Book Reading and Giveaway at the Ronald McDonald House!

Doing author events for charity is always a great experience: I get to help out a good cause and share my writing with people in one fell swoop. It’s like eating an egg wrapped in bacon wrapped in a waffle!

On a few Saturdays in May, I’ll be holding author reading and book giveaway events at the Ronald McDonald Houses in Denver and Aurora, Colorado! I’ll be joining Curt Fulster of C. Fulsty Books at the Aurora house on May 12 and at the Denver house on May 19. Both events will start at 6:30pm.

During the events, we’ll be reading from our books, answering questions, and giving away plenty of copies to the Houses’ families.

For those who don’t know, the Ronald McDonald House works closely with Children’s Hospital to provide housing, food, and other services to out-of-town families. Since there are only a handful of Children’s Hospitals in the world (and they all specialize in different ailments), a lot of families must travel out-of-state and even out of the country to stay near their kids.

These families have to worry about finding hotels, renting cars, paying for gas, and a bunch of other stuff you just don’t want to worry about when your kid’s in the hospital. So the Ronald McDonald House provides nice rooms, hot meals, and even entertainment to out-of-town families.

I didn’t just pick the Ronald McDonald House out of a random hat-o-charities, either. As I mentioned in the post about the charity month, my baby cousin was diagnosed with and died from brain cancer in 2000. I’ve also had a close friend deal with childhood cancer in recent years.

I live in Colorado, so I never stayed at either of the Colorado Ronald McDonald Houses while my cousin was receiving cancer treatments. But when I learned about the House, I couldn’t help but think “I can’t imagine what it’d be like to go through this if I lived out-of-state.”

Also, in 2006, I performed my Eagle Scout service project by supplying the Denver Ronald McDonald House with storage shelves. I raised over $3000, purchased a bunch of shelving racks from Costco, and instructed and collaborated with other boys to set them up. As far as I know, the RMH is still using the shelves.

The Ronald McDonald House helps out a ton of families, and I’m glad to help them in any way I can.  It’s going to be great!