This is the face of a woman who has just 3 days until her latest book-birthday! 🥳Can’t wait to share it with all of you! This is also the face of a woman who found the chromatic filter. 🤣
Here’s an introduction to one of my book’s protagonists, Helen. Stay tuned to learn more about my main characters.
Get your copy of my book at Vine Leaves Press. Signed copies also available at my Etsy store, WritePathProductions.
So pleased that reviews are rolling in for my forthcoming book, The Price of Breathing, that releases on September 15th (next month!), including this marvelous one from The Reading Bud. 😊🎊
An excerpt: “Author Faith could easily have reduced this premise to a conventional love triangle, but she does something far more intelligent and compassionate. Helen’s jealousy is neither mocked nor treated as selfishness; Flora’s illness does not render all her desires automatically innocent; and Harry’s decision to go is both generous and emotionally complicated. Even Gus, Flora’s husband, gradually emerges as a affecting figure rather than an obstacle placed between former lovers. By allowing Helen, Harry, Flora, Gus and several peripheral characters to speak for themselves, author Faith reminds us that the same relationship can look entirely different depending on who is remembering it, and that love, loyalty and regret seldom arrive in morally convenient forms.
The poems centred on Flora and the iron lung are the most powerful in the collection. Faith captures not only the terror of being unable to breathe independently, but also the indignities that accompany prolonged illness. The recurring lists of things Flora misses are deceptively simple and deeply moving because they make us recognise how much of life rests inside actions most of us never think to value.”
Check out the whole review here, and consider preordering today: The Price of Breathing clickety-click.
Super excited that my fifty-word story was published today at 50 Give or Take. It will also appear in the yearly 50 Give or Take anthology. Read my story below, subscribe to get a daily delivery of a story to your inbox, and consider submitting your own stories. Learn more at: clickety-click.
“Stone Fruit”
Fragrant, like edible roses. I wish I’d drawn them first. I wish I’d gotten more than four.
I ate around the stones. I ate them one after another, over the sink, making happy sounds.
Truth be told, I’m standing there still, marked with sticky sweet juice as the world burns.
Melanie Faith loves film cameras and naps. Her latest book of poetry is The Price of Breathing .
Have you always liked to doodle? Wish you could draw more in a low-key, freeing, self-directed way? Like making marks on the page for the pleasure of it? Now that summer has arrived, I’m super excited to share that I’ll be teaching a super fun online class in August. I’d love to work with you and a friend; mark your calendars. Sign-ups now open. 🥳
Here’s the scoop on my new four-week class, Drawing Doodle Comics for Fun and Enrichment: clickety-click.
Class description: COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Love to doodle or draw but haven’t drawn for a while? Or want to learn a new skill that is rich in narrative and creativity-building skills? Find comics entertaining and interesting? Want to depict memorable small moments from your own life or a character’s life for the joy of recording memories and everyday absurdities that amuse you? Or learn a few techniques that pleasantly blur the lines between drawing and diary? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, welcome aboard!
Nonfiction comics are a delightful blend of story compression, dialogue, drawings, and theme. Comics are an ever-malleable form that can encompass journal entries, a comic strip, experimentation with writing about the self as a character, and so much more.
Excellent artistic news! I’ve had a poem and photography published at the most recent issue of Flowers of the Field! From delicious, decadent chocolates to flowers to spools of thread and more, it’s a pleasure to get to share these shots from my camera. 📸Their next issue has a “joy” themed: clickety-click for guidelines. To this continued creative life!
Super delighted to get to share the gorgeous cover for my latest poetry collection, The Price of Breathing.
Read more about the book’s plot and pre-order today at this link: Clickety-click to Vine Leaves Press!
Can’t wait to share this book for its book birthday in September, and many thanks to Vine Leaves Press and multitalented publisher Jessica Bell for this amazing cover design. I couldn’t be happier! Catch more of Jessica’s fabulous designs—I heartily recommend her work if you’re looking for a book designer or have a friend who is.
Thrilled to announce that my short story, “Mama’s Favorite,” was published at Grande Dame Literary & Art Journal. ✍️
Here’s an opening excerpt:
"She wanted you to have it,” Randall says. He holds it out, between us.
What can you say to that?
I move my hip from blocking the doorway. “Come in,” I say.
I let him scooch around me. He looks really good—he’s lost a few pounds and just had a haircut. And he smells even better: woodsy, warm, and clean. I can’t take a chance he’ll “accidentally” touch his hand against mine in the hand-over.
The cutting board is made of walnut. I already have two: one I got for my first apartment before we met, one I got when I cleaned out Nan’s house, but I don’t tell Randall that. I flash back to the first Thanksgiving we went over to Mama Lainie’s. She put me to work paring and dicing the celery, which was a relief because that’s about all I knew how to do. Mama Lainie was always great that way—she could size you up without making you feel weird about it and place you exactly where you’d do your best work.
Randall sits it on the counter next to the juicer.
“You got new Formica,” he says. Never content to just let it be. “When’d you get that?”
Clickety-click to read it all (and check out the other amazing stories they publish): here
Photo courtesy of Debbie Widjaja on Unsplash free-stock
A few years ago, I had the great pleasure of being included in a wonderful poetry craft-essay volume, called Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New & Beginner Poets. The volume was edited by talented Abayomi Animashaun through the marvelous Black Lawrence Press.
If you’re a poet, an educator, an interested reader who wants to learn more about the poetic craft, and/or are looking for a gift that’s sure to bring much inspiration to the poets in your life, I highly recommend this anthology. It’s the kind of book you’ll want to keep on a close shelf to page through for motivation and ideas.
Get your copy now—it’s on sale through this month while supplies last. Clickety-click! Write on!
Excited to announce that:
Doodle by yours truly.
· An article I wrote (about writing more without stressing about it) was published in the WOW March 2026 Markets Newsletter.
· A poem of mine about a science toy, “Newton’s Cradle,” was accepted and published at a great new venue, Flowers of the Field.
· Looking for a very fun new online class? Check out: Your Time to Write! Starts Monday, March 16th. Sign-ups open!
To this continued writing life!😊
Courtesy of Women on Writing
So happy that my latest article was published at Women on Writing today!
Fabulous Food Lingo and 5 Sumptuous, Savory Prompts to Try
By Melanie Faith
Most writers are word lovers. We delight in the fun of stringing each little consonant cluster together.
What might writers adore just as much as the flair of finding just the right synonym or antonym to tell our tales? What pairs well with an appetizer of theme and a garnish of motif and a heaping helping of diction choices with a fresh ooey-gooey slice of second-draft pie?
Why, food, of course!
Food combines a topic that is both highly relatable and rigorously individualistic. Food writing promises: Sure, we’ve all had salad, but we’ve not all described this heavenly pasta salad from Café Romano on Spruce Street or that delectable BBQ Uncle Ross used to bring to every family function with a tangy sauce so top-secret aunts, uncles, and several second cousins are still trying to figure out and reproduce it (almost successfully) for each year’s reunion.
Food is inextricably connected to memory, place, and time. Food is both growing up and growing into our better selves.
Food is also undeniably literary. From Proust’s super famous madeleine to the descriptions of bread, cookies, and cakes (along with those mouth-watering photos) in your favorite print cookbooks or online recipes, food is tied to expression, especially self-expression in relation to our connections with others. Food is also the guilty pleasure stashed in the top or back shelf of the pantry (Shh…, I won’t tell).
Yes, just like writing, the foods and meals we make, buy, and/or share (or keep for ourselves) provide endless possibilities for creativity—from the individual ingredients to the finished dish on the platter someone gave to great grandma so long ago no one knows where she acquired it but now this treasure is yours.
We often speak of food enthusiastically in conversation with family and friends, so why not write about food the same way?
Try a few of these ideas the next time you’re searching for something to write and want to get words flowing in yummy formation:
Food-jar fiesta: Get a glass jar (recycled or new) and fill it with scraps of food phrases, one on each small piece of paper. Or page through a print cookbook for topic ideas. Love surprises? Get a friend, partner, child, or fellow writer to contribute ideas to the jar for you. Draw one scrap a week for a free-write. If you really enjoy choosing from the jar (like the best sweets, it can get kind of addictive), feel free to dip into it a few times a week. Once you’ve worked your way through the jar, reload it and write on!
Make a food-word alphabet: Write A-Z down the left-hand side of a piece of paper. Quickly jot down any food-related word you can think for each letter. Feel free to do a second draft of this list where you use a search engine to add additional words to the list from recipes, cookbooks, or watching cooking shows. Keep this list handy at your desk for future free-writes.
The recipe nobody wants: Write down four or five places where people meet. Then, pick one as your setting. Write for fifteen minutes about a recipe that your character doesn’t want and that others don’t want to eat, and yet…circumstances or traditions dictate they must make and eat this dish. Include body language and some dialogue in a second draft. This prompt is great for exploring tone—from humor to dread—and an excellent way to practice describing various textures of foods we don’t enjoy.
The nose knows: Write for 15 minutes about a food you would recognize anywhere, from smell alone. This is a great way to practice descriptive writing and making your readers hungry!
Ask, and it’s yours: Write down a few food-related questions to ask someone in your family or friend circle. Conduct an informal interview where you supply the treats (or a favorite meeting-place does) and you take notes on your friend’s (and your own!) answers one afternoon. You can also do this exercise as a free-write and then swap each other’s answers to read aloud after writing. Some fun options may include: asking if they recall a favorite food or recipe from growing-up years and its origin; asking how, when, or where they learned to cook; asking them to describe a recipe they made that went wrong and what happened (be ready to laugh). This exercise can also be repeated at various times of year, with both longtime friends and new.
Also, check out my latest online writing class (beginning Friday, Oct. 10th): clickety-click.
Courtesy of Women on Writing.