June 1, 2015

The New, Improved Fictional Café Has Arrived!

The New, Improved Fictional Café  Has Arrived!

 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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June 1, 2015

The Reaper’s Daughter by K. M. Randall

The Reaper’s Daughter by K. M. Randall

Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from a newly published novel, The Reaper’s Daughter, by K. M. Randall. Be sure to watch her novel trailer here at Goodreads.   PROLOGUE Present The rolling green of her eyes was dimming fast, losing color and life to the quick click of time that beat out her days and nights, a perpetual circle that was now fading to a close. Light brown hair that had been recently styled into looping curls was limp against the black pillowcase―a metaphor for her wilted spirit, I mused, thinking offhandedly how proud my English professor would be at my thoughtful use of language. I sighed. I didn’t want to be here. When her eyes met mine, I knew she saw me for who I really was—what I really was. She reached out…

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May 19, 2015

Gramer? Speling? Who Cares?

OK, this is so unbelievable I had to include the absolute proof that it happened – on the radio. In fact, I had to go back and listen again just to make sure I understood what I heard. No mistake, I heard what I heard. The show was Ask Me Another, segment “Like A Confused Boss“, on NPR. A contestant was a college student, apparently graduating, asking her professor for help with her C.V., and annoyed with his advice. But listen for yourself. This post is definitely open for your comments!   Please click on the arrow below to listen.    

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April 27, 2015

Coffee Cup…Butts?

My nephew Luther, who lives in Chicago, is a really creative, ingenious, and funny guy. I love him a lot and follow his interests with great interest because they’re always so interesting. Like his handmade Christmas cards. Like his recent project to build a motorized volume control for his antique Marantz receiver [for those of you who don’t know what a receiver is, click here]. But I am not here to tell you about his retrofitted volume control, but to pass along another of his interests more in keeping with our own: coffee. Specifically coffee cup butts. Yes, you read that correctly. Luther has discovered the coffee equivalent of tea leaves. It hardly makes sense for me to attempt to describe what a coffee cup butt is. You’ll have to find out for yourself my clicking…

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April 25, 2015

Book Review: A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer

It was Peter Dexter who wrote, “Keep in mind that a book that entertains without enlightening can still be a guilty pleasure, but a book that enlightens without entertaining is algebra.” Joseph [X.J.] Kennedy’s delightful A Hoarse Half-Human Cheer is, admittedly, intended to entertain, yet it enlightens in being a period piece – après-guerre America, circa 1946 – foreshadowing the sprawling modern era in this country with wit, humor and irony. After you finish re-reading Heller’s “Catch-22,” this is the novel you should begin. Young Moon Gogarty is the book’s Candide, trying to deal with his stultified feelings after having lost his first love to his mortician grandmother, just as he’s about to begin his studies at the infamous College of Saint Cassian of Imola. He’s thrust into a community of 4,500 older men who’ve…

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April 17, 2015

People, Places and Things I Know on Twitter – NOT!

Why do I get these completely random Twitter notifications about people, places and things I don’t know, would never wish to know, and confound my sense of what’s spam? This is ridiculous. Google does a better job of targeting me with adverts that are at least within my interests or peer group[s]. Call it machine intelligence. Naw, call it machine irrelevance. The computer version of robocalls. And yeah, I know I can log into my account and change my preferences, but clicking the garbage can icon is quicker and more satisfying. Twitter Goes BIRDBRAINED! Tweet! Tweet! Wheeeeeeee!

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March 14, 2015

About the Podcasts

We think podcasts of books are the audio format of the future. Last year, we presented our founding barista’s novel, Wild Blue Yonder, and some other fictional works and old-time radio dramas in downloadable audio files. Jack’s been a DJ and media nut most of his life, so you never know what he’s gonna podcast next. OUR NEW PODCAST This week, we begin the new podcast series of Jack’s second novel, Madrone. It’s the second volume in the Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers story, and it’s received rave reviews from readers. Now you can listen to it here. We’ll publish one chapter a week for the next 24 weeks. The podcast is read by Leonard Mailloux, a lifelong radio broadcaster and broadcast writing practitioner. Len is Senior Faculty in the Communications Department at Simmons College. Sound engineering by Walking…

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December 23, 2014

The Sketchbooks of Jonathan Shih

Jonathan Shih lives in Taipei, Taiwan, although he lived for many years in the U.S., mostly in New York, where he earned his MBA and worked in finance.  You cannot say he has retired, for his interests and activities keep him busy every day. A prime activity is his art. He carries a sketchbook wherever he goes. We met up in a beef noodle restaurant on TaoYuan Street in Taipei. [BTW, the beef noodle soup was exceptional!] Jonathan arrived with three sketchbooks under his arm, and I had to know what they were all about. He told me these three were just for the past few weeks – he regularly fills four to five sketchbooks a month. Clearly, art is his passion. I began browsing through the sketchbooks and quickly decided we should feature his work here at…

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December 13, 2014

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, I Can’t Breathe, Die-In Demonstrations

  The country is experiencing demonstrations across the country to protest police killing unarmed black people with alacrity. We, as a culture, seem to have reached a tipping point. “To Protect and Serve” as been besmirched by Michael Brown’s “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and Eric Garner’s “I Can’t Breathe.” Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice never even got a chance to surrender. We know what’s going on and we know it needs to change. People are speaking out, staging “die-ins” to express their concern [and of course being arrested for it by the police]. I raise my voice and concern and support by sharing this song, “Why Can’t We Live Together” by Diana King with Kyle Eastwood. For me, it says it all, and I know the artists feel the same. I hope you will, too. Jack From the…

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