follow the characters in his newest thriller. This is part 2 of 2. * * * Captain McCloskey yawned then looked at his watch. “Kurchenko, let’s get this over with.” “I thought you should be here for this,” Tolya said. “You were right to think so, but don’t you think this could have waited till later this morning instead of the middle of the night? IA will have to be here for an official inquest.” “I know but under the circumstances I thought we should have a kind of off-the-record conversation with Billy before this thing hits the…

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