What happens when Geo’s fortune-telling scheme exposes what seem to be some very real manifesting abilities?

Where did the idea for Geo’s Fortune come from?

The simple answer is that it came from a classroom! Or, more precisely, from a classroom, twenty names, twenty words, three days, and one truly fabulous teacher.

Mrs. Ellen Manning is one of those amazing, meant-to-be-a-teacher teachers who are so good at what they do, they change their students’ lives. Except in her case, she took it even further: She changed her student’s parent’s life! And she did it without even knowing it, just by being herself.

I hadn’t yet dared show my stories to anyone outside my family before meeting Ellen. With her, it somehow felt easy. I’d been volunteering in her classroom once or twice a week, and one day, purely on impulse, I brought a few in to share with her. To my delight, not only did she like them, she asked me to read them to the class!

I may have sweat through one or two layers of shirt, but the reading went fabulously. It went so well that when I closed the book to a round of applause, I suddenly heard myself blurt, “Hey, how about I write a new story just for you!” Which was not itself such a bad thing, except that I didn’t stop there. When they shouted “yes!” my mouth kept moving, and I heard myself also promise to include each of their names in the story AND each one of their favorite words as well.

Then it got worse. “Great!” I said brightly, as they passed forward all the little slips of paper with their names and words. “I’ll read it to you in three days!”

Three days? THREE DAYS?!?

I got home that afternoon and promptly panicked. Why on earth had I said that? My mind was a blank. I fell asleep that night with the horrid, sinking feeling that I was going to have to fess up to biting off more than I could chew.

The next morning, I downed mugs of coffee while pacing circles in my house. The twenty slips of paper were scattered across my dining room table, and every time I passed them I winced.

Then, FINALLY, on one of the passes, my eye hooked on a single word. It stopped me short. “Fortune.” That word had two meanings, I realized, and I had no idea which one the student had meant. Fortune as in money? Or fortune as in fortune telling? 

Wait…. Could it be both?

That was all it took. Ideas started fizzing like Pop Rocks, and the story flowed out so fast I could hardly keep up. That first version, the one I read to the kids on the promised three days later, was nowhere near a novel yet, of course. And it was almost certainly extremely bad. But the bones were sound.

And that’s how Mrs. Manning gave me Geo. But it was so much more than that. Without her, I never would’ve found the courage to think of myself as a “real writer,” rather than just a mom scribbling stories for her kids. And without that, I never would have gotten up the gumption to connect with my fabulous writing teacher, Susie Wilde, who changed my life in about a million other ways (but that’s a whole ’nother story!).

And THAT, in short, is what good teachers do. They change lives, even without trying, even without meaning to, even without realizing it. If you love Geo’s Fortune and The Rock Readers, they are the ones to thank.

A thousand million thank yous to Ellen Manning, Susie Wilde, and all magnificent teachers everywhere!