Trade the Day...is HERE!

By - August 22, 2013

Whooohooo!  It’s FINALLY here! The big day of the Trade the Day fundraiser and blog-a-thon!

FOR 24 HOURS ONLY, my publisher and I will be donating all gross profits on the sales of my new book, THE TRADE, made on STAIRWAYPRESS.COM to Team Alaina to benefit the Leukemia Lymphoma Society!

I’m glad you’ve found us, and I hope you’ll stick around throughout the next twenty-four hours, during which some of your favorite authors will be guests on this blog, all of them participating in hopes of helping raise awareness about the bigger event:

So, why Team Alaina, you ask?  While working on my first draft of The Trade, a writer friend of mine received some bad news about her daughter, Alaina, who was two and a half year old at the time; Alaina had been diagnosed with Leukemia. On a whim, I decided to name a minor character in The Trade in honor of her. After all, if character Alaina could survive one of my books in which almost no one is safe, then just maybe, there would be hope for the real Alaina. (My mind works in strange ways, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!)

At the time I named that character, The Trade wasn’t even finished, much less scheduled to be published. None of my work was published! But lo and behold, I sold my first book, Chain of Command a few years later. It sold a few copies!  I was thrilled.  Then, my publisher decided that they would accept my second novel for publication: The Trade.

Then one day, as I was finishing editing The Trade, I saw a picture of Alaina posted on my friend’s social media. She had gotten so much taller, and her hair had gone through falling out and growing back again. I thought of my character, and how the real Alaina was still fighting this battle with cancer, as were many kids and adults everywhere.  That was the day I contacted Christa Carol, Alaina’s mom, and told her about an idea I had to launch a fundraiser for Team Alaina, Alaina’s own personal team to raise money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society (what can I say—she’s a cool kid.) by donating some of The Trade’s profits. I got in touch with my publisher to find out if I could get them on board with it, too.  At that time, I had no idea how it would work, when it would be, or if it would raise more than a few dollars, but I wanted this mention of Alaina to help from the get go. What better way to help than to put that character’s reason for being to work?

My wonderful publisher, Stairway Press, agreed to donate everything but what it cost them to print and ship the books the day of the event. But what was the event going to be? I could sell books somewhere in town, maybe, but that would limit the people we could reach. Plus, Alaina’s family not being in the same state, it would be hard to get their family and friends involved.

I decided to make it a blog-a-thon. The internet is for everyone, right?  That way, the sky was the limit! But oh…crap. People have to show up for the event to buy the book. How am I going to get a lot of people to my meagerly read blog for a single day to learn about this event?

That’s where the wonderful and generous authors involved today came in.  I sent out requests to authors—some good friends, some acquaintances, others I’d never met—asking them to participate. They responded in force, each of them being more generous than I possibly could’ve asked, donating giveaways, time, posts, interviews, etc. for the day in hopes of bringing fans of books to this blog for one day to find out about the fundraiser so that maybe that would turn into sales of The Trade that day and thus, money raised for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.

I’m overwhelmed and honored to be joined by so many famous and new authors alike from across every genre on the shelves today to present this special day to you all.  Please see the links at the bottom of this post to learn how to enter giveaways for your favorite authors’ books, the schedule of everyone posting or giving something away today and when that will take place, and the answers to (hopefully!) every other question you could have about today.

But I will ask one more thing, besides that you stick around and participate today on colbymarshall.com/blog and stairwaypress.com. I would like to ask you to please, spread the word RIGHT NOW, far and wide.  For this day, there is no tomorrow. Time is of the essence, and we want to donate as much as we can to the LLS.  So, please, post this event to your facebook (click here for a graphic flier, then click “Save image” on the flier), tweet about it using hashtag #TradetheDay, send your friends and family e-mails and texts…but please, help us get people involved. We need every bit of word of mouth we can get today to make this a huge day in the battle to make cancer history.

Blood cancer isn’t fictional, but through days like this, we can make it so!

Stay tuned- the cozy mystery section of Trade the Day is coming up first: Mystery Lite So You Can Turn on the Lights with special guests Amazon Bestselling Author LYNDEE WALKER and Bestselling Cozy Author ROCHELLE STAAB, both of whom will be giving away free autographed copies of books (and that’s just the beginning!) With additional giveaways from authors John Clement and Gretchen Archer, 1:00 a.m.-beginning segment will start us off right!

Learn More About the Event:

Trade the Day Main Page      Blog-a-Thon Schedule      Giveaway Rules    

Media Kit            FAQs         Links      

Whose post or giveaway are you most excited about today?