It’s that time of year again, folks. Time to make the world a better place while winning fabulous prizes.

(Oooo, shiny new logo…)

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry all over the world.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

(Are you ready? I’m so ready. Let’s do it.)

We’ve changed things a bit from previous years. We’re streamlining and making adjustments, which means we might have a glitch or two along the way. Think of this as Worldbuilders 2013 – Beta. Tweaks will be made as needed….

You’ve got three different options for donating.

Option 1: The Lottery.

This is the option most of you will want. It’s quick and easy and tax deductible.

You just hop directly over to the page I’ve set up on Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate on that page, two things happen.

1. You’ll move us closer to our stretch goals (the first few are shown below).

2. You’ll be entered in the lottery.

After the fundraiser is over, we’ll have a random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated. Thousands of books, comics, games, and other cool miscellany.

For every 10 bucks you donate on our Team Heifer page, your name will get entered into our drawing. If you donate thirty bucks, your name goes in three times. Donate enough for a goat, ($120) and your name goes in 12 times.

What’s in the lottery? A lot. We have a ton of stuff this year. So much that if I showed it to you all at once, its combined awesome would cook your brain like a toad thrown into the sun.

So for everyone’s safety, we’ll be posting up a new blog every couple of days.

As a new feature this year, you can see *all* the books that have been added to the Lottery so far on our snazzy new Lottery Library page.

Or you can see the individual blogs here:

Last year, we banded together to raise more than $400,000 for Heifer International. It was a stunning display of generosity and goodwill.

This year I’m hoping we can do even better.

To encourage people to donate, we have some stretch goals. Even better, these are going to be fun things that awesome people will do to support the fundraiser. There will be music videos, live writing streams, and maybe even some co-written erotic fiction…

I’ll go into more detail about some of these stretch goals as they get closer. I’ve blogged a bit about the one’s we’ve passed over here…

Here’s a cool new graphic we have to display stretch goals as we approach and hit them, and the list of the ones coming up.

Unlocked stretch goals:

$25,000 Peter V. Brett shaves Myke Cole’s head!

$50,000 Paul & Storm re-tool the lyrics for “Write Like the Wind” to fit another slow-writing fantasy author you may have heard of…

$75,000 Jim Hines does a very special, and probably very disturbing, Poser cover parodyparody.

$100,000 Brandon Sanderson will live-stream writing a story, so you can see him work his magic.

$125,000 The Doubleclicks perform the classic piece, Meownlight Sonata, on cat keyboards.

$150,000 Mary Robinette Kowal will write and read her Name of the Wind erotica fan fiction, entitled “The Wind Comes”.

$175,000 Vi Hart will write and perform music based on lyrics written by Pat Rothfuss, entitled “Knackerman.”

$200,000 Team Unicorn will pie each other in the face.

$225,000 Patrick Rothfuss will reveal his first piece of fan fiction he ever wrote: lyrics to Terry Pratchett’s “A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on the End” [Coming soon!] $250,000 Peter Orullian will perform a heavy metal version of Joss Whedon’s “Ballad of Serenity” theme with lyrics retooled for Worldbuilders.

$275,000 Trey Ratcliff, internationally renowned photographer, will take an “ill-advised” bathroom selfie.

$300,000 Scott Lynch & Elizabeth Bear will give a drunken review of the second Hobbit film.

$325,000 John Scalzi will perform “But Not Tonight” on either ukulele or tenor guitar.

$350,000 Hank Green will seduce a particularly nice-looking tree.

$375,000 Patrick Rothfuss will team up with Mary Robinette Kowal to read the NOTW erotica she wrote. [Coming soon!] $400,000 Sandeep Parikh will drink Capri Sun while doing a handstand with other members of The Guild. [Coming soon!] $425,000 Bradley P. Beaulieu will read an excerpt from The Hobbit while enjoying the Wisconsin weather. [Coming soon!] $433,420 Molly Lewis will perform The Greatest Adventure on various silly instruments.

$475,000 Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson will write urban fantasy erotica together. [Coming soon!] $500,000 Neil Gaiman will read you Green Eggs and Ham.

$525,000 Pat will be drawn into a Munchkin Card and a strip of Dork Tower by John Kovalic.

$575,000 Brian Brushwood will teach Pat how to breathe fire. [Coming soon!] $600,000 Nate Taylor will draw a new map of the Four Corners. [Coming soon!] $625,000 Pat Rothfuss will livestream a viewing of the first Hobbit movie. [Coming soon!]

Upcoming stretch goals include:

$675,000 Pat Rothfuss and Brett will reissue the College Survival Guide.

$700,000 Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson will record themselves reading their erotic urban fantasy fiction.

More stretch goals will be added all the time, we’ll be listing them here and on the Worldbuilders website under news.

Note: Worldbuilders ends February 4, 2014 at 11:59 pm PST. To be eligible for the lottery, you must have made your donation on the Team Heifer Page before then.

Option 2: The Sure Thing.

For those of you who aren’t that interested in the lottery, we have some stuff you can just buy from our online store.

Our store, lovingly named The Tinker’s Packs, has t-shirts, posters, and other coolness available for purchase.

We also have foreign editions of many titles, donated and signed by the authors. These are hard to find if you live in the US.

All proceeds go to Worldbuilders, of course.

Additionally, this year we’ve published two calendars. One of them is Heifer International themed, telling the stories of people who have been affected by Heifer’s work.

We’ve also got a fantasy-themed calendar, with fabulous authors such as Christopher Paolini, Cassandra Claire, Tad Williams, and many others.

(Click to embiggen)

There are more pictures from both calendars in The Tinker’s Packs.

We’ll be adding new items to the store throughout the fundraiser, so keep an eye on the blog. If you’re worried you might miss some of the coolness, you can follow the Tinker’s Packs on Twitter and Facebook. We’ll post updates there whenever something new happens.

Option 3: Auctions.

Sometimes we get donations that are really cool…. but they’re only cool for for a select group of people. Some people would squee with delight at winning a portal gun, but other people, (sad, unhappy people) have never played portal, and just don’t care.

The same thing is true with action figures, games, musical instruments, manuscripts, or other collectables.

So we put those things up for auction.

We have professionals willing to read and critique your manuscripts. We have signed art and rare books. We have the chance to win cameo appearances in comics and get your name into upcoming books.

We auction these things off as well.

This year all of our auctions will be launching on Thursday evening, running for ten days, then ending the following Sunday.

There might be a few late additions here and there, but we’ll be working hard to stick to this schedule so everyone will have plenty of time to see what’s up for sale.

All our current auctions are visible over on the Worldbuilders eBay page.

A Few Changes This Year

For one thing, we have a whole new Website. We’ve got a bunch of cool new things there.

Worldbuilders also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account for those of you who are into that sort of thing.

But one of the coolest things we have is the ability to look at *all* the books that are currently in the worldbuilders lottery library.

A Plea For Sanity

Lastly, I’d like to ask everyone to please read the instructions/directions carefully before they donate.

I know you’re excited. I’m excited too. We’re going to raise some money, make the world a better place, and end up with big warm fuzzy feelings.

But the more emails we all get about missing addresses, wrong sizes, or forgotten personalization requests, the less time we’re spending on the fundraiser, getting things up, and getting things out. You don’t want that, do you?

I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure that you’ll read the instructions carefully.

If your question isn’t answered here, you could check out our handy FAQ.

If you have a question about The Tinker’s Packs, you can e-mail the folks there at [email protected]

If you’d like to donate something to Worldbuilders, or help us spread the word, you can drop us a line at [email protected]

All right folks. Are you ready? I’m so ready.

Let’s do this thing.

pat

P.S. Just in case you missed it, here’s one more link to our Team Heifer donation page.