Calling The Indies #Help #GivingBack #Auction

If you spend any time at all online, especially on Facebook and interacting with authors, you might have seen something recently about a GoFundMe campaign to help Deena with EBookBuilders.

For those that are not aware of the whole story, in November of 2014, an intruder came into Deena's house at 5 in the morning and attacked her, stabbing her multiple times in the face, torso, arm and pelvic region. We are thankful that she was awake, finishing up an author’s book so that the author could meet deadline. Because she was working such long hours, Deena was not asleep and able to fight off her attacker, going so far as to chase him out of her house saving herself and her children from further harm. Unfortunately Deena sustained some serious internal injuries including a liver laceration which is taking a long time to heal. Her recuperation time means that she is unable to work the extended hours she is used to clocking to pay her mounting medical bills and as sole means of support for her family.

This single mom is a part of the indie author community, helping authors and publishers, doing many things at reduced charge or even free in some instances, and now she needs your help. A group of her clients/friends/colleagues are putting together an online auction to help raise money to help pay some of the accumulated bills related to the attack and subsequent recuperation. If you would be willing to donate items - signed paperbacks, ebooks, swag, one-on-one mentoring with aspiring authors, professional services - please fill out the form or email helpingindiesout@gmail.com

 

 

Want to know when the auction takes place or what the items up for bid are? Subscribe for updates (this is only for the auction updates and your information will not be sold)

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Other ways you can help Deena: Donate to help her overcome the hardship. Donation button is just below, and even a dollar makes a difference.

• Print this campaign sign, and post them on bulletin boards in schools, churches, and other places permitted: Deena print flyer
• Send the link to email contacts to help spread the word: CLICK HERE FOR DEENA’S FUND LINK
• Share this post with others on social media.
• Embed the below widget with picture on a website or blog sidebar if you have one.

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Write Good Words

The assignment in my English Composition course last week was to write a personal essay discussing something you had read that changed the way you viewed life. It could be anything, a book, a poem, a news article and 'the change' could be something life altering or something as simple as 'brushing my teeth every day'. The purpose of the assignment was twofold: to focus on construction of a personal essay and to realize how powerful words are.

Hats off to my students, who wrote about everything from children's books to epic poems, on subjects ranging from child abuse to better financial management of their own lives.  To learn their interests and what is important to them was fascinating. But as a writer, I realized something very important.

Our written words matter.

All of them.

Of course, there are obvious articles and books that are intended to raise awareness of subjects, but it seems that it was the subtle references in unexpected works that my students picked up on and were really struck by. It is the comparisons to their own lives, similarities and differences, that forced them to look at their worlds differently.  And as one student put it, "Although I've read other things on this subject, this particular author seemed to speak my own thoughts on {the subject}, and I knew I wasn't alone."

That's powerful.

To think that a horror story can make someone understand that we all have a potential monster inside of us, that a poem can make you call your mother every week just to say hello, that a fantasy novel can help you understand the value of imagination, that a news article can help you see the importance of questioning and not taking everything, or everyone at their word, or that a biography can teach you to appreciate the small things in your life, is something we should all consider. Every genre and every medium has the ability to affect someone's life in unexpected ways.

So as writers, what do we do?

We write good words, we tell good stories, we take care in our craft.  Because someone will read our work. And it may make a huge difference in how they view the world around them.

So, in teaching my students that the words they read can be very powerful, I also realized that the power comes from those of us that write those words.

Let's do it well.