July 10, 2020

“19 Nocturne Blvd” by Julie Hoverson

Fictional Cafe is starting off this month with TWO award-winning stories written by the talented Julie Hoverson of 19 Nocturne Blvd! First up, The Outpost. What would you do if you woke up in a strange place that is nothing like your home planet, a million light years from home? Follow Vanessa 98949 as she navigates the bizarre world she wakes up in. This amazing audio drama won the 2008 Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction. And of course this show would be nothing without the incredible cast bringing the story alive! Grant Hickey – Gene ThorkildsenVanessa 98949 – Julie HoversonLassiter – Russell GoldYasmin – Melissa D. JohnsonRecorder – Beverly Poole ** Next on the award-winning list, The Rookie, which won the Mark Time Award for Science Fiction in 2009. This one features a…

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July 8, 2020

“Traffic Report,” A Novel Excerpt by Eric D. Goodman

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Editor’s Note: “Traffic Report” is an excerpt from the novel, Setting the Family Free, published October 2019 by Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press. Copyright, © Eric D. Goodman. This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the publisher. Traffic Report This is your eye in the sky, the WCHL Traffic Copter. If you’re just now tuning in for the first time today, here’s a word of advice: stay home. You heard me right, folks: authorities have advised everyone in the Chillicothe area to remain indoors today and to stay off the roads. If you’re already driving to work, go back home. It’s a zoo out there—literally. Lions and bears, wild cats and wolves have all escaped from a local animal reserve here in Chillicothe. If you leave your house today, you’re walking into a danger zone….

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July 6, 2020

“The Life and Death of Arthur Miller,” by Andrew Lafleche

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ARTHUR MILLER or, Damnationem Vita et Humani Conditione Fourteen days after Arthur Miller’s sixteenth birthday, both his parents were killed in an automobile accident when a drunken driver swerved into their lane as they returned home from a night at the theater. Their deaths occurred instantly, and to that effect, neither were able to be presented with an open coffin at their post-life nuptials. The last time Arthur saw his parents alive was in the moments following Sunday dinner, his mother in a dress, glowing, his father dressed handsomely, saying, “When you finally meet the woman who makes the world stand still, son, don’t ever quit doing for her what you did at the start. That way there will never be an end.” Arthur clung to these words in the weeks that followed. He clung to everything…

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July 2, 2020

Fabrice Poussin — Painting the Roses Red

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Editor’s Note: This month’s featured artist is Fabrice Poussin, an FC alum from 2018. In this collection, he presents his photography of spray-painted flowers and other objects. But this is no Alice in Wonderland redux. Find out what inspired Fabrice to take on this artistic project. I believe the artist must be like the bright-eyed child. He must seek beauty (what is beauty in his mind) and translate it into his own expression to inspire awe, bewilderment, joy, sadness, endless emotions to the viewer, reader, or listener. If he cannot find it, he must create it. These photos were conceived from a strange gift from a friend. He left me a number of cans of paint. For quite some time I wondered what I may do with those, and it occurred to me, and this…

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July 1, 2020

Former FC Art Barista Steve Sangapore Interview

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art, Interviews

Today we are sharing an interview with former Fictional Café Visual Art Barista Steve Sangapore. Fountain Street Gallery, located in SOWA the artistic hub of Boston, presents this interview in their series LIVE AT FIVE on Instagram. LIVE AT FIVE features a 30 minute interview of Boston based artist Steve Sangapore who will talk with Tatiana Flis about art, life, and his most recent painting series titled New Eden. You can follow Steve on Instagram at @stevesangapore. INFO:WEDNESDAY, JULY 01, 2020 | 5:00–5:30 PM EasternLIVE AT FIVE w/Fountain Street GalleryJOIN US ON INSTAGRAM LIVE@fountainstreetgallery

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June 28, 2020

“Countdown to Romance,” by Glen Donaldson

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Amid the din of busy Grinders Coffee Shop, silence like the centre of a hurricane enveloped them both. “Could this honestly get any suckier?” Fergus wondered to himself as he grasped his own sweaty, nervous fingers under the table, yanking then releasing them one after the other. Sitting opposite him was his first meeting date, Willow. She’d said she was 27. She was not only wearing “awkward” like it was her own exclusive fashion label but by this stage had taken to incessant hair-twirling in an effort to get through the dead air and lumbering silences that felt by now to them both as long as a freight train. Fergus commenced quietly tapping his Ray-Bans on the marble coffee table, being careful not to disturb the two polished silver stir-stick containers that rested in the centre; the same ones he’d positioned and repositioned more than a dozen times. Like a finger-drumming leopard straining on…

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June 26, 2020

“Neon Nights: The Arcane Files of Jack Tracer,” Audio Drama

Posted by Ruby Fink in Audio Arts

From the writer’s desk of Rachel Craig and Will Snyder comes Neon Nights: The Arcane Files of Jack Tracer, a hard-boiled private eye with a taste for mystery and a thirst for justice. Alone he stands in the moras of life that is the city of Neon Nights, ready to fight those who live within the shadows. In this first episode, Jack Tracer is hired by a young woman who asks him to investigate the strange behavior of her younger brother. Jack meets a beautiful femme fatale named Red and togather they uncover a dark secret! In this second episode, Jack and Red have begun their investigation of Nicholas Rothschild, interviewing both his mother, Lydia Rothschild, and his professor, Thomas Cardella, who also happens to be an old beau of Red’s. Nick on the other…

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June 22, 2020

“Up There” — Three Poems by Chad W. Lutz

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Up There this one goes out to anyone that’s ever made me feel I wasn’t enough or felt they were too good & drifted away I remember we fucked in the auditorium your idea & how carnal & playful you were wore a skirt and it hurt but I’ll admit I wasn’t ready here’s to the loves that didn’t last couldn’t last it’s all in the past now but I still daydream time to time Acan Glaske big border you know what that means government shutdowns partisan bickering sniveling banter back and forth we go the first settlers built walls around their encampments wanted to keep the threats out the Lakota the Apache the Comanche they lived on the open range in communion with nature …

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June 18, 2020

Poetry and Prose to Honor Juneteenth

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

We at The Fictional Cafe are shocked, dismayed and angered by American policemen gunning down American men of color. We assume you feel similarly. Times of great stress, like the COVID-19 pandemic, bring out both the best and the worst in people. It is a time in which we must be patient, calm, understanding, even forgiving, even while we protest for change. We have no way of knowing what strife and pain, or growth and joy, await us in the endless days of this pandemic. All we have is today to be the very best humans we can possibly be, and that today, today, is Juneteenth when the world bows its head to remember the end of slavery in America, circa 1865. Of course, we know it wasn’t the end and that racism still runs…

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June 18, 2020

“Ave Maria on the Moon,” by Frank Diamond

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Desperation birthed the plan, if you want to call it a birth, and if you want to call it a plan. NASA threw us at the Moon; a Hail Mary pass for world peace, of all clichés. Look how that turned out. I, Chuck Dunn, now sit at the entrance to the cave-complex at the base of the Marius Hills, behind the screen—or the veil, as we on the mission nicknamed it. The Moonscape stretches before me like an addict’s vision of the Arizona desert: rock formations back-lean as the dinosaurs might have while gazing at the arrival of their extinction event. Further beyond, the cloaked range dead-stops at the horizon. The Earth hovers between two cupped peaks; a raised blue Communion host. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,…

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