About Night of the Giving Dead

Night of the Giving Dead, a launch auction benefiting the Giving Library at the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital, will be up and running July 11th through the 25th-ish!

The Giving Library is located at the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital. In a given year, Mott serves about 10,000 inpatients and 60,000 outpatients, from newborns to nineteen-year-olds. My husband was nineteen when he was admitted with an advanced case of Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Thanks to Mott, he beat the odds. When we started dating, his hair was just starting to grow back.

Now he’s at the tail end of his training to become a pediatric oncologist. He’s working side-by-side with many of the doctors who saved his life all those years ago. Sometimes they forget he was once their patient. But my family? We’ll never forget.

I owe everything I’ve got to those doctors. Without them, I’d have no husband. I’d be without my son and the zombie plays he brings me home from first grade. I’d be without my twin daughters and the holes they put in my walls. (I might not miss the holes.) And I would have no book. Because my family’s what gave me the guts to send it out, even though I knew the odds were stacked against me. What can I say? I’m a statistician by trade. I think of these things.

Yes, I’m excited to celebrate the publication of my first book. But for me, this is bigger than a book. This is about paying some of that awesomeness forward. Or in this case, paying it back.

What the bleep IS the Night of the Giving Dead, Anyway?

In 2009, kidlit author extraordinaire Cynthea Liu ran an online auction to promote the debut of her book PARIS PAN TAKES THE DARE and to benefit kids in Oklahoma Title 1 schools. Her efforts raised about $15,000 in reading materials for those students. And when I saw that, I thought, “Holy crapsticks. That’s so awesome!” I sold my first novel to Random House about a month later, and after the hysteria died down, I knew I had to do a benefit.

But what organization to choose? I wanted something to do with books, but I also really wanted to support U of M hospitals. The Giving Library combines the best of both worlds.

Night of the Giving Dead will be an online auction and launch party benefitting the Giving Library. My book, BAD TASTE IN BOYS, hits the shelves on July 12th, so the event will be from July 11th through the 25th. We’ll even have a live event on July 23rd at 2 PM at Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you’re in the area, you should absolutely stop on by!

Go back to the Night of the Giving Dead homepage to get started!