How romance authors help each other and our community
If you’re not part of “Romancelandia” and don’t follow romance world social media, this week - be glad.
(Just this week. Most of the time Romancelandia is a fabulous place to be!)
I promise this is not a post about the Readers Take Denver book signing and convention. I wasn’t there. My friends who were have posted their opinions and experiences.
I want to take a moment to talk about all the ways romance authors help each other and the causes most important to us.
Kennedy Ryan is an author friend of mine. We have more in common than you might think, but what we have most in common is sons who are autistic. Every year, Kennedy asks authors (no pressure, ever) to donate to her Lift 4 Autism auction, which raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for autism programs.
Most years, I donate. And if I don’t, it’s because I have some crisis going on in my life and I miss the deadline.
This year, I remembered! And you can bid on the item, too.
I’ve been holding on to some nice, new, ORIGINAL Cocktales anthologies, and I decided last fall, when I donated a set to Audio in Color, that I would exclusively use my remaining stock for romance author auction donations.
Since 2013, Ive donated items, services, short stories, novellas, and full-length novels to fundraisers in the romance genre world, and those charity efforts have raised more than $1.3 million.
Helping worthy causes is something I consider to be part of my career. It’s not an extra. It’s a feature, one I take very seriously.
When I hear about author world conflict, I remind myself of the good. Like Mr. Rogers and his advice to “look for the helpers” in any crisis, I feel the same way about this community.
There are so many helpers.
We are a powerful, strong community full of love. <3
Coaster Fun!
I have become a wee bit addicted to “swag” coasters.
I can’t claim credit for the Barrington Roasters one, but the others are mine LOL.
Little Free Library Love
My 14 year old and I are going to start blessing some Little Free Libraries in my area with signed print copies of Shopping for a CEO.
These are misprints. There’s an extra, leftover sentence from a different book on the back cover LOL. I figured they’d be fun to hand out!
If you know of a Little Free Library in metro west Boston (let’s say from Newton to Shrewsbury, and from Chelmsford down to Milford/Mendon), post the location in the comments and I might send a Book Fairy your way to drop off a copy!
No matter what, I’m doing Newton and Mendon, for obvious reasons (read Shopping for a CEO to understand why!).