There
should be no mystery in the concept of “Paying It Forward”!
When
someone gives us a leg-up, helping us in our writing careers, it only makes
sense to pay forward the favor or compliment. As favors come full-circle,
everyone benefits with plenty of satisfaction and success for everyone.
The Makiki Community
Library in Honolulu generously allows our Sisters in Crime/Hawaii group to hold
monthly meetings at the library. As a way to show support for the library’s generosity, many of the SinC/HI members are also members of the
library and donate their published books to the library for the public to
enjoy.
Sisters in
Crime, Inc., the national organization, "Pays It Forward" with its “We Love
Libraries” contest. They present winning libraries around the country with grants to purchase books for their library. With encouragement from SinC/Hawaii, Makiki Library entered the contest and became a lucky winner, a
satisfying example of how “Paying It Forward” came full circle.
"Paying It Forward" can be
as easy as offering a heartfelt “mahalo” or “thank you” to someone
who offers advice or a compliment. Recently, I received all the chocolate
candy I could eat in two hours (during a Sisters in Crime/Hawaii meeting!)
after performing the simple task of showing interest in a fellow writer’s WIP.
Hawai'i-based Mystery
Author Toby Neal recently demonstrated “Paying It Forward” when Amazon contacted
her about participating in their new program. As the author of the Lei Crime
series, she is one of only a select group of authors asked to launch a Kindle
World. https://kindleworlds.amazon.com/
To Pay-It-Forward, Toby invited some of her author friends to share in the world of Hawaiian Islands Detective Lei Texeira by contributing stories for publication to her Lei Crime Series Kindle World. Not everyone was prepared to accept her generous offer at this time, but it was a privilege to be asked and to know the offer still stands.
Toby
describes Kindle Worlds on her web page as: “a wonderful new place on the
Amazon site where any writer can develop stories within an established World of
known characters.” You can visit Toby at her web site here: http://tobyneal.net/
I will be posting “Pay It
Forward” stories here on the first and third Monday of each month beginning in September. If you want to share one of your own stories, please contact me at my email address.
I have always loved the concept of "paying it forward" and these are all such wonderful examples.
ReplyDeleteYour chocolate example made me smile :)
ReplyDeleteElizabeth and Karen, I am so excited to be able to add comments to my own blog site again. The issue must have been that I wasn't signed into the account through the Google "everything" site. Now I will have to post a blog article to "Pay It Forward" to the support staff of Blogger who held my hand until I figured it out!
ReplyDelete