Help the Widow of Writer Dan Altieri

This is a call for help for the widow of my dear friend and erstwhile coauthor Daniel Altieri. He and I wrote three internationally bestselling novels set in T’ang China back in the late 80s and early 90s.

A little over two years ago, on September 10, 2020, Dan died, four months after radical emergency open-heart surgery. He had struggled to recover, and his wife put everything she had into caring for him. Alas, he went from believing he’d made it and was on the road to full health to knowing his days were down to just a few. He’d been flown by helicopter from his home in northern California to a hospital in San Francisco, where they at first thought they could perform another surgery on him and implant an L-VAD (Left Ventricular Assistance Device). But he went into kidney failure shortly after he arrived, and they deemed him too frail to undergo the procedure. He died a couple of days later. He was 74, had always been athletic and healthy, an exerciser and a non-smoker, and came from long-lived stock. His death was a shock and a tragedy, to me and to his widow.

The writer’s life can be fickle. Despite the great success of the China novels, that was a while ago, and Dan was pretty much destitute when he died. His widow gets his extremely modest Social Security benefits. She struggles to pay her rent, eat and just survive. She wants very much to work, but doesn’t drive, due to vision problems, and their home is in a rural place with no real public transportation. She is not at all computer-savvy.

Here's what your donation will be used for: To help her pay her rent, buy firewood (it's been a COLD winter, and the wood stove is her only heat), and if possible, get much-deferred and acutely needed dental work, for her health and so that she can get a job. She also wants to honor Dan’s writing and get to a point where she can organize his unpublished work and perhaps even publish some of it posthumously. She has a strong social conscience, and wants to be of service to humanity in these troubled times. Any amount would help. Every cent will go to Dan's widow, and you will have my great gratitude.

You can learn more about Dan and his work here: www.courtofthelion.com