Join me in congratulating Lisette Brodey on her latest publication, TWICE A BROKEN BREATH. Check out the gorgeous cover!
TWICE A BROKEN BREATH
She stole his world. He’s got twenty-four hours to get it back.
Although Liam Tallamore can’t remember the first fourteen years of his life, he’s built a happy home with his wife, Carly, and their two children in suburban New Jersey … until one Friday afternoon when everything changes.
While cashing his paycheck, he’s told his bank accounts have been emptied. Once at home, he learns Carly has left him for her first love—one he never knew existed. Most devastating of all, she’s taken their eight-year-old daughter, Rayelle, and is preparing to leave the country. As if things couldn’t get worse, he has no idea where their twenty-year-old son is or why he’s been unreachable for the past two months.
With total distrust in law enforcement and no clues to guide him, Liam hops on a train to New York City, Carly’s hometown. Through the next twenty-four hours, Liam goes on a wild, unforgiving, frantic search through rain-soaked Manhattan, experiencing the brightest and the darkest humanity has to offer. This is the story of a man who refuses to quit, determined to find “a needle in a haystack,” and who, in searching for the children he loves, doesn’t yet realize he’s searching for himself as well.
Lisette was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. She spent ten years in New York City, and now resides in Los Angeles.
She’s a multigenre author of thirteen novels, writing character-driven stories about flawed people. Having worked in the entertainment industry off and on throughout her life, she has been member of SAG-AFTRA since 2012 and works occasionally as a background actor.
Find out more about Lisette Brodey and her books on the following links.
I’m delighted to welcome poet, Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe, to Patricia’s Pen. Zoë has come along to blog about her writing which includes her competition winner with The Hedgehog Poetry PressWhat An Amazing Place We’ve Been To. Without further ado, it’s over to Zoë.
My Writing
Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe
I started writing when I was five. My very first poem (or so I am told by various family members) was:
Roses are red, Violets are blue, and an Apple is covered in Snow.
It was my love of words, how they tasted in my mouth and spun off the page, which led me to become a voracious reader. My earliest influences and favourites include Spike Milligan, C S Lewis, Richard Adams and Enid Blyton. I loved creating my own stories and worlds, especially ones filled with magic and fantasy.
Writing poetry became a daily occurrence for me when I was at high school. It was here that I fell in love with Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Zephaniah and Shakespeare. At college my French teacher introduced me to Jacques Prevert and I was challenged to translate some of his poetry as part of my coursework. When it was time to choose my degree subject it had to be creative writing.
I was incredibly lucky to have my first pamphlet published after winning a contest at Half Moon Books. I am sad they are no longer around but so thankful they set me on the way to find homes for more of my books with some amazing publishers.
Love is the way bark grows is a book of love poetry, not just romantic love but all kinds of love, familial, broken, friendship and even obsessive, dysfunctional love. My second book is a book of motherhood poetry. Inspired by my own children as well as all the children of my extended family.
Pocket Full of Stones is my full collection. I knew I wanted to become an indigo dreamer poet the first time I discovered their books. I still am in disbelief that my book was accepted by them! Pocket Full of Stones is a collection of poems about being the weird girl, a collection of dreams and of nightmares. It draws inspiration from all of the moments that went into becoming myself, the difficult thoughts and overwhelming feelings, that when gathered together could weigh one down, like a collection of stones in my pocket.
My newest title, What An Amazing Place We’ve Been To, is a poetry conversation inspired by a poem my son wrote when he was six. I decided to write a response to each of his stanzas and love that The Hedgehog Poetry Press selected our little book as one of the conversation winners. It arrived just in time for my son to gift a copy to his teachers when he left primary school this summer. We’re hoping to do a book launch together very soon.
About Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe
Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe is a Poet & Mum from Dukinfield. She has an MA from Bath Spa University. Zoë has four publications, a full collection: ‘Pocket Full of Stones’ with Indigo Dreams Press and three pamphlets: ‘Love is the way bark grows’ (Half Moon Books), ‘I have grown two hearts’ & a collaboration with her young son – ‘What an amazing place we’ve been too’ (both with Hedgehog Poetry Press).
Zoë’s work has appeared in many anthologies and journals & She enjoys attending spoken word events as often as Motherhood allows her.
I’m delighted to welcome poet, Elizabeth Barton, all the way from New Zealand to Patricia’s Pen. This timely feature also corresponds with the launch of her gorgeous poetry pamphlet, Mirrored Time, which was released on September 1st by the awesome Hedgehog Poetry Press.
My Writing
Elizabeth Barton
Writing is a perilous act. As someone who used to do scary things for a living (I was a professional pilot for 12 years), I quickly became comfortable with it. For example, one of my first poems, published by the wonderful Spillwords Press, appeared on Twitter. As a reward for the publisher’s generosity, I was trolled to hell by a woman who obviously enjoyed getting high on marijuana and then sat at her keyboard to spill her own. The temptation to hang her out to dry was almost too great, but I stayed my hand and redirected my energy into writing a poem, like redirecting a raging wier through a sluice. The poem, Trolls, eventually featured in Amphora. Our Own Mythologies. It is now fittingly part of my rebellious pamphlet All Revolutions Begin This Way.
I never had any formal training in literature – no MA in Creative Writing or any writing course – other than a solid basic education at primary school in New Zealand with emphasis on reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. State schools in New Zealand were reckoned to be the best in the world at that time. Creative writing was emphasised and I still remember all the poems read to us by teachers at school. At college, a teacher encouraged my forays into poetry at the time – I was 15. But I went on to study fine art and threw myself into an arts career. But somewhere writing stirred.
I don’t know how it happened, other than I woke up one morning and knew I was a poet. It was in 2018, not long after my mother had died. She lived to almost 102! Apparently, this occurrence is common, especially among women of letters. It’s as if it’s some Goddess archetype is at work, a rite depassage.
I love poetry performance. I’m an incredibly introverted soul – I scored 67% on the Briggs-Myers scale for introversion! But poetry and a stage to strut upon is like lightning and glycerine to me. On I go and poom! One result of the poom! effect was winning a poetry performance gig on National Poetry Day in 2019. A more recent effect was silencing a rowdy pub full of Waikato farmers at an Open Mic event when I read my poem The Miner’s Triumph.
The Miner’s Triumph features in my latest collection Mirrored Time and is one of my personal favourites.
Much of my poetry concerns the love of nature – and time, self and memory, as one reviewer aptly put it.
About Elizabeth Barton
Elizabeth Barton is an artist and poet from New Zealand whose work is featured in numerous Journals, including Spillwords.com, Fevers of the Mind, Pink Plastic House, Hyacinth Review, Vita Brevis Press Nothing Divine Dies: the Poetry of Nature, and Literary Revelations Hidden in Childhood. She was a longlisted poet for the 2022 Dai Fry Mystical Poetry Competition, with work included in the anthology. Joint winner of the 2020 White Label Cinq Poetry Competition, her collection MirroredTime, is published by Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her art is in private and public collections worldwide, including the Prints Collection in the V & A Museum, London.
I’m delighted to welcome poet, Ellie Rees, to Patricia’s Pen for the first time, and in particular because she has just launched her poetry collection Modest Raptures with The Broken Spine. Ellie has come along to blog about her writing so without further ado, it’s over to Ellie.
My Writing
Ellie Rees
The compulsion to write, to seize and freeze a moment, was already there when I bought LETTS Desk Diary 1963 (pictured below.) I wanted to capture in prose – photograph with words – what I called my ‘magic’ days, those intense adolescent ‘highs’. This habit persisted beyond my Adrian Mole period but if I open one of my journals from ten or even thirty years ago I am startled by how close they are in content, technique, even mood, to the poems I am writing now.
There is one obvious difference though. Before I studied for an MA in Creative Writing it never occurred to me that I could, or would want to create poetry of my own. Poetry was something written by someone else to be read for pleasure, or studied, or taught.
For many years I taught poetry to teenagers from all over the world who were studying for the International Baccalaureate. I still remember the time I issued a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry to a class of students who had never heard of her. There was silence at first as they opened their books and then just the sound of their sharp intakes of breath. That was magic – a different sort of magic from my younger days but one that made me decide to write my own.
My first collection, Ticking was published in 2021 by Hedgehog Poetry Press. It is a deep-mapping of a small stretch of the South Wales coastline and is structured as a walk. My second book is different. Modest Raptures is designed to slip into a pocket, to be dipped into. From the Twelfth Night after one Christmas to the ‘findings’ discovered on a visit twelve months later, a year is explored.
There are dancing pigeons, skylarks and sea gulls and a woodpecker suffering from concussion. Time is measured in swallows, while we listen with rapture to the modest song of a thrush at twilight.
There are secretive yew trees, trees that sing, an ash tree disguised as an oak, lines of trees, fallen trees, those that can hum hymns and the ones on the horizon that measure the sun’s royal progress.
The sun and its seasons affect almost every poem whether it is ‘blaring sunlight’ or ‘low and unremarkable’. There are ‘days when it hardly ever gets light’ or times when it ‘shatters leaves like glass’.
At the end of the year, forced indoors once more, modest raptures can still be felt.
About Ellie Rees
Ellie Rees is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet who lives on the coast of South Wales. She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. Ellie writes across many genres including creative non-fiction, memoir and poetry. Her work is published in journals such as The New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, The Lonely Crowd, Black Bough Poetry and The Broken Spine.
Her first collection of poetry, ‘Ticking’ won Hedgehog Poetry’s Selected or Neglected competition in 2020 and was published in 2021. Her second book. ‘Modest Raptures’ won The Broken Spine’s inaugural Chap Book Competition in 2022. It will be published in September 2023.
Please join me in congratulating fellow Hedgehog Poetry Press poet, Julie Stevens, on the launch of her new poetry collection, Step into the Dark.
Step into the Dark
Step into the Dark ventures inside the mind and finds the unimaginable truth. It will show you the true impact of being disabled, whilst bringing a message of care, hope and success for everybody.
Here’s a sneak preview from Step into the Dark
About Julie Stevens
Julie Stevens writes poems that cover many themes, but often engages with the problems of disability. She is widely published in places such as Ink Sweat & Tears, Broken Sleep Books, The Honest Ulsterman, Strix and Indigo Dreams Publishing. She has 3 published pamphlets: Step into the Dark (July 2023), a Stickleback Balancing Act (June 2021) both with The Hedgehog Poetry Press and a chapbook Quicksand (Dreich, Sept 2020).
‘Patricia’s Pen’ is taking a summer break from Guest and Launch Features but will be back on August 29th with poet Ellie Rees – a guest and launch feature for her new poetry collection.
It gives me great delight to welcome poet, Samantha Terrell, back to Patricia’s Pen. This visit Samantha blogs about her writing journey. Without further ado, it’s over to Samantha.
My Writing Journey
Samantha Terrell
Thank you very much for your interest in my poetry. I’m honored and humbled by the gracious support of my readers and fellow writers.
To tell a bit about myself, writing has been the one hobby I’ve consistently enjoyed for as long as I can remember. I excelled at creative writing in school, but I also have a heart for social justice. So in university, I earned a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Sociology and began working in human services. However, I never stopped writing in my free time. Merging my passions was a natural fit, which is why I say my poetry emphasizes self-awareness as a means to social awareness. Eventually, with my husband’s support, I began to pursue my writing career in earnest.
When I began submitting manuscripts over twenty years ago, finding open calls and sending off submissions was a paper process. As we all did at the time, I’d look for opportunities in magazines, mail off my work with an SASE, and wait. It ended up feeling like a lot of wasted stamps! But, of course, the internet opened up a whole new world.
Today – between access to a multitude of journals and lit mags, a streamlined online submissions process, social media, writers’ forums, and Zoom readings – there’s an abundance of resources and opportunities, creating a truly international writing community. This year I started a Featured Poets Series on my website, spotlighting some of the amazing writers I’ve come to know through these online avenues.
I’m eternally grateful for the connections I’ve made, and the many publications which have given my work a home. In 2020, I was offered my first book contract, by Potter’s Grove Press (USA). My poem ‘Just Justice’ was shortlisted for the Poets For Human Rights Awards organized by Poets Without Borders. And, my newest collection,Confronting the Elements(JC STUDIO Press), is my second collaboration with Scottish artist/publisher Jane Cornwell.
Meanwhile, social issues are a recurring theme in my work, and my family and I continue to support human rights issues at home and abroad. Proceeds from my eBooks, Our Neighbors’ Keepers (2022) and Silhouettes(2019), are donated to philanthropic endeavors including affordable housing, food security, medical access, legal aid, and the literary arts.
Thanks, too, Patricia, for this opportunity to share my journey!
About Samantha Terrell
Samantha Terrell is an internationally published poet whose books have received five-star reviews and accolades from her peers. Her poetry emphasizes self-awareness as a means to social awareness and can be found in: Dissident Voice, Dove Tales, Green Ink Poetry, In Parentheses, Misfit Magazine, Nine Cloud Journal, Paddler Press, Poetry Quarterly, Red Weather, and many other fine publications. Terrell is a wife, mother, and former manager in the nonprofit sector who writes from her home in upstate New York.
For more information about Samantha and/or to purchase her books, or read the Featured Poet Series, please visit Samantha’s website HERE.
Françoise is one of the main protagonists in The Oath.
She was born on 23rd March 1895 at Vue de Jardin in Penketh, a fictional village in France.
She’s a stunning looker with gorgeous emerald eyes and shining long chestnut brown hair that runs loose and wild when blowing in the wind.
When Françoise’s not running carefree through cowslip, she likes to spend time with her best friend, Geneviève, sharing secrets while embroidering cushions.
Françoise’s family are close-knit, with her parents still very much in love. Françoise hopes to find this same kind of happiness when her time comes to take a husband.
Her dreams are shattered on her seventeenth birthday when Papa announces Playtime is over. Seventeen is old enough to wed and bear a child.
Françoise is bound by a one-hundred-year oath, and although devastated when she sets sail for England with her elder brother André for company, she tries to look on it as a new adventure and hopes she’ll find the same love and happiness with her new husband as her parents share.
Who is Tilly?
The second narrator is Matilda Ann Greenwood known as Tilly. Tilly is English and works in service as a maid at Highwood Hall, the Dubois residence. She shares a room with her best friend Daisy.
Tilly is also a looker with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s in love with the footman Archie, and refuses to listen to the rumours that he’s a scoundrel and treats girls like dirt.
Tilly misses her home and family and looks forward to days off when she spends time with her mam, elder brother and younger siblings. Her young twin brother and sister get excited when she turns up as Cook always packs Tilly a hamper with special treats.
On Françoise’s arrival, Tilly is promoted to Lady’s maid.The girls, both of the same age, instantly connect.
Who is Sir Charles Henry William Dubois?
Sir Charles is a handsome baronet and lives at Highwood Hall with his mother, Elizabeth. He has black hair with dark eyes like rich soil.Charles is no more enamoured about fulfilling the one-hundred-year oath than Françoise but he has been told it’s his duty to marry a woman of good breeding who can bear him an heir. However, he has secrets to keep from his bride-to-be.
Who is André Dubois?
André is Françoise’s elder brother and he’s a bachelor. Like Charles,André is handsome but his hair colouring isn’t as dark as Charles’.
André is caring, affectionate and a protector for his sister. He agrees to stay at Highwood Hall until Françoise is settled, before returning home to France.In the meantime, he attracts the attention of eligible ladies and their mothers in the district as a good catch.
Who is Lady Elizabeth Dubois?
Lady Elizabeth is mother to Charles. She’s a widow and has also lost a child. Elizabeth is slim and elegant. On Françoise and André’s arrival she arranges a celebratorywelcome for her future daughter-in-law. Elizabeth is set in her ways and will always defend her son, no matter his behaviour.
Who is Antoinette Dubois?
Antoinette Dubois is known as Maman.She’s the mother of Françoise and André. In looks she’s the complete opposite of Lady Elizabeth. Maman is rounded and shows no sign of elegance. She’s very motherly until something happens to change that. She’s also forgetful, stubborn and old fashioned and refuses to move into the modern world.
Who is Lady Suzanna Astley?
Lady Astley has a good sense of humour. In a lot of ways, she reminds Françoise of Lady Elizabeth due to her tall, slim frame and stylish bearing. Suzanna is in her fifties. She has white hair and is open-minded. Suzanna lives at Hargreaves Hall with her nephew. She is a good friend of Antoinette’s and encourages her to see things in a better light.
Who is Matthew Astley?
Matthew Astley is Lady Astley’s nephew.He’s a complete contrast to Charles Dubois in appearance and nature. Matthew’s blond haired with blue eyes, gentle and thoughtful. He falls in love with Françoise from their first meeting.As an eligible bachelor, Matthew likeAndré, is also under the gaze of mothers looking for a husband for their daughters.
Like what you’ve read? Want to know more or buy a copy? Then go HERE for an early bird price on Kindle of £2:99. Also available to read on Kindle Unlimited
Today Monday 24th July 2023 I celebrate the launch of my fourth novel The Oath. Later on I will share some snippets about my main characters but in the meantime there’s an online TV interview live on Showboat TV where author Judith Barrow asks me some great questions.
If you’d like to see the interview, go to the homepage HERE where it’s available free to view.
My first review for The Oath came through this morning. You can read it HERE
The Oath is up on Kindle at an early bird price of £2.99 (price equivalent in other countries) but that price will go up on 1st August 2023. It’s been set up this way to offer a loyalty price to my family, friends, and followers. To take the opportunity of a copy at this price – go HERE
If you have Kindle Unlimited, like my family saga trilogy, The Oath can be downloaded FREE.
The Oath is also available in paperback and can be ordered on Amazon or via any good bookstore (brick or online). Alternatively if you pop into your local library the librarian will be happy to order it in.
Watch out later for the snippets about my main characters.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all my followers for their support, not only for today, but every day.
I’m delighted to invite poet, Zoe Brooks, over to Patricia’s Pen for the first time. Zoe has come along to chat about inspiration for Fool’s Paradise (Black Eyes Publishing UK) so without further ado, it’s over to Zoe.
Inspiration
Zoe Brooks
I have written poetry for as long as I can remember – my first published poem was in the local parish magazine when I was 8 years old. Over the years I have written about many subjects: nature features prominently and of course relationships, but there is often an awareness of the larger context – of our place in time and history, of myth, politics and spirituality.
In early 1990, only a few months after the overthrow of communism, I visited Prague with a Czech friend of mine. She had fled her country in 1968 and was returning at last. I found the visit profoundly moving, I was an outsider but could see the city through the mirror of my friend’s eyes, albeit darkly. When we got back to England, I started writing Fool’s Paradise – a long poem for voices about three travellers (one returning to his home city), who are guided by a fool they meet on the way.
As is so often the way, I started with one trigger, but then what I wrote decided to go on a different journey. My friend was a Jungian, and we had been talking about the archetype of the Fool and his journey in myth and folklore. I am a historian by training, so Prague’s history as a place of occasional freedom and recurring oppression featured strongly in my thoughts, and not just Prague and the Czech Republic, but also those other cities and countries for which this is true – most obviously now of course Ukraine. As a result, the city that the Fool and his companions travel to is not Prague (for starters the oppressors are still there), but an imaginary combination of many places. Nor is the journey just physical, but metaphysical, it is ‘a dive into the uncanny’ to quote Fiona Sampson.
Structurally Fool’s Paradise is influenced by the verse plays I performed in as a teenager and have loved ever since, the most influential of which was Louis MacNeice’s Dark Tower.I love writing in a number of voices and with a number of characters. How my poetry sounds is very important to me and writing a verse play is like writing a choral piece rather than a solo. Multiple voices allow for multiple views and tensions, plus of course dramatic and narrative progression.
When I started writing Fool’s Paradise in 1990, it came in a rush, red hot. But it took me until 2021 before I was finished with it and it with me. In the meantime I had made my own journey – for fifteen years I owned a farmhouse in the Czech Republic and spent about half of my time there. I sold the house in Jan 2020. Was that a coincidence? I think not.
About Zoe Brooks
Zoe Brooks’ poetry career began when she was discovered by Michael Horovitz of Poetry Olympics in the 1980s. Following post-natal depression, she stopped writing for three decades. She resumed in 2018, since when she has had two collections published – Owl Unbound (published by Indigo Dreams 2020) and Fool’s Paradise (Black Eyes Publishing 2022). She is currently working on a collection about her time spent in a Czech farmhouse.
Zoe also likes to hear and support other people’s work. As a result she is a leading member of the team at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
Patricia M Osborne 