A Time to Give

by Jill Williamson

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s almost Christmas! I love Christmas. I wanted a Christmas wedding. I wanted to carry a bouquet of poinsettias, I wanted a Christmas tree where people could put the wedding gifts, I wanted hooded cloaks for me and my bridesmaids to wear, and I wanted to leave the reception in a one horse open sleigh.

Alas, I got married in June. 🙁 But if I could travel back in time, I’d tell myself to do it anyway. Nothing better than Christmas in June, right?

Today, I wanted to talk about giving. Writers have a unique opportunity. Whenever a person opens one of our books, it’s like we’ve been invited into their home to speak to them. How cool is that? It’s better than cool. It’s precious. And humbling. Like Spiderman learns: “With great power comes great responsibility.” We are charged with doing our jobs well, and respecting the power we are given. And it’s a gift that publishers and readers give to us too. I’m thankful for that.

It’d been almost four years since my first book came out, and I’m still in awe of the opportunity I have to speak to readers through my books. But there are many other ways that authors can give to readers. Here are some that I do on a regular basis:

-Answer readers’ emails
-Blog about writing
-Teach about writing in schools or at conferences
-Donate books for all kinds of reasons
-Donate critiques for all kinds of reasons
-Thank people in my books

I recently learned that some dear friends of mine were trying to adopt a girl from Eastern Europe. Adoption is expensive, and until they raise over $40,000, little Sydney can’t come home. Just learning about their desire to adopt and the fact that they’ve been unable to have children of their own put tears in my eyes. I wanted to help. But I don’t have much money right now. Plus it’s Christmastime, and we wrecked our van hitting a cow. (We live in Free Range territory.)

Sydney—soon to be—Haydon

But I am a writer. I am creative. And I came up with a way to try and raise money to bring Sydney to her new family. I self-published an enovella. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo will keep their cut, but 100% of my proceeds from this book will go toward Sydney’s adoption.

Many things had to fall into place for this to happen, and many have given to Sydney’s cause already. Jeff Gerke gave me permission to do this project when Marcher Lord Press holds the rights to my storyworld. In doing so, he also gave up his right to make money off the story. Kirk DouPonce donated a cover, and teens from his church volunteered to model. Rebecca LuElla Miller, the freelance editor I hired, gave me a big discount on editing. As did Kerry Nietz on ebook design. My agent, Amanda Luedeke, waived her right to her 15%. And Chris Kolmorgen had an hour-long, (midnight for me, 2:00 a.m. for him) brainstorming session with me, helping with some last-minute content editing, though that might not have been a sacrifice of sleep on Chris’s part, as he is an insomniac, anyway. 😉

The result is my first self-published project. It released this week. To celebrate that, Jeff allowed me to put book one on sale. So, for the month of December, The New Recruit is $2.99 on ebook. And Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5 is also $2.99.

I’m so excited to be able to experiment as a writer and try new things. And nothing is more exciting to me that discovering a new way of giving back. So, please help spread the word about this project. Tell your friends and family, who like to read. And if they don’t like to read, they can still donate to Sydney’s fund. My friends have a very long way to go.

And now, I’m proud to introduce Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5.

So, bring it, baddies. It’s game on.