Books are full of treasures

I found this hundred dollar bill bookmark in a library book last night.

I love it when people leave surprises in library books. Last night, I opened a recently checked-out library book and found this cute little hundred dollar bill bookmark that someone had left in its middle. Did someone leave it there on accident, or was it a gift? I wonder how many treasures I have accidentally left in my library books when I’ve returned them?

Once in a while, I will purposely leave a real dollar bill in a book before I return it. Imagine the look on the next reader’s face when she finds money in her library book! I think that moment of excitement you feel when you find money, even if it’s only a dollar, is worth so much more than the dollar itself. I don’t mind investing in someone else’s moment of happiness once in a while.

Character building: I just got a BRILLIANT idea (I think)

This is one of two memory books I am filling out for my sons. Each books asks tons of questions about the mother’s life.

I’ve always been obsessed with these memory books that are designed for parents and grandparents to fill out and leave for their progeny to remember them by. When I was a teen, I bought grandmother versions for each of my grandmas. Both of my grandmas totally filled their books out and left me all sorts of memories of them that I will treasure forever. I am lucky enough to still have my maternal grandmother, but my paternal grandmother has been gone for seven years now. I feel so close to her when I can open her book and read her handwriting.

I bought the parent versions for each of my parents a long time ago, but I don’t know if they’ve ever started to answer the questions inside. Maybe they’re still too young to worry much about whether or not they’ll be remembered when they’re gone.

Writing the rebirth plot arc: Rathilde

This building is very much what I imagine the Good Citizen Center to look like in my WIP. | School Building (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a recent blog post titled, “The 7 Basic Plots: Rebirth,” Liz Bureman of The Write Practice discusses the structure of the rebirth plot type and challenges the reader to “write a rebirth arc for a classic villain in literature or film for fifteen minutes.” Rather than writing about a classic villain, I thought it would be interesting to write a rebirth arc for an antagonist in my own work in progress (WIP) and share it on my blog.

For this exercise, I decided to focus on Rathilde, a minor antagonist who does not play a huge role in this novel but will be a formidable figure in the third book of my planned trilogy. Rathilde actually attempts to help my protagonist in book one, but is unsuccessful and goes on her merry way to wreak havoc elsewhere while my protagonist lives through her own private hell.

I doubt that any of what you are about to read will make it into my current WIP, but it will give you a little insight into what I am writing. You will also have some insider knowledge when you finally get the chance to read my published novel (someday.) Here is my rebirth arc for Rathilde, according to the steps outlined by Bureman:

Framing Great Grandma’s quilt blocks

This is one of my great grandma‘s quilt blocks, framed by my aunt.

When I was a kid, my great grandma, Wilma, always had a quilt in the making, stretched out in her big quilt rack. She probably made hundreds of quilts in her lifetime, but I unfortunately never got my hands on one for myself.

Last summer, at my family’s annual Christmas in July celebration (there’s too many of us to try to get everyone together around the holidays… July just seems to work better for us!) one of my aunts came armed with a box load of Grandma Wilma’s quilt blocks, all framed, as gifts for the family.

My aunt had come across a box of unfinished quilt blocks and had thought long and hard about what to do with them. She wanted to share them with as many of us as possible, so putting them together into quilts was out of the question. Like I said, there are a lot of us (my dad has 11 brothers and sisters living… I think… I always lose count!)