A note from agent Colleen Lindsay:
A good pal of mine, writer Aaron Allston, is bouncing back after having had a massive heart attack while on book tour; he had to have an emergency quadruple bypass and now he’s face with staggering medical bills. The Fandom Society of Texas has started a non-profit to collect donations and help Aaron out but we need to get the word out. I’ve written a blog post with all the details and links here.
Go ahead and link through, and if you have the ability, consider helping out.
Thanks, John. Much obliged. =)
I loved Allston’s gaming stuff — his Champions supplement Strike Force, based on his own long-running campaign, is truly awesome, a collection of NPCs, plots, settings and especially tons of GM advice that’s still totally relevant two game editions later.
Plus Doc Sidhe is pretty awesome…a Doc Savage homage, but in a magical world instead. If that capsule description sounds good, you’ll love it.
Done, and done. Thanks for the heads-up.
Thanks, John. The fundraiser is being promoted on theforce.net as Aaron is a Star Wars author. (I’m the Tech Admin for the forums at the site. We have been following Aaron’s situation in the Lit forum there). There will be an auction next Sunday in Georgetown, Texas. More information can be found at the link below.
The story is at http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/Aaron_Allston_Fundraiser_In_Georgetown_TX_124897.asp
Poor Aaron. He is one of the good guys, and I am happy to hear he is on the road to recovery. Now, Washington, can you extract your craniums from your rectums and get moving on universal health care, please?
For those who want to read aforementioned Doc Sidhe, its in the Baen Free Library:
http://www.webscription.net/p-110-doc-sidhe.aspx
I’ll get to work on an LJ based fund raiser/charity auction, and post a link here. This whole “writer/performer/artist with no medical insurance” thing *has to end*. I’m lucky enough to get it through a spouse, but if both of us were full time freelancers, we’d be out of luck.
What Josh just said. America will be a better place when stories like this are firmly relegated to the history books.
Oh crap. That’s terrible. I’d met Aaron at GenCon in 1991 when I was just a wee confused lad at my first con. I’d signed up for a brunch thing and ended up being accidentally seated with him, R.A.Salvatore, and a few other notables.
I’d thought I’d horned in on the wrong table, and offered to move. They insisted that I stick around. I ended up having a wonderful conversation with him and Mr. Salvatore over cold sausage and rubbery eggs.
I was in nerd heaven for the rest of the weekend.