#Butterfly #Cinquain – #ThemePrompt

Lightning

Bursting
out of a cloud, 
it creates a channel –  
tall trees nod and send sparks of love
a beam 
puts up a spectacular show 
sky suddenly lights up
scares some but 
mirthful.

***

single
streak coruscates, 
an incandescent beam 
falls and stokes the light within me
My heart 
clamors to resist, it pierces,
inflames dormant instincts 
wrapping blanket
of love.
© Balroop Singh

Thanks to Colleen for the inspiration to craft syllabic poetry. I’ve written two butterfly cinquains. The theme of the month (chosen by Sangeetha) is: The Nature of Lightning.
The Butterfly Cinquain is an unrhymed, nine-line syllabic poem with 2-4-6-8-2-8-6-4-2 syllables per line. It uses the syllable count of the Crapsey Cinquain and then reverses it. The name comes from the butterfly shape it creates when centered on the page. 

Image from: pixaby

Thank you.

For more poetry: click here to hear Magical Whispers

Here is my latest release  Hues Of Hope 

 

Welcome The Necromancer’s Daughter: #fantasy #book @Dwallacepeach #NewRelease

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I am honored to welcome D. Wallace Peach, a wonderful author who has a new release. I am also sharing my review of the book at the end of this post. One of my favorite authors, Diana conjures a unique world in her novels – a different one in each book. I love her poetic style of writing and her descriptions are vividly exquisite.

She is a poet too!

There are two poems in The Necromancer’s Daughter, and she has shared the second one here with us. It’s an incantation that summons and animates the dead.

Here it goes:

Death seeks what is frail
your blood pooled and bones brittle
eye sockets empty
owls and flies hover, hungry
to consume your flesh
if death is the ice of night
you ride a stray wind
whisper from shores of nothing
dare not let crows comfort you
for I am the cusp
the gate-keeper, dawn-breaker
I lead you back to your bones
meld your blood with mine
rimmed in eagerness and fear
I restore your heart
summon the flame’s ardent breath
which raging seas cannot quell
by blade or infirmity
your apparition 
awakens from your slumber
begone Death’s black wings
for what I know of nature
the beauty of life grows back.

“I hope you enjoyed that. Like the other poem, this one is based on the syllabic form called the choka, but I needed more lines, so I wrote a variation using both forms of the nine-line poem, plus the shorter tanka,” says Diana. The true rules of the syllabic form can be found on Colleen Chesebro’s blog: https://wordcraftpoetry.com. 

Book Blurb:

A healer and dabbler in the dark arts of life and death, Barus is as gnarled as an ancient tree. Forgotten in the chaos of the dying queen’s chamber, he spirits away her stillborn infant, and in a hovel at the meadow’s edge, he breathes life into the wisp of a child. He names her Aster for the lea’s white flowers. Raised as his daughter, she learns to heal death.

Then the day arrives when the widowed king, his own life nearing its end, defies the Red Order’s warning. He summons the necromancer’s daughter, his only heir, and for his boldness, he falls to an assassin’s blade.

While Barus hides from the Order’s soldiers, Aster leads their masters beyond the wall into the Forest of Silvern Cats, a land of dragons and barbarian tribes. She seeks her mother’s people, the powerful rulers of Blackrock, uncertain whether she will find sanctuary or face a gallows’ noose.

Unprepared for a world rife with danger, a world divided by those who practice magic and those who hunt them, she must choose whether to trust the one man offering her aid, the one man most likely to betray her—her enemy’s son.

A healer with the talent to unravel death, a child reborn, a father lusting for vengeance, and a son torn between justice, faith, and love. Caught in a chase spanning kingdoms, each must decide the nature of good and evil, the lengths they will go to survive, and what they are willing to lose.

Meet the author:

A long-time reader, best-selling author D. Wallace Peach started writing later in life when years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books. She was instantly hooked. 

In addition to fantasy books, Peach’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. She’s an avid supporter of the arts in her local community, organizing and publishing annual anthologies of Oregon prose, poetry, and photography. 

Peach lives in a log cabin amongst the tall evergreens and emerald moss of Oregon’s rainforest with her husband, two owls, a horde of bats, and the occasional family of coyotes.

Amazon Author’s Page

Website/Blog

Website/Books

Twitter

 My Review of The Necromancer’s Daughter:

The Necromancer’s Daughter by D. Wallace Peach is a riveting saga of Aster, a still-born royal daughter who was awakened to life by a necromancer and raised with immense love. Peach doesn’t let you breathe and savor the beauty of her exquisite style but builds up the tension with each page, compelling you to keep clutching your emotions and watch how Aster escapes The Red Order, which believes healing death is evil and pursues her even after they had shattered her life, burnt her home, and ripped away her father.

The backdrop and the pictureque winter landscape adds a chilly charm to the challenges faced by Aster. The descriptions are vivid, the friendships exceptional and the kindness exemplary. Peach’s characters stay alive long after you’ve read the last page of her book and the characters in this book stay true to this fact. Can you ever forget Barus, an embodiment of kindness, with a pleasant face but a crooked spine and misshapen hands or lose sight of Teko, the loyal protector of Aster?

Oscillating between his beliefs and intense desire to help Aster, Joreh – the reluctant admirer – gets mired in faith, politics and emotion but he would

 win your heart despite his imperfections. Aster’s mysterious connection to dragons, her will-power and determination to accomplish whatever she thinks is right and her loving heart makes her an endearing protagonist. A female oriented story doesn’t forget to give ample attention to its male characters.

If you enjoy fantasy, if you admire vibrant characters that add to the story, if you like a sonorous style, with a rich vocabulary, this is a perfect book for you. Some magnificent quotes: “The sun surrendered to vermillion clouds and the nightlings flickered between evergreen limbs as they bowed beneath winter’s weight.”
“Sky wept frozen tears for the folly of men, covering their blood as it buried their sins.”
“When dawn pried its fingers through the cracks in her walls”

I am sure you would like to pick up your copy, here are the links:

US: https://www.amazon.com/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach/dp/B0B9FY6YZJ

IN: https://www.amazon.in/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

Thank you. Happy reading!

#BookReviews: #Mystery #TimeTravel #Memoir

Taking a break from syllabic poetry, I want to share the reviews of some fabulous books I’ve read this month. All four are my favorite authors (The Haunting… has been written by two perceptive stalwarts.) I have read one more brilliantly written book by our wordsmith – Diana. I would share it in my next post this week.

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The Haunting of Chatham Hollow gives you a few hiccups in the beginning, oscillating between two timelines and many characters but soon picks up a steady pace and keeps you invested in the mystery as well as seances. A complex plot, ensconcing many stories, it is a combination of supernatural fantasy and cozy horror. 

The style of two authors mingles in a brilliant manner! Who seeks the hidden treasure of Ward Chatham and why? Would Chatham’s ghost reveal the secret? What is the significance of the curse? Many such questions keep gnawing at your heart till the end.

The strength of this book lies in the seances, each one more vivid, more captivating than the other, giving you the feeling of a real scene of a movie. Spiritualists and skeptics provide a balanced view but Ward Chatham adds a weird aura to the story.

Benedict is hardly a competitor for Victor, probably due to his nefarious designs and that is why the latter emerges to be my favorite character. All the characters have been crafted with equal astuteness and the most stunning one is the grandmother of Aiden. 

It is marvelous how all the links are woven together in the end. However, some of the details are superfluous; they hamper the pace of the book and eliminating them could have made it more thrilling. Highly recommended for all kinds of readers. 5 stars reading. 

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Geller’s Find by Sandra Cox is an intriguing tale, a combination of western and time travel, with a cozy romance thrown in. True to her style, Cox dives into the story headlong, and keeps a brisk pace, never letting you waver an eyelid. While hiking through the majestic Great Basin, Luke’s love for artifacts leads him into the past, as he hurtles down into a deep hole, “whirling into a tube of rock”and reaches in the year 1882 where he meets Lily, a rancher. The vivid description of his journey, as if he were in an elevator is most captivating. Many questions would crop up in your mind – How would he get back? Will he stay and never go back? How would he find his bag that gets lost? Where would he stay? Can he adjust to the unfamiliar surroundings?

Cox’s characters are most realistic and the way they welcome Luke into their lives is heart-warming. Strong yet tender at heart, Saffron likes Luke but he keeps his distance, as he knows he doesn’t belong to their world. Stryker remains an enigma till the end though Luke is smart enough to see through his sinister plans. There is enough action to keep you enthralled. The book converts into a page-turner toward the end and much is left to the imagination of the reader. Pick up this book, you won’t be disappointed. 5 stars! 

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The Winding Road is a poignant memoir of Miriam who was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in one of her organs at the time of her hysterectomy. It was considered to be incurable. She was told that the survival rate was six to twelve months among the patients over the past twenty years. An experimental treatment was recommended and Miriam decided to go ahead with it. Her candid account of the treatment and suffering is extremely heart-rending.  My heart goes out to her, as she had the grit and the determination to walk through the unknown road, never losing sight of her destination. The positivity that kept her going despite the long waits, failing health and side effects of the chemo, is noteworthy. It was the most difficult path, with excruciating pains that she had to bear throughout the treatment, loss of appetite and weight loss.

Her persistence paid off; the blessings and prayers of her friends and family plucked her from the jaws of life-threatening cancer and she could fulfill her wishes of playing with her grandchildren. It requires great resilience to relive those moments while telling the story but Miriam chose to share it and I admire her fortitude. She has also shared some beautiful pictures of her family that reinforces how valuable this life is with our near and dear ones. 5 stars!

Happy reading! Thank you.

– Balroop Singh.

If you like poetry, here is my latest release  Hues Of Hope 

#Shadorma #Poetry:Specific form

Flame

This red flame
carries dreams within
the fire,
the glimmer –
a volcano waits to burst –
a dormant desire

***

 burning balm
ignites a yearning
raging smoke
fails to sheath
the shifts that devalue love.
even souls smolder

***

its beauty 
dwindles with the smoke
illusions 
darken with 
the flame but it whispers love! 
tethers fall apart
© Balroop Singh

Inspired from Colleen’s Specific form challenge. This week’s form has been chosen by Jules and it is Shadorma. I’ve written three of them on a specific subject.

A Shadorma consists of a six-line stanza (or sestet). Each stanza is written as 3-5-3-3-7-5 for a total of 26 syllables with no set rhyme scheme.

Image from: pixaby

Thank you.

For more poetry: click here to hear Magical Whispers

Here is my latest release  Hues Of Hope 

Double #Etheree #Poetry Challenge

A Treehouse

A
green girl, 
bubbling with
adolescent 
quest for green mountains
and brooks that enticed her, 
walked away to explore 
forests of pines and deodars
and Mother Nature’s blessings awaited
in the form of a translucent treehouse.
… 

A dream come true, a loving reminder 
that Mother Nature gives and nurtures
one more blessing? an explorer? 
would she find her true soulmate –
a lover of pine trees! 
two parakeets sat 
at their window
to regale
them with
songs.
© Balroop Singh, 2022

Thanks to Colleen’s weekly TankaTuesday challenge, which has inspired me to create a syllabic poem based on color. I chose green, a symbol of balance, nature, spring, and rebirth. It’s also the symbol of prosperity, freshness, and progress. My focus was: “think about the different ways you can use color in a poem.” 

I chose Etheree, which consists of 10 lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 syllables. Etheree can also be reversed and written 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Image from: Unsplash

Thank you.

For more poetry: click here to hear Magical Whispers

Here is my latest release  Hues Of Hope