Brandon Sanderson is running a charity auction for naming rights to “a significant second-tier character in the next Stormlight Archive book.” Sanderson writes: “There’s a charity auction for naming rights going on right now at eBay, with a final bell Saturday evening at 9:30PM Mountain time. Proceeds will benefit the local science fiction and fantasy symposium, called Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE). (Yes, that is a Douglas Adams reference.)
“As it was held at my university, LTUE was one of the science fiction and fantasy conventions that I attended regularly while trying to break in, and it was always an invaluable experience. Now that my books are published and available worldwide, I like to take opportunities to give back to the community that fostered my development as a fan and as a writer.
“I was Guest of Honor myself at LTUE in 2010 (my first stint as a GoH), and for a science fiction convention the crowd at my Guest of Honor speech was amazingly young—full of people in their twenties. (If you want to know why this is significant, do a Google search for the “greying of fandom.”) In my opinion, local conventions of this sort, which promote the sharing of our excitement for the genre among the up-and-coming generation of readers and writers, deserve all the support they can get.
“LTUE has been running for nearly 30 years, but it is and always has been organized by unpaid volunteers. For one reason or another there are always funding issues, especially they try to keep registration free for students—a practice I support, as I can easily recall how little money I tried to spend while working my way through college and writing thirteen novels at the same time. So I’m more than pleased for the proceeds from this name auction to go toward keeping LTUE going next year.”
The auction is on this eBay page. At press time, the bid was up to $1,525.
Full details on the auction are available in this post.