wiccagirl24’s blog

Title: Claiming Grace

Summery:The first rule of social work- don't get emotionally involved. When you work with foster care kids, the abandoned and the abused, it's impossible not to care. It's a fine line between caring and burnout, between loving the children and risking heartbreak. Amanda's been walking the line for six years now. She runs Hastings House, a group home for teenage girl. She prides herself on making life for her girls as normal as possible, with family dinners, birthday parties, chores and trips to the movies. But she's not their mom. They arrive with little notice and can leave just as quickly. Some she will hear from again, some will disappear into the system or fall into the cracks. Amanda worries about them, but when she goes home at night she takes a deep breath, takes a bubble bath, calls a friend. She makes sure to live her own life.

And then she meets Grace. Grace who looks younger than her age because of malnourishment but older when you look into her eyes. Grace, so hungry for affection that a single touch makes her face light up. Grace, who follows Amanda around retreats into herself when Amanda is not there.

Amanda breaks the first rule. She falls for Grace She lets the girl become more important than the others, doesn't correct her when she says 'mom' instead of Amanda. She is not prepared for the day Grace leaves.

Setting: Mainly the foster care home (I'm not in love with the name Hastings, suggestions welcomed) and Amanda's house.  Also misc. places like the courthouse, school, grocery store, etc.  Somewhere in California (because I am lazy and I already know the rules and laws for foster care here)

Characters:
Amanda (still needs a last name) is 31, single (but flirting with a police officer she met when one of her kids ran away), has a BA in English and a Masters in Social Work.  Grew up in Boston but moved to Cali for grad school and interned at Hastings House.  Stayed after she graduated and now runs the home.  She has a brother, mom and dad, all still in Mass.

Grace (needs a middle name) Santiago is 12.  Her father is from Costa Rica.  She lived with her mother and step father until the start of the story when she is taken from her home after a neighbor called social services to report abuse and neglect.  Her father is an imigrant worker with no permanent address.  She looks younger than her age due to malnourishment.  She's very behind in school.

Other characters- various workers at the group home.  An assortment of other girls who live in the home (a few who are there for the whole time, others who come and then leave)  Jason, a police officer who flirts with Amanda.  Amanda's family (mostly only through phone calls)

That's the basics.  Suggestions for names (I have to name all the minor characters, in addition to the things above that I've mentioned needing help on) are appriciated.  Any questions asked will help me flush out the plot.

Also, I can't figure out how to add buddies at the site, unless I have a direct link to their profile.  If anyone wants mine, it's here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/125574

What was the last wedding you went to?  Were you in the wedding?

The last wedding I went to was a debacle. Not for the wedding couple, it was a beautiful wedding. Relaxed, fun, kid-friendly. Michelle wore tennis shoes under her dress and instead of cake there were cupcakes in two different flavors.  It was for my then boyfriends close friend.  He seemed to be completely unaware, but things were very rocky for us at that point.  It was only a few weeks later that we broke up, but that's another story.  I wasn't too keen on going to this wedding.  Not only was I pretty sure that we were not going to be together much longer, but he would be the only person that I knew there.  I'd met the bride and groom exactly once.

Anyway, he came and picked me up at my place, and right off the bat I was irritated.  His pants were massively wrinkled.  Linen that's been crumpled up on the floor wrinkled.  So here I am all dressed up, my hair done and wearing the necklace he had bought me a month ago for my birthday (which I hated.  Beautiful, but felt like it was choking me.)  and the general blah-ness I felt about going to this wedding turns into a desire to lock myself into the bathroom and shout through the door at him to go away.  But I'm an adult, and so I went.

The day didn't get much better.  It was an outdoor wedding, on the grass, which was bad for me allergy wise.  It was an indian summer, so my ex kept complaining about the heat.  I was grateful for the warmth, because inside at the reception it was freezing.  I drank a bazzilion cups of coffee just to stay warm.  And the ex was sulking, so he barely spoke the whole time, leaving me to make chit chat with a table full of people, none of which I knew.

I was very glad to go home at the end of the day.  It was also an event that made me think long and hard about what I could and could not take in our relationship.

Now I'm less sure there will ever be a bridal gown in my future.

So I figured that before I start writing I should do some research.  Not reasearch for the book itself.  I've been doing that.  But I wanted to check around and make sure that no one has already writen a similar book.  Years ago I read a book that was supposed to be the sequel to SG.  It was horrible.  Not the writing so much as the plot.  It took place ten years after the book.  Mary married some guy and went to India, igoring the sickly baby she gave birth to in an almost identical storyline to her own childhood.  After the baby died she came back to England.  Despite the fact that she was in love with Dicken she married Colin (who she later caught having sex with one of his (male) army buddies.)  The whole thing was terribly OC.

I loved the Secret Garden growing up.  I connected with the isolation of Mary, and longed for a garden of my own.  i wanted to be the one to bring it to life, to sit next to Dicken and learn, to get my hands dirty, to bring a book into the locked walls and spend hours with only myself for company.  And now I've found a way.  Kind of.

Instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read in the future, cross out the ones you won't touch with a 10 foot pole, underline the ones on your book shelf, and do not do anything the ones you've never even heard of.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)

2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)

5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkein)

7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkein)

8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)

9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)

10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)

13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)

17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)

18. The Stand (Stephen King)

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)

20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

21. The Hobbit (Tolkein)

22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)

24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)

29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

31. Dune (Frank Herbert)

32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)

33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

34. 1984 (Orwell)

35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)

39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Aurel)

42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)

45. Gift & Award Bible NIV (Various)

46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)

53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)

54. Great Expectations (Dickens)

55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)

58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)

59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

60. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)

64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)

65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)

66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brahares)

68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

69. Les Miserables (Hugo)

70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)

72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

73.Shogun (James Clavell)

74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)

77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)

79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)

81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)

83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

85. Emma (Jane Austen)

86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)

87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)

89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)

90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)

91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)

92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)

93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)

96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)

97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

There is a thread at NaNo composing of people's plot ideas summerized in a sigle line.  Very amusing, some of them.

it's official.  I have signed up for NaNo.  Anyone who wants to add me as a buddy, my name is the same there as it is everywhere else.  Wiccagirl24.