Our good friends at Crossed Genres had a nice idea today. How about writers put up online for free a story, and if readers like it, maybe they'll be moved to go ahead and pitch in some money for the Haiti relief effort? Obviously, millions of people in this country and around the world have already contributed without any kind of incentive other than compassion, but I think it's a great thing for people like us, who normally have something to sell, to instead give a bit of it away so people have a couple more bucks for a purpose way more important than any of the stuff that people like us typing on computers are up to. Starting right now, and continuing indefinitely, my book Ergosphere (M-Brane #12) edited by Rick Novy and full of fantastic new fiction by the likes of Caren Gussoff, Maura McHugh, Tim Maughan, and many others will be available as a free PDF download by clicking here.
Also, I am posting some of my own fiction to my Region Between blog. So get some new stuff to read both here and there and consider a donation (even a single dollar is worth doing if enough people do it) to the Haiti earthquake relief effort. I am endorsing Doctors Without Borders and this is the link to donate there. But if you prefer a different organization, then there are plenty of other options. Crossed Genres has set up a site here where they will be aggregating links to other people who are also putting up free stories, and there are also links to some aid organizations. Everyone's stuff is not necessarily going to be up and linked right way, though, so check back there often during the coming days.
Also, while I hate to say anything that could be taken as negative in this situation, I feel that I need to tell the truth to United States readers: 1) no matter what you may have heard from politicians and media talking-head douchebags, you have not actually already paid for Haiti through "your" tax dollars; US foreign aid, while it somehow has a reputation as being a drain on the budget, is in fact such a miniscule part of the part of the Federal budget that it barely exists; so you've paid nothing through taxes so far. Nothing; 2) The rest of the planet pays a stiff penalty for the fact that the US, which amounts to about four percent of the world's population, uses about twenty-five percent of the planet's resources. That penalty is being paid right now in Haiti.
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