Altered Perceptions - Proving what great people authors can be

I recently saw an update from Brandon Sanderson on Facebook about an Indiegogo campaign called Altered Perceptions. Unfortunately, I saw the update too late to participate in the campaign, which is a real shame. And even though the campaign is closed, this story and the efforts these authors went to really touched me, and I wanted to share it.

The campaign was to raise money for Robison Wells, an author who is suffering from crippling debt due to some mental health problems. Brandon Sanderson came up with the campaign to help raise money, not just for Robison, but also to possibly start a foundation for other authors suffering from similar problems.

I could see something like this revolving around Sanderson writing a new book or short story and using that as the giveaway for the campaign, but that's not what happened. 32 authors contributed to a hardback book titled Altered Perceptions, which they filled with unique content like re-written chapters, alternate endings to their books, deleted scenes, and brand new short stories. 32 people got together to selflessly give their time and work to this anthology to help a struggling fellow author. And the book was just the beginning.

For different donation levels people could get phone calls from Sanderson and other authors, signed copies, a date with Shannon Hale and Brandon Mull, and the ultimate perk, the chance to be written in as a character in a Sanderson novel (If you can't tell Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors ever, and seeing what a great person he is hasn't hurt his standing one bit).

The campaign is closed, but I encourage anyone who's reading this to go check out the page and see who contributed their work to this fundraiser. These people are all great authors and great human beings, and they deserve your support of their works. I'd also encourage you to check out Indiegogo, where you can invest in all kinds of crowd sourced projects. If they get the foundation going and I hear about it, I'll be sure to post something here about it.