Writers Helping Writers

Trish Jensen Fund Scores Big

Laura Hayden, a.k.a. Laura Kenner, of Author, Author! (photo by Studio 16, courtesy Laura Hayden)

One of the best news stories of 2004 started out as one of the worst. In mid-September, romance writer Trish Jensen without warning, suffered life-threatening internal bleeding and a host of related complications. Not only did the medical emergency rank as a 99.9 on her personal Terror Scale, she was temporarily without medical insurance. Fortunately, she wasn't without friends -- really good friends, who organized a combination of book and critique sales, and personal contributions that raised over $27,754 towards Jensen's medical bills.

Recently, Crescent Blues caught up with some of the Trish Jensen Fund organizers for a follow-up on their splendid effort. Sharyn E. Cerniglia, Teresa Hill, Hannah Rowan, and Pam McCutcheon and Laura Hayden of Author, Author! provided a wealth of detail about the fund and their current projects.

Crescent Blues: Who came up with the idea for the Trish Jensen Fund?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: I think Teresa Hill started the idea, but I'm not sure. I know that many people on Trish's online community of friends at RomEx wanted to do whatever we could to help and this is what we came up with.

Teresa Hill: We'd done two critique projects about ten years ago, the first when a friend (and author's) husband was killed in the line of duty as a policeman, and we raised money for a trust for the kids' education. Got about $2,500, I believe. The next one was after another author was killed as a victim of domestic violence, and we gave money to a women's shelter in her name. And the original idea of having authors sell critiques to raise money was mine. Seemed like a natural.

Pam McCutcheon, a.k.a. Pamela Luzier, of Author, Author! (photo by Mae Boles, courtesy Pam McCutcheon)

Beginning writers always want a good critique, and contests were doing more to limit written comments at the time, the Golden Heart was doing away with written comments, and it was almost impossible to get a writer, someone who's currently working in the genre, to do a critique, if you were an unpublished writer. But it is something that's easy for writers to do, and they're very willing if you tell them it's for a good cause and it's going to be a one-time thing. And aspiring writers were eager because we let them pick the person they wanted to critique their work and matched them up line-by-line. If you were writing a Superromance, we probably had someone published in Supers who'd critique for you.

This last time, with Trish, it was Debra Dixon who said we needed to do a critique project again, then looked at me and said, "And I hoped you'd organize it." [Smiles.] To be fair, she served as treasurer for at least one, maybe both, of the two previous critique projects we did.

It was one of the Karens, either Harbaugh or Fox, I can't remember which one, who said we could auction off autographed books on eBay. (Which turned out to bring in a lot of money.) And after one of them said that, I said we could auction off some of the critiques, because I knew some people would be very popular and bring in big bucks.

Crescent Blues: How did everyone get involved with the project?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: I knew I wanted to help, but not being a writer wouldn't be able to contribute either books or a critique. However, I am pretty good with money and keeping records, so I volunteered to be the treasurer of the fund.

Teresa Hill: Everyone volunteered. The great thing about our group is that whenever anyone needs help, it's there. All we have to do is ask. And this is my favorite part of the whole project (other than how much money we raised and hearing Trish say things like: "My new prescription is $500 a month, and I can get it filled because of the fund.")

Next favorite thing: when it came time to put out the call for authors to offer critiques, I sent out exactly one email! That's it. One. [Smiles.] I tried to cc two other list serves on that one email, but I must have messed up the addresses because they both bounced. So it only went to one group of about 60 people, and they all forwarded it to others, who forwarded it to even more people, and within a week or two, we had more than 200 authors, agents and editors who'd signed up to critique. People we'd never met. People we'd never heard of from other genres. People who stepped up and said, "A writer needs help. I can help."

Many said their biggest fear was being without health insurance. Many said they had been without health insurance at one time or another in their writing career. So many people could imagine this happening to them.

It's important to know that no one twisted any arms here to get people to volunteer. No one ever had to ask twice. All these people came to us and offered. It was amazing.

Why did we get involved? Because we could. Someone needed help, and there was actually something we could do that would make a difference. I knew we could raise some money, because we'd done it before, so we knew how to make this project work. I believe people want to help others. They just usually don't know what to do to help. I think people are always waiting for someone to say, "This is what you can do. This will help." I think people are happy to help.

So often, we hear about problems where there's nothing we can do that will help, and it's so frustrating. When you finally see a problem and there is something you can do about it... it's such a relief to be able to help.

So often, we hear about problems where there's nothing we can do that will help, and it's so frustrating. When you finally see a problem and there is something you can do about it... it's such a relief to be able to help.

Author, Author!: Karen Fox and Karen Harbaugh contacted us and asked if we would help sell some books on line to raise money for Trish. Karen H. planned to do some of it and wondered if we could do some, too. Well, since selling books online is what we do, we suggested we take on the whole thing since we're experienced in this area, we know how to ship, etc. And we know Trish and wanted to help. Besides, we knew some people would want to bid on more than one item and it would be easier to combine shipping from one location rather than two or more.

Crescent Blues: What was your goal for the fund?

Teresa Hill: A few people asked early on what our goal was, and we really didn't have one. I tend to not be big on planning (as everyone here can tell you), and organization is not my strong suit. So we kind of made everything up as we went along. We did have a few people worry that our own group was much smaller than it had been when we did the critique projects ten years ago and whether we could get enough interest in a new project to make money. I felt very confident in saying we could make at least as much as we did back then, about $2,500, and I actually believed we could double it. (I was only off by about $23,000.)

Crescent Blues: How long did the auction run?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: The first check I received for critiques was postmarked 10/7/04. I don't know when the auctions ended.

Crescent Blues: How was the auction organized?

Author, Author!: Karen Fox sent out the notices to the authors and told them where to send the books. We set up a special page on the eBay store where people could bid and tried to put 10 auctions up per day (while still running our own bookstore).

Later, Teresa Hill asked us to put some in-demand critiques up for auction as well, so we did that, too. Basically, we received the books and let Karen Fox know they were here so she could keep track on her web site of what sold, what was currently on eBay and what was still coming up. Then we packaged, shipped and sent money to Sharyn Cerniglia. I sent the last check [February 3], and the total for all auctions, including books, critiques and other items, came to a little under $13,200. That was for 427 line items (many were for more than one book)

Crescent Blues: How much money was raised?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: Now this I can answer! [Grins.] [As of January 30] we have collected the grand sum of $27,754.18! And it keeps dribbling in.

Crescent Blues: How much of that was from critique auctions, book auctions and direct contributions?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: The numbers are:

	Critique auctions: $8,070.37
	Book auctions: $13,512.81
	Direct contributions: $6,171.00

I received individual checks for 130 critiques, and lump sum checks for PayPal payments from Karen Harbaugh for many more. Karen can give you the numbers for the ones she collected via PayPal.

Teresa Hill: Hannah reminded me -- I won't say which authors, but we had more than one who wrote checks for $1,000 and just sent them to us! Blew us away.

Crescent Blues: What were the hottest items with respect to the critiques and the books?

Hannah Rowan: I coordinated the mystery, paranormal, romantic suspense, and suspense/thriller categories of critiques. I had one author, Marianne Stillings, who was willing to critique a whole manuscript, which was a hot item. There was quite a bit of demand for many of the authors but I was fortunate that I was able to work it out so that most people got their first or second choice.

Author, Author!: Unfortunately, some of the high bidders backed out at the last moment, so we had to re-list some of them. But here are some of the highest bids we received (the ones who paid). [Grins.]":

	Critique 35 Manuscript Pages by Julia Quinn, $565.00
	Critique 35 Pages by Editor Kate Seaver, $550.01 (she offered two)
	Critique 35 Pages by Editor Kate Seaver, $550.00
	Critique 35 Pages by Mary Theresa Hussey, $535.00 (she offered two)
	Critique 35 Manuscript Pages by Jennifer Crusie, $525.00
	Complete Bridgerton Series Julia Quinn (SIGNED!) $510.00
	Author Brand Analysis, Publicist Theresa Meyers, $440.58
	Critique 35 Pages by Mary Theresa Hussey, $425.00
	Critique of TV or Film Pitch by Harris Katleman, $315.00
	Critique 35 Manuscript Pages by Susan Grant, $306.04

Crescent Blues: What was the biggest surprise for the folks involved with this project?

Hannah Rowan: The number of big name authors who offered to do more than one critique, the number of authors who volunteered, the response itself was astounding!

Teresa Hill: Sending out one email and getting 200 volunteers.

Funniest moments: how fast the news traveled. It was election season, and I hang out on a few political blogs. One day, I posed something on a political blog (where thousands of posts come through in any given day) and mentioned I was a writer. Someone writes back and says, "Are you the writer who's coordinating the project for Trish?" I nearly fell out of my chair. Couldn't believe it. By that time I was thinking, "Wow, everybody knows."

Another funny: Trish obviously wasn't in a position to tell a lot of people about her illness, and one friend found out by reading Sandra Hill's author newsletter. (Sandra put in an item about the fund-raiser.) The friend said she's better not ever have to read Sandra's newsletter again to find out Trish was so sick. And Trish has a story that's hilarious to tell about someone she used to know who found her through the project.

A more serious surprise: our list of authors got long, and as we tried to break it up so people could find someone they needed, we put the authors doing critiques in categories, contemporary romance, historical, paranormal, etc. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to categorize our critiquers because so many of them have written for a number of publishers and in a number of different genres. It was humbling to see how hard they'd worked and how many changes they'd been through and yet still found a new thing to do so they could keep writing and make money at it. Made me see that we're really a bunch of tough girls. You can't keep us down. We bounce right back.

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: For me, it was the incredible outpouring of support, for the most part for someone who was a stranger to those who contributed.

Crescent Blues: Can folks still contribute to the Trish Jensen Fund? If so, what kind of contributions are still being accepted, and where should they be sent?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: Yes, contributions are still be accepted. Checks may be made payable to:

Crescent Blues: How is Trish doing? Is she back to writing?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: She is much improved, and is back to writing. She is also engaged to be married to Ross. (See her web site for more.)

Crescent Blues: How has working on this project changed you?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: I'm just happy to be able to help out a good friend. And to work with other good friends to do it.

Hannah Rowan: It has reinforced my belief that a few people can make an enormous difference in someone's life if they're willing to step up and offer to help, and shown me how a group with each person doing just one little part can have an amazingly positive effect.

Crescent Blues: Would you consider doing it again for a different worthy project?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: Sure!

Hannah Rowan: Yes.

Crescent Blues: Anything I didn't know enough to ask about?

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: Writing these answers has given me a whole new appreciation for what we accomplished!

Hannah Rowan: I'm grateful to the authors and the people who purchased critiques for their patience with any glitches that occurred and with my occasional absent mindedness. Nobody laughed or got angry when I said, "I'm sending you this email because I can't remember if I sent it already, so if you've already received it just ignore it."

I'm also grateful to my fellow coordinators who stepped in when my vacation came along in the middle of the project. (We didn't realize, I don't think, how long it would take or how involved it would get!) They took over my part for almost a week and it was a fairly seamless transition.

Crescent Blues: Please, tell our readers a little bit about you and your current projects.

Sharyn E. Cerniglia: I'm the president of a family business and a mostly-retired freelance romance fiction editor, which is how I met most of these wonderful authors. We recently opened a southern office of our business and I'm dividing my time between winters in the southern office in Florida and summers in the northern office in Pennsylvania. And keeping in touch with everyone always via email.

Teresa Hill: Our auction coordinators own a bookstore called Author, Author! and they worked so hard in this. I don't think any of us realized it at the time, but the job they volunteered for took more than any of the other jobs, I believe, and they haven't asked for anything from this or wouldn't. But I was thinking that one, little thank you to them would be that if authors or chapters have a spot on their site with links to bookstores, it would be nice to give them a link: http://www.author-author.net/. It's run by authors, so they know what they're doing.

My last book was out in August 2004, and I'm on deadline right now for a Special Edition, no title yet, but it's a tie-in to the August book, Someone to Watch Over Me.

Hannah Rowan: I'm a former reporter and am just starting a new job as a youth mentor. I'm a romance writer with two published books. My current book is an e-book from LTD Books, a paranormal romance called Til Death and Beyond. I'm in the middle of helping my daughter plan her wedding this spring, and also have a son who no longer lives at home. I'm coming up on my 30th wedding anniversary, and live in New Jersey with my husband and two dogs -- a boxer and a beagle. Theoretically the boxer is just a foster dog, but we'll see.

Click here to learn more about Trish Jensen.

Click here to learn more about Teresa Hill.

Click here to learn more about Hannah Rowan.

Click here to learn more about Author, Author! Or click on the owners individual sites: Pam McCutcheon (a.k.a. Pamela Luzier) or Laura Hayden (a.k.a. Laura Kenner).

Jean Marie Ward

In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including "Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space" in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, was published by Samhain Publishing in 2007.