Jim Best lives in Kansas, where lately raging rain has caused rivers to rise and towns to be flooded in epic proportions. So perhaps his latest novel, Deluge, is prescient. Taking a break from his phenomenally successful Steve Dancy westerns, Deluge is set in the present, but its antecedents are in 1862, when a sixty-five-day downpour pummeled the western United States. California suffered the brunt of the storm. Almost a third of the state was under water, roads were impassible, telegraph lines down, rivers overflowed, hundreds of people died, and hundreds of thousands of animals drowned. Sacramento remained under water for six months, forcing the state government to move to San Francisco. Geological evidence shows that a flood of this magnitude hits the western United States every one to two hundred years. Well, it’s been a…
PictureStories with Grant Kreinberg
After a four-year absence, Grant Kreinberg returns to the Fictional Café with some new photographs for which he, Sarah and Jack have written prose and poetry captions. We hope your imagination flies, as did ours, and you enjoy the mood-setting provided by Grant’s images and our impressions. “Port Costa Doll” I gasped as the angel appeared, seemingly from the golden mist that arose from the apothecaries. At first glance I thought she seemed a puppet, but she moved in ways that said she was not. She shimmered, and I was aroused but then ashamed, for I was certain she was only a child. Then I saw the words, “A charming surprise,” and I wondered. ** “Who Said What?” He said . . . she said . . . the eternal misunderstanding. ** “All…
“All the Rage” by Lynne Conrad
Cold fear seized Lucy as she mashed the Mustang’s gas pedal further down; her speed now hovered at eighty-eight. She peered into the rearview mirror, terrified by the man in the dented black Ford truck riding her bumper. She had peeled away from the curb in front of the nail salon when this truck pulled up beside her and the driver laid on the horn, waving his fist at her and shouting hoarse curses out of the open window. “Shut up and move on! I didn’t do anything to you!” Lucy screamed out her window, but this guy’s response—it had to be a guy, she thought—was to rev the truck’s engine as he drove along beside her. People walking along the sidewalks stopped and stared. The truck driver slowed and fell back, so she…
Exploring Literary Trilogies and Tetralogies by Victoria Merkle
Editor’s Note: The trilogy and tetralogy are commonplace in genre fiction: science-fiction, fantasy, mystery. But what of literature? Tori Merkle dissects the phenomenon and helps us understand its often unrecognized significance, not only in storytelling but in an author’s oeuvre. Literary Chronicles: An Exploration of Trilogies and Tetralogies in Literary Fiction by Tori Merkle It’s a fact of storytelling: chronicles sell. Series novels, commonly a trilogy or tetralogy, are especially popular in genre fiction—we sit waiting and watching for the next sci-fi or fantasy saga to top the bestseller list and then hit the box office. Once we get the first luscious taste of a fictional world, we’re ravenous for more. We become attached to the characters as if they’re intimate friends. We’re eager to know what happens next. This is the same energy that…
Thoreau Didn’t Need a God of Consolation: Six Flash Fictions by Mitch Grabois
Photo credit: Beverly Bambury Editor’s Note: Mitchell Grabois’ work nearly defies naming conventions, and that’s a good thing. It’s how new plants, birds, constellations and literary genres are born. We asked Mitch what name he gave to these creative, innovative set pieces, because they transcend the commonly known genres. They are almost anti-plot; the narrating character could be the author or someone else, but we can’t be certain; the prose structure leans into the movements in a musical work. Here’s what Mitch replied: “I consider these flash fictions because they are written in prose and they tell stories (though perhaps not conventional ones). Thanks for considering the work poetic—as you know, in much literary fiction there are elements of poetry in the prose.” Infidelity 1. I hid behind a tree, not the Tree of Knowledge or…