May 1, 2019

A Personal Message from Founder Jack B. Rochester

Posted by in Member Writing & Art, News
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….

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April 29, 2019

Free Kindle Books for Lovers of Westerns and History

Posted by in Member Writing & Art, News
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!

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April 16, 2019

FC Anthology in Production

Posted by in Member Writing & Art, News, The Fictional Café Anthology
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…

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January 4, 2019

You Shared Your Favorite Books of 2018. Our Turn Next.

Posted by in Guest Posts, Member Writing & Art, News
You Shared Your Favorite Books of 2018. Our Turn Next.

Thank you to these Coffee Club members for sharing their fave reads of the past year. For those who haven’t and would still like to do so, there’s plenty of time! The link is here. In the next installment, we baristas will share ours with you, and any others who still care to contribute. Thanks to all, and good reading in 2019! — Jack Anne Waldman’s “Trickster Feminism.” I love Anne Waldman and have followed her work for decades. Her last 3 books have been book-length pomes, a very favorite of mine. It’s energetic like a volcano, has the consciousness of a blue whale, the largest mammal on earth. There’s so much to learn here. To celebrate. Shamanic, acute intelligence, a journey we all need to take. – Joanne James * Hi Jack–Hope all is…

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November 30, 2018

See you in Pawtucket!

Posted by in Member Writing & Art, News
See you in Pawtucket!

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

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August 15, 2018

No Fake News Here

Posted by in News
No Fake News Here

The New York Times Joins Effort to Combat Trump’s Anti-Press Rhetoric Excerpted from The New York Times, page B2, August 14, 2018   Sometimes it’s important to stand up and be counted, regardless of whether it’s politically correct or not. Today is one of those times. Today, August 15, 2018, over two hundred newspapers across the country are standing up, very tall, to push back against assertions of publishing “fake news.” Today, these newspapers are publishing an editorial in defense of a free press. I hope you will read this editorial in your favorite newspaper, whether in print or online, and join the Fourth Estate in defending its honor and its rights in America. Because if you don’t, we just might continue down the slippery slope of a censored, politically controlled press. Although you will…

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July 9, 2018

The “Magus Elgar” Contest!!

Posted by in Audio Arts, News
The “Magus Elgar” Contest!!

As promised, here is the “Magus Elgar” contest with real prizes you can win! It’s a simple contest which only requires your having listened – or listening once again – to identify a character’s name. And that character is . . . [drum roll] . . . THE DRAGON! The first Coffee Club member to correctly identify the dragon’s name will win an advance copy of the “Magus Elgar” soundtrack CD  <<< and a Fictional Café baseball hat >>> plus some other swag we haven’t quite worked out yet. But it’ll be good stuff, and you’ll want it! This contest is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. If you loved the first three episodes of “Magus Elgar,” and you love Fictional Café, you definitely want to get into this contest!    …

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June 24, 2018

Congratulations to Artist Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord!

Posted by in News
Congratulations to Artist Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord!

Fictional Cafe member and former featured artist Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has an exhibition in Boston at the beautiful Arnold Arboretum Hunnewell Building Visitor Center through July 22nd. Her Spirit Books combine the aesthetics of the natural world with the art of bookmaking. Susan displays these beautifully and spiritually powerful books all across the country.   Susan was also recently interviewed on WGBH, the local PBS station in Boston, about her work and its meaning to her. Listen to her on the WGBH “Arts This Week” feature to learn more. You can follow Susan’s work on her website as well on Instagram.      

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June 12, 2018

Barista Rachael Allen Moves on to The Atlantic

Posted by in News
Barista Rachael Allen Moves on to The Atlantic

Our congratulations to Rachael Allen on her graduation from Bowdoin College and her new job as an Editorial Fellow at The Atlantic, one of the best, most respected American magazines. The Atlantic Monthly was co-founded by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in Boston in 1857. Rachael will be hanging up her barista hat to take this great stepping-stone into her burgeoning writing career, moving to Washington, D.C., to work on The Atlantic print magazine, fact checking, copy editing, pitching stories, and more. We are going to miss her smiling countenance, superb writing, and knowing we would get every assignment from her on deadline. Rachael has been a Fictional Café contributor since her sophomore year in college, writing engaging pieces on the challenging world of English majors in college, the difficulty finding creative time in this busy…

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