Over 70 M/M Books Donated

Hi guys :)

Yesterday, my cousin Þóra and I went to the LGBT center in Iceland and delivered the 63 books we brought back from GRL 2012. 63 books!! With the books that have been sent directly from authors and the ones on the way, there will be over 70 new m/m books at the library before Christmas.

What am I talking about here? Earlier this year I did a donation call to my fellow m/m writers to ask if some would be willing to donate a print book for the LGBT-exclusive library at the center. It's a fairly large library considering that it only contains LGBT titles. They have non-fics, magazines, yaoi, DVD's, articles....and a very old fiction section. They haven't had money for years to buy new fiction and the most recent title I was able to find was from 2003. None of the amazing contemporary books by my fellow authors were available and it was saddening. So I did the call and got around 20 responses. I offered to take the books back with me from the conference to give to the center. At the conference, however, more than those who signed up gave books. Some gave their whole collection (one gave 10 books!), Riptide generously gave a whole bunch and I gave bunch of books I won/bought. The majority, however, was from individual donations and I am SO thankful for the generosity. This will be a great Christmas for the library and the people who read the books from there. 

Sadly, Arni - the director - was sick and was unable to receive the books. There was an annual meeting later in the evening, so I stacked the boxes in Arni's office and the board of the LGBT organization officially received them instead. We got a big round of applause for all the books and they thank you from the bottom of their hearts. Since this was in the evening, my cousin was unable to attend and therefor I had no photographer. So, no pictures from the delivery. I did take a picture of the 63 books we lugged with us back to Iceland (header picture), so you can see the pretty pile. 

Again, a big thanks to everyone - and the ones who asked me for the center's address to send books. Here are the people/publishers who donated books (I sincerely hope I didn't forget anyone):

Ally Blue

Anel Viz

Anne Tenino

AR Moeler

Bella Leone

Cherie Noel

Christopher Koehler

Clancy Nacht and Thursday Euclid

DC Juris

Edmond Manning

Em Linley

Erica Pike

Geoffrey Knight

Jessica Freely

JP Bowie

KC Burn

Kiernan Kelly

Kim Fielding

Marguerite Labbe

Mercy Celeste

MLR Press

NJ Nielsen

Prism Books
Ranae Rose

Resplendence

Riptide

Sara York

Simone Anderson

Taylor V. Donovan

TC Blue

Torquere

Total E-Bound

Z. Allora

An Exorcism of Icelandic Library Ghosts

Photo by Thora R.K.

Roughly a month ago I sent out a plea to my fellow GRL2012 goers to see if anyone would be interested in donating print books to Iceland's only LGBT center. Their library is very outdated in the fiction section because there hasn't been money to buy anything new in years, so their fictional section is looking rather forlorn.

Photo by Thora R.K.

Chicks & Dicks kindly offered to feature the issue and the post went live today ^.^ I'm happy to say that the LGBT center has a few new books already, either donated by me or sent by people (like Anne Tenino!), and a lot of people - including two publishers - will hand me their donations at GRL for me to take to the center. I thought maybe one or two people might respond to my plea, but I was unprepared for the 20+ people who responded. It goes to show how tight and giving this community is. Now there will be titles in the library by KC Burn, Victor Alexander, Geoffrey Knight, Tara Lain and more, for people in Iceland to read. I'm also hoping this will generate an interest of the local bookshops to buy more m/m books in print (I've already contacted the biggest one and they're very positive - they currently only have a few e-book m/m titles in their online store - by Sara York and Geoffrey Knight, among others. Looks like the shop has a deal with Total e-Bound or something). 

Photo by Thora R.K.

Anyway! If you want to read a bit about Iceland, please head on over to Chicks & Dicks. If you want to send an LGBT book to the LGBT center (by you or anyone else), the address is listed in the post (just please make sure you mark the package as a donation so they won't have to pay the VAT). If you'll be at GRL in ABQ, I'd be happy to save you the shipping cost and take the books to the center myself :)

The Icelandic LGBT Center

HAH Winners

Hi guys :)

Thank you all for taking part in the Hop Against Homophobia. The participants worked hard on their posts and the visitors left thought provoking comments. All in all, the outcome was far beyond my expectations, and I'm thrilled. 

I've drawn the winners from my giveaway, and they are:

For a choice off my backlist (any pre-May release):

Sal - (flubber2kool...)

SiNn - (mortalsinn...)

Rissa - (raynman1979...)

Absolutely Eric:

Luci - (elle.cee6...)

$40 donation to the Samtökin 78 will be given in the name of:

Cole!

I have sent mail to the winners.

Thank you all for stopping by and I hope to see you all in next year's hop :)

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