Looking for that unique, thoughtful gift for your valentine?
Has your loved one always wanted to write but didn’t know how to begin? Does he/she write in a journal? Write poetry? Write short stories? These journals include ‘how to’ sections, inspiring quotes from other writers and lots of blank pages for your own creative writing.
This ‘Creative Writer’s Journal is the perfect gift.
Dear Trisha,
Congratulations, this is just a quick notice to let you know that your poem Fall Opens the Door is one of the
poems being featured on the PoetrySoup.com home page this week. Poems are rotated each day in groups of 14-16 to give each poem an equal opportunity to be displayed.
Thanks again and congratulations.
PoetrySoup
Fall Opens the Door © (Renku)
morning sun dapples
trees in a polka-dot dress
shines soft green and light
chilly hint of autumn
smells of summer, loam, and pause
visions of winter
sap returns from leaves
to store deep in the tree heart
yellow, red, orange, burnt
Note: Renku is a style of Haiku
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I have a few gripes as I grow older and thought I would probably have an audience that can 
relate!
1. Please! No child-proof caps on my medicine….these old hands cannot open them.
2. Whenever I say ‘thank you’ to anyone under 50 the answer I get is ‘no problem‘. What happened to ‘you’re welcome’? ‘No problem’ implies that whatever they did for me to incite a ‘thank you’ might have been a problem for them.
3. Change in driving habits: decades before we put a name to yelling, flipping someone off, etc., it wasn’t road rage….it was freedom of speech. In my twenties, I went so far as to make a plaster mold of a hand flipping ‘the bird’ so I could wave it out my window! Now? I am a meek and courteous driver…you want to beat me to wherever you are going….be my guest!
4. Even though the population is getting older and older we still don’t garner any respect from the younger generation. Ageism is alive and well in this country. Tip: From my stints in the hospital this year I learned something very important. DO SOMETHING to make the staff at the hospital notice you (in a good way). Show them that you are a human being worthy of their care. My idea (and it worked!) was to take the day and night shifts copies of my books. I instantly became a celebrity and I swear I received better care.
5. People who drive for miles with their directional signal on…..their music is so loud that they can’t hear the clicking the signal makes, or they are busy on their phones and they are oblivious to everything else.
6. People who talk too fast…..you know what I tell them? “You’re talking faster than my ears can listen…would you repeat that last bit…and slower?”
7. Work ethic…….where the heck did it go? These young people say they can’t find a job…….oh really?……….there’s lots of minimum wage jobs out there and that can lead to a ‘non-minimum’ paying job. But what do I know? One of my first jobs was waitressing in a cafe at $1.00 per hour. Yep, after working 40 hours I came away with a paycheck of $40. less taxes and was GRATEFUL for the job.
8. Only one thing I like better than paper post-it-notes and that is the electronic ones. At my age if it isn’t on a post-it, it doesn’t exist and therefore doesn’t get done!
9. Drivers: So I’m driving on a four lane, city street, and up ahead someone is stopping to turn left….I have plenty of room to change lanes and use the outside lane to get by. Wrong!! The driver had stopped in his lane, and as I passed I see his right-turn signal on. He turns right across two lanes of traffic and into a driveway. Warning: If you come to Savannah, beware of the drivers…….they are the worst I’ve ever seen.
10. Tupperware! After some 40 years the lid on one of my Tupperware bowl cracked. (I wonder how healthy it was to keep using the plastic storage bowls that long.) So my new bowls arrived …..yes the company is still producing Tupperware bowls. The lids are different but the colors are so much more fun!
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5 out of 5 quills The COUNTERFEIT HEIRESS
by Tasha Alexander
A fourth of the way through this intricately crafted story I wondered to myself if it was based on a true story. And whad’ya know? Truth is stranger than fiction. It’s based very loosely on an American Heiress who recreated the physical environment of her own captivity after she was rescued. And that’s all I’m going to say about the that! It’s a treat!
It’s early 19th century, England, and our two favorite sleuths, Emily and Colin are called upon to find a missing heiress….missing for over twenty years; most likely dead. Tasha Alexander takes us (chapter by chapter) from their clever detective work to the room where the heiress is being kept. At no point in the story is the reader certain whether she is alive or dead. How can a woman survive in a coffin-like room? Continue reading “Missing! and Feared Dead…a Review”
Q. How long after that were you published?
A. If you mean traditionally published, I was never published that way. I had four different NYC and London agents over the years, and had the opportunity several times, but at the end of the day I am too much of a control freak. I can’t stand the idea of letting other people title my books, write my blurbs, jacket copy, design my covers, and generally market and distribute the book. To me, a book is one entity, and all those things are part of it. Different facets of the final product. As soon as I start writing a new book I start thinking about the title, the cover image, the blurb, the synopsis, and I often stop and work on these things in the middle of the book. This helps me focus. This is the reason I self-published and probably will always self-publish. It’s impossible to have any control over those things in traditional publishing.
Q. What makes a writer great?
A. Lots of readers who think so. Full stop. Writing (fiction writing) is art, and all art is subjective. There is no absolute standard to judge it by. Plenty of experts even think Shakespeare was a “bad” writer.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. It’s quite a mess, honestly. Continue reading “Interview with author, Mike Wells (part 2)”
An Interview with Mike Wells *** ‘Unputdownable Thrillers’
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?
A. I like to write outside if the weather is warm enough, which is one reason I live most of the year in Cyprus. I usually write on our veranda, or at an outdoor cafe by the beach. I like to move around to different places, keeps things stirred up.
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
A. No. Those kinds of things (IMO) can turn into excuses not to write, I broke myself of anything like that a long time ago. I’m generally a very flexible and adaptable person, don’t get dependent much on physical elements like that.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
A. I can’t throw up. Continue reading “Interview with successful self-published Author, Mike Wells”
Rating: 5 out of 5 quills “Suspicion at Seven” by Ann Purser
These plots shouldn’t work……but they do in the most charming and understated way. The owner of New Brooms, Lois Meade is an amateur sleuth and has a team of ‘cleaners’ (merry maids) that keep their ears to the ground when foul play occurs. Cunningly simple and a delight for readers.
The setting is a small village in rural England where Lois has lived most of her life. She has raised three
children and now lives with her husband, Derek, and her mother, Gran, who rules the house with an ungloved hand. (no velvet gloves here!)
Village life and all the characters that make up a community are artfully woven into each mystery. Continue reading “It Shouldn’t Work….A Review “Suspicion at Seven””
I was recently working on my blog, and fiction that I had written over a year ago I realized as I cut and pasted excerpts from my writings (in preparation to posting on my own site, www.poetrysoup.com and other sites) that with all the flurry of editing, rewriting, deleting, (I have grown to love my delete key) and proofing I rarely stop to enjoy the final product.
And when I do go back, it’s always with an editor’s eye and I am very critical. I could have done so much better! Do you ever feel that way?
So as I was organizing and doing the housekeeping that a web site requires, I took a moment. As I chose and inserted excerpts, I stopped to just enjoy the poetry of the words, the dry humor in a line of dialogue, or a quip from one of my fictional characters…. Continue reading “Don’t forget to go back and……”
Q. What makes a writer great?
A. I think unforgettable stories and characters. People talk about beautiful turns of phrases, and lovely writing is a joy to read, but unforgettable characters and wonderful stories makes a writer’s work live on. Dickens created some of the most unforgettable characters in literature, and some amazing stories and so his work lives on, even if people don’t read him — his characters and stories have entered popular culture so deeply that people who’ve never heard of Dickens know Scrooge and Miss Haversham and Fagin.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. I think the important thing is to push on. Writers (IMO) tend to give up for two basic reasons — 1) they endlessly tweak and fiddle with the writing, and never get to finish the story. Perfectionism gets in the way. But the best piece of writing advice ever comes from Nora Roberts, also arguably the most prolific and successful writer of popular fiction in the world: “You can fix a bad page but you can’t fix a blank one.” So you need to push on and make yourself finish, even if you think it’s horrible. Then you can either fix it, or work out why it doesn’t work and learn from it. Writing, as with all things, takes practice. Not all the books you write will be publishable — some books have L-plates on them. But often the story idea is good and later, when you’re better at creating the architecture of a novel, you can revisit that early idea.
2) The second reason people don’t finish is…. Continue reading “Interview with best selling author, Anne Gracie (part 2)”
TS: I have been reading Anne Gracie for YEARS…no, decades!! I love her stories! And I admit quite freely that I’m a junkie for historic romances. Anne’s characters are rich and full and funny. So I must tell my readers, fans, friends and tweeters that it is a thrill for me to now be able to interview her!
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?
A. I write in different places. I often go to my local library and write by hand. I write in my office, and sometimes in my bed on my laptop. I carry a notebook with me at all times, because sometimes a phrase or snippet of dialogue will come to me at odd times, and I don’t want to lose it. I also go away once a year with a small group of other writers (eight of us) on a writing retreat… Continue reading “Interview with Australian author, Anne Gracie”
