Last year, author Patrick Rothfuss and his fans across the Interwebs raised more than $100,000 dollars for his, and one of my favorite charities, Heifer International. Pat actually friended me last year on Facebook, and after you read his posts and his blog, you quickly learn, not only is he a fellow Midwesterner, but a really really kind and sweet man. Pat has has used his success since writing, The Name of the Wind, for much good and only bits of evil.

What’s that you say? You’d like to make the world a better place while simultaneously winning fabulous prizes?

Well today is your lucky day.

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. All over the world Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

(Are you ready? I’m so ready. Let’s do it.)

This year we’ve got a couple different options for donating.

Option 1 – The Lottery.

This is the option most people will want. It’s simple. You hop directly over to the page I’ve set up at Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate using my page at team Heifer, two things happen.

1. Worldbuilders will match 50% of your donation. That means your ten-dollar donation becomes fifteen dollars. If you donate two goats, it becomes three goats. And so on.

2. You’ll be entered in the lottery.

After the fundraiser is over on January 15th, we’ll have random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated by authors and publishers over the last couple months. More than a thousand books, DVD’s and CD’s.

For every 10 bucks you donate, your name will get entered into the drawing once. If you donate thirty bucks, your name goes in three times. Think of it as buying tickets, if you like.

We’ve had *way* too many books donated for me to post them all up at once. It’s a prize-rich environment, with over a thousand books.

So I’ll be putting up a new blog full of donated books pretty much every day or so, just to keep people from being overwhelmed with all the awesome. Make sure to check back often.

Pat’s books, and the Golden Ticket

300 Books from Subterranean Press

A Plenitude of Signed Books [Coming Soon.]

A Plethora of Signed Books [Coming Soon.]

Cool Music [Coming Soon.]

A veritable Cornucopia of Signed books [Coming Soon.]

The Glory that is Joss Whedon [Coming Soon.]

Books from Gollancz [Coming Soon.]

Books from DAW [Coming Soon.]

Books from Bad Moon Press [Coming Soon.]

Books from Peter S. Beagle [Coming Soon.]

Last year, people donated over 53,000 dollars on the Team Heifer page, and I’m hoping this year we can do even better.

But let’s start off by trying to hit 10,000 dollars. That seems like a good place to begin, as our lovely sponsor has agreed to match 50% of the first $10,000 donated. Let’s all take advantage of their generosity, shall we?

Click Here to Donate

Option Two: The Sure Thing.

Or, as I like to think of it, the Christmas Present option.

For those of you who aren’t interested in the lottery, I have some stuff you can just buy. All the proceeds will go directly to Heifer International.

Personalized books from Patrick Rothfuss.

Name of the Wind posters. [Coming Soon.]

Worldbuilders T-shirts. [Coming Soon.]

Option Three: Auctions.

This year we’ve decided to auction off some of the rarer items and specialized services people have donated.

We’ve got industry professionals willing to read your fledgling manuscript and give you feedback. We’ve got a limited edition Stardust ARC signed by Neil Gaiman and a copy of The Gathering Storm signed by Brandon Sanderson and the production team at Tor. We’ve got original manuscripts, software, and a rockstar’s guitar. Stay tuned for details.

Rare Books and Manuscripts. [Coming Dec 6th.]

Professional Editorial Advice and Critiques. [Coming Dec 13th.]

Miscellaneous cool. [Coming Soon.]

A Quick Plea For Sanity

Lastly, I’d like to ask everyone to please read the instructions/directions carefully before they donate.

I know you’re excited. I’m excited too. We’re going to raise some money, make the world a better place, and end up with big warm fuzzy feelings.

But here’s the problem. If you’re *too* excited, you’ll end up clicking buttons all higgledy-piggledy, forgetting vital steps and leaving things out. (Especially when buying things with Paypal) Then you’ll send me an e-mail that says something like: “I’m sorry, but I forgot to include my shipping address/t-shirt size/signing instructions. Could you please fix it for me?”

I know I’m bound to get one or two e-mails like this. No biggie. But each one is like a cold drop of water eroding my warm fuzzy feeling. If I get, say, a hundred, I’ll have no warm fuzzy left at all. I’ll be left with nothing but a cold prickly feeling.

You don’t want to give me a cold prickly, do you?

I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure that you’ll read the instructions carefully.

FAQ.

Have questions about the fundraiser? Most of them are probably answered over in the FAQ. Even if your question isn’t answered, I talk about Batman a bit, so it won’t be a complete waste of your time.

And, just in case you missed it, here’s the link to the Team Heifer donation page.

Rock on,

pat

Special thanks to our sponsor: Subterranean Press.

(Huzzah for Subterranean Press! Double Huzzah!)