Currently viewing the category:
"Defying Moments"
While the Editor-in-Chief is not looking, I have decided to post my final entry into the Defying Moments contest. It may be a day late and a dollar short, but so am I. Let me preface the following by pointing out that, like everything else I write, it is not fiction. [...]
Read more... →
Russell Shor’s final entry into our Defying Moments contest hits all the right bells and whistles. It’s such a charming story, Rob Reiner may option the rights. (My advice – string him along a bit. Hold out for the big money.) And now I will go a ways toward revealing my [...]
Read more... →
It’s a tough assignment to create a whole world – characters, plot, conflict, resolution and satisfying details – in just a few paragraphs, but Diana Diehl rises to the occasion like a phoenix from the ashes – or perhaps a beloved VW van from the bottom of the Kankakee River. The [...]
Read more... →
There is something about Juan Vandendorp’s writing – a spareness, an understated plainness – that, rather than diminishing his subjects, serve only to imbue them with a richly emotional quality. However plain the words, we sense a deep current of feeling running under their surface, creating a beautiful tension which is [...]
Read more... →
Miryam Howard-Meier, a regular contributor to A Word with You Press and poster of insightful comments, kindly reminded us that her third entry for our Defying Moments contest had yet to bask in the brown-and-yellow glory of our home page. Miryam notes that this story falls outside of her usual repertoire, [...]
Read more... →
Our Defying Moments contest will soon be drawing to a close . . . but do not go gently into that good night! Send your stories, essays, poems, creative nonfiction (but no non-creative fiction, please!) of every genre to monika@awordwithyoupress.com. Our contest ends Tuesday, June 15 – so it’s not too [...]
Read more... →
In her third beautifully written entry into our Defying Moments contest, Rachel Walker somehow manages, in just four paragraphs, to combine children’s clothing, vampires, violins, a very young woman and a very old man with obscure motives into a story about the hazy borderline between flattering attention and outright creepiness. Should [...]
Read more... →
In her second entry into our Defying Moments contest, Rachel Walker offers us a poem which is deliciously left of center. She explores – with just a few, sweet words – the mystifying element of attraction that makes us tingle with delight when someone does something “just so.” Does this quirky [...]
Read more... →
Ann Bancroft’s deftly executed second entry into our Defying Moments contest – a brief, bittersweet byte of contemporary romance – is guaranteed to deliver a fiberoptic surge of self-recognition. I dare you not to smile when you get the twist.
***********************************
Topic: The Day I Left Him
The Day I Left [...]
Read more... →
Seriously, people – don’t hold back. Don’t pretend that you don’t WANT to tell us exactly what happened on The Day You Left, or precisely why you Had to Quit That Job, or the juicy details of The Second Time You Kissed. Please explain to us, in excruciating detail, every moment [...]
Read more... →
“You never know what’s coming for you,” says Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And as the Cowardly Lion says in The Wizard of Oz, “Ain’t it the truth, though, ain’t it the truth!” I won’t spoil Rachel Walker’s tightly-written short story – her first entry into our Defying [...]
Read more... →
When is that precise moment when your heart becomes more full of grief than joy, and simply cracks, tips over and empties out? When, exactly, does the pain outweigh the tender vessel that contains it? When do you give up hoping, trying, believing? Where is the Point of No Return? In [...]
Read more... →
This is the happy epilogue to Suzanne Morse’s first entry into our Defying Moments contest. If Suzanne’s first story was about defying convention by leaving everything behind, this story is about a different kind of defiance: laying claim to love against the odds, and declaring it, once and for all, hers. [...]
Read more... →
Oh, those naughty altar boys! George Verongos, in his second entry into our Defying Moments contest, describes in vivid, candlelit detail exactly what goes on behind the smoky veil of incense. Their boyish high-jinks are amusing, and a clear villain emerges: the dastardly Armand. But wait – maybe he’s not the [...]
Read more... →
Can a stone fireplace be a work of art? As Peggy Dobbs explains in this entry for Defying Moments, yes it can – especially to the person who finds the stones, hauls them to the site, pulls them in a bucket up rickety scaffolding and carefully decides where each stone will [...]
Read more... →
You want drama? Suzanne Morse gives it to you, raw and uncooked, in her second entry for our Defying Moments contest. This is not about subtle nuances of perception; this is about uncontainable emotion, tectonic shifts in circumstance, gravity-defying decisions to abandon everything familiar. This is a roller-coaster ride, not a [...]
Read more... →
Diane Cresswell bowls a strike with this entry into the Defying Moments contest – an ambitious story which manages to touch upon EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY. She digs deep and comes up with a nearly-forgotten memory, a second kiss, a spectacular failure, and a Volkswagen escapade, while at the same time quitting [...]
Read more... →
. . . you are comfortable with anatomically correct terminology, because this is a story that begins with anatomy. George Verongos’ provocative entry into our Defying Moments contest continues with an anatomy of a different sort – dissecting the formative events of his childhood, separating motives from events, and reconnecting them [...]
Read more... →
Here is the much-anticipated second installment to Brian Harrison’s cliffhanger first entry in our Defying Moments contest. We find him and the object of his affection kindling their romance under the Golden Arches, Nicaraguan-style. Do they have salsa with their fries? Brian does not say. What Brian does say is a [...]
Read more... →
Jack Horne, our Brit-in-Arms from the Sceptered Isle, understands that you don’t have to say a lot to say a lot – if you know what I mean. His two poems, submitted for the Defying Moments contest, are undeniable proof that Small Is Beautiful (and pretty dang funny, too!)
*********************************************
Topic: [...]
Read more... →
Recent Comments