A few early presents…

This holiday season I’ve decided to give a few things away.

There isn’t any particular reason for this, except that I’m grateful to you who have shown enough interest in me to stay tuned to what I’m thinking/speaking/singing about. I’m grateful, and I thought it would be nice to thank some of you.

So every Monday between now and Christmas, starting with yesterday, I’m going to give away three things. I’ll give one away to a random person on my mailing list, one to a Facebook friend or follower, and one to a Twitter follower (or ‘tweep’, as hip say… apparently). The other motivation for giving some stuff away is that it might motivate folks to join one or all of those three groups, but honestly, I’ll be happy regardless.  It was really fun yesterday, writing out of the blue to tell people I was going to send them some free stuff, and that they could choose from any of the books, CDs or DVD on my web site.

Here are the first three people chosen:

Jason Shadrick of Marion, Iowa, an old friend of mine and former intern in my office, came up as the first pick among Facebook friends. I was surprised to see that it was someone I know well, among over 5,000 folks, but I didn’t think I should discriminate against him because of it, so I dropped him a note.  This is what he wrote back:

Wow! I won something. I’m not going to be one of those people who say they have never won something. I mean I get to be immersed in guitars and music all day long. I think I have won plenty.

I have pretty much everything you have put out. So, if possible, can you send a copy of the SS Bathtub CD to my bandmate who is getting ready to have her second kid?

Then I heard back from Henry Owen. Henry and his wife Emily used to see me play at Austin College in Texas when they were in school. Now they live in Charlotte, NC. Henry said that he already has music and my White Flour book, but what he’s really excited about is my next book, Worldchanging 101: Challenging the Myth of Powerlessness. I warned him that it might be more than a year before that book comes out, but he said he’s happy to wait, so I made a note, and he’ll get one of the first copies printed. Very cool.

Finally, I dropped a note to Karen Larson in New Glarus, Wisconsin, who came up as the random selection on my mailing list. She wrote back that she first saw me play when I opened for America at the Birchmere in 2005, and later saw me play in Madison, Wisconsin when I was out that way on tour.  She picked an SS Bathtub book, and it shipped out today.

If you would like to join in the fun, you can follow me on twitter @davidlamotte, or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidlamotte, or sign the mailing list by filling in the little blank in the upper right hand corner of this page. The best chances are on Twitter, as I only joined Twitter a few months ago and there are fewer than 450 people following me there. You’re welcome to do all three if you like, though.  Good luck!

Thanks for listening,

David

WEEK TWO UPDATE:

This week (the first week in December), the winners are Carol Howard Merritt (Tennessee) on Twitter, Daty Sink Warren (Florida) on Facebook & Mikaela Atkins down under in Australia, via the mailing list. Good fun.  😉