Friday, July 1, 2011

U.S. Writer Saving Tassie Devil


For Immediate Release:
 
U.S. WRITER SAVING TASSIE DEVIL

It might seem a long way from home, but local author David North-Martino has joined with 18 other writers worldwide in an initiative to help save one of Australia’s most beloved and endangered species, the Tasmanian devil.

From July 1 to 15th, all proceeds from their anthology EXTINCT DOESN'T MEAN FOREVER, published by Dare to Dream Press, are being donated to the Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal.

"We have several Australian writers featured in the anthology and when we were looking for a charity to sponsor, they told us about the plight of the Tasmanian devils," says Phoenix Sullivan of US-based Dare to Dream Press. "We immediately decided that we had to get involved."

EXTINCT DOESN'T MEAN FOREVER features 19 provocative stories by some of the best up-and-coming authors of mainstream and speculative fiction around the world. Here is the description of David North-Martino’s story "The Language of Ice": When a Neanderthal skeleton arrives at her museum, Cassie learns a woman dead for thousands of years still has something to teach the living.

Tasmanian devils are threatened by Devil Facial Tumor Disease, which is passed from devil to devil by biting. According to the Save the Tasmanian Devil program, a partnership between Australian and Tasmanian Governments, there has been an average 80% decline in devil sightings across Tasmania from 1992-95 to 2003-06. The program aims to see the Tasmanian devil again thriving in the wild through population monitoring, disease diagnostics, wild management and an insurance program – building a population of healthy devils that might eventually be released into the wild.

EXTINCT DOESN'T MEAN FOREVER is an e-publication and is available from Amazon, Smashwords and Barnes & Noble online. The Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal can be found at: http://www.tassiedevil.com.au/tasdevil.nsf/.