I have a thing for chimpanzees. Not like the whole ‘chimp dressed up as a person ha ha isn’t that funny?’ thing, in fact, I kind of hate that thing. What I love is chimpanzees just being chimpanzees.
The thing that opened my eyes to how amazing chimps are, sadly enough, was learning about chimpanzee sanctuaries. It was through discovering why these safe havens were necessary that I started to understand the complicated history between humans and chimps and all the horrible things we’ve put them through. Without going into detail about the reasons why chimps need sanctuary I’ll say that the larger story of chimpanzees as a species (the one most closely related to humans genetically) touches me, and learning the stories of some of the individuals who now live in various sanctuaries around the world broke my heart.
Back when Niteblade was still alive and kicking, we used to offer our authors the choice between being paid for their contributions or donating their payment to help chimpanzees in sanctuaries. Once the donated payments reached the dollar amount that allowed it, we would symbolically ‘adopt a chimp’:
This older gentleman, Rufus, was adopted from Save the Chimps but we later switched over to supporting Fauna Foundation, primarily because it is a Canadian animal sanctuary and I am a Canadian.
Niteblade is no longer an active thing, but I am still actively supporting Fauna Foundation and all the work they do caring for chimpanzees and other neglected or abused animals (though, currently I think their only non-primate residents are some cobra chickens). Jo and I donate to them regularly in our personal lives, and they are always front of mind whenever the the question of ‘What charity can we support with this?’ comes up in my professional life as well.
Late last year I put together an anthology with stories contributed by some of the regulars who spend time in my Discord server. We called the book, Forgotten Lore, and we mostly wanted to give it away — to share it with the world for free. Unfortunately, there is no way to give away paperback copies and we knew some people would want them (because we wanted them LOL) so we asked, “What charity can we support with the sales of these paperbacks?”.
My first suggestion, of course, was Fauna Foundation.
And that is why, even though none of the stories have anything at all to do with chimpanzees, I’m pleased to say that all the proceeds from paperback sales are being donated to Fauna Foundation to help support the chimps.
<3
You can pick up your own copy of our book, Forgotten Lore for free from most places using the following links.
Bookfunnel (no email collection)
Or purchase it for as low a price as we could set at the following places:
Amazon (Paperback)
Amazon (Kindle)
If you buy a copy all the money we are paid for it will be donated to Fauna Foundation.
Or, of course, you could always donate to Fauna directly. Click here to do that.
