Share Your Heart

Posted on | 8 months, 1 week ago, in the late evening | 1 Comment

At Phoenix Comic Con I did a panel on writing – nattering about social media, conventions, meeting other writers, and whatnot. If you were there, you heard me tell a story about the author Leslie Banks (aka L.A. Banks), who was the first pro to ever give me a blurb.

To make that story short – she was kind enough to not only read my first novel, but to say something nice about it; and when I emailed her to say thanks, she wrote me back with the sweetest, most heart-warming letter of encouragement. It totally blew my socks off! And much to my non-surprise but utter joy, she was exactly that fabulous in person when I got to meet her for panels at DragonCon.

I may have hypothetically made a total dork of myself on that occasion.

That NYT bestseller was 100% weapons-grade awesome to this pathetic n00bie, and it turned out, I wasn’t alone. Leslie was really the only “established” pro on our panel of perhaps seven or eight people … and at some point we realized by show of hands that she had given each and every one of us not only blurbage for our books, but tremendous support in public and private.

I cannot recommend this woman highly enough. She deserves praise and kudos far higher than any I can conjure, but suffice it to say, she’s not just a consummate professional, a fabulous storyteller, and an outstanding ally. She’s also a damn fine human being.

And she’s in trouble.

So many of us in creative disciplines are either uninsured or under-insured as a matter of course; we don’t have employers to provide it, and often we can’t afford it on a regular basis.* And bad things happen.

But Leslie is pretty damn phenomenal, and people are rallying to help in whatever ways they can. At the bottom of this entry I’m going to post a link to a fundraising auction – an auction that some of my readers might find very, very interesting.

It’s an auction that’s chock full of professional assistance from writing professionals – critiques, query letter analyses, interviews with editors, and much more. Bid to be featured in a comic book; bid for lifetime subscriptions to industry magazines. Throw your hat into the ring for the opportunity to own stacks upon stacks upon stacks of books.

Seriously. Just go scrolling through this list.
And if you’re interested, get clicking!

Don’t just do it for L.A. Banks. Do it because you love books, or you write books, or you want to name stuff in somebody else’s book. Do it because you collect autographs, or because you’ve always wanted to sit on the phone for half an hour with a rocket scientist.

Go look, that’s all I’m asking.





* I’ve gone without health insurance off and on most of my adult life, and though I have some now, it’s essentially liability for my body. It isn’t enough to save me in case of catastrophe. Did I ever tell you about the time I went eleven years between dentist visits? Yeah…

Category: misc

Comments

One Response to “Share Your Heart”

  1. Rest in Peace : Cherie Priest
    August 2nd, 2011 @ 3:06 pm

    [...] morning, Leslie Esdaile Banks died of cancer. I mentioned before how I knew her and why I adored her; and even though I knew she’d been desperately ill, I [...]

Leave a Reply





Bad Behavior has blocked 760 access attempts in the last 7 days.