Tag: short stories

Celebrations, Poets & Events, short story, writing

A Celebration of Poetry

Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld

We gathered together on Tuesday night to celebrate prolific poetry. I thought I would share this event. There are some announcements included and more.

A Celebration of “Prolific Poets of 2025” #poetrylovers #poetry

We gathered together to celebrate many of the poetry books published in 2025 by Prolific Pulse Press LLC If you see a book or books you would like, the links follow each presenter below or go to https://www.prolificpulse.com/ Be sure to sign up for our mailing list! https://dashboard.mailerlite.com/forms/1262629/142795590456050886/share

Roberta Batorsky is a Biology teacher and freelance science writer. Her poetry reflects her interest in people, their lived experiences and science. She lives in NJ with her husband and has 2 children and 2 grandchildren. she writes with empathy, knowledge and humor and has been published in Heron Clan, Fine Lines, NJ Bards, Delaware Valley Poets and other collections. This is her first book. https://www.prolificpulse.com/robertabatorsky #poetrycollection #poetsofnewjersey #perihelion

Loralee Clark is a writer who grew up learning a love for nature and her place in it, in Maine. She resides in Virginia now as a writer and artist, with two awesome kids and a loving husband. She writes poetry and non-fiction. Myth is her love language. https://www.prolificpulse.com/loraleeclark #myth #poetsofvirginia #solemnity #rites

Zaneta V. Johns is a world-class author of three poetry collections and What Matters Journal. She has co-authored five international bestselling collaborative books and co-edited three poetry anthologies. Johns is an editor of Fine Lines Journal and Women Speakers Association Poet Laureate. Johns resides in Colorado, USA. https://www.prolificpulse.com/zan-johns #poetlaureate #coloradopoets #colorado #awardwinningpoet #poetryeditor

Melissa Lemay lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with her children and cats. She writes about God, addiction, trauma, healing, motherhood, and many other things. She enjoys spending time with family, drinking good coffee, and being outdoors. She loves animals. Her poem, “Ephemeral,” was chosen as Poetic Publication of the Year for 2023 at Spillwords Press; she was Author of the Month for July 2024 and Author of the Year for 2024. Find her at melissalemay.wordpress, collaborature.blogspot, and at dVerse Poets Pub. https://www.prolificpulse.com/melissalemay #rengay #pennsylvaniapoets #poetrycollection #collaboration #humor

LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a dramatist, writer, and poet. A native New Yorker, LoSchiavo has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, Best of the Net, the IPPY Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, Balcones Poetry Prize, and Dwarf Stars. She is a member of Science Fiction Poetry Assoc., The British Fantasy Society, and The Dramatists Guild. She has won Two Awards for Cancer Courts My Mother. https://www.prolificpulse.com/lindaannloschiavo #cancer #grief #caregiving #parentchildrelationship #newyorkpoets #awardwinningpoet

Never until recently did Ken Tomaro consider writing poetry. Not when he slid from the womb. Not when he felt the first tingle of teen hormones. Not after he got married, divorced, moved to another city, lost a couple jobs, moved back. It just sort of happened. Ken Tomaro, self-proclaimed poet laureate of the Cleveland sewer system, has been writing poetry for a few short years. He’s not famous, rich, recognized or read in schools across America. He has been published in several literary journals, done a couple podcasts, started the YouTube channel, Screaming Down the Poetic Highway, and that’s pretty damn impressive. Ken Tomaro.com https://www.prolificpulse.com/kentomaro #poetry #lifesterms #contemporary #ohiopoets

Prolific Pulse Podcast

Book Reviews, short story

Peter Mladinic’s “The Light of Day,” a review of “Yellow Chrysanthemum”

Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld

The Light of Day, a review of Yellow Chrysanthemum by Munmun Samanta. Prolific Pulse LLC. Raleigh, North Carolina. 2025.

In “Sia’s Dream of Dawn” a woman is alone in a garden, thinking, and very attuned to her surroundings. Readers at first think she may be an artist and she’s going to paint the sky. As the story unfolds, readers learn she’s a writer, and it’s as if she’s giving the sky a story, with characters, a plot, a conflict to be developed, heightened, and resolved. And she is. And the sky’s story, like clouds in a river, mirrors the writers. It’s original, poetic, and well worth reading again. Yellow Chrysanthemum as a collection is a story of struggle. Sia “loves this part of the garden. But more than that she loves this confluence of light and shadow.” A struggle to be honest with herself. The collection comprises a struggle for freedom as an artist; for freedom as a wife, daughter, mother, sibling; and for freedom as a person, for equality. “But conventional society never teaches a woman to strike back,” the narrator says in “Written in Blood.”

The stories that depict artists, and scholars are: “Peacock’s Feather,” “Sia’s Dream of Dawn,” “Come Back Somlata,” “Long-forgotten Line,” “A Girl Made of Darkness,” which also involves an individual’s struggle to overcome a society’s prejudice; “Lullaby,” as it invokes the bonding of mother and daughter through song; and “Mad Woman in the Attic,” the story of a woman married to a man who is a successful writer and an emotionally cold, distant husband. His books show empathy for others, but the women in his books reject the woman, just as he does, so she burns his books (his women), and feels at peace.

Stories that involve the struggle of women as members of families are: “Mother India,” “The Caged Bird,” “The Scar,” “Beast of Burden,” “Bright Big Bananas,” “Written in Blood,” and “Uproot.” “Mother India,” the first story in the collection is about hunger and poverty, a mother’s plight to feed herself and her children. It is very visceral; readers feel the hunger in it, and the mother’s desperation. “Uproot,” also about a mother, is contemplative. Should the protagonist stay where she is, or give into her married son’s wish that she leave her home, her job of teaching very young children, and go far away to live with him and his wife? Like “Sia’s Dream …” “Uproot” is a garden story. It begins with Sumita telling the children how a monkey-gardener uprooted trees, to analyze how much water they needed. The children are as delighted with their teacher as she is them, and in the end the story comes back to the garden.

While “Special Dish” has shades of scholastic research, it is primarily a story of the bonding of two women from different classes in society. “A Home of One’s Own,” while it involves family, depicts the plight of women in society at large, a society that says in its morays and traditions that women have no home, the home is the man’s. And in this story, there’s this wonderful sentence: “People say many things, but things are different.” Other stories that involve a woman’s struggle for equality are: “Uma,” “The Kitten and Cleopatra,” and “The Shut Door.” In all these, the plight of one woman is the plight of many.

In “The Shut Door” the narrator says, “It happens sometimes you cannot recognize yourself.” All twenty stories have the unstated adage “be honest with yourself.” Each is an attempt to arrive at some truth. Some stories seem sketched in gray pencils, others in dark blue ink. The light of day is the page on which the story appears. Labels limit. The struggle of the artist, the wife and mother, and the individual all intersect, or seem to, many of them. But in each the author, Munmun Samanta has made a thing of beauty, from her imagination, her vision, and her skill with words. These are stories that ring true; stories of India, of women, of lived lives.

Open her book and see for yourself. You’ll be rewarded. ProlificPulse.com

Peter Mladinic‘s most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

Maiden Rock: Mladinic, Peter: 9798990558557: Amazon.com: Books

Announcements, Book Announcements, book launch, books, Celebrations, Short Fiction, short story, writing

ANNOUNCEMENT! Yellow Chrysanthemum by Munmun “Sam” Samanta is Now Available

Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld

Set in contemporary India, “Yellow Chrysanthemum” is a stirring collection celebrating the lives of Durga, Uma, Tihar, Somlata, Mridula, and fifteen other women from rural villages to bursting cities. These women are not passive victims but survivors and warriors who have the courage to challenge the status quo of society, which always seeks to silence their voices.

As the author, I wrote this book to pay my homage to the women who continue challenging society’s oppressive forces. If you are in search of a book that will both challenge and inspire you, “Yellow Chrysanthemum” is a top pick. Take part in the celebration of women’s voices, a call for justice, and a reminder of the incredible power that exists within us all to rise above, no matter the odds.
Munmun Samanta


~Storytelling, Truth-telling

The commodity of these twenty stories is the struggle of a woman as an artist, as a family member, and as an individual in society. In “Written in Blood,” which concludes the collection, Asima, the protagonist, says, “But conventional society never teaches a woman to strike back.” In every story, the author strikes back forcefully and eloquently, in sentences that are as poignant as they are poetic. “Mother India, which begins the collection, is about poverty, hunger, and a mother’s determination to feed herself and her children. It’s a visceral story, one feels as they read. In “The Caged Bird,” Tihar,” trapped in a repressive marriage, identifies with the bird she sets free. And in “The Dawn of Sia’s Dream,” the “confluence of light and shadow” that the writer-protagonist loves may be seen as the conflict that drives her story, as if her story is also the sky’s. Its underlying theme is the imagination’s power to transcend, a theme also in ” A Girl Made of Darkness, about an artist who has struggled with society’s prejudice of people, like her, with dark skin. Each story in the collection is an integral part of the whole and told in a voice that arrives in each instance at some truth. Yellow Chrysanthemum establishes Munmun Samanta as a topnotch writer of fiction not only in India but also throughout the world.

– Peter Mladinic, Author of “Files of Information for People who Don’t Exist”

Mumnum Samanta’s short story collection, “Yellow Chrysanthemum,” is a treasure chest of joy and strength that springs from the neglect, abuse, betrayal, and invisibility of 20 women. These women are flowers in a hostile world that crushes them underfoot. Yet somehow, they take root and bloom.

We only need the eyes to see what we take for granted. This book will open those eyes.

– Nolcha Fox, author of “End of Earth”

Yellow Chrysanthemum is available at online stores.

Short Fiction, short story

The Question

Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld

sky earth galaxy universe
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Squirming restlessly in his seat, he knew he was in trouble with the lesson for this day.

Questioning every one of the questions on the board, he struggled with analyzing what the teacher wanted to know.

Calling his name, the time had come to go to the board and answer the third question: Who is the first lady? As he struggled with the right answer, someone was whispering from the sidelines, distracting him, but trying to be helpful.

Grasping the chalk tightly in his sweat saturated hand, he tapped on the board with the chalk before writing, “Eve.”

Schoolmates let out giggles and the teacher even had a slight smile on her usual stern face before she said, I mean of this country.

“Heck,” he said, “I oughta get extra credit ‘cause I’s thinkin’ of the whole world!”

The whole class then burst out in laughter and the teacher had to agree that on this day, there was no questioning that the world could use another Eve.

…..

There you have it with this weeks 6 Sentence Story.

Rules of the hop:
Write 6 Sentences. No more. No less.
Use the current week’s prompt word.
Link the URL to your post via the blue “Click here to enter” button below .
Spread the word and put in a good one to your fellow writers  😀

PROMPT WORD:  QUESTION

Want to participate Here’s the LINK 

blog, Personal Essay, poetry, short story

Writing Raw and To Prompts Opens up Possibilities for Creativity

Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld

abstract black and white blur book
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Writing Raw and To Prompts Opens up Possibilities for Creativity

Many times when we write it’s to some kind of theme. It could be from a prompt or thought finding a place on paper. Have you ever written raw? Writing raw is putting pen to the paper and writing whatever thoughts come to mind. When I took the course The Artist’s Way I found this technique to be most helpful. We wrote every morning in what they called the “Morning Pages” and there were no hard and fast rules. You just grabbed your notebook and wrote by hand (yes no keyboard) and wrote a designated amount of time. Then, you put it away and went on about your other life duties. In the course, you came back to the writings and from them could find things to further write about or learn from. It was very revealing to me about certain things needing focus and other things I needed to let go. It was a revealing and healing exercise. It also helped me to use this technique in other writing.

 

I am in an online group call Signs. It is a slow writing group where we write to a certain theme, but it’s not rushed. You take some time to write to the theme and just let it flow. No edits. Just flow with the theme and write whatever comes to mind. It’s another way of revealing to me, my innermost thoughts. It’s not completely writing raw as there is a theme or photo prompt, but it can end up being a piece that may not have one thing to do with the prompt. So, I would call this writing “Lightly Prompted.”

Another online group I belong to also has prompts and you write six sentences to reveal your thoughts around the prompt word. I have been a part of this group for a good while now. It has opened up for me to be more concise with my words and to tell a story with fewer words. Sometimes I write poetry to these prompt words and, one of my personal favorites is to do acrostics. The group supports each other with responses and it is fun to see what develops. Some have developed longer stories from their works on this challenge.

Recently, I started writing to a haiku/senryu online challenge where we have a picture prompt which we interpret and write to in the form of a haiku or senryu. This is a newer challenge and I am loving this. It is interesting to see what others come up with and is a lot of fun.

About once a quarter the Living Poetry group here in the RTP area has a Germination Workshop in which we write to prompts. This helps generate some rough draft poetry. You can develop poems from this and some have been published. The reveal, where we all share what we write is interesting as you hear so many points of view.

What do you write to? Are prompts helpful for you or do you prefer writing raw? I like to mix it up. When you are stuck or need a warmup exercise for your other writing, thinking long work report you must get done, try to write a haiku or short, short story just to get the brain warmed up before entering the demands of life. That is what I am doing right now. It’s gonna make for a much better day.

If you would like links to the online challenges please let me know. I am happy to invite others to join the fun.