Charity Sunday: Helping you to imagine... #NewRelease #CharitySunday #AmnestyInternational

Greetings!

This is the weekend I would normally do a Charity Sunday post, where I post about some worthwhile cause, then invite you to comment. Then I donate to the charity according to the number of comments I receive.

Today, I’m doing something a bit different.

I don’t know if you saw my post “Imagine” a few days ago, on World Refugee Day. In that post (which I’d love you to go over and read), I invite you to imagine what it would be like to be one of the 70 million individuals in the world today who have been forced to leave their homes because of conflict, violence and disasters natural and man-made. Despite their suffering, refugees are in many places treated as unwanted, even inhuman. Can you imagine what it would be like, to be homeless, destitute and despised?

Today, I thought I’d help you imagine, by sharing my own attempts to make real the plight of one group of refugees. According to UNHCR, there are currently more than 95,000 refugees in Thailand, living in nine camps. Most are from minority groups along the border with Myanmar, who have been displaced by decades of ethnic conflict.

My new release Refuge brings one of these camps to life, seen through the eyes of a young private in the Thai military. Here’s the blurb:

I never wanted to be a soldier, especially a guard at the remote, dusty Mae La refugee camp, a thousand kilometers from my home. But these days there were no jobs in our village. My mother depended on the money I sent her each month. Still, she cried whenever I phoned her.

Until I met the lovely hill tribe girl Preean, though—until she asked for help I knew I shouldn’t give her—I never really understood what I was doing to my fellow human beings. How could she go on, one day after another in that desolate place, without any hope for change? Mae La was limbo—once you arrived here you were stuck. There was nowhere else you could go.

To love her was dangerous, a risk to my own life and freedom. But when she offered her body and her heart, how could I refuse? 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

Refuge is a multicultural erotic romance with a happy ending, but it portrays, as vividly as I know how, the miserable life of these refugees.

I want you to read this story. You can download it free from Smashwords by going here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/945432

and then using this coupon:

VZ77M

So here’s the deal this Charity Sunday. Instead of making donations based on how many comments I get, I’ll donate two dollars to Amnesty International (one of the most important organizations working for refugee rights and welfare, around the world) for every download of the book (free or paid).

Furthermore, I plan to donate all proceeds from sales on either Smashwords or Amazon (which I hope will have the book up within the next 24 hours) to Amnesty.

I’ll donate two dollars for every review on Amazon as well.

The coupon and donation offer expires on July 4^th. The altruistic allocation of proceeds will go on indefinitely.

Feel free to share the coupon, and the book, with your friends and family. The more people who imagine the life of a refugee, the more likely it is that the world will work to reduce their suffering and give them a home.

Finally, here’s a bit from the book, so you’ll have some idea what you’re getting:

~ ~ ~ ~ 

“Excuse me, do you have a pencil?”

I jumped. I had been daydreaming about home, eating somtum and gai yang with Mum and my brother Daeng under the tamarind tree in the backyard. The light tap on my shoulder dragged me back to the smelly, dusty camp where I was supposed to be on guard.

“What?”

“A pencil? Or a pen?” The young woman gestured back towards a knot of kids gathered in the shade of the water tower. She held up a sheet of corrugated cardboard scavenged from some trash heap. “I’m teaching them their alphabet. I’ve got this but nothing to write with.”

She wore a faded teeshirt, baggy shorts and flip flops. Her hair hung down her back in a messy ponytail tied with an old shoelace. Still I could see that she was pretty, slightly built, with sharper features and paler skin then the girls back home. Her smile appeared genuine, though her eyes appraised me nervously. I guessed that it took some courage for her to approach me, a uniformed soldier with a loaded rifle—never mind that I was only a year or two older than she was, and wanting nothing more than to go back to my family in Yasathon.

I leaned my gun against my thigh. “I’ve got a pencil back at the barracks, but I can’t leave my post until my shift is over. Maybe you could postpone your lessons until after three? I’ll bring it to you then.”

Her face lit up. She grabbed and squeezed my hands. Hers were tiny, but strong. “Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you.”

I blushed at her enthusiasm. “Never mind. Now you’d better go.” I’d noticed Sergeant Chokchai headed my way. He didn’t approve of what he called “fraternization” between us and the camp’s inhabitants.

“Everything secure, Private Nu?” He loomed over me. I swallowed hard. He came from Bangkok. He had made it clear in his view, I was just a stupid hick from the Northeast.

“Yes, sir. Everything is normal, sir.”

“What were you doing, talking to that filthy Burmese cunt?”

I winced at his foulness. “Nothing. She wanted to know the time, that’s all.”

“Why should she care? She’s not going anywhere!” Chokchai gave a nasty chuckle “You should know better, though. Don’t talk to them. Don’t get involved in their affairs. Oh, they’ll act all polite and respectful, but they’re snakes. They’ll stab you as soon as your back’s turned. You remember what happened to Sakon, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Sakon had been another sergeant. They had found him behind the mess hall with his throat slit. Everyone assumed that he was murdered by one of the refugees, even though he’d been a brutal man who had many enemies.

“Just remember, they’re animals. Ignorant, superstitious animals.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction that the girl had disappeared, shaking his head in obvious disgust, before returning his unwelcome attention to me.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

Thank you for your time, and your compassion.

Quick update: the book is now available on Amazon (but not free):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TDYD7DB
 

Imagine... -- #UNHCR #WorldRefugeeDay #EveryRefugeeMatters

 Image by Zachtleven fotografie from Pixabay

Look around you. No matter where you live, no matter your economic level, if you’re reading this blog, you probably have a home. You’re surrounded by your personal possessions, things that have special meaning to you. You very likely share your home, too, with people who are important to you – family and friends, neighbors, members of your community. Maybe you live in the town where you were born. Maybe you’ve moved far away, but wherever you are, I’ll bet you have happy memories, emotional connections and some level of physical comfort.

Now imagine that’s all gone. Imagine you’ve been driven out of your home, your town, even your country – by violence, by war, by famine, by disease. You have no place to call your own. Think about what it would be like, to be forced to leave everything behind, not just your possessions but also your culture, history and traditions. If you’re lucky, you may have been able to take your family with you when you fled. If you’re less fortunate, you may have seen your husband, wife, son or daughter raped, arrested or murdered, drowned in the effort to escape, or lost to starvation.

Who would choose this? No one sane. Yet this is the situation faced by more than 70 million refugees around the world. What do these people want? What we all want: safety, shelter, sustenance, work that will support them, a community to which they can belong, a future.

Today is the World Refugee Day. I’m not asking you to donate. I’m not suggesting you should feel guilty because you’re fortunate enough to have a home. No, all I’m asking is that you stop for a moment and use the power of imagination – the same power that allows you to lose yourself in a book – to put yourself in their places.

Imagine you’re a Rohingya man from Myanmar whose house was torched by the army, now living in a squalid camp in Bangladesh with 700,000 of your compatriots. Or a Syrian teenager whose parents were crushed inside their bombed house, who risked his life in a leaky boat to find a home in Europe. Or a young mother from Guatemala who’s walked all the way through Mexico to the U.S. border carrying her two month old child, after drug gangs raped her and shot her husband.

Imagine the terror, the despair, the hunger, the deep loneliness. You can identify with characters in a story. Can you do the same for the refugees? Can you summon enough compassion to burn through the xenophobic rhetoric so common these days?

I’m not asking you to do anything – except to resist the temptation to demonize these souls who have lost everything. It’s easy to blame outsiders for everything, easy to fear them, all too easy to reject them. Resist that temptation, if you can.

If you do want to do something more – well, there are lots of opportunities to work with or on behalf of refugees.

As a really simple starting point – since I know you love erotica and romance – consider purchasing the altruistic anthology Coming Together: On Wheels. All proceeds from this book support the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Of course, I have a story in this volume, a romantic and arousing tale entitle “Test Drive”. Here’s a snippet:

Pure testosterone. That was Jack Taggart. I think I must have got a hit of his pheromones or something, before I even saw him. I almost skipped down the sidewalk that July evening, inexplicable excitement fizzing through me. I should have been worn out from a long shift behind the reference desk. Instead, I felt like dancing as I strolled along Main Street, headed for home. I pulled off the elasticized tie and shook out my hair. It tumbled around my shoulders and down my back, much longer than Estelle thought was appropriate for a woman my age. Too bad. My profession requires me to maintain a certain level of propriety in my dress, but there’s got to be a limit.

“Hey there, pretty lady.”

His drawl rumbled through me, an avalanche of heat, melting everything in its path. My hair flew as I turned back in his direction.

I’d intended to scold him for his barely polite greeting. The words caught in my throat as I took him in.

He lounged in the doorway of the Indian motorcycle showroom, hands in his pockets, broad shoulders braced against the frame, one lean, denim-clad leg crossed over the other—six feet of loose-limbed masculinity. A sand-colored braid hung down across his solid chest, almost to his waist. The rolled-up sleeves of his plaid shirt revealed tanned forearms furred with golden down. His sun-bronzed face wasn’t classically handsome, but when his bright blue eyes snagged mine, I couldn’t look away.

Thirty. Thirty five at most. I could almost be his mother. Shocking that all I wanted to do was tear off my conservative skirt and blouse and throw myself into those obviously strong arms.

“Want to come for a ride, darlin’?”

“Ah—huh—what?” A master’s degree in library science, reduced to inarticulate mumbling by a bit of flirting. What was I, a teenager?

“Got a sale going on, through next week. Discounts of twenty to thirty percent on all our models. I have to say you’d look fantastic on a bike, Miss.” He unfolded himself from his casual pose and handed me a business card. “I’m Jack Taggart. Top sales associate in the Midwest, three years running. And you are…?”

It’s none of your business who I am, I wanted to tell him. Fat chance. “Um—Alice. Alice Robinson.”

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Robinson.” Apparently helpless to resist, I accepted the large, calloused hand he held out. Lighting sizzled through me as our palms connected. “Or is it Mrs. Robinson?”

His cocky grin sent blood rushing to my cheeks. I straightened my spine and tried to regain some sort of control over my autonomic functions. “Mrs. My husband died four years ago.”

* * * *

If this piques your interest, I hope you’ll check out the book. In any case, I hope this exercise in imagination will make you a bit more grateful and a bit more kind.

Certainly it has that effect on me.