And now that I’ve got your attention…
I feel about Giving Tuesday a little bit like how I feel about Valentine’s Day: you shouldn’t have to pick a day to help other people, just as you shouldn’t have to pick a day to say I love you and be nice to your significant other, because the implication is that it’s okay to NOT do those things the rest of the year. (On the plus side, Giving Tuesday doesn’t involve the giving or receiving of bad chocolate—that’s what kills me most about Valentine’s Day; the chocolate is terrible, and every time you eat bad chocolate, and angel gets stabbed in the earhole by a devil.)
That said, I’m all in favor of something that gets people thinking about how they can be a force for good in the world, and if Giving Tuesday is the mechanism that makes that happen, then I’ll, um, mechanic it up (I have no idea what that means).
For reasons
detailed here, I like to donate a portion of the (meager) proceedings from my books to worthy causes. In the case of
The Camelot Shadow and
The Strange Task Before Me: Being an Excerpt from the Journal of William J. Upton, it’s Surgicorps.org (for reasons described in the link above), and in the case of
The Chronicle of Heloise & Grimple, it’s ProLiteracy (for reasons that should be obvious to anyone on Goodreads).
HELP ME GIVE MORE!In an effort to augment my usual annual donation to those groups and the book proceeds, I’m going to donate an extra dollar to each cause for every copy of my books sold between now and Friday. Is that going to enable both organizations to completely fulfill their missions and close up shop? Of course not. But, maybe we can throw a little extra good their way and, in the process, provide essential medical care to those in need and help some people learn to read (and gain all of the power (and great responsibility) that knowing how to do that entails).
If you want to participate, just pick up a copy of one of the books (or multiples—they make great gifts) and let me know that you made a purchase, either in the comments below or by messaging me directly; I’ll make the donation on Saturday.
Regardless of what causes you support and how you do that (sometimes money is tight, but time, old clothes, food, and other commodities can always help), thanks to all of my GR peeps for being rays of light in an increasingly dark world.
Happy Holidays to all!
Goodreads for the win!