2014 Calendars – Fantasy and Philantropy

So for the last couple of years, Worldbuidlers has put out a calendar to help raise money for charity.

This year, we decided to up our game and put out TWO calendars:

The first one we put together with help from Heifer International itself to showcase the good work they do all over the world:

Cover

The second is filled with joyful geekery, featuring a bunch of cool fantasy authors… and me.

LZ Cover

Right now, both of these calendars are up for sale in our online store, The Tinker’s Packs.

If you want, you could hop over right now and buy them. But if you’d like more details first….

  • The Heifer Calendar:

One of the things that’s always bothered me about charity fundraisers is that they frequently center around guilt and pity.

We’ve all seen the TV commercials. They show you starving, desperate children and say, “For the price of a cup of coffee, you can feed this child. Not even fancy coffee. We’re talking shitty truck-stop coffee with powdered creamer in it. Not that you would ever drink that. Today you had a half-decaf mocha with blueberry syrup and extra whip that cost you six bucks, you fat, disgusting American bastard.”

I’m paraphrasing, of course. But you know what I’m talking about. You see one of those commercials and if you have any empathy at all… well… it’s just crushing. Whenever I saw one, it always made me feel helpless and hopeless.

The first time I ever saw something different was Sarah Mclachlan’s video, World On Fire. Way back in 2004.

The premise for the video was this: They took the $150,000 a video normally costs, and put that money toward different charitable causes instead.

After all these years, I still remember one moment in the video where they said they’d helped send kids to school. Then they showed a picture of this little girl sitting in a classroom. And she was *so* fucking happy to be going to school and learning things. She was beaming with joy.

A screw it, I’ll just post the video here so you can see it yourself if you want….

The part I’m talking about is right at the 1 minute mark.

I remember watching that video, and thinking “This. Is. Awesome. What Sarah McLachlin has done here is Awesome.”

Then, after a moment, I remember thinking, “I want to be awesome too.”

What’s my point? Here’s my point.

When we decided to put together our own Heifer International themed calendar, that’s the feeling I wanted to replicate. I didn’t want people to feel guilty or sad or depressed at the state of the world.

I wanted you to look at this calendar and think: This is Awesome. What Heifer is doing is Awesome.

So our calendar is full of stories of people that Heifer has helped over the years. People who got a little help, then used those resources to improve their lives and the lives of those around them.

Stuff like this:

After working on their own for 21 years, the women in Azacualpa village saw things begin to change in 2005 when 22 families received heifers from Heifer International.

Four years later, in 2009, they received chickens and completed two rounds of Passing on the Gift, sharing chickens with other families in their community. Seeing the positive results from these first two projects, the women wanted to try something a bit more ambitious.

Cashew

“We wanted something more to do to generate more income,” said Maria Elsa (bottom left, with her husband and grandchildren). From this, the Southern Cashew Enterprise Association was born, with Maria serving as president.

Heifer provided the materials and hired builders to construct the storage rooms and ovens for this cashew enterprise. They also provided 200 cashew tree seedlings.

In 2012, a drought destroyed most of the area’s corn harvest. The cashew business, however, along with the ability to sell eggs and milk from their livestock, still provided income for the families in Maria’s village.

Maria gets almost four gallons of milk a day; she uses one gallon for her family and sells the rest.

Victoriano Gonzalez, Maria’s husband, said, “I never expected to see a cow in my yard and now we have four.” While the women work, their husbands have taken over more of the household chores.

“Now our husbands bring us food while we are working,” Maria said.

 This! This is what it’s all about. Heifer helps people, then those people help themselves. Then they help *other* people help themselves.

And you *don’t* have to shell out 60 cents a day, every day, forever, just to keep some poor kid from starving. When I did that, I felt like I was throwing stones into a well. I felt like it would never *really* make things better.

But here’s the thing: you send some money to Heifer, and they use it to help people make significant, long-term changes in their lives. Now when I donate money, it feels like I’m throwing a stone and Heifer is making sure that stone lands in *just* the right place so that it triggers an avalanche of awesome that will go on for decades, improving the lives of thousands of people.

If you buy this calendar, you are throwing a stone too. I hope that every day you look at it and think: That is awesome. And I am awesome too because I helped.

  • The Beyond Words Fantasy Calendar:

The second calendar we’re doing this year is fantasy-themed. But unlike last year’s calendar that focused on fantasy characters. This calendar focuses on the authors themselves.

For example, Brandon Sanderson:

Sanderson-watermark

Or Lauren Oliver:

oliver-updated(It’s worth it to embiggen this.)

Or Gregory Maquire:

Gregory-Maguire-promo

As you can see, the point wasn’t to dress up the authors as something out of their own books. (Gregory isn’t dressed up as someone from Wicked, for example.) This was a chance to… well… to do something fun and cool.

There are a lot of cool authors involved in this project, including:

If you’d like to see more of the pictures, you can peek at some more over in The Tinker’s Packs.

  • A special offer:

Now I can hear many of you out there howling, “How can I possibly choose between these two awesome calendars? I love Heifer, but I’m also a big geeky fan of [insert author name here]!!”

First off, rest assured that if you buy *either* of these calendars, money will go toward supporting Heifer International.

But really, why buy only one calendar? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a calendar in your office AND in your kitchen? A calendar at home *and* a calendar at work?

And what about Christmas presents? Think of those older relatives that are hard to shop for. Do you really want to give them another kitten calendar? A scented candle? No. You really don’t.

But if you give them a Heifer Calendar, you can explain to them how the money went to a *really* good cause. Then they get to feel awesome, too.

Calendar-2-forSo here’s the deal we’re offering. If you buy more than one calendar, we’ll give you a break on the price.

  • If you buy two calendars, you get $5 off.
  • If you buy three calendars, you get $10 off.

You can mix and match to your heart’s content. Here’s the link the the calendar combo deals on The Tinker’s Packs.

  • The fine details:

A few other things you might want to know:

1. If you buy the Beyond Words calendar, your money will support First Book as well as Worldbuilders.

2. The Beyond Words calendar isn’t *quite* back from the printer yet.

It should be finished in a week or so. And we’ll be shipping it soon after. That’s why it’s listed in the store as a pre-order.

So if you order a calendar bundle including Beyond Worlds, we’ll wait until *all* your calendars are ready before we mail them. It will take a little longer, but shipping is much cheaper that way.

3. Last year, a lot of people complained that while the calendar was attractive, it was hard to use.

The reason for this was that the re was little functional space for writing down doctor’s appointments, anniversaries, birthdays, etc.

We’ve fixed that this year. Both our calendars have nice, big colored boxes for you to write in.

  • Being in the Loop:

As you all know, I end up being really busy. That means I don’t always get to write blogs as quickly as I’d like.

This blog is a great example of that. I’ve been working on it for days.

But the people who follow The Tinker’s Packs on Facebook and Twitter heard about the calendars almost a week ago. That means they’ve already had a chance to place their orders, and in some cases have already received their calendars, giving them the chance to be very smug among their geek friends.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss stuff like this, it would be a good idea to follow those accounts. Especially as I don’t always blog about everything we put up in the store, and a lot of time, items are limited….

More cool things happening soon. Really soon. Stay tuned.

pat

P.S. If you’d like to sell some of our calendars in your store, or just buy in bulk, drop us a line at [email protected].

P.P.S. If you’d like to help out Worldbuilders in some other way, drop us a line at [email protected].

This entry was posted in being awesome, Heifer International, The Tinker's Packs, Warm Fuzzies, Worldbuilders 2013By Pat24 Responses

24 Comments

  1. J. Lego
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 2:25 AM | Permalink

    Hi Pat,

    Just so you know, I don’t think the first book link is working – it takes me to a page that doesn’t exist.
    Can’t wait for other the Worldbuilders’ posts I can sense coming!

    Cheers!

    • Posted October 21, 2013 at 2:34 AM | Permalink

      Thanks. I’ll fix it.

      • Posted October 21, 2013 at 2:38 AM | Permalink

        There’s a reason I make a habit of staying up until one or two comments trickle in on the blog….

        • J. Lego
          Posted October 23, 2013 at 10:24 PM | Permalink

          Works out well – I’m smack-bang in the middle of university exams, and one of my favourite procrastinatory pastimes is hitting refresh on your blog in case you’ve written a new one…

  2. ali rahemtulla
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 3:16 AM | Permalink

    Sigh… Don’t abandon us Pat. Twitter and facebook have always seemed so impersonal to me. Here, I can think “I’m in Rothfuss land now”. It’s not so with social networking.

    • mighty qynn
      Posted October 21, 2013 at 6:25 PM | Permalink

      Ali, we must face it. It is inevitable, and as much as it makes me want to cry, we can’t really ask The Pat for more time than he has to give (see previous blog posts).

      I flatly refuse to join the Cult of the Book of the Face, but maybe…just maybe…(ugh, shudder)…I will create a Twitter account. For Pat. No one else. Mostly because I am intrigued – combining the categories “Patrick Rothfuss” with “communication in 144 character bursts” produces delicious cognitive dissonance in my brainspace, and curiosity is overcoming my distaste.

    • three west
      Posted October 21, 2013 at 7:13 PM | Permalink

      Amen Ali

  3. Little My
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 4:56 AM | Permalink

    Um. At first glance, it totally looks like Brandon Sanderson is out there peeing on the frozen lake. (After having eaten asparagus.)

    • Sokol
      Posted October 21, 2013 at 8:31 AM | Permalink

      I thought the exact same thing. Well, except for the sparagus part.

      • Kerensky287
        Posted October 21, 2013 at 9:30 AM | Permalink

        I’m sure that the illusion of peeing into a frozen lake is *essential* to whatever complex magic system exists in that universe.

      • Posted October 22, 2013 at 11:28 AM | Permalink

        Yep, ditto.
        Double take on that one. LOL.

        Also, this is the first time I really noticed that Brandon has a lot of similar features to Elijah Wood. He looks uncannily like Frodo in that image….
        Which of course I mean as a compliment.

    • eldrelore
      Posted October 21, 2013 at 1:56 PM | Permalink

      Not frozen lake, salt flats I think. And I’m wondering if the color is a photo effect or if they actually had a dye that bright and how long they had to feed that pool to get the salt crystals to pick it up.

      • BJE
        Posted October 21, 2013 at 5:58 PM | Permalink

        Actually that color is not an effect, apparently it’s the liquid from glow sticks.
        You can read an interesting commentary of all the photos on the photographer’s blog:
        http://laurenzurchinstudios.com/author-fantasy-calendar/

        *sorry if it isn’t cool posting a link to another blog here. Please delete if so or I can edit it out if I’m able.

        • Posted October 22, 2013 at 12:06 AM | Permalink

          Not at all. It’s absolutely cool. I love it when people help each other out in the comments….

  4. Silver
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 5:44 AM | Permalink

    Slightly irrelevent to this, though the calenders look really cool

    Pat are you going to be doing a seperate signing in Brighton apart from the convenstion?

  5. Steve MC
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 5:49 AM | Permalink

    The perspective of that video is definitely what works. I heard once that the way to help bring about change isn’t to harp on what’s wrong, but to show how things could be. And in that you’re an awesome Ringmaster.

    • Posted October 22, 2013 at 12:47 AM | Permalink

      Speaking of Ringmaster… Have you seen my picture in the calendar?

      • Posted October 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM | Permalink

        It turned out good Pat! You totally pulled off the part.

        Did you get to keep the sweet outfit?
        If so, you should totally wear it again for Halloween. I think it looks really cool!

      • Treggar
        Posted October 22, 2013 at 2:48 PM | Permalink

        Huh… I thought you were posing as Robert Jordan.

        :)

  6. Posted October 21, 2013 at 1:39 PM | Permalink

    Saw the blog, read the blog, watched the vid, bought the swag.

    Who needs a chair when you can tame with words?

    Thanks, as always, for giving us the chance to do good by [your] being awesome, sir!

  7. BeasMeeply
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 5:23 PM | Permalink

    Pat, you look like taming lynxes doesn’t really do it for you any more. This is what we meant when we warned you that lynxes are often gateway great cats.

  8. three west
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 7:14 PM | Permalink

    I wonder if they found an elephant…?

  9. TLadd
    Posted October 21, 2013 at 7:21 PM | Permalink

    I really want to watch the video, but I also don’t want to be that dude sitting in the campus coffee shop bawling into his latte…

  10. Carla
    Posted October 23, 2013 at 1:31 PM | Permalink

    I don’t know how often you hear this, but thank you so much for all the charity work you do. I have loved and donated to Heifer since before I “knew” you, and I love them for the empowerment they give people, and that you can pick what you give. I normally give bees but if we are raising pigs or goats that year at home, then the kids want to give pigs or goats, and how great is it to teach your children to give too?

    Thanks for making it cool to give, and exposing people who don’t usually donate to charities the opportunity to give. I hope it’s contagious.

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