Causes and Cancer

In the Facebook pools I swim in there was a collective sadness over the death of author Brandon Barr. You can check out his books here if you are interested. I also recently put together an anthology dedicated to my father who has cancer.

One of the things that I worried about was people saying that I was just using my father's cancer to get sales. Ironically, I worried more about it than actually giving any thought of using it to hook in readers. I haven't put it in the blurb or on the sale page. But I also haven't hidden that the reason the whole thing exists is because of my father's terminal cancer. There is a foreword written by my mother. A real tear-jerker that one. I was sniffing and looking for the tissues because you see my mum gets it. I want a way to make my dad immortal with words and stories.

Then my mother was also diagnosed with cancer. This time she has a much better diagnosis than my dad. She'll be able to write a few more forewords about my dad as I plan to make the anthology an annual event. After that I'll probably put a foreword in about my mother and my father.

I'm not afraid of using causes to point people towards my book. I'm dyslexic and I love celebrating that despite that I have written novels. If I could jump up and down on the top of a building, yelling out to the world that I'm dyslexic so read my books, I would. But I never thought about that with my anthology. I was grieving and needed a way to feel like I could make sure Dad was always around. I don't have children myself but I know my books will be my legacy. So of course my first thought of to make sure Dad was remembered, was to put his life into words.