This week’s post is coming to you a bit early to coincide with the day commemorating all the missing children in our world. I know this post is a bit of departure from my usual posts, but it does deal directly with my novel, Undeliverable. In the novel, Ben is struggling to deal with the disappearance of his son, and in rather unhealthy ways. So I decided that on this day I would do my part of help draw attention to the sheer number of children who go missing every day, and the families that struggle with that horror. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that in 1999 (the most recent comprehensive survey of the data) 800,000 children were reported missing. Thankfully, a large portion of them were returned to their family. Quite a few were involved in custody disputes, some were runaways, very few were stranger abductions. In fact, out of those 800,000, only 115 of them were the stereotypical kidnappings that every parent dreads: the stranger in the night making off with their child. But the Center is there to help find the missing children, regardless of the manner in which they vanished. Between their tip line (which has received nearly 4 million calls since its inception), trainings for local and national law enforcement, and avid lobbying for laws to make our children safer and to make it easier to look for them once they’re gone, they have made quite the difference in the numbers of recovered children. If you want to help support their efforts, they are always open to donations of time or money. I am also announcing here that a portion of the cover price for Undeliverable, when it launches next spring, will be donated directly to the Center to assist them in their efforts to recover every missing child, because no family should have to deal with the disappearance of their Benny.