Mission 44

I'm not a book reviewer, but I enjoy sharing books that I like.  I think a shared book is one of the best gifts you can give a friend.  This is my gift to you, friend! I finished Markus Zusak's I Am The Messenger today, and I thought it was a great read.  The main character, Ed Kennedy, and his friends Ritchie, Marv, and Audrey were wonderful to spend time with.  The plot was beautifully constructed and I found myself smiling as Ed delivered message after message, transforming himself from an ordinary person into someone with the power to change lives, often with the smallest gestures. If you enjoyed The Book Thief then I suggest picking up this book.  The voice is similar, especially as Ed spends a lot of time making observations before taking action.  Also along the lines of Book Thief , Messenger's narrator delivers some of life's great truths in beautiful little packages: On carrying eighteen hardcovers home from the library: "I di...

I signed up for NaNoWriMo last week.  That means that during the month of November I must write a 50,000 word novel.  One month.  Thirty precious, unrecoverable days.  This great ambition saddled me with a problem. There's no problem in sitting down and banging keys.  It's what I do all day.  The problem was that when I signed up I didn't have any novel ideas.                    (Sorry... couldn't help myself there.) The two ideas that merged to form the book I'm finishing have been with me for a long time.  The great idea that keeps interrupting me is going to have to wait because I'm not yet a good enough writer to bring it to life.  So I needed an in-between idea.  Something light that I wasn't totally committed to.  An idea that I could date for a month but didn't have to marry. I could think of only one place where I w...

Last week I sent out this tweet: Nothing hurts my inner child quite like butterbeer. http://t.co/4HjaC4P1QK — Scott Ralph (@RalphSensei) October 24, 2013 To which I received this response: @RalphSensei should've gone for the authentic stuff at the wizarding world. Or try making butter beer latte...I have the recipe if you want? — SarahViecelli (@ButterflyQuills) October 24, 2013 So I go: @ButterflyQuills Latte? Please send it my way! — Scott Ralph (@RalphSensei) October 24, 2013 And Sarah 's all like: @RalphSensei 2 tbs of brown sugar, 2 tbs butter melt together while stirring. Add about a cup of milk, 1 tsp vanilla and dash cinnamon. — SarahViecelli (@ButterflyQuills) October 24, 2013 @RalphSensei then you bring all to nice boil. Pour in fave mug and enjoy the nostalgia! It tastes great! — SarahViecelli (@ButterflyQuills) October 24, 2013 If someone takes the time to read my blog, respond to my tweet and then send me a recipe, you can bet I...

After majoring in beer for my first year of college, I decided that it would be in my best interest to leave and seek a fresh start someplace else.  My parents suggested that I return home and finish an associate's degree at a community college in Ocala before attempting university life again.  I agreed that it was probably my wisest choice and began moving my stuff back home.  In the bottom of my bedroom closet I found a tightly packed Tyvek mailing envelope.  It was full of the brochures and catalogues of the small private colleges that send mailings to every high school kid who can spell his name right on the SAT.  (I'm not good at throwing things away; I find value in everything.)  I had considered each of them, back when I was a high school scholar with promise, and they had all had been successful in painting a picture in my mind of walking amongst alluring green spaces and smiling in stately libraries with my beautiful friends.  One by on...

In a beauty pageant they always tell you the runner up before the winner, so here we go with the second most embarrassing moment from my teaching life: I was teaching fifth grade at Lovell Elementary in Apopka and, like all teachers, my body adapted to a schedule of very short breaks and very long teaching periods.  As the longer periods are occupied with the business of teaching, those short breaks become vital to any teacher with a bladder.  As I finished my lunch one day, my body informed me that it was time.  I headed for the men's room and as I came up to the door I noticed that the handle was resting at an angle that it typically didn't.  I grabbed the handle and lifted it and heard a snap from within the locking mechanism.  This probably should have stood out as a red flag, but when you're desperate you don't notice such things.  I pulled the door shut behind me and pressed the lock button on the other side of the handle and heard something slid...

Every Tuesday and Friday I have a standing lunch date with my dad.  On Tuesdays we go to Arby's, where he gets the Classic with the au jus dip and fills a free water cup with stolen lemonade.  On Fridays we go to Texas Roadhouse, where he gets a 6 oz. sirloin, medium rare, a baked sweet potato with extra cinnamon butter, a side of cole slaw, and a 10 oz. Boston Lager. Most days, we have the same conversation, at least on his side.  He'll ask, "How are the girls?" and I'll give him a run down on the doings of my wife and daughter.  His response, depending my answer is either "Oh no," or "that's good," followed invariably by "Scooter's fine.  He went dumpy-poo this morning."  Scooter is the aging Pomeranian that he brought with him to assisted living a couple of years ago.  I'll tell him about my boring life and ask him what he's been up to, a question that leads to one of three possible outcomes:  a) He went to a fitn...

Until last week I hadn't read any of the Harry Potter series since the weekend of the final book's release, about four years ago, give or take a couple of months.  One of my favorite books of all time, The Prisoner of Azkaban , is part of this fantastic collection.  This book has everything that I love about Harry Potter: the train, the Marauder's Map, all types of interesting magical gadgets, Hogsmeade, the Dementors, Hagrid getting drunk, hardcore Quidditch, and everything else you might expect from the perfect Harry Potter book.  Picking this book up ten years after my first read was sweet and familiar, and I relished walking the halls of Hogwarts with my Gryffindor friends once again.  (I must call them friends, and not mates, because I'm a Ravenclaw... as you probably have guessed by now.) Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling also uses her third book to introduce the single worst aspect of the Harry Potter universe to her readers: butterbeer . In the book, ...

So I'm working on this book, right, and I have no idea what to do with it.  Here's the back story: I wrote a book years ago.  I thought it was a great story.  Sent out queries.  A few came back with requests, I sent out chapters, got rejected.  The rest of the SASEs that came back from the queries were rejections.  Project went nowhere. I wrote 75% of a second book, also years ago but not as far back on the timeline.  I knew it was a great story.  Sent out queries before the book was done.  Almost all came back with requests.  Characters were painted into a corner, leaving me with nothing to send out.  Project went nowhere. Last Christmas I imagined the characters from the second book living out their adventure in the setting and context of the first book.  Everything came together and I'm two weeks away from typing The End.  Project is destined to go somewhere...but where? Here's the dilemma : I have been foll...

Today was a challenging day in the book writing department.  I had to rebuild a major plot point because I didn't have my facts straight.  Sometimes, when events are insignificant, I don't mind fudging a date or two.  I ran into a real problem, though, and had to rewrite a lot of stuff. You may be expecting me to say, that sucked .  To be honest, I was about to type that.  But then I considered that changing my plot point redefined how an important group of characters related to one another, and I realized that challenging doesn't need to mean bad.  Sometimes you need to slog through and solve problems.  I got to do a lot of that today.  The point is, keep writing and don't give up... the characters will talk to you and tell you which way to go.  The biggest problem right now, not that it's really a problem, is that the next book I'm going to write keeps interjecting itself into my writing time.  I can't ignore it, so I make as man...

My wife always reminds me how I don't really seem to notice time passing.  She does this by carbon-dating the incomplete items on my imaginary honey do list.  (I call it imaginary because only she knows what's on it; I honestly have no idea.) "That pile of mail has been sitting there for two weeks." "Didn't we talk about cleaning out the garage nine years ago?" The homeowners association president asks me if I'm ever going to put up the fence that I got approved two years ago.  When I dislocated my kneecap last November I went to my doctor.  He still looked the same as remembered him, so it was strange when he said, "Haven't seen you in about seven years!" The students I taught at the beginning of my career have grown up and left school, and many have graduated from college.  One became a star college volleyball player.  I sat with her family at one game per year for four straight years... whenever her team would come to tow...

A common phrase states that the difference between an amateur and a professional is a paycheck.  Someone said that to me shortly after I began my writing career.  I don't remember who, but I remember their words, and I remember it was something that I had thought of as well when I landed my first paid writing job.  I decided to become a writer in March of 2013.  I had been a writer long before then, and had kept all of my rejection letters as evidence that I was a real writer.  Teaching was my career and I was always writing in my spare time, but could never find the time to finish anything else after those first few attempts.  My first paid writing job came on April 1st, 2013, when I earned $33 for writing an evaluation of a software product for a company in the United Kingdom.  With the delivery of that job I considered myself a professional writer. Moving from amateur to professional happened more quickly than I had anticipated. ...