I’m so happy for Mark. I’m shocked at what the guy has been able to accomplish with such minimal support. Most of us need a paycheck to do good work, either being employed by a nonprofit or having a real job so we can do volunteer work on the side. But Mark doesn’t have either (OK, he has the case manager job, but it barely covers his rent). He’s got nothing in his fridge and yet he still champions the cause of the homeless. He’s an incredible inspiration.

That’s why I didn’t mind spamming my friends. Heck, I can hardly call it spamming them when I’m telling them why Mark is so deserving of this grant. I don’t like these spammy tell all your friends contests. I don’t like that they pit good ideas against each other. I don’t like that somebody wins and somebody loses. I hope folks learn from that and do something different next time. But it was Mark Horvath and he needed the help. He didn’t ask for it, but this was offered to him I’ll be damned if I was going to standby and watch him miss an easy opportunity for funding.

$50,000 is huge, but it’s also not. It’s not an unreasonable salary for a person of Mark’s position in a nonprofit (that position being everything from CEO to camera guy to janitor). He could give himself an actual salary and restock the fridge and he’d be just fine in my book. But knowing Mark, he’s not going to be sitting back with this money. That’s part of why my little InvisiblePeople.tv book project is so important to me. As huge as this grant is, Mark needs the on-going support.

Anyway, we won. Geeks doing good. Awesome. Thank you Pepsi. Thank you Gary Vaynerchuk. Thank you everybody who tweeted. And thank you, Mark. This was the least we could do.

The video announcement and Mark’s “acceptance speech”:

Other cool folks blogging about the victory:

• Congrats Mark Horvath & Invisible People TV for Pepsi SXSW Challenge Win
• Dear Twitter, I Love You

I’ve been tweeting like mad because I believe in what Mark is doing. Unfortunately he’s losing to an idea supported by the tech site Mashable, a site with more than a million views a day. (An idea, by the way, that no one has yet invested in or proven—Mark has been doing his thing since 2008; OK, sorry. Shouldn’t rag on the competition, I’m just a little bitter about that.) I’m so passionate about this because a few tweets could give Mark some major support. It kills me that he doesn’t have the support he needs.

So I tweet like mad. But if all our frantic tweeting doesn’t get Mark the $50,000 he deserves, it’s not a total loss. At least we’ll have helped spread the word about what he’s doing.

But the reality is that I’ve been doing a lot more than tweeting.

I’ve got a secret: I’ve been working on a book about homelessness to support Mark’s work. In my wildest dreams I thought I could have had the book ready by this past weekend—conveniently in time for Mark’s appearance at SXSW.

Not so much. It seems putting a book together takes a lot longer than I hoped. The manuscript is nearly finished and going through editing right now, then it needs to be proofed, laid out, designed and published. So realistically it’s probably going to take another month or two. Doh.

The idea behind the book is to provide some support to Mark Horvath and his on-going work to highlight the plight of the homeless. As I mentioned yesterday, Mark has nothing in his fridge. The guy’s broke. He does this because he must, and he’ll do it with or without Pepsi’s $50,000. I thought we needed a resource to raise money for Mark, and since no one else had stepped up to do it, I thought I should. I don’t have much money to give Mark, but I can give him my time and energy. Books aren’t exactly big money-makers, but I figured it could at least be a small source of income for Mark. That’s the plan. We’ll self publish it through CreateSpace and all the proceeds will go to Mark (likely $3-5 per copy on a $10 book).

I’ve talked to a lot of big name social media people (Mark has some amazing connections) and I have close to a dozen folks in the tech, social media, nonprofit and church worlds who contributed something to the book. The core of the book are the stories of the homeless people Mark has collected and shared on InvisiblePeople.tv. I’ve got folks lined up to help with the design and to spread the word when it’s finally ready. It’s a fun little project and I can’t wait for it to be ready.

I decided to announce this fun little project because it cracks me up that I’ve put untold hours into this book project since January and if it’s a smashing success we might raise a few grand for Mark. But a few tweets could earn Mark $50 grand.

But that’s OK. With or without $50,000 we’ll keep fighting for Mark and the countless homeless people who have stories worth sharing. So tweet #RefreshGary until midnight tonight and maybe we can give Mark that $50,000 yet. But either way, we’ll support Mark. This book is just one little effort.

Even though the book isn’t ready, I suppose we could take pre-orders. Hit me in the comments if you like that idea and we’ll set it up. Pre-orders would likely be cheaper for you and mean more money going to Mark. (Gulp—that’s kind of scary to throw out there.)

• charity: water is trying to raise $100,000 for Haiti.
• Geoff Livingston is trying to raise $5,000 for cancer (he’ll tattoo the Live Strong brand on his body if he makes it).
• Then my friend Mark Horvath is trying to win $50,000 from Pepsi.

There are probably others I’ve missed, but I’m most excited about Mark Horvath and the Pepsi Challenge. Here’s how it works: He’s competing against two others to see who can get the most votes by midnight on Monday. Winner gets a $50,000 grant from Pepsi. You vote by tweeting “#RefreshGary” and you can vote every two hours. All the details are on Pepsi’s Facebook page (vote on Twitter, details on Facebook?).

I’ve talked about Mark before. He’s a tireless advocate for the homeless. When he lost his job in the fall of 2008 he was only seven weeks away from being homeless. Again. He spent a year in the 1990s living on the streets of Hollywood. But instead of worrying about being homeless himself, he went out and started InvisiblePeople.tv to tell the story of other homeless people. He’s been doing that since, and the entire time he’s been on the verge of homelessness.

He lives in a cockroach apartment in Los Angeles. I interviewed him for an article a few months back and the contents of his fridge was a bottle of water, milk and a discount veggie tray. He was eating dinner at the homeless shelter, not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

If anybody could use $50,000 from Pepsi, it’s Mark.

Mark started InvisiblePeople.tv with next to nothing. Yet he’s shared the uncensored stories of over 100 homeless people, from Los Angeles to New York, Florida to Seattle, New Orleans to St. Paul. He’s done incredible things with no resources. Imagine what he could do with $50,000.

I get kind of tired of these social network voting things where we spam our friends and the most popular person wins. But I can hardly consider telling my friends about Mark Horvath to be spam. If you get tired of it, you can ignore me. If it makes you mad, stop following me. If I lose a bunch of followers because I tried to help my friend, so be it. If you don’t like it then you can give Mark $50,000 and I’ll be quiet. I just want to help my friend.

So I’m asking you to help Mark out. We only have until midnight tomorrow. So hop on your Twitter account and slap a “#RefreshGary” tag on your tweets every two hours. If you don’t have a Twitter account, set one up just for today. Why not?

Geeks doing good. What’s not to love?

Update: Here’s a story Mark shared from my own backyard. Pearl calls a shelter in St. Paul her home. She wants to know if you’re kind or cold-hearted? This why Mark deserves this grant from Pepsi, so he can continue to share these stories and make us realize the reality of homelessness in our own cities.

Pearl from InvisiblePeople.tv on Vimeo.

Last night I pulled out my non-sci-fi novels and started reading through the first chapters. I liked what I read. I saw a few things here and there to improve (I’ll probably always feel that way), but I didn’t have that impending sense of way too much work to do to find anything salvageable. I enjoyed what I read, perhaps out of nostalgia for my own creation, but I also thought it was pretty good.

But the question I kept coming back to is what do I do with these novels?

I’ve read enough about the publishing industry and I’ve learned enough as a writer and editor to know that I can’t just fire off manuscripts to publishers and wait for a phone call. I have to pick a genre, I have to craft my book so it fits that genre, I have to research markets and publishers, I have to package and sell my novel so it fits those genres, markets and publishers just right—fits enough to sell, but stands out enough to sell.

And I’m the guy who doesn’t have time for that. I barely have time for the work I do have, nevermind creating more.

And so in our technological wonder world I think about self-publishing. I’ve already done it twice. Is it enough to just throw these creations out as self-published efforts and let them live and die there? It seems better than sitting on my harddrive, better than nothing. But it’s also lonely. My first self-published novel in 2004, Downtown Dandelions, sold something like ten copies (I think my parents bought five of those). Least of These has sold two. Admittedly both of these efforts are rough and involved minimal marketing. Clearly it can’t be about the numbers.

I like that self-publishing is easy and cheap. It gets the book out there quickly (I published Least of These in three days). But I can’t help but wonder if I’m resigning my creations to a lonely, quiet death?

This morning I woke up and remembered that publishing is lined with stories of rejection. Everyone who ever found success had to pile up the rejections, from Stephen King to Madeleine L’Engle. And that makes me wonder if I need to give it a go. If I need to rack up my own pile of rejection slips. Or would that just turn me into another hapless hopeful adding their manuscript to the slush pile?

Am I lazy or undisciplined or just another busy guy?

I don’t know if I need to play the system and work the marketing angles and rack up my rejection slips. Or if I should just throw my work out there self-published and unheralded and move on. If people find it, great. If not, no big deal.

Like most writers I write because I love it. I yearn to tell stories and that’s why I’ll probably do NaNoWriMo again this year. Success isn’t so important—as cool as it would be, I don’t have delusions of becoming a professional novelist. But anyone who writes also wants to be read. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear, if someone writes a novel but no one reads it, does it matter?

I’m probably just looking for easy answers. And there are none.

Yesterday I sat down and did a little video chat about the book with one of my readers, Jonathan Blundell (my one reader?). Jonathan has been very supportive of my work (and I’m supportive of his work) and it was fun to talk over some of the ideas in the book and how the book came together.

So if you’re looking for the inside scoop on Least of These—how inspiration came from U2 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, how my wife refuses to read it, my take on standard post-apocalyptic plot lines, why it has such an awesome cover—check out the video chat. I even do a little impromptu reading.

For a special bonus, count how many times I say ‘um.’

Get your copy of Least of These now.

You always hear about the ridiculous real estate prices in Detroit (one NPR story mentioned a $500 house) so I decided to see how crazy it the market really is.

It’s crazy.

While I searched I found listing after listing for beautiful homes for well under $100,000. OK, the mansions were under $100,000, the homes for the rest of us were under $50,000. The home pictured above is a four-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,000-square-foot house built in 1931 on the east side (technically the Morningside neighborhood, but that means nothing to me). The price? $19,900.

That’s crazy.

I used the mortgage calculator just for kicks (would they even give you a 30-year mortgage for a $20,000 house?). Your mortgage would be $117 per month.

All of which makes me want to move to Detroit.

We’re not moving to Detroit.

But the possibility is kind of intriguing.

I realize the reason these houses are so cheap is the wretched economy in Detroit. Sure, you could move there and get a cheap house, but you’re not going to find a job (unless, like me, your income is not dependent on your geographic location). There are also issues of saftey (you might find a job in the private security industry) and convenience (no Target, WalMart or even a grocery store within city limits). But those might be balanced by food (the locally grown options would make a foodie drool) and artistic green spaces (Art! Trails! Score!).

As Detroit slowly deflates like a day-old balloon, I see possibility rather than just a sad balloon.

I’ve mostly left video games behind to avoid this addictive behavior, but every now and then I give in and have a little fun. Like last month when I went back to my childhood game of Pirates!

It all started, oddly enough, with the Earthquake in Haiti. As I was looking at a map of Haiti, I suddenly remembered the exact coastline of the country thanks to hours spent playing the Commodore 64 strategy classic, Pirates! You played the role of a pirate in the game (duh) commanding your ship as you sailed across the Caribbean. Much of the Caribbean became familiar to me, including the coastline of Haiti and that rare enclave of French colonies (including Leogane, which is a little odd because that’s where my church’s sister parish is based).

My brother and I would play the game for hours on end. We’d actually wake up early on Saturday just to play. The game didn’t include a map (or we lost it), so my brother and I would pull out an encyclopedia to help guide our expeditions.

I’ve tried to find that game on many occasions—it’s been re-envisioned a number of times as Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the PC and the Xbox—but last month I struck gold and found a version for the Mac. They’ve updated the graphics and some of the gameplay, but it’s basically the same game I played more than 20 years ago (meaning horribly lame by today’s standards).

Of course I bought the game and have been conquering the Caribbean ever since. I did have an addictive bought of game playing for the first week or two, but it nicely coincided with being sick, so it worked out. Lately I’ve played a little more sparingly (probably because I’m growing a little tired of it).

Most of what I enjoy is the familiarity and nostalgia of the game, but I also like the strategy and free-form feel of the game (I should never, ever play World of Warcraft—I’d be so addicted). It’s fun to hunt down a notorious pirate or build up your crew so you can sack Havana (oh yeah, I totally sacked Havana—the Spanish put a price on my head).

It’s fun, if completely frivolous, to go back and relive the pirating days of my youth.

If only I could find a way to play video games that actually accomplished something. Not just a little beneficial education (which Pirates! managed to do—if only Caribbean geography was useful in my daily activities), but game play that did some good in the real world. Harnass all that nerdery and addiction for some real world good.

Watch the video.

You can buy a copy from Amazon if you like. A few friends have also created e-versions from the free PDF (iPhone and ePub, I think), but I haven’t gotten around to posting them. If you’re clamoring for those, hit me up in the comments I’ll stop procrastinating.

And for the record, I noticed one error and a handful of corrections I wanted to make after reading the first chapter outloud four or five times. I told you it was a rough draft.

More than just a resurgence of the yo-yo (can I claim to be ahead of the trend?), this is my old yo-yo buddy making it big (if you consider “big” to be featured on yo-yo packaging and in a video loop in an aisle of Walgreens stores across the country). Adam is the guy who taught me how to yo-yo when we were both Petra-loving, Christian T-shirt-wearing geeks. We had a yo-yo ministry in high school (that was even featured in the Detroit Free Press, complete with crazy cool photo). He taught me how to do street performing in Chicago, which made a crazy summer adventure even crazier. He was in my wedding and I was in his.

So you can understand why I think it’s pretty cool to see my friend on the packaging of a yo-yo. I think it’s so cool I bought four of ‘em.

You can see more of Adam in action at YoTricks.com. And check out the yo-yos. $3.99 is dirt cheap for ball bearing yo-yos (back in the day we paid at least $20) and they work pretty good.

Fun fact: Adam and I had the chance to be yo-yo pros back in 1998. As I recall, the Yomega corporation offered us something like $20,000 to be their touring yo-yo pros. Being a freshman in college, that was the equivalent of a year’s tuition and not tempting enough to get us to drop out and become professional yo-yoers (besides, I don’t think I was ever that good). It’s cool to see Adam still chasing the dream.

So basically her boss is the Bishop of Haiti, Jean Zache Duracin (last I heard he was living in a tent). The Episcopal Church of Haiti is running something like 20 refugee camps and caring for more than 20,000 people. Among those are the priests, parishioners, parents and students of the churches and schools with which my own church has had a 20-year partnership.

So Lauren Stanley was giving Twin Cities churches an update on what’s happening on the ground in Haiti. I went to hear what’s happening in Haiti and learn how the money Color4aCause has raised is helping (a tiny, tiny fraction of the money that’s been raised). Lauren had sobering updates, butt-kicking statements and in-depth stories and history to share. She’s a firecracker.

A few random updates:

• 300 students were buried in the rubble of the Holy Trinity trade school.
• Another 200 students were buried in another collapsed school (I missed the name of it), one of the premier schools in Haiti. They managed to save 12, though some of those have since died.
• When asked about clearing rubble, the bishop’s response has been, “We will not bulldoze our children into oblivion.”
• As a result of all the students killed in collapsed schools, “Haiti has lost a generation of intellectual leaders.” That fallout of that will be felt for generations.
• The Episcopal Church is going to be in crisis mode until they can give everyone who needs it food, shelter and medical attention.
• As they plan for rebuilding they’re already seeing ridiculous bids from contractors and are going to be ripped off royally. They’re trying to find ways to minimize that as much as possible.
• She talked about the urgent need for tents and temporary shelter in the face of the coming rainy season (see the work of one Atlanta church: A Home in Haiti): “Don’t give me a stupid-ass pup tent. I need a tent that will fit an entire family!”
• Of money donated to Episcopal Relief and Development, 93 cents on the dollar ends up in the hands of the people they serve in the form of food, water, medicine, supplies, etc. The remaining 7 cents goes to getting those supplies to the people. None of it goes to administrative costs (those are picked up by the Episcopal Church. “You’re not going to see a lot of press releases for Episcopal Relief & Development or see our logo on anything. We just want to feed the people.”
• “We ain’t got much, but we perform miracles.”
• While in the U.S. the Episcopal Church is perceived as being a church of the elite, in Haiti, “We are the church of the poor.”
• In the next 5 years Haiti is going to need people with these kinds of skills:
  • Construction
  • Pastoral care
  • Trauma care for children
  • Medical care
  • Teaching
  • Physical and occupational therapy
  • Art therapy (for children coping w/ trauma)
• There is another 6.0-earthquake predicted for Haiti in the next six months. This one is expected to be more widespread.
• Haiti is a country of with a long history of faith. The first eucharist was served in Haiti in 1493 (didn’t happen in the U.S. until 1608).
• It’s also a country with a long history of getting stomped on by the rest of the world (and by their own corrupt leaders). Haiti has been getting the short end of the stick since Columbus landed in 1492. When Haitian slaves defeated Napoleon’s army and declared their independence, no country in the world would recognize them. They had to pay reparations to France for stealing their land and have faced tariffs and sanctions of one kind or another almost all the time (the U.S. just recently lifted some sanctions against Haiti before the quake). The U.S. invaded Haiti in 1915 and occupied the country until the 1930s. During that time we apparently reinstituted slavery. Thanks to tariffs and U.S. farm aid, it’s cheaper for Haitians to buy rice from the U.S. than to grow it themselves.
• Recommended reading: Paradise Lost: Haiti’s Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hotspot by Philippe Girard for a history of Haiti and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, which explains national mythology and how that can hinder development. This is going to be a big issue for Haiti, especially the divide between those who survived the earthquake and resulting devastation and those areas that had minimal or no damage.
• There’s an African term, ‘wabenzi’ that literally means people of the Benz, as in Mercedes Benz. These are the people who get rich or powerful and forget the people. It’s a derogatory term for those who don’t give back.
• “Poverty is a sin. Poverty is caused by people who refuse to share of their bounty. When people are in poverty it’s because someone has turned their back. And sometimes that someone is us.”
• “Right now Haiti is about pissing matches, organizations more focused on egos and wanting to be heroes than working together. And God’s children are suffering because of it. Stop the pissing matches.” (I couldn’t write fast enough, so this quote is summarized and not word for word.)
• The Holy Trinity Cathedral was completely destroyed, which housed an incredible collection of Haiti artwork. Only one mural survived. (I realize artwork ranks pretty low on the scale of importance in the face of a tragedy like this, but it is an incredible cultural loss.)
• “God says to you, you do your part and I will do my part. God has always done God’s part and the Episcopal Church of Haiti has always done its part. We ask that you do your part because we are one body and when any part of the body suffers the entire body suffers.” (again, paraphrased quote)

Lauren Stanley speaks with passion, conviction, fire and humor. She has quickly become one of a small group of folks I recognize who refuse to take a nickel and dime approach to stopping injustice and practice an inconvenient compassion that’s I find tremendously inspiring and at the same time personally shameful. These people routinely kick my butt for my own comfort, wealth, inaction and apathy. These are folks like Mark Horvath and Shaun King who get righteously angry. I find it both easy to ignore them, and also impossible. I want to turn away and not listen because what they say is hard. But I also find deep in my soul that I have to listen, I must listen. And more than listen, I need to act.

Afterword I went up to thank Lauren and quickly told her about Color4aCause. Not because we’ve done anything great with Color4aCause, but because I wanted her to know that we were working hard to help in our own small way. I gave her one of Lexi’s pictures (the crab) as a small thank you. She loved it and told me she was going to hang it in her office, and to be sure to tell Lexi that she was going to do that. I told Lexi this morning and she took it in quiet stride. I’m not sure if she really understood or if she was distracted by Sesame Street or if she was in awe that someone helping people in Haiti would hang her picture on their wall. Either way, she went back to work coloring more pictures for Haiti.

So do not forget Haiti. There is so much work to do and there will be for years and years. God is doing his part, the Haitians are doing their part, and we need to do our part.

You can do you part:

1. Haiti has mostly fallen off the media’s radar, but you can stay updated. Lauren’s blog is packed with daily updates. It’s easy to turn away if we’re not aware of what’s happening.
2. If you’re the praying type, pray.
3. Donate. There are plenty of places you can donate. I’m pushing Color4aCause and we’re supporting Episcopal Relief & Development, but I don’t really care where you give as long as they’re doing good work. Do some research and give, give, give.

Thanks.