Jake Black is a local comic book writer.  He is a dear man and I love him deeply.  I don’t follow his blog (bad me!) so I just discovered that he has cancer.  Our FLGS, Dragon’s Keep, is holding a fundraiser to help pay for treatment on Saturday the 12th.  You can find more info here.

I’ve volunteered for this, and I’m sure I’ll be doing something, even if it’s fetching and carrying for the comic book people who are participating and throwing all my available cash at their donated product.  But I’d like to do something more, and I need your help.

I’ve talked to Carolyn.  We’re going to do a Jake Black Fundraising podcast audio story (to release end-of-Octoberish).  It will be my short story The Great Midwestern Squirrel Conspiracy of 2010.  I’ve been saving this one for a special occasion, and this is it.

So here’s how it’s going to work:

I don’t have the technical bits in line yet (let’s assume I have to set it at a hard minimum price), but Carolyn is in a master class until the middle of October, so we have a little time.  It won’t hurt to have a run-up period for people to check in on the site again.  Let’s start the buzz on this one.

You’ll donate money.  You’ll get the story somehow.  Jake gets everything paypal doesn’t take.  What I don’t know yet is how much I should set as the minimum donation.  I want it low enough for everyone to get in on it, but paypal starts with a pretty big chunk, so the more we pay per story, the lower the percentage they take off the top.

I haven’t read the story aloud in a while.  I believe it’s about an hour long.

If this works, I’ll be releasing my other comedy stories the same way.  This might mean I have a lack of comedy material for free, but I think we can all agree that this is a good cause, and I’d like to be able to say that thousands of people banded together in laughter to help pay the medical bills of a good man in need.  (Did you hear that?  Thousands.  That means that I don’t want to settle for the standard small percentage of of sell-throughs.  You all want to be a part of this.  I know you do.  Let’s all step up and do something special.)

So what do you think we should charge?  I want to really try to get as many people donating as possible.  Chemo and radiation are expensive, and insurance doesn’t cover it all.  WEKM suggested $5 at Dragon’s Keep tonight, but I want to hear the rest of you as well.  Be honest.  I don’t want to set the price and find out everyone is well-meaning but practically, they don’t get around to paying the price point.

Comment.  Let me know.  It’s for a good cause.

Love,

Bob