Blog | Mindfulness, Meditation, Journaling & Walking in Nature
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Writings and Readings Blog

Madhu Bazaz Wangu

Kathleen George: July Guest of Honor

I am delighted to welcome Kathleen George as our July Guest-of-Honor. Kathleen’s daily practice couldn’t be more different than mine! What she has common with me, and with us all our love for the English language. Welcome Kathleen! Kathleen George is a professor of theatre and writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of the acclaimed novels Taken, Fallen, Afterimage, The Odds (nominated for an Edgar award for best novel by the Mystery Writers of America). She has also authored Hideout, Simple, and A Measure of Blood. All these procedural thrillers are set in Pittsburgh. Also, in 2014 the University of Pittsburgh Press released The Johnstown Girls,her novel about the Johnstown Flood, and in 2018 a novel about Lena Horne and jazz, The Blues Walked In.  Kathleen is the editor of Pittsburgh Noir, a collection...

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Sudha Balagopal: June Guest of Honor

Sudha Balagopal is both, a fiction writer and a yoga teacher/practitioner. Her writing shapes the yoga instruction and her yoga practice hones her writing. In many ways the two disciplines are intertwined since they both involve drawing inward.  She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn, and two short story collections. For the past three years her focus has shifted to flash fiction. In that time, she has had over three dozen flash pieces published in various journals worldwide. Her flash has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and is listed in the Wigleaf Top 50, 2019. She won the Soul Making Contest in the flash category for 2017. More at https://sudhabalagopal.com Good morning, everyone! It is an honor and a privilege to be with all you...

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May Guest-of-Honor

Lisa Diane Kastner @lisadkastner, a former president of Pennwriters, founder of Running Wild Writers Community, and current founder and executive editor of Running Wild Press, is my Guest-of-Honor today at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/706933849506291/?source=create_flow ...

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Nancy Springer: April Guest of Honor

Nancy Springer was my Guest of Honor Online Mindful Writers Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/706933849506291/?source=create_flow Nancy Springer is a lifelong professional fiction writer who has passed the fifty-book milestone, having written that many novels in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magical realism, and mystery.  She has collected starred reviews and other honors until it is no use mentioning them anymore, except maybe for those two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America. Her latest release is “GrandGhost,” women’s literature with a paranormal twist. But her most popular works, no contest, are a series of short novels about Enola Holmes, Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister. Beginning with THE CASE OF THE MISSING MARQUESS, these six books have been optioned in a major film deal by Legendary Productions.  Emmy-nominated young actress Millie Bobby Brown will star in...

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Timons Esaias on Writing Meditation Practice

Timons Esaias a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh joined the Online Mindful Writers Group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/706933849506291/?source=create_flow on March 18 to talk about Writing Meditation Method that includes meditation, journaling, wordless recreation and his favorite books on the craft of writing. Timons Esaias's works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty languages. He has been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award and has won the Asimov's Readers Award. He was shortlisted for the 2019 Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Prize. His story "Norbert and the System" has appeared in a textbook, and in college curricula. His SF short story "Sadness" was selected for three Year's Best anthologies in 2015. Recent genre appearances include Asimov's, Analogand Lightspeed. His full-length Louis-Award-winning collection of poetry -- Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in...

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Surprise Guest-of-Honor!

I'd be delighted if you would join me tomorrow at 9:00 to read thoughts and feelings of our surprise guest-of-honor about Meditation, Journaling, Non-Verbal Activities, Recommended Books and a Writing Prompt at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/706933849506291/?source=create_flow [caption id="attachment_42236" align="alignleft" width="415"] Mount Denali, Tundra, Alaska[/caption]...

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The Immigrant Wife: Her Spiritual Journey

Are you in a mood for reading emotionally touching, heart wrenching love story set in picturesque valley of Kashmir and hills of Pittsburgh? Then this is your book--THE IMMIGRANT WIFE: HER SPIRITUAL JOURNEY--on sale today at: https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/free-and-bargain-ebooks/ The Fussy Librarian sale ended last night at 12 pm. But the book will continue to be on sale for one more week at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other bookstores online. Sorry for any inconvenience!...

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Happy 2019!

Dear Readers and Writers, I feel fortunate to have met you either in person or online. Allow me to shake your hand or wrap my arms around you to let you know how blessed I feel to be linked to you. Hope this Holiday Season you bonded closer with family and friends, exchanged gifts of love and food, had warm conversations, and did things that made you feel good all over. And now after a week or more of haaya-bhanga (wonderful muddle), you need solitude. Time to floss and brush your brain. You already know that meditation, journaling and spending time in nature are life transforming practices. 2019 promises to be the year of learning, maturation and transformation. Wishing you all 2019 showered with health, joyous vitality and health! Here are this year’s thaals...

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AMAZING AFRICA: BOTSWANA AND ZIMBABWE

When we get into the forest… we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves…Life will rush in.”  D. H. Lawrence I can’t resist sharing with you photos and selected videos that Manoj and I shot in Chobe National Park in Botswana, and Sable Alley in Okavango Delta. In Chobe we stayed in a thatched chalet at enchanting Muchenje Safari Lodge. We had an awe-inspiring view of the Chobe River and Namibia’s Zambezi region. We went for our usual morning and evening safaris but also had the pleasure of boat safari on Chobe River and walking safari in Chobe National Park. This park is widely known for its large Kalahari elephant population, estimated to be around 50,000. In Muchenje, it was our honor to...

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