Maw Books

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Last year I reviewed The Sudan Project: Rebuilding with the People of Darfur and interviewed the author Melissa Leembruggen.  Melissa has a new book that also benefits Africa and that’s the picture book Benny the Baffled Behemoth, which I just reviewed.  It’s my pleasure today to have Melissa guest post for us today.  So please give her a warm welcome . . .

For me, writing is something that I’ve explored throughout my life, but not in a passionate and serious way. At times, poems and essays just spilled forth from me without my intellectual purpose or thought process saying, “Ok, I am going to write now.”

My first two books, “The Sudan Project: Rebuilding with the People of Darfur” and “Benny The Baffled Behemoth” started as an idea that just poured forth and compelled me to work and shape them into what I saw in my mind that they could be.

There are additional books on the way that were the result of the same process: passion, drive, and purpose compelling the process of bringing forth a new work.

What I find is that my passion to make a difference often provides the drive I need to put everything else aside to tell the story before me, the story then offers me a specific purpose to promote that which I am passionate about.

In the case of both books mentioned, my purpose was to educate kids about an idea or circumstance and then to share some of the profit with an organization that can benefit from additional resources to make a literal difference for children in the world.

My two charities that I am supporting currently through the books are The Sudan Project (www.thesudanproject.org) and Heart For Africa (www.heartforafrica.org).

The Sudan Project is providing clean water, child protection services/education, and agricultural development guidance to the people of Darfur as they attempt to move on and resettle in less war torn areas of Southern Darfur.

Heart For Africa works with children in multiple countries as they provide HOPE: hunger services, orphan services, poverty services, and educational services. In fact, Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in Africa at close to 42%. Heart For Africa is building a self-sustaining community for orphans that will provide for these hundreds of thousands of orphaned children. It is estimated that at the current death rate there will be few adults in the country in the next two decades. The life expectancy in Swaziland is 29 years old.

Since 2008, I’ve been able to give back almost $1000 from the sales of these two books. It is a drop in the bucket compared to the need, but it was more than I had to give before writing these books!

I am excited to say I have a new book on the way, titled “Night the Jallys Roam”, that is part fiction story and part non-fiction information about the benefits of micro-lending business development programs in Jamaica with ACE (www.acexperience.org). I get to travel to Jamaica in November as we finish the final development of the project and prepare it for publication in January 2010.

I challenge all writers. Write what you are passionate about. Follow your drive in your writing. Fill your books with purpose.

Melissa Leembruggen is the author of The Sudan Project and Benny the Baffled Behumeth.  She serves as the president of Clay Bridges Communications and can also be found on Twitter @ClayBridges.

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