Be Immortalized in Print!

On Thursday evening, at 6 PM Pacific time, we’ll be having the first of our American Cancer Sociey Relay For Life auctions in Second Life. We have a number of really cool and unique items up for sale:

1) Autographed books by Robert E. Vardeman and me.
2) A number of one-of-a-kind and truly rare items for use in Second Life.
3) And, as mentioned in the title, you can win the opportunity to become a character in one of my stories. This is something I make available extremely rarely, and only for charity auctions. You win the auction, we’ll talk, I’ll work out the details of your character in the story. I can’t promise I won’t kill you, but if I do, it’ll be really cool. (Nor can I promise that I will kill you, unless you just want to be a henchman or murder victim or someone who dies of some horrible wasting disease. There’s always room for those kinds of characters in stories.) When the story sees print, I’ll make sure you get a signed copy of it, and your generosity will be mentioned in the Afterword to the story.

Second Life, as I’ve mentioned before, is free, graphically-based chat software which supports voice-chat. I’ve been using it for over two years now for readings, classes and just chatting with folks during my weekly Office Hours.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software, and registered with Second Life, you can click this link to be teleported to where the auction will take place. That same link will bring you to where I have office hours. There you can ask questions about writing, and get my take on issues facing writers each Wednesday evening—including this evening, at 6 PM Pacific Time.

I noted above that Second Life is free. This is true, but it does have its own economy. You can purchase game dollars to spend on your American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life winnings. Second Life has been very supportive of RFL. Last year we were part of the effort which raised over a quarter of a million dollars for cancer research. It was during RFL last year that I lost my very good friend Dave Arneson to cancer, bringing home both the tragedy of the illness, and the need to fund research.

During the RFL season, I’ll also be doing two other things:

Readings from At The Queen’s Command: I’m really excited about this prospect. I will be reading from my new novel, At the Queen’s Command, on a series of Friday evenings. The first is April 9 (this Friday), the second is April 23, each starting at 6 PM Pacific time. And here’s the deal. I will stay and read as long as folks want to stay and donate. You’ll get about four chapters an hour. There’s 71 chapters in the book, and RFL runs through early July. In about 25 hours I figure we can get through the entire thing, all 192,000 words. (And to forestall questions in the comments section, no, I won’t be recording the reading to an MP3 file. (That would defeat the purpose of the fundraiser.) The only way you’ll hear it is to come to the reading and kick-in so I will keep going.)

Classes: By request I will be offering the same classes I do at Origins, Gencon and DragonCon as fundraisers for RFL. The classes will cost 2,000 game dollars (or $8 US, which is what you’d pay at the convention). First one up will be my 21 Days to a Novel class on April 17, at 3 PM Pacific time. It will run two hours.

Please join us for the auction, the reading and working to end this scourge.