Editor’s Note: I met Holly Guran at a poetry reading one chilly night in December. She told me that she had heard of The Fictional Café because her friend Maria Termini told her about the site. Now, for a literary magazine as small as ours, meeting someone who’s heard of your publication is a pretty big deal. Needless to say, I was flattered and encouraged upon hearing this news. Well it turns out that Holly is a darn good poet herself! After reading some of her work online, I was struck by one of her poems about yesteryear. It was part historical fiction, part lyrical voyage. I was enticed by the visuals her poetry created – of a life so much different than mine in an area I have visited a dozen times (mostly for…

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Editor’s Note: This story is a lead-in for A. J.’s latest novel, Forgiving Mariela Camacho,  which is the follow-up to his first novel, Forgiving Maximo Rothman. If you enjoy “A Glint of Metal,” you can follow the characters in his newest thriller. This is part 2 of 2.   * * *   Captain McCloskey yawned then looked at his watch. “Kurchenko, let’s get this over with.” “I thought you should be here for this,” Tolya said. “You were right to think so, but don’t you think this could have waited till later this morning instead of the middle of the night? IA will have to be here for an official inquest.” “I know but under the circumstances I thought we should have a kind of off-the-record conversation with Billy before this thing hits the…

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Editor’s Note: This story is a lead-in for A. J.’s latest novel, Forgiving Mariela Camacho,  which is the follow-up to his first novel, Forgiving Maximo Rothman. If you enjoy “A Glint of Metal,” you can follow the characters in his newest thriller. This is part 1 of 2.   * * *   Washington Heights, New York May 8, 2015   Pete slept with his cell phone on the night table, the sound off, the flasher on. He was no stranger to middle-of-the-night calls from the precinct. No cop was, that’s the cop life. “Gonzalvez,” he said, grabbing the phone and catapulting out of the bed so as not to wake Glynnis. The time read 2:12. “Pete,” Tolya said. “Yeah, who were you expecting?” He passed Jeremy’s room on the way to the living room,…

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John, the narrator of this funny, fascinating, futuristic story, is dead. As he spins his tale of what it’s like on the other side, he’s also trying to figure out why he’s dead and who got him that way – hence the title. We’re swept up in a Machiavellian mystery tale that takes us into the world of wisps and preeps, to the Burj Khalifa, to Fameland as John tries to figure out who done him in. We published “Who Done Me In” in five parts earlier, but now offer it to you in one complete post.   Who Done Me In? How Dick Cheney, Grace Hopper, Ada Lovelace, Gilgamesh, and A Few Others Solved My Afterlife Mystery by John Martinson Part I It was a while before I figured out I was dead. Days, weeks, or whatever passes…

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Your baristas, Caitlin, Jack, Jason and Mike, would like to wish you, the members of our Fictional Café Coffee Club, a Happy Holidays season. Hey, even if you’re reading this but not yet a member, we still wish you the best of the season. [Maybe it’s time for you to join us?] In any event, here’s a very short but very charming story from our friend and contributor, Lloyd R. Prentice, author of The Gospel of Ashes, a thriller we excerpted here at the FC last month [“titled “Carmichael“], Freein’ Pancho, and the three-volume manga Aya Takeo. Catch up with Lloyd and his books at his Amazon site.  Santa Has Second Thoughts: A PG13 Christmas story When Santa on his yearly round narrowly dodged a shoulder-fired missile, he proclaimed, “Enough is enough!” This went far beyond marking up…

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