A Special Charity Project for an Adoption

by Jill Williamson 

I recently learned that some dear friends of mine were trying to adopt a girl from Eastern Europe. Adoption is expensive, and until they raise over $40,000, little Sydney can’t come home. Just learning about their desire to adopt put tears in my eyes. I wanted to help. But I don’t have much money right now. Plus it’s Christmastime, and we wrecked our van hitting a cow. (We live in Free Range territory.)

Sydney—soon to be—Haydon

But I am a writer. And I came up with a way to try and raise money to bring Sydney to her new family. I self-published an enovella. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo will keep their cut, but 100% of my proceeds from this book will go toward Sydney’s adoption.

This 120-page story takes place after book one in The Mission League series and before book two. Many things had to fall into place for this to happen, and many have given to Sydney’s cause already. Jeff Gerke gave me permission to do this project when Marcher Lord Press holds the rights to my storyworld. In doing so, he also gave up his right to make money off the story. Kirk DouPonce donated a cover, and teens from his church volunteered to model. Becky Miller, the freelance editor I hired, gave me a big discount on editing. As did Kerry Nietz on ebook design. And Chris Kolmorgen had an hour-long, (midnight for me, 2:00 a.m. for him) brainstorming session with me, helping with some last-minute content editing, though that might not have been a sacrifice of sleep on Chris’s part, as he is an insomniac, anyway. 😉

The result is my first self-published project. It released this week. To celebrate that, Jeff allowed me to put book one on sale. So, for the month of December, The New Recruit is $2.99 on ebook. And Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5 is also $2.99.

I’m so excited to be able to experiment as a writer and try new things. And nothing is more exciting to me that discovering a new way of giving back. So, please help spread the word about this project. Tell your friends and family, who like to read. And if they don’t like to read, they can still donate to Sydney’s fund. My friends have a very long way to go.

And now, I’m proud to introduce Chokepoint: Mini-Mission 1.5.

So, bring it, baddies. It’s game on.