As for donations to the Fireman of Julian/Cuyamaca who lost their own houses while battling the fires in this area, I talked to Paul Tullius at Valley Independent in Julian again today. he's given me a link to a general donation site:

NOVEMBER 2, 2003

A Note: The Julian/Cuyamaca Volunteer Fire Department or....how real life intersects with fiction.


I wanted to thank ALL of you that are reading and reviewing, and those of you that are reading only. Your comments and encouragement are what keep me going, keep me loving the story, even when real life and other things get me distracted from it. It's always there for me (well, really since May when I started it, and last February, when I wrote the prequel).

I lived in San Diego for about a year back in the 80's, and went up to Julian for hiking and an overnight. Julian is a town up in the mountains in the same county about an hour from San Diego...strange thing is that I wrote that into my stories...how Spike came to own the house in Julian was because I was looking for a place for him to take Buffy for the weekend, when I looked at their website (after trying to remember the name of Julian) I discovered it was one of the first goldmining town and that was around the 1860's - 1870's mostly. That gave me a reason for him to have inherited property there (from a brother who had bought up land, then later Spike killed) and gave me the whole premise of why he owned it in the first story and now how Buffy had inhereted it from him (b'cuz he had a premonition about not making it and wanted her to have it, etc.) ...for the first 80 chapters or so...it dealt with her living there for 5 years, her finding out about the amulet...etc...and the drive cross country with Willow, Xander, and Dawn, to bring William and Elizabeth/Buffy back to CA and to the house in Julian...so the fact that I've wove this town into my stories since last February, starting with the first one of these two...well, it just hurts me to think of it burning. I've had readers already telling me that they recognized the town b'cuz of the story. Art imitating life, huh? Another weird thing, in Ch. 11 this is what I wrote prob. way back in May or June:

[After a nearby forest caught fire, and fearing she might be in the same situation some day, she read some books that Spike had in the house on land management and also called The Department of Forestry with some questions. She told them only that she was doing research for her Geology Class. She even was allowed to visit them and witness a prescribed burn. After seeing this, her and Clem would take to doing this once or twice every spring, a different area every time. They did it very carefully, on a very small scale, and only after carefully clearing out a wide area around the area to be burned, and on a very calm day. She felt it was the best way for them to not lose any of the land due to Mother Nature's whims. She thought Spike would be proud of her for this, indeed, she felt rather proud of herself.]

Weird,huh?


So here's the real life story going on right now, there were 7 men and women of the Julian/Cuyamaca Volunteer Fire Department that lost their own houses, while battling the blazes of their neighbors in the area. One firefighter was literally two doors away from their own burned out house. as they helped try to douse that of their neighbor's house.

I thought that since I have touched many of you with this story and made Julian a real place (since it is) and a place that many of you have written to me about with worry, since hearing about it on the news, that I would try to set up a fund for those firefighters whose houses were lost.

I'm going to contact them and the local bank in Julian today to see how I can go about it. Perhaps it will just be through a fund at the local bank in Julian (I believe there's only one) that you could mail donations to, or if they would open a Paypal account, that would make it easy for me to use a link here on my website for donations.

Check back to this page (I'll update it) for more news on donations for the firefighters.

Thanks,

spikealicious