I was going to launch into a series of blog posts about my writing and how I went about certain things. I'm going to put that on hold for a couple of weeks. Why? I have a more important topic. That topic is Operation E-Book Drop.

    Operation E-Book Drop is an effort founded by independent author Edward C Patterson and Smashwords co-founder Mark Coker. The project's aim is to make e-books available for free to our service men and women overseas using a Smashwords coupon code that reduces the price to $0.00. Why do this you ask?

    I can only speak to why I've done it, and I'll try not to pontificate too much. You decide if you think it's a good enough reason for you to participate.

    For me it comes down to the people. Like war or not, back it or not, it's fought by people. Our people. Some of these people may very well be the blood thirsty war mongers some have called them. I doubt that most are.

    I've known my fair share of servicemen and women and every single one of them was just like you or I. They came from different backgrounds and different ethnicities. Some joined the military to secure our freedoms, some to get money for college, some because it was the only opportunity they had to better their life. These are just people. Good, bad, and everything in between.

    The difference is that they are giving their lives for us, for a war that is ugly, and not popular, and have been for years. They spend much of their time away from family and friends and the comforts of home. They do this for us even if that wasn't their reason for signing up. They are under a tremendous amount of stress and have to face things on a daily basis that would break many people.

    One of the most common ways that soldiers rest and relax, as I have been told, is to read books. A friend of mine that spent a lot of time in the desert said that reading a book allowed him to take his mind away from the war, away from the violence, and let him just decompress. To me that made sense as I do the same thing when I have a stressful day at my job, and I'm not being shot at or mortared. So when I asked what he read he replied with a ton of different sci-fi and fantasy titles. This was years ago. How does this relate to the present?

    Two days ago my wife came upon Operation E-Book drop while surfing the net and explained to me what it was trying to do for military men and women. So I gave her an enthusiastic "Sign me up!" She sent out a request to get e-mails for us to send Smashwords coupon codes to and we ended up getting over 170 responses asking for e-books.

    I'm very thankful for the sacrifices that the servicemen and women have made for us and I hope that my book will give them some entertainment and some stress relief.

    If you're an author and want to participate please check out the following links. Obviously different people want different sorts of books so take a look at the forums and see what people want and don't want. Also, this is largely on the honor system so if you may want to recycle your coupon codes every so often and send new ones out so you don't have your books get posted all over the internet for free. I'm watching my Smashwords dashboard to see how many books are going out so if I'm suddenly at 1000 downloads I'll know I need to expire the coupon and send a new one out.

Amazon Forums

http://www.amazon.com/forum/meet%20our%20authors/ref=cm_cd__ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2UYC1FC06SU8S&cdThread=Tx24PGX6ZALLZHJ&displayType=tagsDetail

Kindleboards Forum

http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,13352.0.html

Facebook Fan Page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Operation-EBook-Drop/172002003420

If you want to donate some hard copies of your books please check out Operation Paperback

    Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Garth