vituperation

December 30, 2004

Note: The offer below has ended. Thanks to all who contributed — a tally of the total donations collected will be put up in the next entry.

By now you’re aware — along with the entire planet — that over 116,000 people in southeast Asia are dead as a result of tsunamis caused by a massive earthquake last Sunday morning. Thousands of children are orphaned, millions are homeless, and billions of dollars in damage have been done.

And this is just the beginning. Over the next days and weeks, more trouble is coming in the form of death from things like cholera, malaria, dysentery, water-borne disease, and malnutrition.

Relief is pouring in from around the world, and as of this writing about $220,000,000 had been promised from various countries, a drop in the bucket against what will eventually be needed. Individual contributions are pouring in, too, from people like you and me.

Maybe you’re thinking about donating money but haven’t decided to. Maybe you don’t know where you want to send a donation. I want to make an offer to you fellow Americans.

Amazon is taking donations to go directly to the Red Cross for relief to the victims of this disaster. So far they’ve collected about $4,500,000. Every penny of this money is earmarked for victims of the earthquake.

Here’s my offer: if you’ll donate at least $25 to the Amazon Red Cross fund, I’ll send you a copy of my book, postage paid by me. To donate, click this link and follow the directions. Amazon will send you a confirmation email.

To claim your book, forward that entire confirmation email to me (it’ll show 5 digits of your credit card number, so feel free to edit that part out if it’s something you don’t want me to see. Not that I’d look, anyway.) using the address address removed, along with a mailing address where we should send the book.

Please note: I can only send the free books to U.S. addresses.

This offer is good until Sunday, January 9, 2005. Books will be shipped starting the next day, and you should get an email from me or Robyn with a tracking number when we send your book out.

Thank you, and have a safe new year.