Completely in the Dark

A friend recently asked how organized I had to be to write this blog. While I do develop an editorial slate, I’m comfortable having posts fall out of order depending on, well, serendipity.

You see, serendipity is nearly a religion for lazy piddlers like me. It often leads to delightful discoveries.

Like the one I made last week.

On Wednesday I got a bee in my bonnet about selling some books I no longer read. Of course that involved sorting and flipping through them just to make sure I wasn’t leaving stray dollar bills, bookmarks, or odd papers stuffed between pages.

In a paperback titled Plot Outlines of 101 Best Novels, somewhere between H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island), I found a real treasure, one that made me gasp—a missing letter from our old family friend, the late Mr. Tom…