Julia Huni's Blog, page 5

New Release!

I have a new book coming out on March 23. I’ve mentioned it once or twice (or a million times) in my newsletter. And on Facebook. And to anyone I meet randomly on the street. The cover is finished, the book is with the formatter, and the pre-order is live!

I’m really excited to be working again with Indie Science Fiction powerhouse Craig Martelle. Craig has lived in the Amazon top 100 Science Fiction authors for most of the last four years, and has probably forgotten more about marketing than I know.

There will be at least four books in this series and the first draft of Book 2 is almost done. If you’d like a taste of the first chapter of Book 1, keep reading!

Krimson Run

Tony Bergen hated the capital city of the United Federation of Planetary Societies, but the weather always raised his spirits. Bright sunshine, but not too hot. A light breeze with a whiff of sea salt, but no trace of dead fish. He wasn’t sure how the Federation managed it, but Romara weather was perfect.

The same could not be said for the company. Like all Federation cities, the metropolis was overrun with UFPS security. He’d counted forty-three uniformed agents and twelve undercover. None of them had taken a second look at him, so life was good.

He strode down the perfectly fabricated cobblestone street—every square meter included one stone set a half-centimeter higher or lower than the rest. The effect was meant to be charmingly random, but anyone with an eye for patterns could see the careful planning. He shook his head. It would have been cheaper—and easier—to hire humans to install the darn things. But the Federation automated everything.

Half-way down the street, he tripped over a slightly raised stone and stumbled into a wall. That gave him a chance to glance behind without being obvious. Twenty meters back, a well-dressed couple chatted as they strolled. In a nearby alley, two children played a game involving a ball and a stick. A small, furry creature sat on a doorstep—obviously someone’s pet. A pretty young blonde carried a bag of groceries toward him.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. If Federation Security was watching for him, this is where they’d strike. A narrow street, nowhere to run and few witnesses. He straightened up and strolled onward, whistling an old tune as he walked. The blonde girl smiled at him and slid her hand into her pocket.

Tony’s heart rate increased. Was she reaching for a weapon? The children had disappeared. He sidestepped and glanced back. The couple had stopped talking and increased their speed, closing in with a deceptively smooth gait. Tony picked up the pace.

The girl approaching him pulled her hand out of her pocket. Something metallic glinted in the sun.

Tony flung himself sideways into a shallow doorway. A male voice roared, “Halt! Federation Security!”

With a piercing scream, the young woman dropped her groceries and her silver communications tablet. Round green fruit bounced out of the bag, scattering across the narrow road. The pet hissed and scrambled up a drain pipe.

The well-dressed couple broke into a run and thundered past both Tony and the girl, shouting incomprehensible code as they ran. The woman’s left heel pierced one of the green fruits, but she ran on, oblivious to the new ornament on her bright red shoe.

Tony stepped out of the doorway, smiling sheepishly. “That was terrifying.”

“You’re telling me,” the girl said. “I wonder who they were after?”

Tony shrugged, then crouched to help her gather the spilled fruit. “These don’t look too bad,” he said. He picked up the silver device. “Here’s your comtab. Good thing you have a high-density case.”

“It’s weathered a few drops,” she replied with a slight smile, taking the comtab. “And the fruit are for a sauce, so it won’t matter if they’re bruised. Thanks for your help.”

She rose and continued up the street. Tony slid the thin silver chip that had been attached to the comtab into his pocket and strolled in the other direction.

If you want to read more, you can pre-order Krimson Run now, and it will automatically be delivered to your Kindle on March 23.

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New Release

I have a new book releasing today. This was my “super secret” co-writing effort that I finished last month. The title is Superdreadnought 6 and the author is listed as CH Gideon. But yours truly wrote the story with direction, tweaking, and editing by my co-author, Craig Martelle.

Finishing a series

Superdreadnought is a six-book spin-off series from the very popular Kurtherian Gambit Universe. The KGU is the brainchild of Michael Anderle, one of the big names in the Indie author world, and a perennial member of Amazon’s top 100 authors list. The KGU now includes over 150 books by I don’t know how many authors. Seriously, I have no idea how many there are.

Last spring, I submitted a story to the anthology The Expanding Universe 5. I’ve mentioned that book before–23 awesome science fiction stories. If you haven’t taken a look at it, I highly recommend you do!

Well, it seems the beta readers for that anthology read my story and recommended to the editor, Craig Martelle, that he hire me to write Superdreadnought 6. They needed the series wrapped up, and the original co-author was not available. My TEU5 story had the right voice.

Craig is big stuff in the world of Science Fiction, and in the Indie author world. He’s the man behind the 20Books50K Facebook group and the largest independent authors’ conference in the world: 20BooksVegas. So I was very flattered when he emailed me this summer and asked if I’d write the sixth book in the series. I wasn’t sure I was the right choice, so I dithered a bit, but eventually, I said yes.

Now, I need to warn you–this book has swearing. I don’t normally have any foul language in my stories, as you’ve no doubt noticed, and I hope, appreciated. But to stay true to the SD series and the KGU style, I had to add some bad words. I tried to keep it to a minimum, but if you don’t like swearing, please don’t read the book!

Superdreadnought 6

The superdreadnought is run by an artificial intelligence who goes by the name Reynolds. There’s some backstory there, but I’m not sure which of the 150 books you’d have to read to learn it! Anyway, the Reynolds was mothballed, and while in solitary, the AI developed split personalities to deal with his loneliness. The first five books take up the story after the Reynolds is brought out of retirement and sent to another galaxy to hunt down Kurtherians.

Once the bad guys have been brought to justice, it was time to head home and have his alternate personalities fixed. But nothing is ever that easy in fiction. At the beginning of SD 6, the Reynolds accidentally gets hurled 10 billion light-years away. My book is all about getting the ship home, and Reynolds coming to terms with his other identities.

It’s a fun book, and I think you could read it as a stand-alone. You’d miss out on some of the jokes and references, but the story makes sense. You can definitely read it without having sampled the KGU–I still haven’t read anywhere near all 150 books!

If you want to read Superdreadnought 6, here’s a link. It’s free in Kindle Unlimited.

If you want to read the rest of the series, check it out here. Or wait until December, and you can get all 6 ebooks in a single low-priced set.

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How to help your favorite author, part 2

Last time I told you about a couple ways to support your favorite author. Buying books or reading them in Kindle Unlimited are great ways to get more visibility for a book. The increased sales and page reads give a book more visibility in Amazon’s system.

Reviews

Another way to help your favorite author is to review books. Reviews provide “social proof” — they tell potential readers that other people liked this book. (Or didn’t, but we’re going to pretend all the books you read are good.)

Amazon has a five star system. One thing a lot of readers don’t know is three stars is not considered a good rating by Amazon. So if you like a book—even a little, giving four or five stars will help the author. Giving one, two or three stars can really damage a book’s chances.

A lot of folks don’t want to do reviews because they don’t know what to write. I’ll give you some ideas here, but you don’t have to write anything. Just the stars are super helpful.

No Spoilers, please!

If you want to write a review, here are some things to write about:

Your favorite character–and why you loved themThe best settingWhat spoke to you emotionally about the storyWhat makes you want to read another book by this authorThe tone of the book: light-hearted, suspenseful, fast-paced…

Try not to include any spoilers—potential readers might not buy if you give away the secret twist, or tell the ending.

Who can review

Amazon won’t let you review unless you’ve purchased at least $50 of product from them. This includes anything you buy on Amazon, so you can rate books you haven’t bought. However, if you have bought the book, your review will be listed as a “verified purchaser.” Readers often give more weight to verified buyers.

Strangely enough, Kindle Unlimited readers are not tagged as “verified purchasers.” That’s something a lot of authors are lobbying Amazon to change. They know what books you’ve checked out–why wouldn’t they credit you with having read it?

ARCs

No, not Noah’s Ark. If you enjoy reviewing books, you can become an ARC reader. ARC (Advanced Reader Copies) are copies of the book an author gives you for free in hopes you’ll review it. If you get an ARC copy, you should include the words “I received an ARC of this book” but don’t say “in exchange for.” That sounds like the author traded the book for a good review, which is against Amazon’s rules.

Another thing that’s against the rules is reviewing a book when you have a personal relationship with the author. So you can’t write reviews for friends or family. Sometimes they’ll even delete reviews if you are Facebook friends with an author!

If you’re interested in being an ARC reader for me, shoot me an email at info@juliahuni.com. I should have a book ready by the end of November!

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How not to make a first impression

I went to the Sisters Festival of Books last night. I was honored to be one of the local authors. They gave each author a few minutes to talk about our work, and I sold a dozen paperbacks! And I really enjoyed meeting readers and other authors.

Me, talking to Festival mastermind, Mac Hay



What not to do

At the event, I met author Valarie Anderson. Val writes narrative non-fiction. That means her history book reads like a novel, instead of a textbook. Her book, The Money Eater, is about Bernard Otto Kuehn, who spied for the Japanese in Oahu. During her presentation, she spoke of the research involved in writing a historically accurate book. Months of research, involving declassified CIA and FBI files, family records, local government documents, and radio broadcast transcripts.

The story sounded fascinating, so I picked up a copy of her book. And when I asked her to sign it, I started off with my usual charm: “Your work sounds horrible!”

That’s not a nice thing to say to anyone, but especially not an author. We’re a sensitive bunch.

Time to back peddle

Of course, I quickly explained that I meant the hours of research sounded like way too much work–especially for someone who makes up everything she writes. She said understood, and that she felt the same way about fiction. But I will never forget the look on her face when I first blurted that out!

I’m hoping this will become a funny story she tells whenever the subject of “worst fan ever” comes up.

The moral of the story

Of course, the moral of the story is to think before you speak. My mother told me that my whole life–you’d think I would have learned it by now! But this is why I’m a writer. I can edit everything. Many, many times.

If you live in Sisters, there are lots of amazing authors in town this weekend for the Festival, and events continue through Sunday. Check it out. Swing by our local indie bookstore, Paulina Springs. And pick up a copy of Valarie’s book!

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How to help your favorite author

There are a LOT of books on Amazon. Millions. Literally. So getting your book in front of the people who want to read it is hard. Indie (independently published, aka self-published) authors like myself have to work to get the right eyes on our work. It’s hard to throw your book out into the world—it’s a piece of the author’s soul. (In a good way, not a Voldemort way.)

Plus, while publishing, itself, is free, there are a lot of
costs associated with publishing a book. I’m a writer, not a graphic artist, so
covers cost money. Editors catch all those pesky errors—and they want to be
paid! Advertising, so people learn about your book costs money. Hosting a
website. Even sending out a newsletter costs a few dollars.

If you have a favorite author, someone you’d like to see
write more books (me, pick me!) Here are some ways you can help them get more
visibility. Visibility -> sales -> positive reinforcement -> a desire
to write more books.

Buy the book:

Obviously, the first way to help your favorite author is to purchase their novels. If a book is selling well, Amazon is more likely to recommend it to other readers. The same goes for other platforms, like Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Scribd, Apple…the list goes on and on.

Kindle Unlimited:



A lot of folks are reading on Kindle Unlimited these days. If you’re not familiar with it, KU is a subscription service through Amazon. You pay in the neighborhood of $10 per month for unlimited access to a huge array of books. (This is just information, not a plug for KU—I don’t get any kickbacks unless you read my book!) You can check out up to 10 books at a time, and read them whenever you want.



If a book is in KU, it can’t be sold in e-book form anywhere else. Many authors choose to publish through KU because the benefits outweigh this major negative. All my books are currently in KU. I’ve had them “wide” for a few months, and sales were pretty low, so I came back to KU.



How does an author get paid through KU? Since you aren’t buying the book, we don’t get a royalty. We get credited with a “borrow” when you check it out, but that doesn’t earn us any money. It does help with our overall author rank, which makes us more visible. But the dollars start to flow when you start turning the pages. Every KU author gets a little less than half a cent for every page you read. It fluctuates a bit month to month—all those KU subscriptions are put into a pot (after Amazon takes their cut) and that pot is divided up between authors based on total pages read. So more pages = more money. And more page reads = increase author rank, which means Amazon promotes it more.



Authors can see how many pages are read every day, and those numbers provide a little warm-fuzzy feedback. “Look, people are reading my book!” And naturally, that leads to: “People like my books! I’ll write more!” We’re a sensitive group. We thrive on readers’ love.

I hope that gave you little insight into how you can help your favorites author (pick me!). Next time, I’ll talk about reviews.

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Relaunch Complete!

I didn’t need to publish new versions of Sweeping S’Ride and The Trouble with Tinsel, since those titles didn’t change, so I updated the covers this week when I published Glitter in the Stars. Now the whole series is live in its new format!

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The big relaunch

If you’ve read my newsletter, you know I decided to relaunch my Space Janitor series. This means I’ll be putting new covers and new titles on the books. The stories will stay the same–except for that typo one of my observant readers pointed out.

Because three of them will have new titles, I’ll have to “republish” them on Amazon. There are some perks to that–Amazon treats your book like it’s brand new, so you get a little more visibility. And they’ve said they’d be happy to move my reviews over from my original books, so I won’t lose those.

I’m also going to take the opportunity to put them into Kindle Unlimited. This means they won’t be available on Kobo or Barnes and Noble or Apple after July 27. But KU subscribers can download and try them out for free. Which means more visibility, which can lead to more sales. I’d love to say I do this all for the love of writing, but the fact is, I’d like to make some money. Or at least break even on the covers and editing! And in a few months, I may take them wide again.

So, without further ado, here are the new covers and details on the relaunch:

Murder is Messy will be rechristened The Vacuum of Space and republish on August 1st.Dirtside Decluttering will become The Dust of Kaku and appear on Amazon on August 8.Stars, Stiffs and Stains will be reborn as Glitter in the Stars, and debut on August 15.Sweeping S’Ride will become, well, Sweeping S’Ride because it was an awesome name.
It will return to Amazon on August 22. Also, the Christmas novella will stay The Trouble with Tinsel, but it will get its new cover on August 29th.

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Announcing Space Janitor Four

Sweeping S’Ride

Sweeping S’Ride: Space Janitor Four, is finished! at least, everything but the last of the editing. I will publish it in June 2019. The cover is almost finished. Check back here on Tuesday for the cover reveal!

For now, here’s the blurb:

It’s a big galaxy, and somebody has to clean it.

When maintenance technician Triana Moore arrives on the planet Sally Ride, she just wants to get through the top-lev meeting and get her relationship with Agent Ty O’Neill back to normal. But everywhere she turns, she’s reminded of the serial killer who got away. When a short escape from the boredom leads her to an eerily familiar crime scene, she starts to wonder if she’s losing it.

With the help of Ty, her frenemy Vanti, and a cupcake truck, will Triana survive the most boring meeting in the galaxy? And will she finally sweep her nemesis out of her life? 

Or will she run away again–this time for good?

Scoop up the then next book in the Space Janitor Series!

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Oh, Zark!

I’ve been running around telling everyone that Space Janitor Three will launch today. But the bots are conspiring against me! This is the first time I’ve changed the date on a pre-order, and I didn’t realize it still takes three days for the book to go live. If you just publish it usually takes less than 24 hours, but pre-orders take longer for some reason.

So Space Janitor Three will go live on Amazon on Thursday, and on the other retailers on Friday. If you’ve pre-ordered, that’s the day you’ll get the download. If you haven’t, you still can pre-order, or just wait.

I’m so sorry if you were hoping to start reading today. As soon as I can find my time machine and space ship, I will bring you some Dolce Amour apology chocolates.

In the meantime, here’s the first chapter:

Crossing the cargo bay requires timing, speed, and an unhealthy disregard for human life. Your own life, that is. If you get crushed by a cargo bot, you better hope it kills you. Because if it doesn’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life paying off the damage assessment.
I’ve been prowling around the cargo bays for years without getting hurt. Although, to be honest, it doesn’t really require anything except a good eye for patterns. Or access to the cargo bay schedules, so you can look for down times.
My name is Triana Moore, and I’m a station maintenance technician, so I have access to virtually everything on the station. I’m also the daughter of the chair of the station board of directors, which grants its own gold-card access. I try not to use that access unless I absolutely have to—explaining to my mother would be worse than paying off the damage assessment.
Tonight, Charlie Bay is quiet. Bots are unloading a freighter from Grissom over in Bravo Bay, and there’s a cruise liner taking on supplies at Delta. But the last ship docked at Charlie left two hours ago, and the next one isn’t due until morning.
With a wave of my holo-ring, the door to Charlie’s control booth slides open and lights spring on. I take a quick look at the console, but all readings are nominal. Out in the bay, five neatly arranged stacks of crates wait for tomorrow’s ship. I squint at the markings—looks like Kakuvian brandy from the surface and a shipment of zero-grav veggies from the farm levels. The brandy might merit some extra security scans, but it won’t require eyes-on inspection until just before loading.
I dim the windows so lights from the bay won’t disturb me. Then I hook my hammock into the tie down rings—thoughtfully placed at chest height so workers can tether in the event of gravity loss—and climb in for the night.

» «

Thump.
My eyes pop open and I stare into the darkness. The glow from the console power button gives the ceiling a faint blue tinge. I peek over the edge of the hammock, but the console itself is dark.
I lay back and listen. The faint, ever-present hiss of the air handlers sounds loud when I’m paying attention, but that’s all I hear. Wait. What is that? A kind of sliding sound, like something heavy being dragged across carpet.
I lean out of the hammock and reach for the window control. The hammock swings wide and I grab at the console edge to steady myself. My fingers smack the edge of the console, but I can’t—-waaaaghh!
Laying on the floor, I stare up at the dimly lit ceiling. From down here, I feel a rumbling vibration and shuddering thud. Something is going on in the cargo bay.
Rubbing my backside, I climb to my feet and clear the windows. The cargo bay looks just like it did last night. Six neat stacks of crates, waiting for the—
Hang on. Weren’t there five stacks last night?
The sixth stack doesn’t really merit the name. It’s two small crates, about a meter square and maybe two meters long. They have no visible markings, so I fire up the console to consult the manifest. Probably just a late delivery, but I’m awake now, and curious.
Tomorrow’s ship is a freighter headed for Sarvo Six. That’s out on the fringes and we’re the last stop before the long transit. The manifest still shows a huge shipment of Kakuvian brandy and a small produce pickup. Probably to be consumed by the crew on the way—the produce, not the brandy. Although the total bottle count might decrease by the time they arrive. Fresh fruits and veggies are provided by most big freighters to keep crew from jumping to another ship, and a tiny discrepancy in the brandy count will probably be overlooked. Good crew are hard to keep these days.
That’s odd. No other items appear on the manifest. It’s possible they were misrouted. I snoop around through the data for a few minutes, but no one has flagged a missing shipment, yet.
I look out the window again. There is something odd about those two crates. Beads of moisture have gathered along the sides of the crates. They almost appear to be… sweating? With a shrug, I crank up the lights and head out into the cargo bay.
A rapidly drying trail of splotches leads from the internal station doors, across the wide bay to the crates. Whatever it is, it’s leaking, which is not good. I follow the trail to the crates, and walk around them, shining a focused beam from my holo onto the shadowed side of the boxes. No markings, anywhere. No shipping chip, no bar codes.
A bead of moisture collects on the corner of the top crate. It grows, clinging to the edge, then lets go, sliding down the side. Eyes narrowing, I reach out towards the rolling drip. This crate isn’t leaking. It’s melting.
I yank my hand back before touching the crate and spin on my heels. I run back to the control booth. It takes three tries before I manage to get my hammock down and bundled back into its conveniently attached packing bag. I take a swift look around to make sure I’ve left no evidence and scoot out the door.
The warehouse takes up most of Levels 36 and 37. The ring of cargo bays occupies the outer ring, but the rest is a massive open space with bots pushing cargo from one bay to another and into the huge cargo float to distribute items to the rest of the station. I find a convenient stack of crates and sit down, flicking my holo-ring. A quick hack erases my visit to the cargo bay. Then I call Station Operations.
“Ops, Carter.” A small bald man with bright green eyes and a neck tattoo answers the call.
“Carter, it’s Moore,” I say. “I’m off duty, but I need to report a cargo issue.”
“Triana, it’s oh-dark-thirty!” He peers around me, obviously reading the data on his screen. “What are you doing in Cargo if you’re off duty?”
I shrug. “Couldn’t sleep, figured a walk would help.”
“A walk—through Cargo?” He gives me a look. “Does Kara have a visitor again? You can always crash in my place.”
“Thanks, Carter, but I’m fine. Besides I don’t think your partner would appreciate me randomly barging in.”
Carter waves his bony hand. “Not a problem. We’ve all had roommates before. Tracy gets it. But that’s not why you called.”
I flick a picture of the drip trail to him. “I noticed something dripping. I followed the trail to Charlie, but it’s dried up now. You might want to send someone in to investigate.”
A smile flashes across Carter’s narrow face. “You must be tired. You forgot to strip the metadata from this still, Triana. It places you inside Charlie.”
Zark.
He laughs. “Don’t worry, I deleted it. I’ll send Farquad up on a ‘routine’ check. You mind waiting to show him what’s going on?”
“I don’t think he’ll need me to show him,” I say. “But I’ll wait.”
I look for a place to stash my bag but give up after a few minutes. Carter obviously knows why I’m here, and I’m sure Farq does, too. He’s the biggest gossip in the station. I dash across the warehouse to wait for him by the float tubes in the center of the huge space. Forget what I said about crossing a cargo bay—if you want to take your life in your hands, try crossing the warehouse at peak time. It’s like playing that Ancient Earth vid game with the frog.
A few minutes later, Farq steps out of the float tube. I’m pretty tall for a woman, but Farq makes me feel tiny. He’s well over two meters tall—tall enough he has to duck to go through a standard sized door—and broad as a planet. His dark skin contrasts beautifully with his white teeth and sparkling gray eyes. Blond dreadlocks fall to the middle of his back, but since he’s on duty, they’re tied neatly back into a bundle.
“Yo, Tree, talk to me!” He smiles and slaps me on the shoulder. I stumble and catch my balance against a nearby crate. “I hear you discovered a mysterious trail of moisture!” His voice, like the rest of him, is huge.
He leads the way down the brightly marked safety path, carefully staying between the lines and stopping at the crossings. Farq rolls his eyes at me. I shrug and we both laugh. No doubt this “routine” check is being recorded, or Farq would have bounded across the space like I did earlier. Safety first, at least when the boss is watching.
Farq opens Charlie Bay and we hike across the empty space to the six stacks of crates. I half expected the mystery boxes to be gone, but they’re sitting there, dripping like crazy. In fact, a puddle has formed around the bottom one. We exchange looks, and Farq calls Ops.
“You seein’ this, Carter?” He asks, ignoring the standard protocol. “There’s no ID and it looks like the box piddled on the rug.” He waves a device near the box and puddle. “Nothing on the haz scan, so I’m going to open her up.”
“Roger,” Carter replies, his formality a rebuke. “Proceed with extraction.”
I snicker and Farq grins.
“Proceeding as ordered,” he replies in a robotic voice, shaking his head. He hooks his scanner onto his belt and pulls out another device. He reaches up and attaches it to the top corner of the upper crate. The device latches onto the corner and begins cutting around the top edge like an Ancient Earth can opener.
“Can you see anything up there?” I ask. If I stand on my tippy toes, I can peek over the top edge, but I can’t really see anything. Farq’s extra centimeters give him a distinct advantage here.
“Nothin’ to see. Grab a lifter, will you?”
While the cutter whirs away, I trot across the bay and pull one of the box lifters from the rack by its convenient handle. Bots do most of the heavy lifting, but these hand-held anti-grav lifters make shifting cargo much easier in tight spaces. I grab a second lifter and head back to Farq.
When the cutter finishes its circuit, Farq unclips it and sticks it back into his belt pouch. The smell of hot plastek curls the hairs inside my nose. He attaches a lifter to one end of the box lid and turns it on. With a soft hum the lifter lights up. Farq presses the link sequencer to connect the two lifters and attaches the second one to the other end. He presses a green lighted button. The lifters whine and with a grate and a chunk, the lid comes loose. He tugs the closest handle towards us, and the whole lid slides forward.
“Saints and angels preserve us!” Farq stares down into the box, transfixed. His hand makes a ritual gesture, seemingly without input from his brain.
“What?” I cry, jumping up and down like a spoiled child. “I can’t see! What is it?”
“Not what,” Farq says, still staring into the crate. “Who.”

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Project Unifiy

We spent Saturday at Oregon State University’s Dixon Recreation Center watching the 2019 Oregon Unified Basketball Tournament. Project Unify is a part of Special Olympics.

Two of my kids play on our high school’s Unified Team–one is an “athlete” and the other is a “partner.” The athletes are neurodiverse students–kids with developmental or intellectual disabilities. Some of them have physical differences, as well. The partners are their neurotypical classmates.

These kids take a class in which they play sports together all year–soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball and golf in the spring. Then they compete against other high schools, sometimes traveling several hours to away games. Some of the partners have been on the team for two or more years–they love it that much. It allows the jocks to play sports in which they don’t normally get to compete, and it lets kids who otherwise would never even consider sports to play on a team and compete at the league or even state level.

Our high school has an amazing culture around Project Unify–thanks almost exclusively to Josh, the incredible special education teacher who brought the program to our school. Unified teams get big send-offs just like the state-bound varsity teams. The Project Unify class had to close registration early this year because too many kids tried to sign up for it. And last time we had a staff vs Unified game, we drew more spectators than the varsity team.

I love attending Unified games. I’m not really into sports, so going to a high school basketball game is just embarrassing–I’m constantly asking someone to explain the arcane rules to me. Seriously, it’s like Bring your Muggle to Quidditch Day.

But at a Unified game, no one cares if you clap for the wrong team, or you don’t remember if we’re “home” or “guest,” or if you don’t understand why that guy just got three free-throws, even though the final buzzer had already sounded. (Really, the last game yesterday ended 28-27 with a foul on a three-point attempt.**)

You just get to cheer on some amazing kids who are playing their hearts out. You get to watch a kid with leg-braces and a helmet make two points–after the opposing team passes him the rebound and gives him another chance to score. And you get to see your own team win the Sportsmanship award because they are the most generous and helpful kids of all. They took Bronze, too, but as Josh said, after bringing a stack of pizzas to the bus for the four hour ride home, “You won the most important award.” And they all knew exactly what he was talking about.

That’s Project Unify.

Yours truly with my son’s bronze medal and the team’s Sportsmanship trophy.

** “foul on a three-point attempt”: I hope I got the verbiage right.

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