I have this friend named Sandy James. Her husband has cancer and almost died of sepsis recently. She’s a teacher, and thus lavishly underpaid, so the medical bills are crushing her like Rodin’s Fallen Caryatid Under Her Own Stone. She is an English, rather than chemistry, teacher so she cannot Walter White ala Breaking Bad her way out of the debt. If this sounds weird to my European friends and readers, that’s because you guys don’t know that cancer can mean losing everything you’ve ever worked for. Medical bills are the #1 cause of bankruptcies in the United States, but at least we are “burdened” with universal health care like every other industrialized nation on earth.
Sandy is also a writer. Like almost all writers she could never afford to give up her day job, but the love of the craft keeps her publishing.She writes romance novels. She writes GOOD romance novels that are both fun to read yet aren’t fluffy bunnies (not that there is anything wrong with fluffy bunny books; I adore them personally). It is a small source of income and she needs it to be larger. At the very least she needs it to be a bigger trickle of money than it is now. Her hubby’s chemo ain’t cheap.
It is for this reason that I am pushing her books today as though I were her overzealous stage mom. This is her author page listing all her books on Amazon in the USA: http://www.amazon.com/Sandy-James/e/B002BLZOFW/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1423182382&sr=1-1 and in the UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sandy%20james. The kindle version of her books cost as little as $.99 and never more than $3.99. Her paperback copies are quite reasonably priced as well.
If you read romance novels, please buy one or more of hers. If you don’t read romance novels, buy one anyway because you should broaden your genre horizons. Give them as gifts if the mood strikes you.
Be kind, and help Sandy James and her husband make it through this.