May Featured Author: Neetu Malik
May 28, 2019 by Neetu Malik in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as May Featured Author of the Month, Neetu Malik, Poet's Day, poetry
Neetu Malik’s poetry is an expression of life’s rhythms and the beat of the human spirit. She draws upon diverse multicultural experiences and observations across three continents in which she has lived. She has contributed to The Australia Times Poetry Magazine, October Hill Magazine, Prachya Review, among others. Her poems have appeared in The Poetic Bond Anthology V and VI published by Willowdown Books, UK, NY Literary Magazine’s Tears Anthology and Poetic Imagination Anthology (Canada).
Her poem, “Soaring Flames”, was awarded First-Place by the NY Literary Magazine (2017). She has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, 2019 for her poem “Sacred Figs” published by Kallisto Gaia Press in their Ocotillo Review in May, 2018.
Neetu lives in Pennsylvania, USA.
The Hereafter by Neetu
May 26, 2019 by Neetu Malik in category Poet's Day by Neetu Malik tagged as death, life, Neetu Malik, poems, poetry
The Hereafter
They say there are
two sides of the graveone where grass grows green
trees bloom and decay, leaves fall
winter winds blow, then
life renews againand you can walk and breathe
watch the sky and the streets
touch and be touchedthe other side, I’m told, is evergreen
peaceful and sedateis it the dead below the ground
that whisper such tales? Or is it
the living who search for gracein their lush imagination
of a fertile eternity?© Neetu
Make Your Writing Shine through Self-Editing with Linda Carroll Bradd #onlineclass #self-editing
May 23, 2019 by Linda McLaughlin in category Online Classes tagged as Linda Carroll Bradd, OCC/RWA, Online Class, Self-editing
About the Class:
• Learn how to identify shallow POV and make it deeper.
• Learn how to change your writing from Telling to Showing.
• Want to perk up the pace of your prose?
• Need help pinpointing weak spots in your writing style?
This workshop will provide tips to help you tighten your sentence and paragraph structure to make your writing shine! Through the use of checklists, topical lectures and structured writing/revision exercises for each lesson, I supply tangible examples of what to look for and how to fix it. You’ll get interactive assistance from freelance editor and award-winning author, Linda Carroll-Bradd.
Linda Carroll-Bradd
The years Linda Carroll-Bradd spent working in secretarial positions paid off when she ventured into writing fiction. Along her writer journey, she put her skills with spelling, grammar, and punctuation to use and edited other authors’ manuscripts—first with just friends and then friends of friends. In 2012, she formalized the process and Lustre Editing was created. Linda has a clientele that includes USA Today and NY Times bestselling authors and has worked on all subgenres of romance, plus narrative nonfiction, memoir, middle grade fiction, and police procedural novels.
Married with four adult children, she now lives in the southern California mountains with two beloved dogs. In addition to working as a freelance editor, she is the author of more than 50 contemporary and historical stories that range from heartwarming to erotic (written under pen name Layla Chase).
Enrollment Information:
This is a 2-week online course that uses email and Groups.io. The class is open to anyone wishing to participate. The cost is $15.00 per person or, if you are a member of OCCRWA, $10.00 per person.To sign up or for more information, go to the class page at the OCC/RWA website: http://occrwa.org/classes/online-class-two/
Linda McLaughlin
OCC/RWA Online Class Coordinator
Veronica Jorge Reviews Secret Relations A Novel by Rebecca Forster
May 22, 2019 by Veronica Jorge in category Book Reviews by Veronica Jorge, Write From the Heart by Veronica Jorge tagged as book review, Finn O'Brien Thrillers, Rebecca Forster, Secret Relations, Veronica Jorge
Secret Relations
Finn O’Brien Thrillers
Book 3
Rebecca Forster
Review
A seasoned detective knows that the best way to solve a crime is to follow the money trail, especially in a particular L.A. neighborhood where the rich float on top while the bottom feeders sink below. But we’re talking about Detective Finn O’Brien and he’s in the other L.A., the one with sun-streaked neighborhoods burning with robbery and drugs, and where kids duck for cover under a lullaby of gunfire.
Amber, his partner Cori’s daughter, bypasses her mother and asks Finn for help in finding her missing friend, twenty-two year old Pacal Acosta. Finn is conflicted about keeping a secret from his partner and challenged by the impossibility of trying to gather information to track an undocumented male immigrant.
When a number of missing young immigrant men are found murdered, Finn’s instincts kick in. There’s a serial killer on the loose targeting immigrants, and Amber’s involvement is spooking the killer which means she’s in danger too.
Friendship and trust are tested when Cori discovers the secret pact between Finn and Amber, and when she learns that her daughter loves the missing young man, her worldview gets turned upside down. Cori struggles to accept her daughter’s openness to this new blended world and is forced to confront her own prejudices.
The three work together to compare notes and scenarios. Who would kill immigrants and why? Could it be gang related? Maybe the work of Marbles, a member of the Hard Time Locos, not yet 18 but whose “evil is already old and deeply ingrained.” Ruling out money and drugs, the three of them follow, not the money trail, but the trail of blood and dead bodies.
Finn and Cori investigate possible killers, interview members of the ethnic community, and try to keep Amber safe, all the while dreading the unspoken possibility. What if Amber’s young man is the next dead body they find?
With multiculturalism quickly becoming the new normal, the fast-paced thriller Secret Relations is the novel for our times. Read it!
See you next time on June 22nd.
Veronica
May Featured Author: Neetu Malik
May 21, 2019 by Neetu Malik in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as May Featured Author of the Month, Neetu Malik, Poet's Day, poetry
Neetu Malik’s poetry is an expression of life’s rhythms and the beat of the human spirit. She draws upon diverse multicultural experiences and observations across three continents in which she has lived. She has contributed to The Australia Times Poetry Magazine, October Hill Magazine, Prachya Review, among others. Her poems have appeared in The Poetic Bond Anthology V and VI published by Willowdown Books, UK, NY Literary Magazine’s Tears Anthology and Poetic Imagination Anthology (Canada).
Her poem, “Soaring Flames”, was awarded First-Place by the NY Literary Magazine (2017). She has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, 2019 for her poem “Sacred Figs” published by Kallisto Gaia Press in their Ocotillo Review in May, 2018.
Neetu lives in Pennsylvania, USA.
Featured Books
ISN’T IT BROMANTIC
With his passion for romance novels, it was only a matter of time before Vlad wrote one.
More info →
THE POETIC BOND V
Celebrating Five Years of Global Poetry Poetry that binds, Poetry that is NOW, Poetry that BONDS.
More info → THE RELUCTANT GROOM AND OTHER HISTORICAL STORIES
Enjoy historical fiction? Like short stories? Then dive into this collection of historical shorts by an award-winning author.
More info →
