On Holiday

It’s a little dark in here right now. The cups and saucers and plates and silverware are all cleaned

You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to — The Outer Limits.

and put away. The tables are arranged in their proper order, chairs are set upside down on top. The coffee pots and espresso machine are unplugged.  The door’s locked and the lights are off.

We’re closed for a bit. Not too long, though; only a couple of weeks while we all take a little breather.

We’ve been writing here at the Café since the first week of January 2012 with two and sometimes three posts a day all week long on a wide range of topics. We started sharing our flash fiction in March of 2012 and we’ve all had a great time.

We had a staff meeting recently and took a good look at what we’ve accomplished. We are the proud owners of an insightful resource and repository of personalized writing experiences and interesting flash fiction. It’s been one heckuva ride so far and the writers are getting published, finishing and submitting novels and there’s a clear path behind us to show for it. Now we’re ready to REALLY get things going.

In fact, we’re more pumped up than ever.

We’ll be back on April 1^st with more great posts about a wide range of topics and MORE FREE FICTION than ever before.

Every week our writers will tackle the topics we’ve asked ourselves about. Every day will be a single post allowing our faithful readers the chance to absorb and ponder the writing. You’ll have more chances to comment and keep up with what we’re doing. And every day will be different. Monday may be a Writer’s Life post while Tuesday is a Flash Fiction and Wednesday would be something about the writer’s process. If Tuesday is a Flash Fiction and Thursday is, too, it may be that the stories will be from different prompts, including our work in progress: Straeon Manor.

We’re jazzed to bring you these changes. We hope you’ll find them as exciting as we do. Thank you so much for your patronage so far. Bear with us while we make things better.

In the meantime, we asked the writers to share with you their favorite post of the last year or so. Feel free – in fact, PLEASE – check ‘em out and comment. Share your thoughts with the authors and stay tuned.

The best is yet to come.

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Amanda is off doing what writers do best… Getting drunk. However she is around people, so check back in a few weeks when she manages to recover from a panic attack inspired by social anxiety.

Kevin Wohler: “Trophies” — Although this story was written as part of our Straeon Manor stories, it was actually an excuse to work on a character I had wanted to write for some time. Setting the story in the late 1920s gave me an excuse to do some research on that decade.

Sara Lundberg: My very favorite part of the Cafe is our monthly flash fiction assignments. I’m always so proud of what my fellow Confabulators come up with, and I’ve been pleased with the way the prompts have twisted my brain to produce some interesting stories. My favorite by far is the story I wrote called “Munitions Run.” Each word I put down begged even more backstory, so one of these days I’d like to flesh out the world. For now, here’s a teaser of what will hopefully someday be a full fledged novel.

Ashley: I think one of my favorite posts was still the first flash fiction I did — “The Dock Worker“, that one where aliens eat babies. (ZOMG SPOILERS) It’s not that it was my best writing or even terribly good (not even my favorite story to come out of the flash fiction, really). There’s just something about the character Abra and the situation that I’ve always loved. I’ve always meant to write more about Abra.

Jason Arnett: Picking just one favorite is difficult but there’s no need to go on about, I suppose. All of us have our darlings, our babies. The Straeon Manor stories were fun, especially the second one (“A Delicate Man“), and I enjoyed seeing how Ted Boone and Christie Holland both used bits of my first story. My favorite post, though, has to be my Revenge story, “What Is Best In Life“. That topic was my suggestion and everyone did great work on that one. I think all cylinders were firing for all of us then.

Christie Holland: My favorite part of the Cafe has always been writing fiction.  While I love seeing my fellow Cafe members’ thoughts on different parts of writing, seeing how we interpret the same prompt is really fun.  My favorite short story that I’ve written is “A Certain Kind of Magic“.  It was the first story that I had in my head that came out exactly as I wanted it to.  It’s also one of the first stories that I thought was really good and I was proud to show it to all of my friends.

Ted Boone: “Gravity” — The juxtaposition of ancient culture and far-flung future humanity was challenging, especially in light of the 1000 word flash-fiction limit. I’m really pleased with the end result.

Cafe Management

Cafe Management is run by the administration of The Confabulator Cafe. We keep things running smoothly, post stories by guest authors, and manage other boring back-end tasks.