The Big Birthday Giveaway (and a much-needed divide)

Smaller news first.

The Bitter Homeschooler -- channeler of the "legendary" (thank you, Salon!) Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List, author of The Pros and Cons of Homeschooling, dark chocolate devourer and screamer non-stop -- is an editor.

The Mad Editor is a bitter homeschooler.

The two of them drive me nuts with all the bickering about who gets to talk about what on this site.

The Bitter Homeschooler keeps rhymes-with-itching about how she's the one who started this thing in the first place, since without her list nobody would have ever even heard of Secular Homeschooling Magazine.

The Mad Editor icily replies that if she hadn't done all the work involved in pulling the whole rest of the magazine together and keeping it going for two years now, The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List would be just one more piece of mildly amusing junk floating around the Internet, and its author would have starved to death long ago.

The Bitter Homeschooler's reply can't be repeated, or even quoted, on what is attempting to be a family-friendly site; but she does make some good points about how it's her energy that's fueling this enterprise, since anyone as allegedly sensible and businesslike (cough) as The Mad Editor would have given up and gone back to working retail long ago.

To which The Mad Editor replies, fuming, that --

ENOUGH!

That was me. The one that's sick of listening to all this.

Break it up, you two. Just go to your rooms and play by yourselves if you can't even look at each other without getting into a fight.

But we can't! We only have THIS room!

Not anymore.

The Bitter Homeschooler has run off, screaming with delight and without so much as a backward glance, to her own site, the appropriately named Bitter Homeschooler:

http://www.bitterhomeschooler.com

She talks about whatever she likes there, and if anyone doesn't like it they can just --

Well, that's exactly the kind of language (not to mention imagery) that we're trying to keep to a bare minimum around here.

The Mad Editor is still quite mad, don't worry. We're not trying to bore anyone to death.

She'd just appreciate the chance to focus more on magazine-oriented things.

Like the GIVEAWAY we've been hinting about for the past several days now.

Here's the thing: It's SHM's second birthday. That's big. So I wanted this to be something special. Something big.

But also something that won't break the bank.

And -- maybe most importantly of all -- something that will be of equal appeal to new readers and loyal supporters alike.

Those in the latter group don't have much to get excited about when I offer up, for instance, a copy of all the back issues in existence. Or even a copy of the newest issue. In fact, they get to feel a bit as if they missed out by buying early.

That's the kind of decision I don't want anyone regretting, since that's the kind of decision that keeps me in business.

So the new giveaway is something that everyone can enjoy.

It's simple.

The winner is entered into our system, and just keeps getting copies of SHM for as long as ye both shall live.

It's a magic subscription that doesn't cost anything and you never have to renew -- although letting us know if you move would be nice.

If you already have a subscription, we'll just add a really big number to the end of it. 10,000, say.

If you aren't a subscriber, we'll make you one. Forever.

Post a comment if you want to enter. I'll give this a few days for word to get around, and then I'll generate a random number and -- oh, you know the drill.

I have a nice little stack of review copies of various books that I'll be giving away soon. But none of them seemed quite special enough for an occasion like this one.

I hope this giveaway suits. And that you have a wonderful Halloween.