UPDATES - 9/1

*Thank you all for your overwhelming response to donate items for the upcoming auction to benefit Larissa! As of now, we’ve closed the auction donations, and you can view the lists of authors, editors, agents, web designers, readers and more who are donating critiques, books and other items here. A more comprehensive list will follow once the auction goes live. Continue to check back for information on the date of the live auction. (anticipated date is Friday, September 9th.)

We will continue to accept donations through PayPal by emailing paypaldonations AT alisonkent.com and/or cash/gift cards via the Access Romance Mailbox (Access Romance / Larissa Ione/ 1795 N. Fry Rd. #263/ Katy, TX 77449-3347)at this time. Again, Larissa and her family are grateful for the generous response, and send their thanks .

* Check out ROMAID for a partial list of items to be auctioned!
* Read a message from Larissa here.

My critique partner / good friend / fellow-blogger, Larissa Ione lives in the area of Gulfport, MS. She is a former Air Force meteorologist, and she knows storms. She left with the kid, the laptop, the cat, the mice, and clothes for two days when Katrina was still a category two storm. Katrina grew, and now Larissa has no home to return to. Her hurricane insurance will not cover all of the loss because the largest part of the destruction was caused by the storm surge. Her son will be moving to Washington state to live with his grandparents so he can start grade school again. She will be handling all the repair / recovery on her own because her husband is required elsewhere. He is Coast Guard, and was stationed in Gulfport. He is now assigned to hurricane search and rescue.

Larissa’s critique partners, Alison, Emma, Katie and I, and her blogging group at WriteMinded, including Sharon Long, Amy Knupp and Jan Kenny are organizing an auction to help out her family in their loss. We anticipate launching the auction on Friday, September 9th and we’re asking for your help.

For Authors interested in donating critiques and / or autographed books: For the critiques, we’re asking for donations of critiques (5 page synopsis - 30 pages manuscript) from anyone available to commit. As mentioned above, the auction’s anticipated for Septemeber 9th, and the critiques would be needed around month’s end. If you are interested in donating your time, please email either: Sharon Long - smlong AT gt.rr.com or Amy Knupp - aknupp AT sunflower.com - (they’re working together, so don’t worry about duplicates to have your name listed in this fundraising auction.)

If you’re interested in donating anything else for auction, please email stephanie AT stephanietyler.com.

For general questions, please email: stephanie AT stephanietyler.com.

Other ways to help:

If you would like to help Larissa directly, we’ve already started a way to do so. We’re thinking that what she needs right now is immediate help in the way of necessities until any emergency money or insurance kicks in. Visa/Amex cash cards would be the best, along with gas or WalMart/Target cards. Those would cover groceries and clothes and school supplies and pet food. Thinking ahead, Home Depot cards would also work as well.

Since she’s going to have spotty internet service, if any at all, physical gift cards, rather than emailed ones would work best. Or, if you would like to PayPal money for Larissa, you can send to this email: paypaldonations AT alisonkent.com and all funds will be used to purchase cash cards for her.

Anything you can do to help would be appreciated. You can use the address below, and we’ll forward anything that comes in to her as a next-day / priority kind of thing, so we make sure nothing gets lost in transit as she moves around and regroups.

Access Romance
Larissa Ione
1795 N. Fry Rd. #263
Katy, TX 77449-3347

It would be wonderful if you could spread the word about this by linking to this post if you have a blog.

Thanks in advance for all your generosity. Larissa is a true friend who has always gone out of her way to help people. We’d love to be able to help alleviate some of her worry right now.

For those who have already donated, we can’t thank you enough!

Steph T.

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