Showing results by author "Linda A Lavid" in All Categories

In this companion to Summoning Fables, Linda A Lavid offers twenty tales where story and image intertwine in quiet reflection. Each fable—both ancient in tone and modern in meaning—reveals the hidden light within ordinary lives: a girl who follows a rabbit into a storm, a knight who discovers compassion beyond command, a queen who learns the power of silence. All illustrations were created from the fables themselves, using AI collaboration to transform words into vision. The result is a book to experience rather than analyze—a meditative encounter between imagination and insight. ...

The Mystery Writer’s Cat is a practical, no-nonsense guide to writing mysteries that work. Linda A. Lavid, author of the Hattie Moon Mystery series, lays out the essentials with clarity and wit: how to build a victim, stage a crime scene, craft a sleuth, and keep readers chasing after clues, evidence, and red herrings. Structured around key building blocks, the book guides new and seasoned writers through plotting, character development, timelines, and the all-important reveal. With diagrams, exercises, and straightforward advice, Lavid shows how to shape a mystery that is both fair to ...

Quigley Tree drops out of college. At age 23, she's been a complete failure. If she doesn't do something soon, her life will careen into a deep, dark, irrevocable void. Tick Tock. That soon is now. From the publisher: Five-Star Review from Readers' Favorite by Lorraine Cobcroft: Quigley Tree, the protagonist of Linda A. Lavid’s novel of the same name, is a young woman with an odd name. A college dropout from a dysfunctional home, and recently escaped from a relationship with a narcissist, Quigley needs to find a new place to live, quickly. A unique idea sets her on a path to find ...

From Twig to Spark is a journey through humanity’s oldest art: storytelling. Gathering three books from The Chronicles of a Wandering Mind series—Summoning Fables, Illuminating Fables, and Transcending Fables—Linda A Lavid explores how story first rose from the need to survive, how it grew into myth and morality, and how it continues to evolve in the age of the machine. Through essays, fables, and reflections, Lavid follows story’s transformation from breath to inscription, from oral imagination to written word to digital pulse. Each part rekindles our shared flame of wonder: how ...

What if magic isn’t found in dusty rituals or strict traditions, but in the shimmer of everyday life? In Kindling Magic, Linda A Lavid invites you to rediscover wonder through the lens of chaos magic—a playful, creative approach that celebrates personal experience, intuition, and imagination. Blending stories, folklore, psychology, and practical exercises, this book shows how magic is already alive in your hands, waiting to be kindled. Inside you’ll discover: Moments of wonder—personal testimonies that reveal how awe, synchronicity, and memory can shift perception. Tales and ...

Kindling the Ordinary brings together three volumes from Linda A. Lavid’s Chronicles of a Wandering Mind series: Weaving Metaphors, Kindling Magic, and Interpreting Strangers. Across these works, readers are invited to reimagine daily life as a field of possibility—where the smallest details and oddest encounters spark meaning, transformation, and delight. Weaving Metaphors explores how unexpected pairings—cribs and books, feathers and apples, grief and pie—become portals to reflection, journaling, and healing. Kindling Magic reveals a playful path into everyday enchantment, where ...

Every fable begins with an image—three Tarot cards drawn at random—and what follows is both mysterious and deeply human. In this luminous new collection, Linda A. Lavid transforms archetypal symbols into brief, spellbinding stories that explore love, loss, courage, and renewal. Each piece begins with Impressions and Conflict, then rises into the Fable itself, closing with a distilled reflection—Lesson in the Leaves. Together they form a mosaic of meaning: tales that feel timeless yet personal, ancient yet immediate. Whether or not you know Tarot makes no difference. Each image is ...

Murder in the Pachysandra introduces Hattie Moon, an elderly widow, who steps out of her dusty world of cat hair, mixed-up days, and rambling conversations with her dead husband, to solve the murder of her paperboy Jason Meeks. She, along with her friend Muriel Manning, unravel clues the police have missed. Suddenly, the amateur sleuths find themselves swirling in a deceitful, troubling world of marital infidelity, drugs, the dark web, and a diabolical force that hovers, ready to pounce.

Welcome to Woodberry Lane, where the gardens are overgrown and the bodies are freshly inconvenient. Meet Hattie Moon—a woman of a certain age who talks to her dead husband, solves murders, and still believes a good shortbread can fix just about anything. Along for the ride: her best friend Muriel (she brings the whiskey), a son who thinks “downsizing” means putting his mother in a home, and enough quirky characters to keep the rumor mill spinning at full tilt. Inside, you’ll find three mysteries with more twists than a bag of pretzels. There’s scandal, some bodies, and the ...

What if making abstract art wasn’t about technique or talent—but about finding yourself along the way? Unlocking Abstracts is a poetic and practical guide for creatives seeking meaning, play, and presence through the language of abstraction. No art degree required—just curiosity and a willingness to begin.

What do a ladder and a cat have in common? Or grief and a slice of apple pie? Welcome to Weaving Metaphors, a soulful and surprising journey into the art of seeing meaning in the everyday. With warmth, wit, and a touch of midnight musing, author Linda A. Lavid invites you to explore unlikely pairings—two random nouns at a time—and discover how they connect, clash, or conspire to tell us something deeper about life. Part journal, part creative practice, and part spiritual whisper, this book is for thinkers, feelers, wanderers, and anyone who believes the world is more than it seems. Each...

101 Ways to Meditate: Discover Your True Self is a primer to illuminate the landscapes within and beyond. Easily explained and specific, 101 Ways to Meditate, supplies a wide selection of processing, imagery, release, and inspirational meditations to make meditative practice life-affirming, insightful and fun. A 31-day journal is also included. Whether to explore metaphysical questions, experience higher awareness, or come to terms with the mystery within, meditation serves. This book was a finalist in the 2011 Global E-Book Awards.

A contemporary short story of three aging friends, two sisters and an ex husband, who continue to mess up and learn lessons.

Transcending Fables is the luminous final volume in Linda A. Lavid’s Fables Trilogy — following Summoning Fablesand Illuminating Fables — and a cornerstone of her Chronicles of a Wandering Mind series. In this concluding exploration, Lavid traces the evolution of storytelling from its primal origins beside the fire to its rebirth in the digital age. She begins where language itself began — with the night voice that comforted the tribe — and follows story’s long arc through myth, scripture, morality, printing, and algorithm. Each chapter reveals how narrative both shapes and ...

We are all collectors—of things, of memories, of selves we used to be. From childhood treasures to digital tabs, from egg cups and paperclips to emotional fragments we can't quite release, Curating Collections explores the deeply human impulse to gather, hold on, and make meaning. Blending poetic nonfiction, memoir, metaphor, and reflection, this book is a love letter to what we keep and why. With tenderness and wit, author Linda Lavid invites you to rummage through your own life's keepsakes—both tangible and intangible—discovering how they reflect your identity, longing, and growth. ...

Hattie Moon, a modern-day Miss Marple, is thrown into a mystery close to home when her son Howie, gets engaged. While his bride-to-be is charming, Hattie learns the woman is a widow who lives with her mother and sister, who are also widows. Naturally, Hattie becomes concerned...as she should.

Beneath every veneer, beneath the person who is you, there are secrets, never acknowledged, never told nor shared. It is your sexuality, and mine, a compendium of dark influences, of seeds sown, of lost fleeting moments that run us wild, ragged. Ever constant, we deny our nature of want, desire, guilt, shame. Ever constant, we succumb to the subterranean pull of pleasure and pain. It is here where the story begins. Welcome.

There are several aspects to writing fiction. Rendering what John Gardner in The Art of Fiction describes as a 'vivid and continuous dream' is a complicated affair. Story is created from the imagination of a writer, who in turn must translate it onto a page of symbols so that another person can read, absorb, and experience the story in a similar fashion. It's a remarkable process when you think about it. In On Creative Writing the process of writing fiction is demystified and cut in palatable bites to help any writer who has the passion and mad desire to tell a story. Reviews: Bitten by ...

Embark on a transformative journey with "Personal Archetypes for Stress Relief: A Holistic Guide," where ancient wisdom meets modern life. This book introduces 52 archetypes, each embodying a unique aspect of the human experience, offering readers a rich tapestry of tools for managing stress and enhancing well-being. From the wisdom of the "Ancestral Guardian" to the tranquility of the "Restful Space," these archetypes guide you through life's challenges with clarity and purpose. The book goes beyond traditional stress management, delving into the spiritual and psychological depths of each ...

In Challenging Constructs, Linda A. Lavid invites readers on a journey through ordinary days that crack open into extraordinary experiences. From a morning commute bathed in otherworldly glow, to quiet revelations in nature, to meditations that turn whimsical (a squirrel with Robert De Niro’s head, anyone?), these moments point to a powerful truth: connection is the cure for fear, and love is its expression. Part memoir, part guide, this book blends: Personal stories of transformation and resilience Science side notes that ground mystical insights in psychology and neuroscience Reflective...