I am trying my best to fill my life with positive images, words, and people. Given our current situation, my heart needs it more than I thought it would. I do not want to come undone.
“An Anthology of Creativity, Expressiveness, and Tranquility
Before I purchased this anthology, I knew it would be a work of art. There are over 230 writers and connoisseurs of haiku included, and with every turn of the page, a land of wonder awaits the reader.
Edited by Gabriela Marie Milton and published by Literary Revelations, the team has produced a book that is sure to stand the test of time.
It is an outstanding follow-up to Petals of Haiku: An Anthology, and is now placed alongside it on one of my bookshelves.
I appreciate and have an affinity for the form of haiku as it pertains to micropoetry, and every contributor shared their five haiku in creative and vividly expressed ways.
I have no doubt this book will be one I turn to when I need a place of calm as my personal retreat.
If you want to experience creativity at its highest, timely serenity, and be engulfed by the expressiveness throughout the anthology, then, I suggest this book for your collection.
We all could use a bit of tranquility.”
An overwhelming sense of calm would enter my body every time I picked up this book to read it. It’s as though every writer were in sync with one another.
We all understood the assignment. And I hope you’ll take the time and care to share with your heart a plethora of haiku that’ll definitely do it some good.
Have you gotten your copy of my new book: a collection of serial tales & flash fiction, Séduire (E-BookandPaperback) yet?
I recently signed up to write on Substack as well. Poking the Bear’s Belly for Fun is a place of healing as I speak aboutthe most recent events with my place of employment, as it pertains to racism and discrimination. I welcome your visit.
The most important items at that moment. Intersections by Jack Herlocker is my favorite, though.
There’s nothing quite like reading a book that makes you laugh, reflect, wonder about what it’s like to find the VERY person with whom you connect on a level no one else gets, and sink into poetic goodness, too! Intersections: Stories, Chats, Truths, and Verses, by Jack Herlocker, has all of this and more! Jack and I met on Medium (maybe 9 or 10 years ago?), where we dove right into each other’s work.
He’s always been such a cool cat who doted on his wife, shared stories about his life in the military, being married and then divorced, and married again, and also about his career in IT and as a technical writer, etc.
When I found out he had published a book by familiarizing myself with his Substack bio, I jumped at the opportunity to get it, and I was not disappointed. I knew I wouldn’t be. There’s something in this book for everyone.
I had not been surprised when I beamed with elation and excitement upon the first few pages of Jack’s book. It’s classic Jack with a bit of humor, sadness, truth, and peace sprinkled throughout each page.
You’ll laugh out loud (I did so many times) from the section, “Chats with Deb”, be inspired by his short fiction, moved by his poetry, and locked in while reading the creative non-fiction. Jack is, as God would have it, a Jack of All Trades.
He doesn’t skimp on creativity, metaphorical blends, easy-to-digest scenarios, and entertainment. Reading this book made me remember how much I loved interacting with his work on Medium, and now, I get to do so again on Substack.
If you’re looking for a fun-filled quick read that will put you in a good mood, “Intersections” is truly the book you’ll want to get. It did not disappoint, and I knew it would not.”
For light-hearted reading with a splash of humor and reflection, this is the book for you. I know one day soon, I will pick it up again, and I’m certain I’ll find something new upon the next reading of it. It’s the kind of book one would never tire of reading, especially during these God-forsaken times in which we currently live.
Too Much and Never Enough. Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
Recently, I finished Mary L. Trump’s book,Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which I believe everyone in the United States should read. I sat with this book for a few weeks, savoring it. I did not want to rush through it, so I did not. I took everything in, digested all of it as best as I could, and I am happy that I spent as much time with it as I did.
I reviewed it both on Amazonand Goodreads, and the review is as follows:
“Every Family Has a Bit of Dysfunction
But the Trump Family, as it’s told by Mary L. Trump, Donald J. Trump’s niece, is on a whole other level of shadiness, greed, carelessness, and self-fulfilling tactics.
Mary, a Clinical Psychologist, posits that her uncle’s behavior didn’t simply evolve on its own, he had help. The culprit? Her grandfather, Fred Trump.
Donald was a puppet, a means to an end for her grandfather; someone he wanted to abide by his rules and show that he could carry on the family business in the most vindictive ways possible.
If Donald couldn’t satisfy his father’s requirements, his father’s love would be harder to obtain. Imagine knowing your entire life is a circus; that your performance is monitored and calculated, and if you don’t perform well, you mean nothing. You are nothing.
Reading this book gave me a better understanding of the current sitting president’s mental health, and a deeper look into his overall background as a member of the Trump Family.
I remembered his brother Freddy (Mary’s father) and tales of his demise before reading the book, and was recounting the story to my mother a couple months ago.
To thumb through every page pertaining to his involvement in his father’s business and how it brought about his dive into alcoholism and a slow rotting depression, made my heart ache.
If you’re an empath, you’ll read this book and walk away more knowledgeable about people-pleasing and the need to feed our parents’ curiosity into who they want their children to become. You’ll be left with the pain of this world because of the carelessness of a few.
Donald will never seek help from what his past has done to his present self. “Donald today is much as he is at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his response, or take in and synthesize information.”
And with this, we have a human being in the highest seat of the land (once again), performing theatrics and skirting around important issues because he is still living to please a person who is no longer alive; his father.
We are all at the mercy of a person who does not care about the American people and never will. The end goal for him is complete and utter power and the ultimate hierarchy status. Dictatorship. Kingship.
“If he can in any way, profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.”
For a deeper understanding of the person America wanted as president yet again, I recommend this book. Learn about the mistake we made. Engross yourself in the damage you may have caused if he was your choice during this past presidential election.
Take a look at the baby trapped in an elderly man’s body whose sole purpose is to obliterate anything that stands in his way of getting everything he wants.
Did you make the right choice? I am certain Mary L. Trump, the author of this book and niece of Donald J. Trump, would say, “No, you did not.”‘
I do not say any of the above with a silver spoon tied to my mouth. I am a hard-working, low-level middle-class, Black, bisexual woman who lives in the South. Basically, I am everything Trump hates. My bones are completely and utterly tired of the drama seeping into my marrow from the daily antics of a man who “doesn’t know any better.” Donald is still operating as a child would; a teenager who will tantrum it out if he or she doesn’t get their way. This is what we’ve been gifted with Trump 2.0.
If you can sleep well at night knowing everything that has occurred since January 20, 2025, has your name stamped all over it, then you and I would not be kissing cousins or good buddies offline. It is telling of the type of person you are with regards to what you want for the American people, what you want for our allies, and any other human being living and breathing on this planet. That shit is contagious, and I don’t want it around me.
As for the book, I plan to read it again and maybe again after that. To know a niece could tell the world all about her uncle while he’s still alive, lets me know his past is his present, and he has no way of differentiating between the two, and we are all going to suffer because of it. We probably should have heeded her warning.
NaPowriMo#3 A Haiku & Review of Séduire by Michele Lee
AI-Generated image with a Black woman who has her hair in a natural updo. She is wearing a midnight blue top and slacks that match. She is looking at a White woman who has strikingly silver hair, wearing a tan long-sleeve shirt, and jeans. They are both sitting on a couch deep in thought – pausing to reflect.
storytellers dwell in the corners of l o s t paths waiting for their sun
I am honored to share a review and interview from the incomparable and indomitable Michele Lee at my inspired life.
“Storytelling can entertain and offer escape, but those with the courage to offer life telling – exposing destructive situations and sinister behavior that can lurk in the shadows – offer a path for change.
Author Tremaine (trE) L. Loadholt is one such lifeteller, a term I thought of (last night) when thinking about her storytelling abilities. She does captivate the reader with her writing; however, she writes stories that reflect real life, which can be real tragic, abusive, and not always have a happy ending. I applaud trE for weaving difficult subjects into her short story collection, Séduire: Serial Tales & Flash Fiction. Her stories offer hope, too, which highlights this writer’s ability to not only write about darkness and evil but attempt to transform it.
Séduire is separated into fourteen stories that introduce a variety of characters who seem so real, it is hard to believe that they aren’t! The author’s talent for character development is what stood out to me when I finished reading her collection and what compelled me to send trE a few questions, which she graciously answered (below). For those who appreciate real life scenarios, complex characters, and diverse dialogue offered in short story form, I highly recommend Seduire, and if you’re a writer, you may also be inspired to become more observant about human behavior after reading trE’s book.
Questions for trE about reading and writing:
Tell us about the inspiration for your characters. (real people, movies, other books, observations, a combination)
To be honest, characters speak to me. They present themselves to me whether I want to be an intruder in their lives or not. They come to me with their problems, their joy, their sadness, accomplishments, etc. And they will NOT SHUT UP until I’ve written their story.
I wish there was something else I could tell you, some writing exercise that I do to coax a story or character to life, but really that’s mainly it. They speak. I listen. Then, I write.
Who is your favorite character from a book you’ve read and what makes that character stand out?
Tangy Mae, a character in the book The Darkest Child, by Delores Phillips. Tangy is brilliant. She is resilient while living a life full of struggles and dealing with a mom who verbally and physically shows her disdain for her children. She is a fully-developed character who made my soul ache, and I will read that book a million times over to feel what I feel each time I read it.
It is apparent in reading your work that you have great empathy for others. Please describe how writing may help you process all that you may feel in relation to the burden of others.
Writing is a release. I am hypersensitive and an Empath; so much so that in the past, when I didn’t have quite the best grip on my emotions and how the pain of others would affect me, I would be in physical pain because I would take on the hurt of my loved ones.
That is not a healthy life to live. Writing and therapy have helped me with continuing to acknowledge the pain of others but to detach from it. I can be aware and stand in solidarity with the hurting ones and recognize their voices should be shared and heard without hurting myself.
What do you find most challenging about creating and developing characters?
Honestly, it’s not really creating characters that’s a challenge for me, it’s getting them to be quiet. Sometimes, I don’t feel like writing. I would rather not experience their pain or tell a happy tale or share their defeats with others. But I’m forced because these fully-formed characters will not let me rest until I’ve completed their life’s story. I actually have more of a problem letting go of some of the characters I’ve created, and some readers do, too.
One character, Aunt May, from an ongoing series I did had reached her end–I wrote her death into an installment and then, the funeral in the next. Readers were LEGIT mad at me for months for killing off the character, but she was becoming such a part of my life that it was going to be harder to let her go if I didn’t do so when I did. ……………….. Anything else you would like us to know about Séduire or your writing process?
I write because I have to. I write because it is a healer. It has given me life that I needed and had forgotten I could live. If you read Séduire, I am almost certain, you will feel that.”
Sometimes, a book takes you down so many “Memory Lanes” that you just have to sit with it longer than you would. Kym Gordon Moore’sWe Are Poetry is one of those books. I can tell that the author loves poetry, and she also loves learning about poetry.
Kym Gordon Moore does a fantastic job sharing her thoughts and observations about poetry, its origin, the writers who are well-known for it, and how we can all grow from it, and learn to use poetry as a form of expressiveness and encouragement.
I love how she pinpoints society’s best known poets against lesser known phenomenal writers and how we should be aware of them as well.
She not only shares these facts, but she also gives readers a tutorial of sorts into the various forms of poetry and how to write them. If you’re a lover of this genre of writing, you are going to be in heaven as you thumb through the pages of this book.
She closes the book with her original poems that make up a good portion of the book’s ending. I have to admit, for me, this is the meat of “We Are Poetry”–the part that fills the reader up.
Every poem stirs up a different emotion, and they are all very well-written. Kym did an excellent job weaving in comedic verse and reflective poems, too.
If you’re interested in learning different forms of poetry, reminiscing along with an author, and experiencing several emotions, too, then I recommend “We Are Poetry” to you. Your heart and mind will thank you.”
Get your thinking caps on and grab your learning tools. It’s time to give poetry the respect it is due!
Pieces of Me by Maggie Watson. Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
I started reading this book directly after The Keeper of the Keyby Nicole Willson, and I read about fifteen pages then. I wanted to start fresh the next day without remnants of gothic horror on my brain, and this is what I did. I like to give the books I read my full attention. This occurrence was no different.
I will never understand the mind of an abuser. I will never know how someone can knowingly attempt to damage another. Maggie shares a bit of her experience through poetry inPieces of Me, and reading through some of the poems . . . I know it took courage to do so.
Here is the review I shared on Amazon and Goodreads for it:
“It Takes Courage To Free One’s Pain
And then share it with the world. That is exactly what Maggie Watson has done with her collection of poetry, Pieces of Me.
There are many poems within this collection I could highlight, and since I am old-school, I literally highlighted phrases and made comments/notes in the margins.
Reading one’s triumph over their abuser in the form of poetry is a testimonial experience. I felt as though I was watching the writer release her pain with every poem shared.
Starting off slow, a few of the poems in the first section didn’t hit me nearly as hard as the poems in the second and last section. But I most definitely felt something–it stirred up emotions within me I thought had been buried.
I commend the writer for being vulnerable enough to share with the world a traumatic life-event that didn’t ruin her outlook on how she lives, but instead gave her the strength to fully live.”
If it were up to me, the world would be rid of abusers in every form. A book of poems such as Pieces of Meshould not have to be written. Still, I am glad the writer/author shared her experience as a form of testimony and also included other instances not directly linked to her that so many people have experienced.
The world in which we live is a horrible place under the surface. But there is always a spark, a glimmer, a modicum of love and care waiting to spring forth. I believe Maggie wants that for everyone–love springing forth. And I also believe her writing will help facilitate that.
A Cornered Gurl 
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