Featured Image Photo Credit: Wikipedia. West Quoddy Head, in Quoddy Head State Park, Lubec, Maine, is the easternmost point of the contiguous United States. A clump of snow slid from the plunging power lines and splattered atop the coffin. Utility poles leaned on both sides of the road. When Maverick looked up, the empty white sky was blocked by rubber cables. For miles ahead, the snow sparkled untouched. No tracks, nor footprints, completely uncharted. Behind Maverick and Goose were two sets of footprints and sled marks. Thick rope was cutting into their shoulders, dragging the wooden tomb. Its imprints creased the burly coats they’d been wearing for two months. Goose pulled down his wool scarf. The first exhale billowed into a cloud of frost. His nose was beet red, poking out from a black garden of unkempt facial hair,…
Hi! It’s Jack Again.
Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers’ Milieu The 1960s was our generational time of great social change, not only in America but around the world. It was the first time America had gotten into an unpopular (and ultimately unwinnable) war. Driven by World War II GIs returning home, followed by the 1950s Beat Generation, it was a time of massive youth rebellion against the staid, comfortable, hierarchical parent-child social structure, which had prevailed for decades. These were still times when adults believed youth should be seen and not heard, but as Bob Dylan sang, those times were a-changing. It was the time of the Hippies. When we meet Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, he is a true naif, unaware of the ways of the world. One thing he knows: he doesn’t want to be drafted into the Army and tote…
A Personal Message from Founder Jack B. Rochester
We Fictional Café Baristas are not only editors but writers, too. Just as we introduce you to Member Writing and our forthcoming Anthology, from time to time we’ll invite you to learn more of what we’re doing as creative individuals – as I’m doing now. For the past decade I’ve been writing novels about a young man and his coming of age in the 1960s and ‘70s. His name is Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, a bookish 20th-century Candide who has been sent off to the Air Force in the midst of the Vietnam War. He will discover friendship, Chinese philosophy, hippie counterculture, and the meaning of romance as he tries to make sense of what’s happening in America. Nate’s fervent wish is to live by Bob Dylan’s refrain: how to avoid making the same mistakes twice….
Free Kindle Books for Lovers of Westerns and History
Author James D. Best has graced FC’s ‘zine pages on two occasions in the past. He’s offering free Kindle copies of two of his novels until Thursday, May 2. The first free book is The Shopkeeper, the first Steve Dancey tale. It’s the first of six. The second free book is The Shut Mouth Society ,a mystery concerning a recently discovered document of Abraham Lincoln’s. Thanks, Jim!
The Ghostly Art of Stephen Pavlovic
Artist’s Statement: My work explores my anxieties. I work to externalize those anxieties in a visually interesting way. The image of a Hungry Ghost (in Buddhism, a person doomed to wander the earth, unable to satisfy their overwhelming desires) has always been a recurrent theme in my work, but in the last two years it has taken a more central role. Who knew there were so many of them? I find the image of the Hungry Ghost useful in explaining to myself the current political state of things and at the same time externalizing my emotions to reduce the angst I feel. In some Buddhist cosmology, a person can be reborn as either a human being, into the realm of the Gods, or as a Hungry Ghost; Hungry Ghost being the worst rebirth. I find…
FC Anthology in Production
Hello everyone, we are excited to update you all on the forthcoming FC Anthology – our first print edition! We’ve begun book production, including layout, cover design and printing sources. For those of you familiar with self-publishing, you understand it’s a lot of work (and learning). This anthology will include the baristas’ handpicked “best of” from 2013 until 2017: the first five years of our existence. We’ll include short stories, novel excerpts, poetry and visual art from over 50 members! I’m happy to report that we are moving along with the manuscript layout thanks to friend and fellow member of IPNE, Eddie Vincent of Encircle Publications. He has been working in book production and design for over 30 years! This will be the second Fictional Café Press book. We published the first, Where Are the…
“Eye Contact” Part II
By Ann Davis Editor’s note: Here is Part II of Ann Davis’ experimental fiction, guaranteed to open your eyes. The featured image, “Collapse of the Mind,” is courtesy Steve Sangapore, our Fine Arts Barista. But . . . before you begin reading, listen: Morris could not remember the last morning the sunlight had looked so golden, or when he had had such a refreshing sleep. Woke up entirely on his own too, before his alarm even, a whole hour before he usually did. Especially surprising was that he felt perfectly awake, with no urge to lie back down whatsoever. Must be from his long nap during the insertion the other day. Oh yes, the insertion! Suddenly driven by an urge to check the mirror, Morris darted out of bed and straight for the looking glass…
“Eye Contact” by Ann Davis
Editor’s note: We met Ann Davis at a writers conference in December, 2018. She wanted to know more about the Fictional Cafe and then told us the writer’s lament: her hard drive had crashed and she’d lost all her writing. Well, a year passes and we’re back at the same writing conference again when Ann walks up to the Fictional Cafe booth with a two-inch stack of printout in her hands. She had recovered her work! We told her we were entertaining manuscripts that were a little, ah, different for 2019, and she tugged this one out from her stack. We read it, liked it, and accepted it. Of course it had to go through the submissions process as a Word file, but here it is. We’re calling it “experimental fiction.” Due to its length…
“The Maltese Goddess”
Third and Final Episode Here we are folks, as promised, at the same time and same station, headphones poised to listen to the last episode of our mystery-adventure in 3-D sound from our friends and fortunately frequent contributors at ZBS. I do want to give them a great big fist bump from Fictional Café and a nudge for you to go check out their site, because it is full to overflowing with great stories and tales for listening. You’ll recall that “‘The Maltese Goddess’ is “a detective story set in the 1930s, with voodoo, mobsters, goddess worshippers, a snake cult, and an ancient, priceless, statue from Malta.” And, as you remember, it won first prize in the Prix Italia audio arts contest a few years ago (you’ll hear about this again in the Introduction). It’s…
“Chronicles of Cambodia”
Creative Nonfiction by Vlad Linder Translated from the Russian by Marika Marina One can travel in different ways: observe the surroundings comfortably through a car window, or blend into the local people’s lives, experiencing and going through their pain and joy, troubles and concerns, just as the author of ‘The Chronicles of Cambodia” did. Vlad Linder describes in detail his journey to the land of The Khmer Rouge, which took place in April 2012 . . .. Part I A week after my arrival in Sihanoukville, I was rather tired of the predictable life of a settled tourist. Staying at a snug little house right on the shore of the Gulf of Siam, I kept feeling I was looking at the world through a well-polished, barely visible glass. I set off to a place, where…