It's that time of year: the leaves have turned, tricks and treats have been had and temperatures have dropped. I love the fall, especially now that I'm back in the U.S. of A., preparing for a hibernation (of sorts) in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

Just as animals store up energy for their hibernation, Hello Poetry needs to store up funds for the coming months. Last Halloween we raised $1500 in 4 days to cover the server costs for six months, and now it's time to do it again.

A few updates from HPHQ:
- There are now over 100,000 of you on the site and over 1 million poems!
- The cost to run the site has risen $100 to $350/month (better email provider and image storage costs)
- The front page lit up as many of you gave sunshine to support great undiscovered work
- We beat spammers peddling softcore porn and black magic cures for relationship ills (if only the cures worked!)
- A number of new features are in development: more on this in the coming months

Thank you to everyone who supported HP and me last year, financially and otherwise. Your donations keep this community independent and free, your wise words and supportive comments make HP shine and your beautiful messages keep me sane. We need $2100 to cover costs for the next six months and I bet we can raise that in less than 10 days.

So, if you're able, would you donate something to keep Hello Poetry running?

I'll keep this post updated with the results over the coming days.

Updates
1 day later: We just hit $900. Almost half way there!
3 days later: $1400
8 days later: $1750.. nearly there!
11 days later: $2150. We did it!