Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

“Dave!” Ann took a step backwards. “It isn’t your business where I am.” She sashayed across the marble floor on her Jimmy Choos and pressed a button. Georgy, sitting on a black leather sofa in red Armani casuals, could now hear the conversation. “What the hell have I done with what?” Ann’s neck jutted forward. “Polite, Dave. We’re divorced now.” She wiggled her hips over to the sofa and sat on its wide armrest. Georgy’s large hand cradled her buttocks. “You had your netsuke collection valued? The best pieces have been replaced by copies?” Ann laughed. “You told the judge you don’t have a netsuke collection.” Georgy patted Ann’s buttocks. “Like you didn’t have a Jag. Remember? A year before the divorce. You changed it for a Fiesta and told me you’d lost all your money.” She stalked over to a cabinet and chose a small object. “Polite, Dave, or I’ll put the phone down.” Ann fluttered her eyelash implants at Georgy. “If you do have a Jag and a netsuke collection, we’ll have to go before t

Greetings all! Just to let you know, for those of you who may not have noticed, we have decided to run our Cafe Aphra Flash Fiction Fridays series on a fortnightly basis from now on. Looking forward to reading your work and posting up some beautiful polished gems every other Friday! Please do check our Submissions guidelines before emailing us your work.  Also, Cafe Aphra now has a Twitter account... so for those of you who tweet, check us out and follow us on Twitter! See you soon... 

When I started working on my first novel, I felt very enthusiastic about creating my own little universe full of different characters. As the story was set in a village involving several main as well as minor characters I had to come up with a lot of mini subplots, which ideally shouldn't distract but rather complete the main storyline.  Although readers cannot always put a name to it, flat, two-dimensional or non-credible minor characters can be a real turn-off and mark the difference between a good book and a great book. What can writers do about this? In selected creative writing guidebooks or workshops it is suggested that an author should write a short biography of all the important characters before starting to write the actual story. This is a great way to "get to know" the protagonists, even if none of these biographies end up in the final product. The characters will acquire a more real, complete feel. This is certainly good, valuable advice. In fact, man

“Hola, Señorita. You wanna look?” The dark man sat on the shimmering sand with his legs coiled beneath him. In his hand, a red velvet tray of silver-plated jewelry sparkled in the afternoon sun.  The girl shaded her eyes and took one step closer, clutching the hummingbird-shaped coin purse that her parents had filled with pesos for the week. She pointed at a butterfly ring. “How much is that one?” He smiled wide enough for her to see his two gold eyeteeth. “Is 500 pesos. For you 250. Come, Guapa, I put on your finger.” His mud brown eyes weren’t looking into her hazel ones. He eyed her ruffled Bugs Bunny bikini. The girl crossed her arms over her flat chest and took one step back. “Ohhh, you no like? OK, Bonita, look at dis big one.” The girl glanced down, but he wasn’t holding a ring, he was pointing at something that hung out of his shorts, lying on the sand like a fat brown snake. “You ever see one of dees, Princesita?” She couldn’t answer or

Geoff put his half-eaten cheese & pickle bloomer to one side and tentatively opened the letter, his gnarled arthritic fingers trembling. He paused momentarily, gazed out through the living room window towards number six where the woman with those bloody terriers lived. The two little yapping bastards that almost gave him a cardiac on Tuesday. Again. He gently tugged at the letter and pulled it free from the dirty white envelope, an envelope that had seen better days. It, along with its unopened contents, had taken up long-term residency in the greenhouse on the shelf behind the empty jam jar. Compost-caked fingers had toyed with it for far too long, his fear always triumphing over his desire. It was franked ‘Biggleswade, 19 March 2013’. Almost a year ago to the day. His stomach churned and he felt the bilious gas rise from the pit of his stomach, the acidic burn of Branston’s singeing his nostrils.  The writing was a childlike scrawl, almost illegib