Author's Notes - Hannah Alexander.com

Author's Notes

A Special Message
from Hannah Alexander

We've had a chance to do a few small things for some homeless this year. It was fun gathering supplies of food and toiletries, prayer pillows and copies of our books to send to a friend in California who has an outreach to the homeless. But in all, we reached fourteen people, when there are thousands in need, and with the postage for shipping, I feel more needs would have been met had we simply sent the money. Yes, it was fun collecting those things, and it felt good, but I kept wondering what would happen when their food ran out, when their bars of soap were used up, when their opportunity to feel a part of humanity instead of nameless faces was once again gone. We have seen how huge the need is. I've been supplied with the websites of a couple of Christian organizations that help out with the huge homeless population in Southern California. www.urm.org and www.metrokidz.com are two avenues of service you will find helpful if you wish to help in the most effective way possible.

We urge you to give. All through the Bible there are reminders to give to the poor. There are teenagers, elderly, mothers with children living on the streets because they lost their homes to forclosure and had no one who could take them in. If you were to send the amount of money you might spend on a grocery bag full of food and supplies to one of these organizations, I believe you will be blessed. We have been. And I know there will be homeless human beings who will be so touched to find that someone cares, and that they aren't being forgotten by the rest of the world.

Many Blessings,

Hannah Alexander

A Message from Hannah
posted December 12, 2009

Last night I attended the second of three booksignings Mel and I have been signed up for in a local small town this month--after no signings for over a year. It was amazing. From 6-8 pm, our local pharmacist--where several of us writers were signing books--was bombarded with shoppers, as was the rest of the tiny downtown. The streets were packed.

All was Christmas oriented, I'm talking CHRISTMAS, not just generic "holiday" stuff. We had live music on the street and everybody who knew everybody else getting together and chatting and hugging and trying really, really hard to remember names. We're all getting a little older.

I'm not much on crowds, but this was fun, and since I can't drive, and Mel had to work, I had to catch a ride home with the mother of my stepchildren. Yes, my late ex-husband's first wife, who is one of my dearest friends.

This is SO small-town that I must write it into the next book. I mean, the Methodist minister came by to see me because I was wild about his rock band when I was a teenager--The Lavender Hill Mob. I don't think I've ever been so glad to be a part of this tiny microcosm of society. Small Town Missouri, live on!

My biggest problem was protecting my shoulder--still in a sling since surgery. So many people came by to hug me that I was afraid it would set my healing back a week or so. It didn't. It just reaffirmed my faith in small-town America. Mayberry RFD, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres all rolled into one, with intelligent, loving and very GOOD people roaming the streets half the night. God is still blessing us here in Mid-America.

Hannah Alexander