Worldbuilders and an Auction
Every year, Patrick Rothfuss, the team at Worldbuilders, and a couple of hundred of the coolest authors, artists and gamemakers around do this thing to raise mone y for Heifer International, which plants trees, provides livestock, and helps people do something as basic as EAT with dignity. For every $10 a person donates, their name gets entered into a lottery for a chance to win signed books and games, and I've been donating copies of Marking Time to the lottery since it was the only book in the series. Each year I have more books to give, and last year, Maria, at Worldbuilders, asked if I'd consider donating something bigger that they could auction off on ebay. A tuckerization (yep, it's a thing) of a character in Waging War earned $150 for Worldbuilders. The winner of the auction gave me a name for the character - Tam - and two characteristics: curious and clever. I had a wonderful time weaving Tam into Waging War, and because curious, clever people named Tam seem to