At I Heart Lesfic, we believe the world could use a bit more kindness after one of the hardest and longest of years. Many authors have signed up to help IHL spread kindness in the world.

Today, the wonderful Anne Hagan is here to share a story. Also, Anne is giving away 2 ecopies of Steel City Confidential. Below the guest post, you’ll find more details about the giveaway.

Take it away, Anne.

Pay it Forward

The concept of paying it forward, repaying a kindness done for you to someone else, has been around for a while. A US based insurance company garnered national attention in 2014 and 2015 for a series of well done, ‘pay it forward’ commercials. Today, that same insurance company has resorted to the humor of a human interacting with an emu in most of its ads. Perhaps we need that lightheartedness in these crazy times. I wish they’d go back to the pay it forward spots.

My first memorable experience with someone doing me – and eleven others who were with me – a kindness was back in the early ‘90s, right after the first Gulf War. I was in the Ohio Army National Guard then. A dozen of us were traveling to our two weeks of annual training (AT) at Camp Grayling in Michigan. We were in uniform and ordered by our commander to stick together, but we were traveling apart from our unit convoy in ones and twos in our privately owned vehicles (POVs).

Soldiers don’t like to miss meals, and that day was no exception. The troops in the convoy were dining on MREs. Those of us lucky enough to drive ourselves stopped at a Frisch’s Big Boy for ‘chow.’

Frisch’s was busy. We squeezed in around three tables near each other and got served pretty quickly. We laughed and joked and had good time as we ate, but we were respectful of those all around us and kept it clean.

When it was time to go, we called for the bills. That’s when a server told us our bills were paid including tips, over $200.00 worth of food and drinks. We couldn’t even thank the person who’d paid. He was long gone.

Someone stunned me that day, and every time it happened after that. It happened a lot throughout the 1990s and the early 2000’s when I retired. Sometimes I knew who did it and could at least offer a thank you. Sometimes I didn’t.

I retired over fifteen years ago. To this day, when I see a soldier in uniform anywhere getting food, I try to pay for them. It’s one way I try to pay it forward for all of the times someone did it for me.

Have you ever been a little short in the grocery checkout line and had a stranger waiting behind you pay the difference? Yes? I’ve been there too, and I’ve also been the one to pay the overage.

Paying it forward doesn’t have to mean spending money. Has anyone pointed out something to you that saved you a ton of time? Maybe someone has taught you something that seemed to you like it was easy for them. You can pay their kindness forward. We can all do things which might be all new skills for others. Each one, teach one.

I live in a tiny village now. I witness acts of kindness every day. The mail clerk carrying packages to an older person’s car. A woman leaving food for the barn cats that didn’t catch any mice. People sharing from their gardens. Dozens dropping everything to help search for a dog that got away from its owner. Look around you. See what acts of kindness you can do to pay it forward.

GIVEAWAY

STEEL CITY CONFIDENTIAL
Steel City Series: Book 1

by Anne Hagan
Available in Kindle Unlimited

Clients hide things from their lawyers all the time. Pam Wilson makes it an art form.

Pam’s been on the run from the law for years and she was getting away with it. The statute of limitations ran out on most of her crimes. For her spouse Charlotte? Not so much. Though they were aging, they looked forward to enjoying their golden years and, hopefully, forgetting about the past.

Life got complicated when Charlotte became gravely ill, their daughter got pregnant with the child of a married man…a married man someone took shots at from a rare motorcycle Pam happens to own. When the man was shot again and killed in his office at Pitt a couple of weeks later, the police found all signs pointing to Pam.

Rochelle ‘Ro’ Rabinowitz, a second-generation Pittsburgh lawyer, and her little firm take on Pam’s case pro-bono. Ro thinks it’s a slam dunk for the defense and hands the case off to her new associate and – she hopes – her future partner in the firm, Dominique, to get her feet wet in a courtroom. Clients are never completely honest with their lawyers and Ro and Dominque soon learn this one is no exception.

Slam dunk? More like a pipe dream…

2 winners

Steel City Confidential Giveaway

Ended

MEET THE AUTHOR

Anne Hagan is part-time employee and full-time author. She and her wife live in a tiny town that’s even smaller than the Morelville of her mystery fiction novels. Anne’s wife grew up there and has always considered it home. Though it’s an ultra-conservative rural community, they’re surrounded there by family, longtime friends and many other wonderful people with open hearts and minds. They enjoy spending time with Anne’s son, with their nieces and nephews and doing many of the things you’ve read about in her books.