We welcome a new podcast to Fictional Café which can hardly be called new. The folks at the  ZBS Foundation have been producing audio/radio stories since 1970, and I’ve been listening to them since those times as well. The brave, intellectual, spiritual adventurer Jack Flanders lives in my memories.  I’ve listened to many ZBS stories and turned many others onto them as well, perhaps notably my son Josh who shares my passion for audio drama. I hope you will too, beginning with a premiere taste of some new stories from ZBS: “Tiny Dreams,” very short pieces which will appear here at the FC every Friday evening in July. I encourage you to visit the ZBS website, where you will find a treasure trove of fun listening. More about ZBS in coming weeks. A Short Introduction to…

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Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, we were delighted to run the entire first season of “Mickie McKinney, Boy Detective,” a podcast written, produced and directed by Ruby Fink and delivered by her incredible Faux Fiction Audio actors. What Ruby and her people have done is extraordinary, creating a story of our times and producing it at the professional level of classic old-time radio dramas. Ruby writes scripts with a real twist: Mickie and his sidekick Sam [Samantha] are middle-schoolers, and their nemesis is the principal. They encounter and set out to solve various mysteries around their school. The Faux Fiction voice actors are terrific, and the sound effects discerning and clever. This is good stuff. We have the first two episodes from Season 2, which we’ll publish this week and next. We’ll publish subsequent episodes…

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From left to right: Violet Faux as Samantha, Lucas Faux as Mickie, Leann Faux as Burner and Writer-Director Ruby Faux.   Here’s the news, Fictional Cafe habitués: Although this is the last episode in the story of the chemistry lab explosion, it’s not the last in the Mickie McKinney story. If you like what you’ve listened to here, please head over to Faux Fiction Audio to listen to more. The next episode is “Brain and Brawn.” This is such a unique theme in today’s podcasting, featuring a teenager in middle school who solves mysteries and problems for his classmates. A tip of the barista hats to Ruby Fink, the series creator, and to all the folks who listened to weekly episodes on her site. They have inspired her to keep going. She and her talented team…

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