I’ve told you about the super photographs on Leslie R. Lee’s blog. Now go look at the ones on Mindy’s blog. She does some kind of crazy filtering or something on a lot of them. I can’t tell what it is about them that’s so hinky, but they’re the only photographs that look EXACTLY  the way things look when I’m steering close to suicidal ideation and I counter it by concentrating on the deep beauty of ordinary things. They’re amazing, her photos.

If you have a Kindle or other ereader, or are thinking about getting one, or have Kindle for PC/whatever, or have books available as eBooks, I recommend cruising over to Kindleboards. I think you can read all you want without registering. Information overload at first, but it isn’t as if poking around is going to disturb a rattlesnake or release a vindictive genie from a bottle. –Okay, I’ve been involved online long enough to know there are rattlesnakes and vindictive genies everywhere, but what I’m saying is that it probably won’t hurt you very much to go take a look, okay?

While I’m on the subject of eBooks, Dark Valentine Magazine just posted the good news that TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON, one of my favorite books, is available for Kindle. It’s a unique fantasy and a “mature love story”, meaning that the heroine is a lady of a certain age and the hero is … older than that.

Barbara J. King has a lovely and moving story about a rescued feral cat on her Friday Animal blog. It made me think of Miss Tiffany, my first cat. Here’s the poem I wrote for her, which appeared in the Southern Indiana Writers Group’s anthology, BEASTLY TALES.

The Styrofoam Kitty
by Marian Allen

After sixteen human years of life
Miss Tiffany
— cat of the silent meow —
had no heft, no weight, no mass
except on stairs.
There, by force of will,
she mimicked elephants.
Or, when I napped on the couch,
she stepped
down
from her higher perch,
passing a cosmic pressure
through one small foot
into the space between two ribs.

WRITING PROMPT: If your main character has a pet, have him/her write a poem about it. If he/she doesn’t have a pet, have him/her imagine one. If you don’t have a main character, imagine one imagining a pet.

MA