a multitude of me

Two posts in one day! Whatever is the world coming to? Well, this:

I haven’t yet posted about Match It For Pratchett because I’m easily distracted by bright shiny objects, but I have been meaning to. On the off chance anyone reading this hasn’t heard, Terry Prachett, who was recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, has donated half a million British pounds (approximately $1m USD) to Alzheimer’s research. His fans, within a matter of days, had started the Match It for Pratchett fundraising effort, which has the aim of raising an additional half million pounds, to bring it up to a nice round million.

In the past week, some £34,000 has been donated. The Alzheimer’s Research Trust in Britain is stunned and overwhelmed; according to their figures, $25US pays for an hour of their high-end research, so this kind of money really does make a significant difference to them.

My agent, Jennifer Jackson ( / arcaedia) has just posted the following:

Also–the person reading this blog that makes the highest donation by midnight on Saturday, the 22nd (and sends me some verification thereof), I will read and review your synopsis plus 50 (or so) pages of a work-in-progress (limited to novel-length fiction in the adult/YA genre categories I actually represent). You can go directly to the tipjar on the Match It site and make a donation. You can send verification to jjackson [at] maassagency.com

I *unquestionably* have the most awesome agent in the universe.

I am also hoping to get, at the very least, a Match It tip jar set up at the front desk for P-Con, and hope to get tickets handed out to everybody who donates. At the end of the weekend we’ll draw from a hat and I’ll give a signed copy of the complete Walker Papers series (so far) to the winner, or possibly books 1 and 2 of the Negotiator and will send 3 along when it comes out, if the winner prefers that.

I love my tribe, I really do, and I’m terribly proud of them for this effort.

And on a not exactly related, but not exactly not, topic, I’d like to raise a glass to Arthur C. Clarke, who was one of the pioneers of the world we live in.

A couple of weeks ago I got email from Joshua Palmatier inviting me to participate in the Great Plot Synopsis Project, wherein he was asking a bunch of published writers to post a book synopsis in order to help show aspiring writers how they’re done. (Joshua keeps having good ideas like this and then *following through on them*. I think he’s an alien.) So today is the Great Plot Synopsis Project Post Day, and I’m posting. :)

I have blatantly stolen the Synopsis Q&A Joshua posted in the post that inspired all of this.

Please note that there are SPOILERS for URBAN SHAMAN behind this cut. The book synopsis is replicated in its entirety. As it happens, because of how this particular synopsis is written, it’s not *very* spoilery, but it is spoilery! So be warned, and now you can, if you wish,

(more…)