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Posts Tagged ‘good causes’

FandomAid fundraiser for the Philippines

The death toll and destruction in the Philippines have been nothing short of horrific. The LJ community FandomAid has put together a fundraiser — not an auction but just a “Buy It Now” sale. Since my time is limited, I’m offering stuff that already exists, to whit, books.

Offer #1: signed ARCs of A Natural History of Dragons

Offer #2: signed ARCs of The Tropic of Serpents

There are five copies of each on offer (because that’s all I have left of ANHoD, and about all I can spare of TToS). The ARCs have full-color covers and all the interior illustrations, but not the maps; inscriptions can be personalized on request. The price is $10 in the US, $15 overseas, and the books will go on a first come, first served basis. You just make a donation to one of the approved charities — there’s a list here.

If you want to donate more, please do. They need it.

And if those offers don’t float your boat, browse the post for more. There’s eleven pages of comments already, and more to come, I’m sure.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/602156.html. Comment here or there.

Lady Trent Supports the Ada Initiative

The Ada Initiative, which “supports women in open technology and culture,” is running a fundraising drive. They’re currently about seventeen thousand dollars short of their goal, with four days to go.

I read the reviews for A Natural History of Dragons, and I see a lot of readers mentioning how much it means to them that Isabella is a scientist, and how resonant they find her struggle against the restrictions placed on her gender. As much as I’d like to say that struggle is over today, let’s face it: we as a society aren’t that perfect. Women still face obstacles on that path, and harassment at the end of it; especially in the open-source tech world, there’s a lot of lower-level primate chest-thumping that makes the environment kind of toxic to women (and to men who like the idea of having women in their community). That’s one of several things the Ada Initiative — named for Ada Lovelace, of course — works to counteract.

So if this is the kind of thing that matters to you, and if you can spare a bit of money, please consider donating. There was a matching donation offer from Jacob Kaplan-Moss, up to $5000, but I think we may have burned through that already, or near to it — the meter had more than twenty-five thousand dollars to go when I saw that announcement yesterday. But it’s still true that if you donate $128 (whether in a lump sum or installments), you get this lovely pendant, which is indeed “schwag done right.”

Let’s see if we can’t get them over the finish line.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/595727.html. Comment here or there.

Neverland’s Library

As I mentioned a while ago, my short story “Centuries of Kings” is going to be in the charity anthology Neverland’s Library, whose sales will benefit the literacy charity First Book.

Before it can do that, though, the anthology has to be funded. You can find them over at Indiegogo — note that this is a “flexible funding” campaign, which means all pledges will be honored, even if the project doesn’t make its goal. You can also see updates over there, with shiny things like the cover art (which is really, really lovely). If you scroll down the project page, you can also find a list of the contributing authors — the ones accepted so far, that is, as submissions are still open.

So click around, and if you like what you see, lend them (us) your support. You get good stories and a good cause out of it. 🙂

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/588952.html. Comment here or there.

two (three) good causes

The Indiegogo campaign for Neverland’s Library has started up. You may recall me mentioning this before; it’s the anthology to which I sold “Centuries of Kings.”

If you contribute, you’re actually helping two things happen: first, the anthology itself, which includes such authors as Mark Lawrence, William Meikle, R.S. Belcher, Jeffrey J. Mariotte and Marcy Rockwell, Peter Rawlik, Jeff Salyards, Kenny Soward, and Tad Williams. (Plus others — the TOC isn’t entirely filled yet. Submissions remain open until June 20th, and I especially encourage women to submit, as I’d like to see a more balanced final TOC.)

Second, your donation is helping to support the literacy charity First Book, since 50% of the profits from the anthology will be going directly to them. First Book is a good organization, so I’m in favor of a project that both helps them out and produces a cool book.

Also, the Public Domain Review is running a small fundraising campaign, which is almost over; there are six days to go, and they’re 96.39% of the way to their goal as of me posting this entry. It isn’t a Kickstarter/Indiegogo-type thing, with all the reward levels, but if you donate $40 or more you do get a tote bag.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/586272.html. Comment here or there.

last few days for Con or Bust

Just as a reminder, the “Con or Bust” auctions close this Sunday. Bidding on the double-signed copy of A Natural History of Dragons (autographed by both me and Todd Lockwood, with a bonus sketch from him) is up to $48, while A Star Shall Fall is at $15 and With Fate Conspire is at $20. Proceeds go to a good cause, and the books don’t suck either, if I do say so myself. 😉

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/577160.html. Comment here or there.

Giveaways, as far as the eye can see!

Update on the Con or Bust auction: bidding is up to $35 dollars, having just opened on Saturday. Remember that this copy of A Natural History of Dragons is signed by me and by Todd Lockwood, and furthermore that he drew another dragon on the first page! It’s shiiiinyyyyyy . . . .

(I should mention that I’m also auctioning off signed copies of A Star Shall Fall and With Fate Conspire. We now return you to your regularly scheduled ANHoD update.)

Other giveaways: good lord, you can’t throw a rock right now without hitting one. I’m probably missing a few, but so far I know of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight underway.

Three new bits of content as well. At Bookish, I talk about how I came up with the different dragon types, and at My Bookish Ways I answer various interview questions. Also, over at No More Grumpy Bookseller, I discuss why Victorian-ish fantasy is so popular right now (or at least, why I like it).

Finally, don’t forget that Letters from Lady Trent is underway! I may delay my responses just slightly, to see if I can obtain something Extra Awesome to include in my replies . . . I need to go look into that.

Anyway, there’s a few things to entertain you all, and I promise I’ll be back soon with non-ANHoD-related blogging!

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/574477.html. Comment here or there.

Recent offerings from Book View Cafe

book not done book not done book not done <pant pant pant>

But I’m surfacing long enough to post something I’ve had sitting around for weeks, which is the list of recent offerings from BVC. Before I get into the full list, I want to call out this one particularly:

Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, edited by Nisi Shawl

Eleven original stories by recipients of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship (2007 through 2012), plus a reprint of “Speech Sounds” by the scholarship’s namesake, Octavia E. Butler. This anthology also includes a brief memoir of Butler by her Clarion classmate Vonda N. McIntyre and an introduction by Nalo Hopkinson.

Every year, the Carl Brandon Society, whose goal is to increase diversity in the field of science fiction, presents scholarships to two students of color accepted to the prestigious Clarion and Clarion West writers’ workshops. The scholarships, named in honor of the brilliant African-American writer Octavia Butler, pay workshop tuition and housing fees for the recipients. Since 2007, they have made it possible for eleven students to attend the workshops.

Give a little, get a free ebook.

If you contribute a mere $8.01 to the scholarship fund, you can download Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, an ebook anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories by these students — the voices of the new generation of writers of color in speculative fiction.

This special ebook is available only until June 22, 2013, Octavia’s birthday. She would have been sixty-six this year.

Octavia taught at Clarion and Clarion West, and provided enormous support there — and elsewhere — to other writers of color. Through these scholarships, she continues to do so.

Help continue Octavia’s work.

Other new books, from Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Pati Nagle, Gregory Frost, and David D. Levine

Worldbuilders

As in previous years, Patrick Rothfuss is running Worldbuilders, a charity auction/lottery to raise money for Heifer International.

He’s been adding prizes in batches, and mine just went live. By donating, your name will go into the lottery, with a chance to win not only copies of Warrior and Witch, but a signed ARC of A Natural History of Dragons. Plus there’s, like, a bazillion other awesome prizes — you can check out the site for more.

Go forth! Donate!

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/571250.html. Comment here or there.

a fundraiser for Jay Lake

For those of you not aware, Jay Lake — author, blogger, and all-round excellent guy — was diagnosed with cancer back in 2008, and at every step of the way, the dice have turned up snake eyes for him. Now he’s approaching a dead end in treatment, where there won’t be anything new for his doctors to try, that hasn’t already failed.

There is, however, the possibility of whole genome sequencing, which would potentially allow them to tailor his chemo regimen to his cancer much more specifically. This is, of course expensive — but in the time it’s taken me to put up this post, the campaign to raise the money has passed the $20K goal already. Given the financial burdens on Jay (despite good employment and good insurance), overshooting isn’t a bad thing. So consider sparing a few bucks, if you can.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/570729.html. Comment here or there.

Jubilee

I mentioned it before in a link post, but it deserves one of its own, and an update.

Rolling Jubilee is a project to bail out ordinary people instead of businesses. It’s using a quirk of our financial system (the ability to buy debt for less than its value) to take a small amount of charity and do a much larger amount of good — about $20 for every $1 donated. In so doing, it pushes back against the notion of debt as an inescapable moral burden, a moral failing, that should pursue people beyond the point of reason.

As of me posting this, the site’s meter says it has raised $412,368, which is enough to abolish $8,252,175 of debt.

Laid against the debt in the United States, it’s a drop in the bucket. Tuition debt alone is over a trillion dollars; the site doesn’t say how much is owed on, say, credit cards. So it’s easy to look at eight million dollars and think, nice idea, but it isn’t doing much good.

That’s looking at it from the wrong end. I donated $100, which translates to $2000 of effect. For some individual or family out there, that $2000 is huge.

Eight million is enough to fundamentally transform the lives of countless Americans. People who had a serious illness or an unexpected breakdown in their only car or, yes, even people who made bad decisions, and are now being crushed under the weight of a debt burden they’ll never be able to repay. Would I rather wait until they’re out on the street, then donate some cans of food to a soup kitchen? Or would I rather donate that $100 now, and give them a second chance before their lives have been destroyed?

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. I’m thankful for the fact that my husband and I are on top of our debt; pretty much the only thing we have is my student loans (and they’re small). I have a check at home, waiting to be deposited, for thirty some-odd dollars — payment for a small short story sale. It won’t hurt me one bit to send that money to Rolling Jubilee, and give somebody else six hundred some-odd dollars to be thankful for.

If you can, I encourage you to do the same.

not so much five things as everything on hand

1) The Red Cross book sale raised $250 (I added a bit to make a nice round number). Thank you to everyone who a) supported the cause and b) took some of these books off my hands!

2) Speaking of books, I just got the news that the Science Fiction Book Club has acquired A Natural History of Dragons as an Editor’s Pick. Given that they did the entire Onyx Court series as well, this makes me very happy.

3) Speaking of other things related to my job, both Sirens and 4th Street Fantasy are open for registration. I haven’t yet settled my con schedule for next year, but there are good odds of me being at both of these — and whether I am or not, I highly recommend them both to all of you.

4) Speaking of things related to other people’s jobs as writers, Patricia Burroughs is running a costume contest between now and December 4th. This is your chance to play dress-up and win an ebook and a gift certificate. I know some of you are costumer types, so check it out!

5) Speaking of, um, okay, I’m having trouble inventing segues . . . speaking of other people’s jobs as creative people (in this case, art), Robert Scott (he of the Urban Tarot Deck) now has an online store, selling prints not only of various Urban Tarot cards, but other work he’s done. So much pretty stuff . . . .

6) Speaking of things totally unrelated to everything above, I encourage you all to check out Rolling Jubilee. This post does a good job of articulating why I support the project, as does this one. Short form: it’s a way to short-circuit one of the systems that perpetuates and feeds the growing inequality in the United States. And I’m kind of in favor of that.

7) Giving on up on segues, this video is nifty.

8) . . . and that’s all I’ve got for now.

Last Day for Books

As a reminder, you have until I wake up tomorrow morning (10 a.m. PST, more or less) to buy books and raise money for the American Red Cross. Full details are at that link, for anybody who missed them before and/or needs to refresh their memory, but I’ll repost the list of what’s available (and what’s been taken) here:

    $10

  • A Star Shall Fall, mass market paperback (17 copies, was 19)
  • Warrior, mass market paperback (2 copies)
  • Witch, mass market paperback (1 copy)

Please, please, get more of these books off my hands. 🙂 Tell your friends, post to the Twitbooknets, whatever.

For those of you who have made purchases, thank you, and I’ll be shipping things out soon. (My plans on that front have been derailed by one cold segueing into another, with the result that I haven’t exactly been getting out of the house lately.)

five things are all the post my brain can manage right now

1) As a reminder, the book sale will be running until next Thursday morning. I should mention that my goal is to downsize my stock until it actually fits once more in the official Box of Author Copies. And, um. We’re not there yet. <gives stacks of books the side-eye>

2) Pati Nagle is donating $2 per sale from her book Dead Man’s Hand to the Food Bank of South Jersey for the remainder of this month.

3) On a different charitable front, the Strange Horizons fund drive is in its last few days. All donors get entered into a draw for these prizes, which include a full-color ARC of A Natural History of Dragons.

4) Speaking of ANHoD, mrissa has a lovely advance review of it up on her blog. (I think this is perhaps slightly less of a tailored-for-mrissas book than A Star Shall Fall was, but apparently not by much.) Also, a review of Lies and Prophecy, which I’ve been meaning to link to for a while.

5) Finally, I’m blogging at BVC again today, on what makes a folktale. Go there to guess what makes some fantasy seem fairy-tale-like, even when it isn’t actually retelling a fairy tale.

disaster relief book sale fundraiser

I’m going to take care of two problems here today:

1) I would like to raise funds for the American Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Sandy,

2) I have way too many author copies around the house, that I’d like to get rid of.

So we’re having a book sale here at Swan Tower. Comment on this post, or e-mail me at marie{dot}brennan{at}gmail{dot}com, and I will sell you the following books at the following prices, including autographs and (if you request it) personalization to you or another person of your choice.

Note that the prices are a bit higher than they might otherwise be, to ensure that packaging and shipping doesn’t take too big a bite out of the Red Cross donation total. (I will send books overseas, too, but since this is for charity, I will probably ask you to kick in a few bucks extra to cover the increased cost of shipping.)

    $10

  • A Star Shall Fall, mass market paperback (17 copies, was 19)
  • Warrior, mass market paperback (2 copies)
  • Witch, mass market paperback (1 copy)

Please spread the word wherever you think people would be interested. I’ll try to keep this list updated in a timely manner, so that you’ll know how many books are left of each type. ETA: Total raised thus far = $245

The sale will run for one week (so, through next Thursday morning, the 8th of November).

last reminder

I should have said this before, but don’t forget that the Pe ‘Sla project is “flexible funding.” They’ll get the pledged money whether or not they hit their goal, so if you looked at it and thought “I shouldn’t bother, since it’s not going to happen anyway,” then please go back and bother.

Priorities

Look. I am glad for The Gamers: Hands of Fate. I am glad they met their fundraising goal, and that they also hit the stretch goal that means AEG (the company behind L5R) will be producing a card game based off the one they invented for the film. This is fun and exciting and cool, and I wouldn’t have linked to the project before if I didn’t want it to succeed.

But.

The Gamers has raised $384,264.

Pe ‘Sla: Help Save Lakota Sioux Sacred Land has raised $341,526.

According to the last update, they’ve managed to get a seat at the negotiation table. That’s good, and I’m sure it’s due in part to the money they’ve been able to raise. But I have no idea how much of the land they’re going to be able to buy with that money. All of it? I’d be surprised. They wouldn’t have set their goal at one million if three hundred grand was enough to do everything they needed.

The Internets are a great place. But they are also a place where people will stump up more money for a movie and a card game than for helping the Sioux Nation regain control of one of their most sacred sites.

I’m not surprised by this, mind you. But I do think it shows some wrong-headed priorities. There’s thirty-seven hours left on the Pe ‘Sla project; I hope they can bring in more before it’s done.

a couple of Kickstarters (or Indiegogo)

It’s going to be interesting to watch how well crowdfunding fares over the next few years. I’m getting more and more pleas to donate to or help promote various projects — enough that I’m very much having to pick and choose which ones I go with. You guys have been great about supporting the ones I’ve mentioned here before, but I don’t want to burn out your goodwill.

So, with that in mind, these three are all projects I actually have a personal desire to see succeed:

Pe’ Sla: Help Save Lakota Sioux Sacred Land — this one was launched when a sacred site in the Black Hills was put up on the auction block by the landowner. It’s since been taken down from auction, but according to the updates, the Great Sioux Nation is in private negotiation to buy as much of the land as they can. This is a Flexible Funding campaign, which means they get the donated funds even if they don’t reach their goal; it’s also worth noting that the crowdfunding is in addition to the money being put up by the tribes themselves. So the project helps take some of the burden off them/expand how much they can purchase and protect. Given the history in this country of fucking over indigenous groups by taking their land, this is a nice, direct way to help do the right thing.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate — on a less serious and political note . . . but only partly, I guess. I linked to this one before, but as part of a link dump, with very little explanation. To go into more detail: as described in this update, the filmmakers are actively concerned with and interested in doing something about the problems with gender in the gaming community. I quite enjoyed the first two movies in the series (the first on in particular is a hilarious tour through all kinds of good ol’ bad tropes in D&D), so I’m hoping this one gets the last bit of funding it needs to happen.

Electric Velocipede — finally, a small one for the magazine Electric Velocipede, which published my short story “Selection” some years back. They’re a quirky little market, and about halfway to their goal, which will fund them for the next four issues (i.e. a year).

Two reminders

1) The first of teleidoplex‘s costume auctions are ending soon — like, in about six hours. (Others have a bit longer to run.) Take a look, bid while you can, help her go to Clarion West!

2) I’m reading at SF in SF tomorrow night, with Ysabeau Wilce and Erin Hoffman. Hope to see some of you there!

Costume sale! For a good cause!

My friend teleidoplex has won herself a place in Clarion West, which is totally awesome.

But Clarion, regardless of direction, is kind of expensive — and that is not so awesome.

But! You can be awesome and help!

In addition to being a writer of much talent, teleidoplex is a veteran costumer. (In fact, she’s one of the people that infected me with the costuming bug when I started LARPing.) And she’s created an eBay store to sell off some of her hoard of outfits, wigs, shoes, and more, with proceeds going toward paying her way to Clarion. Some of the stuff is very costume-y; other stuff is perfectly legitimate street clothing. I heartily encourage you all (at least, all of you with a use for women’s clothing) to browse through it and see if there’s anything you might be interested in.

And if you don’t want stuff, but do want to help her out, there’s a donation button on her website, where you can chip in directly.