Spreading the Love

Recently, a friend, Lisa (L.K. Madigan), shared difficult news on her blog: that she's been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer.  I still can't type those words or think about it with tearing up.  Maybe that's one reason I haven't blogged about this yet.  Another reason is because her news fell so shortly after I sat by my step-father's side while he passed away that I just chose to ignore it all.  Too much sadness.

Her post is so amazingly eloquent that I honestly can't find much to add.  I met Lisa through the debs and as a group we've shared so much together.  But we were never supposed to share things like this.  When we started I assumed it would all be about books but we've shared so much else in the past three years -- parents dying, sick kids, births of new happy healthy kids, bad news and good news.  So much that falls into the broad category of life.

Honestly, there are times my fellow debs feel like a family more than just friends or colleagues.  And so it is too painful to think about one of them going through something like this.  I've always been amazed by Lisa and I'm even more amazed by her strength in facing this news.

As Cindy Pon wrote on a recent debs post:

so how can we best express our love and support for
lisa during this time? through the celebration of her books.
only a fellow writer can know the angst and turmoil associated
with creating stories--because we put so much of ourselves in them.
won't you help us in spreading L. K. Madigan Book Love? 

So that's what this post is about.  Spreading the love about Lisa's books -- a book that won the Morris Award (for best debut novel) and another that has touched so many people.  The debs are giving away 40 sets of Lisa's books and you can find out how to enter here.

Thanks for taking this time to help us show how much we love Lisa and how much her friendship's meant to us.  And thanks Lisa for being so awesome!