Friday, May 22, 2009

Hope Part 4, or Another Great Thing You Can Do: The Bridget Zinn Auction



From April Henry's blog, as posted at The Bridget Zinn Auction site:


This is Bridget. Three things happened to Bridget in February:
1. She got an agent for her young adult novel.
2. She got married.
3. She found out she had Stage Four colon cancer.

I met Bridget a year ago at an Oregon SWCBI event. She had just moved to Portland from Wisconsin, where she was a teen librarian. She is a beautiful person, inside and out. When she found out she had an agent, she was just glowing. A few days later she went to a naturopath for headaches and vision problems. She ended up in the ER – and learned very quickly that she had cancer.

As Bridget says in her blog, “I would like to add in here that I am a super super healthy non-smoking, non-drinking, carcinogen avoiding young vegetarian who wears sunscreen every day. I looked at the list of risk factors for colon cancer and it turn out that I don’t even have one. Not one risk factor. So that was a surprise. Then Barrett and I decided to get married. He proposed on my hospital bed, it was terribly romantic and we were married by the hospital chaplain the first possible moment we could be.”

But now Bridget is dealing with an ugly reality that is all too common in America today. Even when you have insurance that covers most things, it doesn’t cover everything. Medscape reports, “The cost of treating colorectal cancer has skyrocketed over the past 5 years or so, and the costs of new agents and regimens have risen 340-fold.”

Here’s how you can help. A group of writers who have been impressed with Bridget’s friendliness and what can only be described as her radiant joy (even now) has banded together to help Bridget with the costs she faces.

One of the activities will be an online auction.


The Auction is up and running, and bids are being taken until 11pm Saturday May 30.

There are some AMAZING things being auctioned:

FOR WRITERS WANTING TO GET PUBLISHED:

Reads and critiques by

Kristin Nelson, Agent

Nancy Mercado, Editor Roaring Book Press

A unique team critique by Dori Chaconas (author) and Andrea Tompa, assoc. editor Candlewick Press

and many more critiques by award winning and wonderful authors!!!

FOR WRITERS WANTING MORE READERS:

There are so many amazing opportunities!!! Like these:

an expert social media plan,

a personalized book launch consult,

a custom audio production of a program you can use as a podcast and on your website,

a custom marketing package,

your own website designed for you,

a custom teacher guide created just for your book,

even a podcast interview

and a radio show interview!

FOR READERS:

There are Many, Many, Many signed first editions and Original works of ART!!!

There are too many wonderful choices to even try to summarize them here, but there are some incredible finds - like this ARC of "Dreamdark: Silksinger" with temporary faerie warrior facial tattoos that Laini designed!

Oh, and this signed first edition of Stephanie Meyers' "Eclipse" (the 3rd book in the Twilight series)

FOR EVERYONE:

There's so much more...

Vacations,

baby quilts,

hand crafted journals,

more vacations,

goody bags,

a dragon jester stick!,

custom kitchen knives

...hey, you can even bid to get Carl Kasel's voice on your answering machine!

There are so many great things beyond what I highlighted... and it's for such a great cause!

So please, Go check it out (and get your bids in) to help Bridget and get something AWESOME for yourself!

Thanks for being part of sharing the HOPE this week!

Namaste,
Lee

3 comments:

jone said...

Thanks, Lee. The auction has been amazing! I hope everyone can find something to bid on.

Hayden Thorne said...

I just posted a heads up at my blog, Lee, and I hope you don't mind sending people over to yours. Thanks for letting us know.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this, Lee. I've seen her story in a few places the past 2-3 weeks, but somehow managed to miss that she lives in my hometown, Portland. Wish I could make it to the live auction event, but I've got other plans.