As the Page Turns

Character Profile Sheet for Teddy Mentor from Gary Morgenstein's ‘Jesse's Girl’

Years ago (and still applies today), the experts were telling fiction writers that in order to really know their main character, they must come up with a character profile sheet for them and definitely applies to all your characters as well. This is a good practice because once you know all the ins and outs of all your characters, the book flows better and allows the author to get inside the head of each of their characters.

We decided to ask authors if they would like to come up with a character sketch of their main character, throwing in a few unique questions to make it really fun!

Today we have Gary Morgenstein stopping by on his book tour with a character sketch of his main character, Teddy Mentor of Jesse's Girl. Enjoy!

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Learn more about Teddy Mentor!

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Name of Character: Teddy Mentor

Age: 54

Eye Color: Blue

Hair Color: Greying Brown

Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York

Marital Status: Divorced

Children: Jesse Mentor, 16

Place of Residence: Brooklyn, New York

Description of Home: Two-bedroom apartment in Park Slope neighborhood

Dominant Character Trait: Worried about his only son, Jesse

Best Friend: Klaus Webber

Enemies and Why: Other than the psychotic killer hunting him?

Temperament: Good-natured, humorous, but on edge

Ambition: To find peace as a single parent after a messy divorce, death of ex-wife and problems of teenager struggling with substance abuse.

Educational Background: B.A. from State University of New York at Binghamton

Philosophy of Life: Man plans, God laughs.

Bad Habits: Smokes cigarettes after finally quitting for nearly a year

Talents: Skilled media relations executive

Hobby or Hobbies: None. Doesn’t have time.

Why is Character Likeable?He will do anything for his son, who’s all he has left in the world.

Favorite Pig Out Food:Chinese food like General Tso’s Chicken

Character Mini-Interview:

Every New Year’s I resolve to: Quit smoking and lose weight.

Nobody knows I am: Shy

I wish: I had my family back again

The worse part of my life is: Loneliness

I want to teach my children that: It’s okay to be afraid

A good time for me is: Nothing right now, but I remember how Jesse was as a little boy

The worse advice my father gave me is: He never gave me any

When I feel sorry for myself: I get mad at myself because my mother played the victim

My friends like me because: I’m loyal

My major accomplishment is: My son

My most humbling experience was: The day we adopted Jesse.

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Learn more about Gary Morgenstein!

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The novels and plays of the award-winning writer Gary Morgenstein have been featured in national media from the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, New York Post and Sports Illustrated to NPR and Fox News.

Including Jesse’s Girl, Morgenstein’s seven novels include the critically acclaimed trilogy The Dark Depths comprised of A Mound Over Hell, A Fastball for Freedom and A Dugout to Peace, which begins in 2098 after America and the West have lost World War Three to the Islamic Empire and baseball begins its final season at Amazon Stadium.

Morgenstein’s stage dramas, which have been performed all over the country, include A Black and White Cookie, A Tomato Can’t Grow in the Bronx, Dancing on Glass, Walking Charlie, The Silence of Our Friends and the bi-partisan political satire AOC and the Untold Story of the 2028 Election.

Connect with him on social media at:

╰┈➤ Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/gary.morgenstein/

╰┈➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garymorgenstein

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Inside the Book

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Teddy Mentor finally thought his troubled teenage son was safe. No more drugs. No more police. No more fear. Only guilt. Then came the midnight call from the wilderness program. Jesse had run away.

But what can Teddy do? Risk his shaky job and head to Montana to search for Jesse? Let the authorities handle this. They know what they’re doing. That’s why Teddy sent Jesse away. Because he already failed. No. Teddy can’t jeopardize what little he has left for the adopted son who said Teddy wasn’t his real father. But Teddy is a parent. A single parent. And Jesse is all he has left.

The novel asks the question how much should a parent sacrifice for their child? In Jesse’s Girl, the answer is: Everything.

╰┈➤Book Details

● Title: Jesse’s Girl
● Author: Gary Morgenstein
● Genre: Thriller
● Sub-genre: Crime Action/Adventure
● Language:English
● Pages: 318
● Paperback ISBN: 978-1441492241
● Publisher: Amazon
● Price: Paperback $17, Kindle $3.99, FREE on Kindle Unlimited
● Amazon: https://a.co/d/03JVVL7e
● Barnes&Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jesses-girl-gary-morgenstein/1018257163

📙 A Bookish Word or Two with Giselle Mascarenhas, Author of She Forgot She Was Free: Returning to the Girl You Were Before the World Got Loud #abookishword

On A Bookish Word or Two, we have a guest post by Giselle Mascarenhas, author of She Forgot She Was Free: Returning to the Girl You Were Before the World Got Loud. Giselle is the founder of BECOME™, creator of the BECOME Methodology™, and author of She Forgot She Was Free. An entrepreneur, speaker, and transformational guide, she has dedicated her life’s work to helping people reconnect with who they were created to be so they can live with greater purpose, freedom, and intentionality.

After years of building businesses, leading organizations, and walking through seasons of personal growth, Giselle recognized that lasting transformation does not begin with external success, it begins with remembering one’s authentic identity. That realization became the foundation of the BECOME Method™, a proprietary methodology designed to guide individuals through a transformational process of self-awareness, healing, alignment, courageous action, and embodied growth. Unlike a framework that offers guidelines for achieving a specific outcome, The BECOME Method™ is a comprehensive method of personal advancement that can be applied across every area of life, leadership, and purpose.

Her debut book, She Forgot She Was Free, is both a deeply personal memoir and an invitation for readers to embark on their own journey of remembrance. Through honest storytelling, reflection, and faith, the book explores the universal experience of losing ourselves beneath expectations, fear, pain, and performance, and the courageous journey of rediscovering the freedom, identity, and purpose that have always existed within us. Rather than simply telling her story, Giselle invites readers to see themselves in its pages and begin writing the next chapter of their own lives.

The book became the catalyst for the broader BECOME movement, an expanding ecosystem of transformational experiences designed to help people move beyond inspiration into intentional action. Through immersive workshops, retreats, leadership development, educational programs, community experiences, publishing initiatives, and speaking engagements, Giselle equips individuals with practical tools to create meaningful and lasting transformation. Every experience is grounded in the belief that personal growth is not about becoming someone different but remembering and embodying the person God uniquely created each of us to be.

Known for her ability to blend heartfelt storytelling with practical application, Giselle creates spaces where people feel seen, challenged, and empowered to take meaningful action. Her presentations combine vulnerability, strategic thinking, and actionable guidance, allowing audiences to leave not only inspired but equipped with a clear path forward. Her work resonates with entrepreneurs, leaders, professionals, educators, faith-based communities, and individuals seeking deeper purpose and authentic fulfillment.

Beyond her work as an author and speaker, Giselle is passionate about developing leaders who create ripple effects within their families, businesses, organizations, and communities. She believes transformation is contagious, that when one person remembers who they are and chooses to live courageously, they give others permission to do the same. This philosophy continues to shape every initiative within the BECOME movement.

Through future books, collaborative publishing projects, leadership academies, retreats, and global speaking engagements, Giselle’s mission is to help millions of people reconnect with their God-given identity and become the fullest expression of who they were created to be. She envisions BECOME as a worldwide movement that empowers individuals to live intentionally, lead authentically, and create lasting impact for generations to come.

Giselle lives in Texas with her family and continues to write, teach, speak, and expand the global reach of the BECOME movement. Whether on stage, in the pages of a book, or through transformational experiences, her message remains the same: the person you are searching for has never been lost, you have simply forgotten who you are. Remember. Rise. BECOME.

Visit her website at www.thebecomemethod.com.

She Forgot She Was Free is an invitation to remember the woman you were before fear, expectations, achievement, disappointment, and survival convinced you to forget.

In this deeply personal and transformational book, two-time best-selling author and founder of The BECOME Method™, Giselle Mascarenhas, shares the lessons, questions, and revelations that led her back to her truest self. Rather than offering quick fixes or another self-help checklist, she invites readers into a journey of honest reflection, identity, healing, and intentional growth. Through compelling stories and practical insights, readers are challenged to release limiting beliefs, reconnect with their authentic voice, and rediscover the freedom that has been within them all along.

Rooted in the principles of The BECOME Method™, She Forgot She Was Free equips readers with a powerful way to move beyond simply surviving and begin living with clarity, courage, and purpose. Whether you’re navigating a season of transition, rebuilding after loss, or simply sensing there is more waiting for you, this book will remind you that the life you long for doesn’t begin by becoming someone new, it begins by remembering who you have always been.

Because the person you are searching for has never been lost.

She has simply been waiting for you to remember her.

She Forgot She Was Free is available at Amazon.

The Inspiration Behind She Forgot She Was Free

By Giselle Mascarenhas

I was building a global women’s empowerment movement, and I was completely lost.

From the outside, I was living the dream. As COO, I had helped develop chapters across the United States and Canada, and we were preparing to expand into Latin America. I loved the founder. I loved developing women. I had freedom and work that mattered.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling seen. I stopped feeling heard. I felt like a “glorified secretary” in a life I had once been passionate about.

No one was at fault. I simply didn’t belong there anymore.

At the same time, my faith was growing. God was helping me uncover layer after layer of programming, and I was beginning to recognize something painful: I had spent much of my life helping powerful people build their dreams while making myself smaller and smaller.

I had never really bet on me.

For almost a year, every time my best friend Eliza Garza posted about her publishing company, Mija Media House, I felt the same pressure in my heart:

WRITE A BOOK.

I ignored it until I couldn’t anymore.

I booked a discovery session and walked into Mija Media House with absolutely nothing. No title. No concept. No outline.

That morning I had been putting out fires at work, so before we started, Eliza and I danced. Fifteen seconds of “Saca Saca Therapy,” something our best friend Caro Chams created to shift your energy.

Then we prayed.

And God came rushing in.

When the prayer ended, Eliza walked toward her desk, and I felt this surge of energy move through me. I stood up, walked to the whiteboard and started writing.

I don’t remember what I said.

For approximately twenty minutes, I talked and mind-mapped without stopping while Eliza took notes. She fed those notes into her AI system as I spoke. When I finally stopped and sat down, she read everything back to me.

There it was.

The entire framework of my book.

It was on the whiteboard. It was in her notes. And neither of us could explain what had just happened.

We cried.

That night, I workshopped titles with my husband, Ruben. When he said, She Forgot She Was Free, I knew immediately.

That was her.

That was me.

The next day, I started writing.

For three days, I wrote nearly fifteen hours a day. I felt vibrant, clear, focused and peaceful. I knew God was in every word.

When I finished, I sent the rough manuscript to my publisher. She sent back notes and places she believed I could expand.

As I read them, I heard God clearly:

Do not change anything.

I didn’t.

That first rough draft became the book.

Writing it showed me that experiences I had carried for decades weren’t random. Mrs. Champion shaming eight-year-old me for dancing. Watching my mother fall from the pedestal I had placed her on. Relationships that ended without the healing I wanted. So many moments when a hurt became a belief and a belief quietly became a decision about who I was allowed to be.

And suddenly I understood:

God had been preparing my entire life for this book.

I believe most of us are walking through life making decisions from old trauma, wounds, fear and shame instead of from our truth.

I am here to give women permission to love even the messy parts of their stories as they reconnect with God and the dreams He placed inside them.

Because you are not waiting to become whole.

You are whole right now.

Maybe you didn’t lose yourself.

Maybe, like me, you simply forgot you were free.

🎤Interview with Giselle Mascarenhas, Author of She Forgot She Was Free #AuthorInterview

Giselle Mascarenhas is the founder of BECOME™, creator of the BECOME Methodology™, and author of She Forgot She Was Free. An entrepreneur, speaker, and transformational guide, she has dedicated her life’s work to helping people reconnect with who they were created to be so they can live with greater purpose, freedom, and intentionality.

Visit her website at www.thebecomemethod.com.

Connect with her on social media at:

╰┈➤Twitter: https://x.com/giselleempowers

╰┈➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/giselleempowers

╰┈➤Instagram: https://instagram.com/giselleempowers

╰┈➤Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21957760.Giselle_Mascarenhas

Can you tell us a little about yourself? Are you a full time author?

I am an author, but I wouldn’t call myself a full-time author. I’m a builder.

For most of my life, I have built businesses, developed people, created communities, and taken ideas that existed in someone’s imagination and helped turn them into something real.

Today, I am the founder of The BECOME Method™, and my work is centered around helping women remember who they were before the world told them who they needed to be.

I am also a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and someone who is still very much in her own process of becoming.

She Forgot She Was Free is my first book, but writing it helped me understand that storytelling has always been part of what I do. I just didn’t always use a book to do it.

I don’t think of myself as someone who has arrived and is now teaching everyone else how to get there. I am living this work right alongside the women I serve.

I think that’s important.

BECOME isn’t something I created from a textbook.

I lived it first.

You have been building businesses and leading organizations for years. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that?

Building is probably one of the most natural things I do.

I can see something before it exists.

Throughout my career, I have helped build businesses, brands, communities, programs, movements, and leaders. Most recently, I served as COO of a women’s empowerment organization where I helped develop chapters across the United States and Canada and was preparing for expansion into South America.

And I loved that work.

But there was an unexpected lesson waiting for me inside all of that success.

I had become incredibly good at helping other people build their dreams.

I wasn’t nearly as good at betting on my own.

That realization changed the direction of my life.

I began to see how often I had placed myself behind powerful people, powerful brands, and powerful movements. I could recognize greatness in someone else immediately, develop it, create strategy around it, and help bring it into the world.

But somewhere along the way, I had made myself smaller.

Eventually, God began asking me to take all of that ability I had spent years pouring into everyone else and finally use it to build what He had placed inside me.

That is the season I am in now.

And it has become some of the most meaningful work of my life.

Can you tell us about your latest book,

She Forgot She Was Free: Returning to the Girl You Were Before the World Got Loud?

She Forgot She Was Free is a memoir-style journey back to the girl you were before the world got loud.

It begins with little Gi, the little girl I was before I learned to perform for love, approval, belonging, achievement, or acceptance, and follows the moments in my life when I slowly forgot that I was already whole.

Some of those moments were enormous.

Others would look almost insignificant to someone else.

That’s actually one of the reasons I wrote the book.

We can make lifelong decisions from something that happened in a matter of minutes.

Someone embarrasses you at eight years old and suddenly you decide it isn’t safe to dance.

Someone you love disappoints you and you decide people can’t be trusted.

You experience rejection and decide you need to achieve in order to be valuable.

Then thirty or forty years later, you are still making decisions from a belief you don’t even remember creating.

The book explores my own versions of those moments, not because I believe my story is extraordinary, but because I believe women will recognize pieces of their own stories inside mine.

Ultimately, this book isn’t about becoming a better woman.

It’s about remembering that the woman underneath all those layers was already there.

Can you pick out a passage in your book to share with us?

There are so many passages that mean something to me, but this one holds the heart of the book:

“You do not find yourself. You return to her.”

And that is really what I want a woman to understand.

We spend so much time searching for ourselves as though we disappeared somewhere.

I don’t believe you disappeared.

I believe life happened.

You adapted. You survived. You achieved. You became responsible. You learned what received approval and what didn’t. You picked up identities that helped you belong.

And underneath all of it, you are still there.

Is this your only book?

For now!

She Forgot She Was Free is my first book, and becoming an author wasn’t something I had mapped out for myself.

In fact, God spent about a year nudging me to write it before I finally listened.

So I’ve learned not to tell God what I’m not going to do next!

What I do know is that the book opened something in me. It showed me the power of using our stories, not to remain inside what happened to us, but to understand what it cultivated within us and then use it to serve someone else.

Whether the next expression of that is another book, an anthology, or something I haven’t imagined yet, I am open.

How can people benefit from reading

She Forgot She Was Free: Returning to the Girl You Were Before the World Got Loud?

I hope they stop trying to fix themselves.

That’s the benefit I want more than anything.

I want a woman to read this book and begin recognizing where today’s decisions may actually be coming from yesterday’s wounds.

Where did you learn to become smaller?

Where did you learn that love had to be earned?

Where did you stop trusting yourself?

Where did someone else’s opinion become your truth?

Where did survival become an identity?

And then I want her to look at all of it with love instead of shame.

Because my message isn’t, “Look at everything that’s wrong with you.”

It’s the opposite.

Look at everything you survived. Look at everything you learned. Look at the woman who is still standing underneath all of it.

You are not almost whole.

You are not working toward wholeness.

You are WHOLE right now.

The work is remembering.

Thank you so much for this interview, Giselle. What’s next for you?

BECOME.

The book helped me understand that what I thought was a personal journey was actually the foundation of my life’s work.

Today I am building BECOME as an ecosystem of experiences designed to help women move from remembering into living.

That includes The BECOME Method™, Dream Labs, BECOME THE CAMP, anthology experiences, methodology development, and other spaces where women can uncover what is theirs and begin building from that truth.

But I’m also trying to stay very present with what God is showing me next.

For most of my life, I thought being powerful meant knowing exactly where I was going.

This season is teaching me something different.

Sometimes power is saying:

“God, show me what is mine.”

And being willing to move when He does.