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…

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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…

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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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