52 LIKES, Titles to Write By, The Monday Muse and Being Thankful

Medeia Sharif's 52 LIKES is 99 cents on Amazon for a limited time. This edgy, paranormal YA title has been receiving rave reviews. Important issues such as rape, bullying, and social media abuse are tackled in this novel. You can connect with Medeia through her blog, Twitter account, Goodreads page, and Instagram to learn more about this book and her other titles.

52 LIKES, Evernight Teen, 2015: After a brutal rape and near-murder, Valerie wants to get past feelings of victimhood from both the assault and her history of being bullied. She’s plagued by not knowing the identity of her rapist and by the nasty rumors in school about that night. Valerie follows clues from ghostly entities, past victims of the rapist-murderer, contacting her through a social media site—why do all of their eerie photos have 52 likes under them? Their messages are leading her to the mystery man, although he’ll put up a fight to remain hidden.

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Titles to Write By: In which we play with a single word and turn it into, what else, titles! Afterwards the object is to pick one of them and write a little something.

It was Ray Bradbury, in his book ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING, who taught me about making lists of words and turning them into titles. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it.

For no particular reason today's word is: 
STONE

Stone Mountain

The Stony Road

House Made of Stone

How to Identify a Stone

Stoned Silence

How to Act Stoned So You Won't Be Bullied by Stoners

Eyes of Stone

Stone Cairn

This exercise leads write (right) into The Monday Muse

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I gather stones
to build a cairn.
Certain ones call,
"Pick me! Pick me!"
Out of a nondescript pile
something is formed:
a guidepost to show the way,
a balancing act,
a fairy house under the elms,
each is as ephemeral
as life.

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Being Thankful
Today I'm thankful for cairns and their ever changing variety. They remind me that nothing lasts forever and that it is useless/needless to stay attached to anything. For it is in the letting go that we truly live.

Cairn for my mother

Cairn for Gene

Buddhist Cairn

Coral cairns

 Woodland Elf Home

Ocean side cairn

Cairn with arch

None of these cairns still exists. Like life, they have a beginning, middle and end. Sometimes the stones are rearranged to form something new, sometimes the stones are never used again.

Please pray for  dear friend of mine, a young woman who is dying. Today she is having experimental/exploratory surgery. It will not save her life, but may prolong it. It may also shorten what time she has left. She is brave and ready for whatever is to come. My prayer for her is that she not suffer. No matter what, she has been and is, for me, a kind of cairn. She is a guidepost marking the way, she is balancing between life and death, she is, like each of us, as ephemeral as a sand castle, a baby's laugh, a mockingbird's song, the wind in our hair.