Give back...My Hurricane Relief Pledge

I am an east coast kind of girl. I grew up in the Virginia Piedmont and now live on the inner edge of the Tidewater region just below the fall line of the Rappahannock. I like tall trees and walkways made of crushed oyster shells, and blue crabs. I like our history, the good parts that we're proud of and even the bad parts that we're not proud of.  I like to write stories about our history, more specifically our coast and as many people know living on the coast can be hard. My great Aunt and Uncle owned a condo at Fort Fisher in North Carolina, and I spent many a summer there playing in the surf and learning the history and legends of the area. It's those many summers that inspired my interest in the legends of the Outer Banks, and inspired me to write The White House and A Fond Kiss and the many other stories of the coast that are churning around in my head to be written in the future.  But like so many people along the Southern coast, we also dealt with our fair share of hurricanes. After getting hit three years in a row, my Aunt and Uncle sold their condo and our trips to the beach have gotten less regular. Hurricane damage is a fact of life on the coast.  Although it's something that our friends up north don't have to deal with as often. I think those of us who have been through this should stand up and help those who are dealing with it now.

So, I just made our family's donation to the Red Cross for storm relief. I encourage everyone reading this to do the same. In fact, here's the link to donate.

But I'm also going to take it a step further.

During my previous life as a corporate trainer, I worked for Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks and TurboTax (no, I will not help you with your bookkeeping or taxes). Intuit is a great company to work for because their Operating Values are as good as their products. One of the key Operating Values at Intuit is "We care and give back." Which means that they make an effort to contribute to the communities around their facilities and they encourage their employees to do the same. I've been away from Intuit for four years now, I don't even think about tax software outside of tax season,  and I couldn't tell you what the newest features of QuickBooks are, but that Operating Value is one that I will never forget.

With that said, I am pledging 100% of my royalties from this quarter to the Red Cross. That's right, 100% of royalties from Oct, Nov & Dec.

Admittedly, my books only cost .99 and I'm not exactly swimming in royalties. That's where you come in. If you've been thinking about buying one of my books and just haven't gotten around to it, now is the time. Tell anyone you know with an ereader, that if they buy my books, I will donate ALL the royalties to the Red Cross. This goes for all royalties from Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

In case you don't trust me. I will happily share pics of my sales reports and my donation receipt, once the donation has been made.

As I mentioned before, my royalties are not huge, so we've already made a personal donation to the Red Cross. If you want to be absolutely sure of giving more than the .30-.60 that I will collect from selling a book, then you too can make your own donation here.

Please keep all of the people affected by the storm in your thoughts (and prayers if you're a praying person) as I can assure you they are in mine.