The Confabulator Cafe

Author: barista

  • March Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    The Confabulator Cafe has been generating fiction in some capacity or another since its inception in 2012. In that time, the Confabulators have produced over 200 original short stories.

    We have quite the impressive body of work, if we do say so ourselves. If you ever feel like perusing past work, head on over to the Fiction page. Just be careful. You could get lost down the rabbit hole once you get started.

    For March, we decided to use that list of stories as prompts. We challenged ourselves to choose a title from the 200+ stories that have been written, write the story we felt went with that title, and then give the story a new title. All without reading the original tale until all of those steps were complete.

    It is fascinating to see how our own creativity has sparked additional creativity. We have all linked the original story that prompted the new story (at the end of the story, though, to avoid any potential spoilers).

    We hope you’ll enjoy a double dose of Cafe stories this month, and delve into our (sometimes shady) past as we forage ahead into the future.

    Here’s the March schedule:

    Friday, March 4: “The Tithe for Broken Dreams” by Sara Lundberg
    Wednesday, March 9: “The Sea and the Sky” by Emily Mosher
    Monday, March 14: “To Simplify Sadly ” by Rob Conway
    Friday, March 18: “The Last Sunny Day” by Dianne Williams
    Wednesday, March 23: “Missing Days” by Eliza Jaquays
    Monday, March 28: “A House with Many Doors” by Jack Campbell, Jr.

  • February Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    We hope you enjoyed leftover month at the Cafe. Now that we’re firmly into 2016, we’re all back in action and ready to write new fiction based on brand-new prompts.

    This month, our prompt was a fill-in-the-blank line. The line was: “There’s no ___ in this house. This probably won’t end well.” Some chose to use the line in the actual story, some just let it inspire the story, but, as always, we have a wide range of genres and tones spring from this prompt.

    We also have a brand new guest author, Rob Conway, so please make him feel welcome for his first story debut with us!

    The February schedule is below. We hope you enjoy!

    Monday, February 1: “The Promise of Running Water” by Eliza Jaquays
    Monday, February 8: “Maybe While I’m Asleep” by Sara Lundberg
    Monday, February 15: “Invisible Dad” by Emily Mosher
    Monday, February 22: “Morning Girl” by Rob Conway
    Monday, February 29: “The Shadow Thief” by Sarah Bredeman

  • January Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    Happy New Year, friends! Welcome back to another year of free fiction from us here at the Confabulator Cafe. We’re brainstorming all new prompts and preparing for another awesome year of storytelling to entertain you all.

    We’re kicking off this year with a 2015 throwback, though. January is going to be what we’re calling a “leftover” month, because after the holidays, we’re too tired to cook and we still have tons of frozen leftovers from Thanksgiving and the holidays.

    So visit us all this month for a bit of a “best-of” as we all revisit our favorite prompt from 2015. And keep coming back all year for brand new, free fiction that we write just for you.

    Here’s the January schedule!

    Friday, January 1: “Autumn’s Fall” by Sara Lundberg
    Friday, January 8: “Home in Time for Cake” by Aspen Junge
    Monday, January 11: “The Cat Came Back” by Emily Mosher
    Friday, January 15: “The Cow of Cthulhu” by Jack Campbell, Jr.
    Friday, January 22: “The Stork’s Feather” by Dianne Williams
    Friday, January 29: “The Workers’ Tower” by Ashley M. Hill

  • December Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    NaNoWriMo has drawn to a close, and we’re back to our regularly scheduled stories for December.

    So, here we are, friends. The last month of the year and the last batch of stories for 2015. We hope you have enjoyed reading as much as we have writing this year.

    For December, the prompt was “unexpected gifts.” While some people took a holiday turn with that, others did not. However, all of these stories seem designed to make you think twice about accepting those gifts you weren’t expecting.

    Here’s the schedule below, so be sure to check in on these days for brand new, original free fiction! And happy holidays from us here at the Cafe.

    Friday, December 4: “WereTeddy” by Dianne Williams
    Wednesday, December 9: “What Kind of Mother” by Emily Mosher
    Friday, December 18: “The Smell of Christmas” by Eliza Jaquays
    Wednesday, December 23: “The Fruit Cake Invasion” by Sara Lundberg
    Monday, December 28: “The Gift of Flesh” by Jack Campbell, Jr

  • November is National Novel Writing Month

    It’s November, and that means National Novel Writing Month. For those of you who don’t know, NaNo is a writing contest where you try to write 50,000 words in a month.

    Most of the Confabulators participate in this contest every year, so our format for November switches from monthly flash fiction to weekly liveblogging our progress.

    So follow along with us this month as we all set off on the great writing adventure that is NaNoWriMo.

    Flash fiction will return in December.

    So, best of luck to you if you are participating in NaNo, and we’ll see you on the flip side!

  • October Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    October is a wonderfully colorful and crispy time for writers to write. There are all sorts of associations with October and fall: pumpkin spice, sweaters, pie, haunted houses, Halloween, autumn leaves, death and decay, zombies, ghost, ghouls…ok, maybe that’s just us.

    This month, the Confabulators were asked to write about either fall and/or Halloween to fit with the mood of the season. Some of these stories might not be for the faint of heart.

    We hope you enjoy, and leave us feeling cozy and…haunted.

    New stories go live on Mondays and Thursdays this month. Here is the lineup. Don’t miss a day!

    Thursday, October 8: “Birdie” by Dianne Williams
    Monday, October 12: “Harvest Party” by Emily Mosher
    Thursday, October 15: “Secrets of Passages” by Jason Arnett
    Monday, October 19: “The Murder Cabin” by Sarah Bredeman
    Thursday, October 22: “Beneath the Waves” by Eliza Jaquays
    Monday, October 26: “Alexandria’s Halloween” by Anita C. Young
    Thursday, October 29: “Party at Pinehurst” by Jack Campbell, Jr.

  • September Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    It is often said that all stories have already been told, we’re all just rehashing the same plots over and over with our own unique perspectives.

    So this month at the Cafe, we intentionally did just that. We were challenged to write a retelling of a fairy tale, mythological story, or urban legend. See if you can recognize the original tales these stories came from this month. We hope you enjoy these strange and different retellings of common tales.

    Here’s the schedule this month:

    Thursday, September 3: “The Blind Poet’s Dog” by Emily Mosher
    Thursday, September 10: “Goldilocks and the Three Empty Cryopods” by Dianne Williams
    Monday, September 14: “Skinwalker” by Anita Young
    Thursday, September 17: “The Prince and the Poltergeist” by Sara Lundberg
    Monday, September 21: “The Sleeping Strategy” by Neil Siemers

  • August Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    We hope you all enjoyed our setting prompt last month. This month, the Confabulators were given a new challenge: to all write stories all using the same first and last lines.

    While all of our stories will begin and end the same, you will be amazed at the wide range of different stories that happen sandwiched between those common lines. We will let you discover for yourself what those lines are, and as you read, see if you can figure out how each author will get to their final destination.

    Not only are we exploring a wide range of prompts, we are also collecting a wide range of new guest authors, as well. This month, in addition to having a repeat offender, Topekan Anita C. Young, we will also have a debut story from Sarah Bredeman, a Kansas City resident, add her voice into the mix. Please welcome them both to our world of pure Confabulation.

    Here’s the August line-up:

    Thursday, August 6: “Glitterbomb!!” by Eliza Jaquays
    Monday, August 10: “The Glowstone Quest” by Anita C. Young
    Thursday, August 13: “Midnight’s Mission” by Sara Lundberg
    Monday, August 17: “Control” by Kevin Wohler
    Thursday, August 20: “Don’t Let Me Drown” by Sarah Bredeman
    Thursday, August 27: “Death World One” by Dianne Williams

  • July Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    Hello readers. Thank you for visiting our website, where authors create short fiction for you to enjoy for free every month. We are about to embark on our sixth month of monthly writing prompts. We hope you have enjoyed what you’ve read up to this point and will stick with us as we continue to get better and write toward new and different prompts.

    For July, the Confabulators were given a setting prompt. The setting: a dining room. Stories had to take place only in a dining room. Flashbacks could happen elsewhere, but all action and all telling had to take place in a dining room. It seems limiting, but we put no restrictions on what kind of dining room. Maybe the dining room doesn’t belong to a human. Maybe the dining room is in outer space. Join us for the month of July to see where our writers took this prompt.

    In other exciting news, we have our first two guest bloggers contributing stories to the Confabulator Cafe this month. We hope you’ll welcome Anita Young and Emily Mosher with the same warmth you receive the rest of us with each month.

    Here is the July schedule, so be sure to check back each week on the days below for new free fiction!

    Friday, July 3: “Parchment and Paper” by Neil Siemers
    Thursday, July 9: “Death of Underwood” by Anita Young
    Sunday, July 12: “The Lonely Ghost Meets the Hungry Ghost” by Sara Lundberg
    Wednesday, July 15, “The Rest of Us: Bottoms Up” by Jack Campbell, Jr.
    Saturday, July 18: “Falling Feet First” by Eliza Jaquays
    Tuesday, July 21: “Super Support Group” by Emily Mosher
    Friday, July 24: “In Possession of a Mother’s Intuition” by Ashley Hill
    Monday, July 27: “The 17-Year Harvest” by Dianne Williams
    Thursday, July 30: “Love Potion No. 999” by Aspen Junge

  • June Stories at the Confabulator Cafe

    Welcome to another month of free fiction at the Confabulator Cafe. We have a brand new prompt and a whole batch of new stories lined up for you this month.

    For June, we were tasked to write stories to go with story titles we created. These titles came from a Wordle generated from titles of stories published in Clarkesworld Magazine. Clarkesworld is a science fiction magazine, so it’s actually pretty impressive that we ended up with our usual range of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories.

    If you’d like, you can take a peek at the Clarkesworld Wordle to see if you can spot the titles the Confabulators used this month. There’s lots of good title potential here, so we may revisit this prompt again in the future.

    Here is the story schedule for June. We hope that you’ll visit us every week this month and enjoy reading the stories as much as we enjoyed writing them.

    Thursday, June 4: “Deep Flight – A Tale of Broken Memories” by Neil Siemers
    Monday, June 8: “Last Men” by Eliza Jaquays
    Thursday, June 11: “Stone Gods in the Heart of the City” by Kevin Wohler
    Thursday, June 18: “Flight Mother” by Dianne Williams
    Monday, June 22: “The Heart of Stone Monsters” by Sara Lundberg
    Thursday, June 25: “The Red House” by Jack Campbell, Jr.
    Monday, June 29: “The Queen’s Skin” by Ashley Hill