Fictional Cafe will have a booth at tomorrow’s Rhode Island Author Expo! This is our second year at ARIA, and we had a blast meeting all kinds of interesting authors and publishers last time. For more info (FREE Admission) and directions, visit http://riauthorexpo.com/ We’ll have a drawing for choice Fictional Cafe swag. We hope you can make it, and look forward to meeting you! Your Fictional Cafe Baristas
Editor’s Note: A pivotal World War II battle was fought on the beaches of France in the summer of 1944. The Normandy invasions by the Allied Forces resoundingly defeated the Germans, who occupied France, but the cost in lives was immense: over 425,000 lives were lost. Yet for the survivors, many more lives were “lost,” as Cindy Layton’s story recounts. Storming Normandy From the doorway I watched as Dad held the gun in his palm, inspecting it, not like they were old friends but business partners. It looked old but still deadly. Where did he get that? His bony fingers ran alongside the round barrel while his eyes traveled along the length of its metal frame. The door to the safe was open, exposing envelopes and a metal box. A purple velvet bag, showing the…
Bent I can bend and break, mend and make amends, start riots and cry out— in surrender of once feeling stifled. I can close my eyes and still see what is gained, lost, and corrupted; for what is done does not die. It festers and flourishes— seeps into the hollows of every passing moment; for pain itself is simply a shelter that serves to protect the past from the threat of being forgotten. And yet how can I ever want to straighten my back when I am stronger through this weight I carry? Finite You were not the orange hue from the streetlamp. You were the streetlamp as we lay upon my parents’ driveway on nights that were heavy with humidity and our quick, quick…
An Important Announcement Regarding Submissions Beginning today, November 25, 2018, Fictional Cafe won’t be accepting any new submissions until February 1, 2019. Your Baristas simply need time to catch up on reading the submissions that are currently on our desks, or are still in our queue. New work will continue to be published. If you have submitted work between June 11, 2018 and November 23, 2018, your work is being read, and you will be notified of a decision soon. Thank you for your patience and your continued support of the Fictional Cafe. ***
Hey, Coffee Clubbers! Steve Sangapore, your Fine Arts Barista, here. I’ve been following several artists who have exhibited at the Fictional Café in the past and chose David Morton Meyers for a new show. Dave is currently living in Iowa, and has been working on a whole new experimental body of work that I thought would be really cool to share, to show you a familiar face with new work and creative direction. -Steve ** Artist’s Statement Currently I have an exhibition on view at the University of Iowa’s Visual Arts Building where I am completing the final year of my Master of Fine Arts in painting with a secondary emphasis in sculpture. This exhibition is entitled “Free Beer (Part One)” and is the sketch for my final MFA show that will occur this coming…
Photo Credit: Tori Merkle Photography We met Daniel in Harvard Square, where he stood at the corner of Mass Ave and Brattle, typewriter poised to write a poem for a dollar. We asked him to write a poem for our dog, and what he pounded out on the old manual keyboard was sublime. We asked for more, and a correspondence ensued – Boston, New Orleans, Florida – and produced the following excerpts from his impressive body of work. Here’s how he describes his writing: As for the story of how I came to write poetry in Harvard Square: it has everything to do with my love affair with New Orleans, which started three years ago when I hitchhiked from New York to the Big Easy. New Orleans is a place where there’s an established legacy…
All right, then, you radio zombies! Halloween has arrived and with it the last six episodes of ZBS Media’s “90-Second Cellphone Chillin’ Theater.” If you enjoyed Nights One and Two, Monday and Tuesday, you’re sure to enjoy night three. But if you haven’t heard Night One or Night Two and are just arriving here tonight, you can still click back and listen to a dozen more episodes from last night and the night before! Isn’t technology wonderful? “Ghouls Galore” “Betty Big Boobs Meets Vinnie The Vampire” “(Diva #1) Divas Of The Dark” “Sad Regrets Of Cowgirl Clem” “Shameful Wanda & Her Wicked Wereass” “The Secret Smile of the Moaning Lisa” “The Box” We at the Fictional Café, along with the gang at ZBS Media, hope you’ve enjoyed our Halloween celebration. Many…
Following last night’s premier podcast, here are eight more Halloween treats from ZBS Media’s “90-Second Cellphone Chillin’ Theater.” You podcast lovers might recall “Saratoga Noir,” which we re-podcasted here a few months ago. Tomorrow night, Halloween, we’ll present the final eight episodes, for a total of 24. Do we deliver great content or what? “Zombie Al’s Big Night Out” “Dixie Doodle, Girl Geek, in ‘Totally Flat Busted’” “When the Wolfling Learns to Whistle” “Eating Crackers in a Crypt” “Dixie Doodle, Girl Geek, in ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’” “Drooling Doreen” “Revenge of the Tooth Fairy” “Loathsome Sally Under the Texas Moon” That’s all, folks! We hope you enjoyed and if you did, check in tomorrow night for the final eight episodes of “90-second Cellphone Chillin’ Theater.”
Thanks to our friends at ZBS Media, we present three nights of Halloween audio fun: “The 90-Second Cellphone Chillin’ Theater!” These are ghoulishly fun little podio stories created to get you in the mood for Halloween. Tonight we offer you the first eight, plus eight more tomorrow night, and eight again the Halloween night. We hope you enjoy them, and if you do, please write a Comment for us the share with ZBS. If you love audio stories, we encourage you to visit the ZBS Media website. It’s an audio treasure trove! “The Okie Dokie Swamp Thingie” “Hotel Catatonia” “Don’t Eat on Twilight Street” “The Monkey”s Magic Eyeball” “Don’t Eat at Igor’s” “The Sweet Scent of a Succubus” “Frankenstein’s Finger” “The X-Filings Dental Case”
He said he was going into the den to pay some bills. He took his beer with him and kissed his girlfriend on the head and said he would back in time to go to bed. She did not say anything but she probably smiled. He went into his den and shut the door and went to his desk. It included pencils, paper clips, an old transistor radio he never used, tissues, a phone book. He sat for a while, sorting out all the paperwork, when his cellphone rang. It was her again. He had to answer. “Hello?” “Hey, Kevin.” “Hey.” “I’m…surprised you picked up. I’ve been trying to get you.” “I’ve just been busy.” “Doing what?” “Just…things. Nothing, really.” They were treading worlds of the past and they were doing it too lightly to…