The Best of CaféLit

We'll shortly be looking at all of the stories we've published between 15 October 2012 and 15 October 2013 in CaféLit, the e-zine that supports the work of the Creative Café project. It contains short stories that are linked to a drink. If you're in the mood to drink hot chocolate you may find a story that goes with that. And if you’re reading CaféLit on your phone or tablet in a café or looking at a copy of one of the “Best of” books, then that café actually ought to be in the project.  Do send us details!

CaféLit has recently published quite a few what we call 100-worders. These are pieces of fiction 100 words long. If we can get up to 100 of these, and it’s looking likely, we’re going to publish a little square book. Are you up for the challenge? Find details here.   

CaféLit anyway is always looking for more conventional short stories. Submission details here. 

We publish CaféLit in two different places – on a dedicated web site but also on Blogger. Blogger enables us to judge which are all-time most popular stories and on 1 January 2014 we’ll be announcing first, second and third place. There will be a prize!

You can order individual copies of the Best of CaféLit 2011 and 2012 from the links below. From 1 November there will be a special Christmas offer on orders for five copies plus, mixed and matched between the two titles.   

Happy reading, writing and coffee drinking!            

 

 

Expansion of the Creative Café Project

We’re forcing a period of growth right now – well someone has to. We have a few plans afoot.

New web site 

We’ve taken the old Creative Café Project web site down and we’re going to be putting up a brand new one soon. We hope to make this searchable. In the meantime we’re using this blog as the main form of communication.  We’re aiming for:

Getting more cafés involved

We want to find more and more cafés worldwide who will take part in the project. This will mean more administration but we will allow cafés to self-register or other people to register for them. We’d still keep some control in vetting registrations before they went live.

Increasing income

We want to do this without charging cafés, creative practitioners and the public a fee except for when we provide a service other than what is just part of the Creative Café Project’s ethos.  For example, we might charge a fee for a speed-dating session. This would not aim to make a profit but if it did, that could be donated to the Project. It would normally just cover costs.

We want to raise further income:

·         Through donations

·         Sales of the Best of CafeLit

·         Fund raising events

·         Ethical, appropriate advertising

Employ more people

We want to get enough people working on the Project so that it works properly. These people shouldn’t be working for no return. The return could be in kind but we’d like to put this on a proper business footing. Except: we’re not really a business. We don’t want to make a profit. We’re in effect a social enterprise. Any surplus to expenditure would go into creating something new within the Café.

This is about building up and contrasts with the dumbing down that is going on presently.             

Encouraging involvement of cafés

Many café owners / managers and creative practitioners are doing what they do well and that maintains the spirit of the Creative Café project. We’d like to set up a system where they can share ideas more with each other and mentor those newer to the project.    

And coming soon

Free competition to find the first Creative Café Project artist in residence. Watch this space.