Art for heart's sake

An email this morning from Tim Hallinan:

The Gods of Nature

The most ancient Japanese religion is Shinto.
The name is taken from two Chinese words, shin, meaning "spirit," and to, which is a derivative of tao (as in Taoism), a path or a course of study. So I suppose you could say it's a spiritual path of study. It's sometimes translated as "the way of the gods."

Shinto holds that the natural world is the home of kami, or spirits.
Many of them are spirits of place: stones, trees, hills, bodies of water.
The Japanese reverence for nature has its roots in Shinto.

This is a torii, a gate for the kami to pass through. They stand outside virtually every Shinto Shrine and also provide passageways for spirits of place in spots where their influence is strongest. Many of them stand in bodies of water.

On March 11 of this year, something unprecedented in modern memory rose up out of nature and struck Japan.

Following a massive earthquake, the waves invaded an enormous area in the northeast of Japan. In a matter of moments, both the natural and the man-made landscapes were altered, perhaps forever.

Watching the devastation, all I could think was that writers should be able to pool their talents to raise money as musicians and actors do. And it occurred to me immediately that we can. With the immediacy of e-books, writers can join together to try to bring some small solace in the face of tragedy. People who have lost children, parents, loved ones, friends, communities, livelihoods -- they deserve our best efforts, however humble.

Less than three months after the disaster, nineteen wonderful writers have donated their talent to make this possible.

This is a collection of original Japan-themed short stories, almost all written since March 11, inspired by the desire to help.

The writers who responded with such wonderful stories are:

Brett Battles 

Cara Black 

Vicki Doudera 

Dianne Emley 

Dale Furutani 

Stefan Hammond 

Rosemary Harris 

Naomi Hirahara 

Wendy Hornsby 

Ken Kuhlken 

Debbi Mack 

Adrian McKinty

I.J. Parker 

Gary Phillips 

Hank Phillippi Ryan 

Jeffrey Siger 

Kelli Stanley 

C.J. West and 

Jeri Westerson. 

Another fine writer, Gar Anthony Haywood, designed the cover.

Taken as a whole, these people have won every major mystery prize and sold hundreds of thousands of books.

Two remarkable translators of haiku, Jane Reichhold, whose 2008 volume translating all the haiku of the 17th-century master Basho has been hailed as a new standard, and David Lanoue, who has done beautiful translations of Issa, allowed us to use their renderings without charge.

Kimberly Hitchens and her first-class crew turned the manuscript into a beautiful a-book.

One hundred percent of the writers' royalties from the purchase go directly to the 2011 Japan Relief Fund administrated by Japan America Society of Southern California, which has already sent $750,000 to organizations working on the scene.

You can buy SHAKEN: STORIES FOR JAPAN as a Kindle e-book on Amazon right here http://www.amazon.com/SHAKEN-Stories-for-Japan-ebook/dp/B00556WX9A/  for only $3.99.  


If you don't have a Kindle, you can download Kindle for PC here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311

or Kindle for Mac here
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_mac_mkt_lnd?docId=1000464931

and read the book on your computer.

If you have a Nook, buy the book and e-mail me, and I'll send you an epub file you can transfer to the reader.

But buy it, please. Nobody gets anything out of it except people who need it badly. This is art for heart's sake, but it can't do its work without you.

Thanks in advance from all of us.