Archive for the ‘Essays’ Category

Fund raising idea with Book People

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Contest and Fundraising Idea for Writers: the complete concept

Funding for education in America is in a crisis. Together we can implement inspirational ideas to help with this immensely important issue. This proposal presents creative ways to raise funds for public libraries and schools, involve students and have a beautiful online or physical community event at the same time. Really good ideas always involve community.

She needs a name

She needs a name

The following concept is to be used to raise funds for education.

The Idea

I have started a story based on my theories of everything: Everything Groups, Everything Ungroups, and Everything is made up of Groups of other Things. If there is no brick at the bottom, no smallest something, and no ceiling at the top, no largest anything, then perhaps the group is Everything. If we grant sentience to every grouping, not just to the group that is our species, how would we view Everything?

I would like others to read my philosophy in Everything IS and to write the adventures of the characters and locations I have drawn in The Book People.

I converted a pdf of Everything Is into photos so I could post it in FaceBook as the Photo Albums

Everything IS First Half and Everything IS Second Half.

The latest edition of the hard cover book Everything IS can be previewed and purchased at Grace Art Group, Everything IS.

Please see my photo album entitled Book People to

View All 47 Book People Images

If a specific population would then like to use this as a fund raiser, they need only tag their stories with their organization (e.g. UC Berkeley Philosophy 101 2009 spring or Folsom Prison 2009), contact me when they are ready to turn their stories into a book and I will create a hardcover book to be sold at a fund raising event. The organization can hold a contest if they have too many entries and an event could be held to honor the winners. I use only print-on-demand printing services so books can be ordered as sold and can be ordered online with the proceeds automatically sent to the organization. See www.GraceArtGroup.com bookstore to see how lovely the hardcover books look.

Perhaps we can take this one step further and create videos, an online series, to also be posted here. Perhaps someone like Ron Howard or David E. Kelley will see these videos and make a tv series out of them, using the talent from the videos and sending a percent of the profits to the organization chosen for a specific episode or season. Aspiring actors, actresses, directors, etc. would have a chance for their work to be shown, plus the regular employees of a television series would still have their jobs. Since the concept lends itself to populations, the stories would be infinite, just like Everything Else. Perhaps I won’t even have to contact Ron Howard or David E. Kelley. Perhaps they will see this idea, recognize its potential and…perhaps they will contact me!

The Story

Page Turner and her colleague, Doña Read, live in a small traveling suburb called Read Riding Hood. They must get to Pyreadmid City to visit the sage, Ms. Tree, for reasons still unknown, but are being thwarted by the mood of Read Riding Hood, who is not only a city millions of times larger than they are, she is also a personality with hopes, dreams and plans of her own.

As a product of her generation of towns, Hood is irresistibly drawn to a huge concert called Bookstock, where other towns would be inhaling letters, words, even entire phrases. The Librarian only knows what all of these new ideas would mean to the microscopic cosmos which had created the towns and of whom Page and Doña were members. Think of the memory needed to store the thoughts!

After many grand adventures with outlandish characters in outlandish places, a stranger named Bea Hive helps them change the direction of their town as they learn to write their own stories and discover when they have had too much ink.

I respectfully submit this story outline to the world to see what stories are returned to me.

It is my hope that people will go to the Book People photo album and add their stories under the character or city of their choice. Be sure to tag them with your organization name. I named some of the characters, but most of them are in need of good names.

Sincerely, Sarah J. Curtiss, Grace Art Group