Birthday gifts for Mom (Patty Blount)

Once upon a time there was a little girl whose mother called her Patty Ann. She was bored.

Very very bored.

So her mom introduced her to books. First, she read them to her. And then, she taught Patty Ann to read at the age of four. Patty Ann thought it would be awesome to make books. To be a writer. To be an author. To have people read her stories and tell her how much they love her characters. To have fans.

So she wrote and read and grew and grew and read and wrote. And people told her her writing was good, but Patty Ann didn’t believe it… not then. No, she wouldn’t believe it until many years later.

Many, many years later.

The year 2000 to be exact.

She thought it would be incredible to have her name on a book on a shelf in a store someday. Her mom did, too. She wrote a book. Er… well… she tried to write a book. But it was boring and she gave up. Her mom encouraged her to try again with another book. And in 2005, she finally nailed it. She finished a full length novel called Penalty Killer.

It wasn’t very good.

But her mom enjoyed it. So did her sons. And, judging by the amount of red correction marks, so did their teachers.

In the years that followed, she wrote a few more novels and then in 2011, it finally happened. An editor read Patty Ann’s manuscript and wanted to publish it. In 2012, that editor put her name on a book and put that book on shelves in stores. In 2012, people read Patty Ann’s story and sent her messages about how much they love her characters, like this one:

And by the last month of that year, Patty Ann learned to be a real author with deadlines and commitments and speaking engagements and revisions and readers – actual readers and it’s been everything she always knew it would be since she was four years old and wishes more than anything that her mom had lived to see what she’d started all those years ago simply by opening a book and reading these words…

Once upon a time…

Happy birthday, Mom!