You're Not the Only One - Back to Buy for £9.70 - All Proceeds Still to WarChild

Pease click to purchase.

Sarah X

£1200 for WARCHILD - You're Not The Only One

Hey!

You might be interested to know that today I made a payment to Warchild for just over £1,200 raised by the book You're Not The Only One - see below for all the details...

It wasn't as much as I was hoping for but sadly life got in the way of pushing this as much as I wanted - Warchild are chuffed to bits and we will be added to their contributors on their site shortly - not to mention we have raised money to assist with dealing with childrens' horrible war realities...

Here is their letter of receipt:

Dear Sarah Peach,

Please accept our sincere thanks for your generous donation of £1,244.00 raised through your fantastic idea of book of blogs. The money you have donated will help the most marginalised children affected by war, including child soldiers, street kids and children in prison in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda through a range of different projects.

- In Afghanistan, our work provides legal aid to children who have been arrested and we have also worked to separate these children from adults prisoners. For those children, who have not been charged, but forced to accompany their mothers to prison we also provide access to a kindergarten. We work with local organisations to help get street children into schools to prevent them coming into conflict with the law in the first place.

- Through our work in the Democratic Republic of Congo we assist ex-child soldiers, street children and children accused of witchcraft by supporting drop in centres, where they receive food, medicine and access to education and training. We also provide grants to help them start their own business, allowing them to re-establish a place in their community.

- In Iraq War Child has funded the refurbishment of drop-in centres, trained social workers and worked closely with local communities to improve the protection of the growing population of street children.

- And in Uganda we work with the children who suffer the most due to the long enduring war – young girls with babies, disabled, orphaned, unaccompanied children and those abducted during the conflict. We help them get back into education, offer professional training and find them job placements.

Because of your support we will be able to achieve more for children living in war zones in 2009. If you would like to receive regular bulletins from War Child by email, please do let me know by emailing me at [email protected] .

Thank you once again for your support and interest in War Child. If you would like any further information or have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Sara Bowcutt
Fundraising Manager

Anyone still wanting to buy the book? Click on the link!

(... more links etc to come...)

Sarah

You're Not The Only One - UPDATE

We made it to £1,000 made for Warchild in under three weeks!!

Keep buying it!

You're Not The Only One - Charity Book for Warchild

UPDATE 2: Hey guys - thanks again so much for all your comments and emails saying you've ordered the book and/or have received it and enjoyed it. Yay! I do read them all, things have got a bit crazy in my world of late so I haven't had a chance to answer you individually or even blog properly. Will be back as soon as poss - we've raised over £800 in the first week for Warchild and the total still goes up - ! I am waiting on the ISBN number and making any final adjustments and amendments and then we go GLOBAL, ha, ok not global, but then we hit the high street shops etc and the book becomes a real live hardcopy book ... but that's taking most of my time and nearly all of my patience. I've also got some work issues, have to find some new housemates and I've a court appearance and several baby related Drs appointments ahead, so apologies if I'm not seen here blogging for a while - I'm still around and leaving comments on yours when I can, and I do need to hear from you (email is best please) if there are any further amendments to be made to the book.

See you very soon, thanks for buying the book and all your plugging and pimping - keep spreading the word and let's try to hit the £1K mark asap !

____________________________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: Hi guys - thanks for all your comments and emails - I've amended as many urls and changed names as much as poss - it means that the first few prints are different, but until we have the ISBN number, this shouldn't matter too much. BUT I have a proposition for you - if I have ballsed up your URL in the book - I will buy another amended copy for you - so drop me your address via private email if you find I have.

Ah, its been a great three months, my blog's hit the 50th Most Influential Blog in the UK and I've had over 250 hits per day for the past 16 weeks or so! Now, I know it's not for my scintillating writing, my sidesplitting anecdotes or my filthy fantasies, it's only because of the book (sniff) but hey, it's been nice to be so popular, I hope you come back again even though the book's out...

Because it's HERE! We did it!

Ok, so it took three months, but rest assured it is three months of BRILLIANCE, of EXCELLENCE, of carefully chosen GORGEOUS bits of writing, of lovingly tendered editing and proofing, of gently nurtured and carefully catered for tastes and styles and with over ONE HUNDRED BLOGGERS' ENTRIES - woo hoooooooo!

The book costs £12.50

£5.00 goes to production costs (that Lulu take and pass on) Lulu.com takes £1.50 for themselves in fees (but I THINK they're going to waive that for us) and the rest, £6 goes to Warchild.

*If you buy it as a download, £10 of the £12.50 goes to Warchild*

Now, I suppose you want to know first off who's in it eh? All your little comments and questions over the past three months - I'm sorry it took so long and I'm sorry you had to wait!

Before I list the contributors, you'll have to hang on because I want to say a few things:

Firstly - THANK YOU to ALL of you who sent something in. ALL OF YOU. The final count was about 400 entries, which was a brilliant response, some of you sent in more than one (and a few of you more than 3!). I'm grateful you were all so generous to share, with potentially the world at large, some of your most private and intimate stories. It was tough reading what some of you have been through and amazing at the same time. Thank you.

If everyone who submitted something for the book, whether they made it or not, still bought the book that's a guaranteed £2.4 k we will have made for Warchild right there.

The second thing is: A huge thank you to Ariel, Desperate Sarah, Ms Robinson and Vi who have been bloody brilliant, especially Ariel who has helped me so much with the editing.

I chose 4 very different bloggers for the team so we had a good mix of tastes and preferences in picking the pieces, plus we had a slick voting system which meant we ruled out favouritism and bias as much as possible. Thus, a piece one of us loved wouldn't necessarily be loved by all or any of the others ....and I want you to know we scrapped a bit and debated and heckled quite a lot over quite a few of the pieces.

We all read every single entry more than once. We each voted 2 points for a def yes and 1 for a maybe. NO entries got 0 out of 10 so that means, whether you're in it or not, whatever you sent in meant something to at least one of us (I'm not entirely sure this makes you feel any better, but I hope it does).

I think we have a fantastic mixture of serious, poignant and moving stories together with upbeat, lighthearted posts which will make you feel a bit more like you're not the only one, and makes a great read too.

And thus, I guess, the biggest point I want to make is that if you're NOT in it, it means nothing bad whatsoever.

In the end, we had a limit of 200 pages for the stories (which we didn't manage to stick to as it is). We tried to keep all pieces under 1500 words (which we also didn't manage to stick to for one or two), plus sometimes there were several stories on very similar topics.

But, the response was so good we already want to do another one ( You're Not The Only One, Too? You're Still Not The Only One? Hey! Look There's Someone With You?) so please know it means nothing if your piece didn't make it in.

So I guess you want the list of contributors eh?

If you submitted to it, or are in the book, or just want to help spread the word, here's also what you can do:

1) Buy the book and maybe leave a review:


2) Publicise the book on your site and link back here again please.

3) Send links to this post to some friends.

Thank you.

Now, here's who's in it - if your URL is wrong, I've spelt your name wrong here or in the book, we can change it, so do let me know.

*Please can you email me if you want the HTML for the widget or for the pic - thanks!*

UPDATE: Hi guys - thanks for all your comments and emails - I've amended as many urls and changed names as much as poss - it means that the first few prints will be different, but until we have the ISBN number, this shouldn't matter too much.
BUT I have a proposition for you - if I have ballsed up your URL in the book - I will buy another amended copy for you - so drop me your address via private email if you find I have.

Thank you again:

1. DBA Lehane
2. Corinne Furness
3. Village Idiot aka VI
4. Fringes
5. LilliPilli
6. Naomi Dunford
7. Leigh Forbes
8. Heather Hunter
9. Fweng Ebola
10. Sue
11. Ani Smith
12. Anna Pickard
13. Ree
14. Desperate Sarah
15. M.McEwen-Asker
16. Paige Jennifer
17. Cat
18. Sarah J Peach
19. Mike Atkinson
20. Diane Mandy
21. Rachel Goldsack
22. Deborah Carr
23. Jenny Maltby
24. Helen Redfern
25. Miss Smack
26. The H Factor
27. Fat Controller
28. L.M.Noonan
29. Kal
30. Ronjazz
31. Nicholas Grundy
32. Rob Ryan
33. Casdok
34. DJ Kirkby
35. Bone
36. Kathryn Harriss
37. Helen Dalby
38. Alex McGlin
39. Kate Kingsley
40. Miss Tickle
41. Just A Girl
42. Catherine Sanderson
43. Enigma
44. Tim Warren
45. Kat Campbell
46. Daren Callow
47. Alan White
48. Zinnia Cyclamen
49. Tired Dad
50. The Boy
51. Swiss Toni
52. Cliff Jones
53. Fiona Williams
54. Kate
55. Isabelle
56. An Unreliable Witness
57. Dave Lozo
58. Anne Byrne
59. Micky McGuinness
60. Phillip Copland
61. Larry Teabag
62. enidd
63. Sugar007
64. Ariel Langham
65. Mr Angry
66. The Overnight Editor
67. Kristin
68. Léonie Kate
69. Barb McMahon
70. Misssy M
71. Meaghan Kearney
72. Pat Mackay
73. Swearing Mother
74. Emma Kaufmann
75. Angela La La
76. Boy Does Life
77. Guy Herbert
78. Blue Soup
79. Junior
80. Curvy Girl
81. Prada Pixie
82. J
83. Ms Robinson
84. Distracted Spunk
85. Jane
86. Jennifer White
87. The Boy Who Could But Didn’t
88. Solaris Girl
89. Beth Smith
90. Wendy Christie
91. Miss Diarist
92. Colin
93. Hope
94. Enny
95. Joanna
96. Reluctant Memsahib
97. Karen
98. Stephanie Shaw
99. Clarissa
100. Susan P
101. Debbie
102. Crystal
103. Scorpy
104. Megan
105. Uncle Norman
106. Johnny B

ENJOY THE BOOK, I think it's bloody good!

You're Not The Only One Update # 8

OK, we're nearly there. I'm hoping for next week! But if not, due to certain technical things, I am hoping it will be by the end of May. That seems like a long way off doesn't it? But no longer than that I really hope. There's one large thing I am trying to do which will make the whole project even better, so hang with me just a little little and we will have the best charity book ever!

Thanks again...

You're Not The Only One - Update #7

Hey, just a quick heads up, because I know you're all desperate to know, I'm back on the internet at home and got lots of proofing done this weekend, so very very shortly we will have our book! Warchild are still reading it - I will chase them today - and the artwork is still forthcoming. Again, apologies for the delays...and no I will not give a sneaky peak of the line-up to you yet! Come on people, the best things in life are worth waiting for...

You're Not The Only One - update - 6

Well, the annoying and frustrating news is that we're going to have to delay "launching" the book til after Easter.

Sorry about that.

There are a few reasons: -

Still waiting on a cover. We have a few people working on that now, which is great.

Warchild haven't got back to me and approved the racier submissions (there are only a few).

Plus, I haven't heard back from a few submitters - can you check your spam folders and see if there is a You're Not The Only One email there: I wrote to a few people with thoughts on editing the odd one or two submissions and I am still waiting to hear back.

(please don't think that if you haven't been contacted that that means you're not in the book, that's NOT the case! One or two submissions were a bit too long so I suggested some edits. I will post the final list after Easter when we have the finished book - there's more than 100 of you in it and its bloody brilliant!)

Thank you again for submitting and I'm sorry for the delays.

Cover Art Contest! - Warchild Update #5

Hey, we're nearly there with the book, editing and re-reading and slotting it all together... but we still haven't got any cover art finalised and so, if you fancy submitting us something, please do.

We are waiting on a few people who said they might be able to get us something, but we'd thought we'd throw it out there for good measure just in case.

DEADLINE: Sunday 16th March - 9pm

SPEC: Something simple and iconic reflecting "You're Not The Only One" and the camaraderie of blogging. Please not too many colours - less is more. Must be above 300 dpi - and 1786 x 2556 pixels. You can give me GIF files or PSDs - please include bleed (thanks Boy for prompt!)

SEND TO: address as before: [email protected]

thanks in advance!

You're Not The Only One - update 4

OK THAT'S IT! Thank you for all your submissions and links and pimpings - the deadline was Sunday Mar 9 - please send no more stories, the project is now closed... and wow what brilliant things you've sent us!

I am hoping to get the final draft ready for the end of this week and will be listing the final running order next Monday night (March 17th)

ALL LINKERS AND PIMPERS ARE LISTED: HERE

You're Not The Only One - update # 2

NEW DEADLINE SUNDAY 9TH MARCH 08

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them!"

Shit, I think I was just on TV. Our workplace has been in the news a bit lately (for boring not scandalous reasons, sadly) and as it's a media company there are often cameras and semi-famous people milling around which I usually tune out unless they're particularly ridiculous but I think they were just doing a news piece and I walked straight in the middle of it about three times as I bought lunch and had a cig. Great.

But international fame and fortune CAN STILL BE YOURS if you send us something you've written for the WARCHILD book, You're Not The Only One!

The guidelines are here.

SUNDAY 9TH MARCH is the new deadline (as requested by Warchild)! You have one more week!

[email protected] is where to send them....

Over 250 submissions!

Over 300 links (which I will update tonight; I've still got no internet access at home which is rather amusing given I'm trying to organise an internet based project. They promise me it back on Saturday. Until then I can piggyback an unsuspecting neighbour but it's only a matter of time before he finds out, password protects and I am totally shut out of the information superhighway. Or arrested).

If you have written anything FUNNY about something you've been through, then we would greedily lap it up; because the standard has been sky high, we're all sniffing and moping about because everything's been so sad! We of course want you to write about anything you've been through, but if you've spun an amusing angle on it, we'd favour those pieces a bit now given we're very very sad and need to add a little balance to the book. And our psyches.

So get writing and sending: I am thrusting greatness upon you. Thrust it back!

(click here to see all the submitters and linkers....)

UPDATE:  Man, I hope I haven't confused or put anyone off - if you have sent something not funny THIS IS FINE!  Just that in order to make the book balanced and not Zola-esque depressing, we just wanted some variety... it is however still about ANYTHING you have been through, so if you still want to submit trauma and pain, please do too...  this was how the book got devised, by reading how much people had been through and how people share this through blogging and find You're Not The Only One... geddit ?

Right.  As you were.