November 5, 2019

Novel Excerpt 1: “Kado,” by Rusty Braziel

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

Editor’s Note: We’re excited to premier Kado, a new adventure novel, today and tomorrow. Today, the Introduction, Foreword and Chapter 9, followed by Chapter 10 tomorrow. Kado was published today on Amazon and is available as a hardcover, Kindle and Audible book. Get yours here. Introduction It is the early 1800s in the new frontier west of the Mississippi. Eighteen-year-old Tom Murrell could never understand his father’s dreams of carving a new life out of the wilderness. He wanted to do something else with his life besides spend it behind a plow, but with the family moving to the Red River in Arkansaw Territory, he was stuck. Everything changes for Tom when he witnesses the death of Tiatesun, spiritual leader of the Kadohadacho tribe, and is drawn into a raging conflict between the Kado and…

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November 2, 2019

“In Thought, Word and Deed,” by Jose Oseguera

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

By the time Paul and Ariela reached the Caravaggio exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, they decided to stop avoiding the urge to hold hands, and finally interlaced fingers. The tingling sensation first came to him when he handed her the red LACMA sticker, she needed to wear in order to be allowed in all the special exhibits. Paul squeezed her hand as if it would fall out of his if he didn’t. She blushed. He smiled, showing more teeth than he’d intended. Paul was born in Mexico, but was adopted as an infant by white evangelical Christian missionaries who decided to bring him home to Rialto, California along with all the goat’s milk candy they could fit in their luggage. Although his parents had tried to instill as much Hispanic culture in him…

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October 27, 2019

Mind-Melding with Lew Holzman’s Art

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Fine Art, Member Writing & Art, Writing

We’re pleased to showcase Lew’s unique expression of the intersection of photography and painting once again. His work first appeared here, and was featured again in our just-published anthology, The Strong Stuff: The Best of Fictional Café, 2013-2017. Artist’s Statement There are many beautiful or interesting moments that one can capture but we’ve seen many of them too many times. I always attempt to avoid the clichéd. My work is transformational so that we might look again and see things somehow differently. I am trying to blur the distinction between photography and painting with influences mainly from late 19th and 20th-century art movements including Surrealism, Dadaism, and abstract expressionism. *** I have always created either word images in my poetry or visual images. Digital photography expanded my horizons and my transformations transformed me into a…

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October 24, 2019

“Variations on the Trolly Problem” and Other Poems by JP Mayer

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

de rerum natura and I realized I was the pieces I was picking up, all scattered across the floor, all technicolor fragments of static jettisons from far away; I am a farmer in Kansas. I am a doctor in Nairobi. I am a prisoner in Beijing and a pilot in Lahore and a fisherman off the coast of Jeju Island; the saltwater pulls at them with its ebb tide but all the same the lines on my hands are not ones that can be washed away ** love in lost time I shot Proust dead in an alleyway on my way home from work. It was something he said it was love is a reciprocal torture his body hit the pavement with a thud. It started raining on my walk home and I…

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October 21, 2019

“Stan the Sous-Chef,” by Wilson Koewing

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

Stan the sous-chef turned forty-seven on a Sunday. A fishing rod and an apron were painted in icing on his cake. After his modestly attended party, Stan cleaned streamers off furniture and vacuumed up confetti. When the guests were gone, and Stan knew his wife, Cathy, and his adult son, Jamie, were occupied, he wandered outside and released a happy birthday balloon into the sky. Stan stood in his driveway watching the balloon rise and float away for a very long time. Stan had been given his birthday off at work, the New Orleans Country Club, and since the club is dark on Mondays, Stan received two days off in a row. A phenomenon that had never occurred in the seven years he’d worked there. Taking advantage, Stan enjoyed a quiet day of fishing for…

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Novel Excerpt 1: “Kado,” by Rusty Braziel

“In Thought, Word and Deed,” by Jose Oseguera

Mind-Melding with Lew Holzman’s Art

“Variations on the Trolly Problem” and Other Poems by JP Mayer

“Stan the Sous-Chef,” by Wilson Koewing

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