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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 Here Comes the Sun: A happy, faithful fan of the Fictional Café Dear Faithful Fans: It was a long, cold lonely winter, but at last we can tell you that our hard work has brought forth the redesigned, completely revamped, Fictional Café! I want to thank Shari Ryan of Author Needs for months and months of demanding [and often frustrating] work to develop our new site. Shari and I have worked together for nearly five years now, and I greatly appreciate her creativity and perspicacity. She’s also an author and you ought to check her out. Our newest barista, Mike Mavilia, has worked about sixteen times harder on the site than I. He has learned an awful lot about the arcane world of WordPress, teaching me quite a lot in the bargain. Thanks, Mike, for keeping us…

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On Monday, June 1st, The Fictional Café will be cutting its virtual ribbon to celebrate the relaunch of our site. We welcome you to stop by and celebrate with us! We will be posting our monthly submissions again in the Member Writing & Art section, as well as blogs in the News, Reviews and Interviews section from each of us baristas commenting on the writing and art world. Poke around and see what we’ve changed, or if you’re new, explore the wonderful creativity contributed by writers and artists from all over the world. Be sure to check out The Fictional Café on Facebook and Twitter to access exclusive content. Stop by Monday, June 1st, and share a cuppa creativity with us! We’d love you to write a comment or two on what you see.  

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We here at The Fictional Café tend to notice when a comma is used when a semicolon is necessary and when a person decides to lay down instead of lie down. Sometimes it makes us pull our hair out, but other times it elicits a hearty chuckle from us. Fortunately for you and me, the omnipresent eye of the internet notices too. Here are two of my favorite sites for fail-induced guffaws. Oh, and I had to include one great blog for accurate, easy to understand grammar and spelling tips. You know, to balance out the facepalminess. http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/ http://www.lowercasel.com/ http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl  

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