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…
Lessons From Infant Footwear
Some Fictional Cafe patrons already know about the Baby Shoes flash fiction anthology, a Kickstarted project I led that’s now up on Amazon for anybody who wants to buy it (hint, hint). Last November, I launched the campaign based on a simple concept: 100 writers, 100 stories, less than 1,000 words each. We looked for enough funding to pay an editor, get a hot cover, and do an offset print run. And it failed. We got nearly half the money we needed. In December, I retooled with a trimmed budget and more support for contributing authors to bring in backers. We funded, and I promised delivery in April. Just today I sent out the last backer orders, which is another way of saying I delivered three months late. Needless to say, there was stuff I didn’t…
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…
Randy Cade’s New Thriller is a Western
Editor’s note: We published an excerpt from “Call Me Harry,” from the the prolific Mr. Cade, in May, 2014. His new novella is a Western. The trick question in the title, “At the Request of James Dougle,” may keep you wondering for a while, but wait – it’s a zinger. This is an old-fashioned Western, and I love the genre. Maybe because I grew up wearing cowboy boots, but more likely because in many ways the Western was the progenitor of the mystery and suspense genre, in which I dearly love to read and to write. The tales James Fenimore Cooper told of Matty Bumppo [aka “Leatherstocking”] were thrillers set in an untamed America, which translated forward into the wild-in-the-streets American cities where cops and private eyes fought crime. Race, it seems, has always been…
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…
365 Docobites: “A child’s life in my hands” video
A few months ago, The Fictional Café made a pledge to an enterprising young couple of video documentary makers, Epiphany Morgan and Carl Matson. They’re from Sydney, Australia, and have been touring the world making a video documentary a day – “365 Docobites.” Our contribution has come back to the coffee shop to roost in the form of a video gift, which you can watch here. We’re very proud to have supported this creative endeavor and hope to publish a few more of the 365 Docobites here in the future. For the nonce, you can go watch a few yourself at their website. Again, congratulations to Eppie and Carl on a very big project, well done. Hey guys, please stop by the ole Fictional Café for a cuppa next time you’re in town! Jack, Mike,…
Film Review: “Ex Machina”
The box-office success of “Mad Max: Fury Road” [reviewed by Jason] and “Ex Machina” is the quintessential personification of lowbrow versus highbrow films. We Americans – indeed, most of the world, civilized or no – love both types. I have come to pick up Jason’s gauntlet and praise the latter film, but not at the expense of the former, for I, too, loved them both. And as writers and artists and students of the craft of storytelling, so should you. “Ex Machina” begins by celebrating the brilliance of the creative lions of Silicon Valley, in this case Nathan [Oscar Isaac], and the wonders of technology, like the Google-like empire he has built. Yet Nathan is now, not unlike Thoreau, retired to the woods to contemplate his next brilliant move, for nothing less than topping his earlier triumph will satisfy this…
Offbeat Resources for Writers
One challenge of the writing life is we’re so often alone that we’re sometimes slow to seek help when we’re stumped. Another challenge is, again because we’re alone so often, we don’t always have access to solutions we can’t think up for ourselves. Here are five resources that have saved my bacon at different times in my career. None of them are traditionally for fiction writers, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them. 1. Productivity Tools The Pomodoro Method. GTD. Toggl. Eternity. These are just a few of the time-tracking and focus-enhancing tools aimed at professionals. They help you keep track of your time so you can use it to the best effect. Turns out writers can use them, too. If you’re a serial procrastinator or slow producer, these already have your name on them….
“Diplomacy” by Jane Ward
Editor’s Note: We welcome Jane Ward back to the FictionalCafé ‘zine pages with a new short story. Her first, “Balancing Act,” appeared in the June, 2014 issue. * “It’s not like that,” she said. They were sitting on the steps of the old house where Raynor had grown up, looking out at the moss-covered rocks on the front lawn, and trying to get the bottle caps to land on top of the biggest rock the way they had done when they were children. The house still reminded Tara of the house in Forrest Gump, the way its size was somehow mediated by its straightforward shape and layout, so that the place managed to appear unassuming. “It sounds pretty much ‘like that’ to me,” he told her, keeping his hand in the air after it let…
Film Review: “Mad Max: Fury Road”
When I saw the trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road last summer, it gave me a massive, throbbing anticiboner. I love Mad Max. I love Tom Hardy. The initial images looked like they were doing it the right way, instead of throwing a modernized and weak-sauce reboot at us. Turns out it was that and much, much more. Fury Road is the best movie I’ve seen this year, with nothing else coming anywhere close. It’s so damn good we can use it as a guide for how to improve our fiction. That’s right: we can learn about our craft from a postapocalyptic chase scene full of flamethrowers and electric guitars. This is true even if you’re writing cozy mysteries on the moor, or hilarious chicklit about designer jeans and eating disorders. For example: Fury Road Crushed the Cinematography…