Do Judge A Book By Its Cover - Flash Fiction

The bookbinder asked him if he wanted a family crest stamped into the cover to underscore the personal nature of the commission. He told her he’d get back to her within the day with his answer. No mean artist himself, he sketched some versions of heraldic serpents. Although suggestive of the writer’s craft, he immediately ruled out the snake in the skull. Death heads apart, the skull was not a coat of arms trope. B esides he didn’t want to give the game away, tip his hand to the reader before they had cracked open the cover. He drafted involved snakes with their curlicue form consonant with a serif character, but unfortunately he also decided it conjured up a snail. He limned encircled snakes, making some the ouroborus which consumes its own tail to signal eternal renewal. He essayed nowed or knotted snakes, a doubled loop evoking the symbol for infinity, but he felt it looked too much like a reef knot. Besides, these were somewhat missing the point. Conferring untameable power upon the ophidian which cut very much against the grain. In the end he settled on an eagle volant, wings displayed expanded, a snake in its talons. He executed a final design and sent a scanned copy off to the bookbinders.

A fortnight later and his book was ready for collection. The bookbinder carefully unwrapped it from its protective waxy sheath and presented it to him. It was a thing of exquisite beauty. He had opted not for the usual calfskin, nor Moroccan (goat) leather and had certainly rejected the gaudy sheen of seal skin out of hand. No, his book hide of choice had been that of the snake. Its reticulations forming a delicate spangling pattern that surpassed any artificial dye sprinkling of the traditional calfskin. The forked page marker was n ot wrought from silk, but that of the snake’s very tongue itself. Marker of the twin perspectives required to a full appreciation of his text. He could also indulge himself in the fancy that the disarticulated organ could taste the fear and perspiration imbued by his words.  It was only a pity that the hollow fangs could not be somehow incorporated into the divine architecture of his tome, representative of the venom its viperous words laced.

In his vanity, the association he had not been able to make, was that reading his circumlocutory style was akin to the turgid process of a snake working its prey through its body. The squeezing and compression of muscles in the digestive tract was much the same, as was the sense of bloated ingestion. 

Serpent encircled

Serpent nowed

9-Line Nonpareil - Flash Fiction

I author infect you. I stain you with my word markers. I impregnate you with my seminal ink. You download my minuscular packets of lexical data. Even if you scale no further than the opening chapter, my verbal DNA has ineffably entered your bloodstream. Your eyes burn in the back of their sockets. Your breathing stops up and when you swallow for air, it burns the lining of your throat such is the caustic corrosive nature of my verbiage. For you can’t unread me. Words are viral. The symptoms are similar even if you regard the words as invigoratingly communicable, as non-pathogenic. Either way, partially digested or complete, your system extracts the aliment, my propellant, while the lexical orts refuse your expurgation and bulwark and barricade themselves rendering you discomfitedly costive. Your mental immunosuppression system may attempt to quash my word sepsis from reproducing within your host, but they hitch a ride with your vulgate leukocytes. Catch as catachrestic can. Sink their claws into the antigen receptivity, forestall your production of antibodies through a circumlocution here, a turn of phrase there, to elude the wandering phagocyte censors. Suppressing your suppressors. The macrophages who would seek to inject me with their deleterious toxins, when it is in fact my printing press that squeezes and devours them. My words knock off your words. They duel and grapple and attach themselves dual. Whence my muscular molecular vernacular makes use of your cellular apparatus. A reverse transcription to multiply your vocabulary and shape it inevitably mine. I rewrite you. I seep into your very marrow, to be spewed out a thousandfold greater in volume. I bleed you dry, drain you of lymphocytes and replace them through my own hematopoiesis. I transcribe your blood. I author you.  

A New Phonetic Alphabet

Can I suggest the need for a new phonetic alphabet? What with Ancient Greek letters, old fashioned dances, metric weights, Canadian provinces and Shakespearean characters, today's youth have little chance of readily recalling the mnemonics attached to the letters.

We need to provide them with words instantly recognisable. Words they encounter every day. Words from the high street (or online shopping at least).

So I propose the following:

Alpha - ADIDAS
Bravo - BURBERRY
Charlie - CALVIN KLEIN
Delta - DIESEL
Echo - ELLESSE
Foxtrot - FILA
Golf - GIORGIO ARMANI
Hotel - HOLLISTER
India - IGI & CO
Juliet - JORDACHE
Kilo - KAPPA
Lima - LACOSTE
Mike - MARK JACOBS
November - NIKE
Oscar - OSHKOSH B'GOSH
Papa - PRADA
Quebec - QUICKSILVER
Romeo - REEBOK
Sierra - SUPERDRY
Tango - TOMMY HILFIGER
Uniform - UGG
Victor - VANS
Whiskey - WRANGLER
X-Ray - X-BIONIC
Yankee - YVES SAINT LAURENT
Zulu - ZARA


And to make it easier, these come with ready-made visual prompts.

 
 

  
 
 

 
 

 
 

 

 

The World Of David Cameron & Mossack Fonseca

I have never had any investments. No shares. No ISAs. No pension plan. Partly because I've never had any disposable income I could afford to put aside. But also because I was exposed to such a world as a child by the dealings of my father and was completely repulsed by what I saw even at that tender age.

But I'm going to offer a story that in some ways best illustrates that world and which may throw some light upon the revelations of the Panama Papers albeit at a much lower level. It's a world that the average person is completely outside of and thus why revelations such as the Panama Papers seem to come as such a surprise when the story breaks. But it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise really. Just think about it, the firm Mossack & Fonseca are merely one of these type of operators across  a fistful of countries and dependencies, who host such offshore financial arrangements that so benefit their rich clients. I'd suggest it represented just the tip of the iceberg, except these countries tend to have hot weather and any ice would melt.

Okay, so on a more personal scale. My father was up in court accused of insider dealing on shares in the 1990s. The law he was prosecuted under was fairly new and was intended to prevent professionals who came by sensitive information regarding companies then made a profit from it through buying or selling shares based on the information. My father was a lawyer and had come by the information when one of his clients, an accountant, came to see him about possibly suing a company who were tarnishing his reputation as he served as a broker between it and another company who were looking to merge. The accountant had bought shares on the basis of this upcoming merger (and eventually pleaded guilty to one count while being cleared of 3 others, which was bizarre since the one he claimed guilt for was buying shares on behalf of his grand-daughter who was under 10 years old....) After the meeting in which he distributed legal advice on the slander and defamation of character, my father then proceeded to buy shares in one of the companies. And that was what he was on trial for. If the accountant hadn't have pleaded guilty to his one charge and subsequently been cleared of that as well as the other 3, then the authorities could not have come after my father, being a stage further removed from the privileged information, when they would have failed to successfully prosecute the primary source.

So I attended the court case over the 4 days it took place. My first warning should have been the moment we stepped up to the building. There was my father in his usual suit and bow tie, in the middle of defendants from the other more run of the mill cases, the Notting Hill drug dealers and gangsters. The contrast was blatant. Next thing I notice was that I'd played football regularly against one of the members of the jury which was a heck of a coincidence. I was in the public gallery so I don't know if he clocked me or knew my relationship to the accused, so it almost certainly weighed more upon my impressions than it did his. And then the trial got started.

One after the other, either for the defence or the prosecution, marched up to the witness box a parade of stockbrokers, lawyers, accountants and civil servants. Now I credit that I'm a reasonably intelligent person, well educated and reasonably well read, but I couldn't pick the bones out of what they were saying. The world of investments and stocks and shares they talked about, was as alien a landscape to me as a reality TV programme would have been to them (a slight anachronism since this was an era still relatively unsullied by the form). Again, maybe this is fanciful on my part, but I imagined I could see the eyes of the jury glaze over, because this world being presented to them just did not compute. These men and yes they were all men were arrogant and presumptive that we all knew about what they were talking about and therefore they had no need to explain and define what they did. Which was use money to make more money and to move money about. They reminded me of Catholic Priests of old jealously guarding the exclusivity of Latin that prevented any body challenging their status or knowledge. The accountants and stockbrokers were made to squirm by the QCs, because bandying words was not really their thing. The lawyers in the box were better suited to the fencing. All were odious to my judgemental eye.

Having sat through that trial, I was none the wiser whether my father was guilty under the law or not (as per usual any legislation drafted by Parliament you can normally drive a bus through its loopholes or lack of definition. Information is a precious commodity in the world of speculators and investors, a bit like getting the scoop on how a horse is training from the stables ahead of a big race. But it remains inestimably hard to decide what and who is 'privileged' in regard to information. I think my father was certainly morally culpable if not technically guilty, a bit like David Cameron. Anyway he was found guilty and as a final disorienting landmark, the fine was paltry compared to the fees of my father's legal team which was what actually bankrupted him. Money chasing after money again, yet not quite at the same level of no win no fee have you injured yourself at work the rest of us get bombarded with on TV...


So the world of investment remains abstruse to many of us. Hence when the shock horror, rich people salt their gotten gains away from the taxman revelation emerges, it really shouldn't be a surprise at all, but inevitably is.  I loathe those for whom money is the only interest they have, not just professionally but in their whole mien, so that  though they would proudly pledge themselves to the UK, at the same time getting their money safe from the talons of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, no matter how legally they are behaving. In the same manner as the moment the government mentions a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance, some firms start making noises they'll quit the UK for more tolerant tax regimes. These people have no deep stake in our country. Like the offshore operators they utilise, have money will travel to find the best deal. It behooves us all to try and educate ourselves, to arm ourselves with the information to be able to nail these sharp practitioners who screw the country out of valuable funds. This is why Cameron can bare faced stand up and proclaim he has done nothing illegal, which is true, but it gives the lie to his political message of one nation Conservatism, we're all in this together, the cuts to the welfare budget are all that stand between the UK and economic bankruptcy, etc etc. As my father's case  demonstrated, there is the letter of the law and then there is its spirit.

Justice is blindfolded rather than blind... Coincidently, when I did jury service, one of my cases was about the receipt of stolen weighing scales...

Songs About Books

A few years ago I was involved in an anthology of stories inspired by songs 

I wrote the introduction and reproduce it here:

The Symbiosis Of Music And Literature
I never read books until I was fourteen years old. Typical boy, I was out in all weathers playing cricket or football instead. What tuned me into literature was a respected older cousin’s suggestion to listen to The Cure's ‘Killing An Arab’ and then read Camus' L'Étranger, both of which I dutifully did. At the time I was on the look out for cool bands to drop in to conversations at school, but thanks to this one suggestion I had my appreciation opened up to a second vibrant art form. Oh yeah, I not only read books now, I write 'em as well. And as part of that, music is still key.

Literature is perhaps regarded as the highest, noblest art form for  opening our minds towards contemplation of the world around us. And rock'n'roll, bubble-gum three-minute-pop about puppy love and teenage crushes, is regarded in some quarters as the most disposable of art forms. Books occasionally percolate society's collective consciousness, for example the obscenity trials over Lady Chatterley's Lover or Last Exit To Brooklyn. Pop frequently outrages, from Elvis The Pelvis, through ‘God Save The Queen’ to Beastie Boys. Yet, despite being from fairly opposite ends of art's 'brow' spectrum, the two are fundamentally intertwined and mutually inform one another. 
Apart from the above example of The Cure, Gang of Four referenced Joseph Conrad's ‘Heart Of Darkness’ with ‘We Live As We Dream Alone’ and Kafka's beetle from ‘Metamorphosis’ in their song ‘Anthrax’. Howard Devoto, singer in Magazine, referenced Raskolnikov and  Dostoevsky's ‘Underground Man’ in ‘Song From Under The Floorboards’.  Just a few examples of artists honouring fellow artists who have gone before them. Inspired them. Given them words and ideas to stir their own creative pools...

Of course, it goes the other way too. Poets Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah and John Cooper-Clarke have all performed live with backing bands. Gus Van Sant has set texts by William S Burroughs to music, and Steve Fisk composed music for the late Steven Jesse Bernstein's poetry. Then there are the crossover artists: Patti Smith, Nick Cave and Henry Rollins to name but three with a foot firmly planted in both camps. Plus recently we have had short story anthologies inspired by the words of Mark E. Smith and the music of Sonic Youth. 

So now nine new writers offer their contributions to the symbiosis; nine stories inspired by songs from different musical artists, plus nine stories arising from the same song: "Heroes"’ by David Bowie. Nine very different interpretations, no mere cover versions.

So, here is a music video playlist for books name-checked or referenced in songs. Enjoy.


1) The Cure - "Killing An Arab"

This was the Cure's debut song as Robert Smith took his exam-level study of Camus' "L'Etranger" and spun a song out of it. Later, once tried to retreat from fame into his half-Goth, half-childlike persona, the books he referenced were more of the order of children's books such as "Charlotte Sometimes".



2) Kate Bush - "Wuthering Heights"
I was never a huge Kate Bush fan, but I was heartened when her recent comeback tour sold out so rapidly. Normally I am appalled by comeback tours when artists are way past their prime and the audiences just want to indulge in some nostalgia, but this tour seemed genuinely to have an audience spanning across generations suggesting Ms Bush had picked up legions of fans who have come to her music long after it was in the charts and public sensibility and that must speak for its strength.

                         


3) Velvet underground - "Venus In Furs"
With Lou Reed's interest in all things transgressive and sexual, perhaps not surprising that he should find as an inspiration Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch's book that gave us the word 'masochism'. Never has John Cale's viola sound been used to such unsettling effect as on this song.

4) Klaxons - "Gravity's Rainbow"
The blissed out hedonism of rave is not usually associated with the literary, as its fans stand waving glow sticks around in muddy fields, bombed out of their heads. And yet here Klaxons reference  a writer who guards his true identity more than JD Salinger guarded his privacy. But then Pynchon writes about a pretty bombed out American sensibility so maybe it makes perfect sense.

5) Rush - "Tom Sawyer"
Rush were big fans of Ayn Rand, but I'm not going to peddle of her work here. They also quoted Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" which is far more edifying, though with Rush you never quite know. I don't know, like most things Rush, they manage to make this all sound somewhat bombastic.

6) Manic Street Preachers - "Patrick Bateman"
After Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye" and Tolkein's "The Hobbit"and Orwell's "1984", this is the book most often referenced in song by musicians. And the thing is I suspect most of the musicians creating a paean to Brett Easton Ellis' psychopathic financier probably identify with him rather than embrace Ellis' satire. The Manics maybe one of the few who got it to judge by their sarky opening.

7) Joy Division - "No Love Lost"

Ian Curtis was very literary in his refrences, from JG Ballard's "Atrocity Exhibtion" to Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony". Though spoilt for choice I've plumped for a slightly more trashy reference from a book called "House of Dolls" because it's the book from which the band took their name. Curtis quotes a passage from the book directly in the song. 

8) Lagwagon - "Owen Meaney"

Having not read the book I hope author John Irving got to the point a hell of a lot quicker than Lagwagon, a band about which I know nothing. Not very informative on this one I'm afraid.

9) The Stranglers - "Death And Night And Blood" 

Stranglers' bassist JJ Burnel got a bad rap as a thug when in the fledgeling days of punk he just used to lay into photographers at the front of the stage and belt them with his bass. But actually he's pretty well read, evidenced by his solo release "Ozymandias" quoting a Shelley sonnet. But as a song it's nigh on unlistenable. I suspect that this Stranglers ditty was his as well, referencing Japanese author Yukio Mishima's "Confessions Of A Mask". The band identified with outsiders and peripheral guys, such as Sancho Panzer in "No More Heroes". And there were fewer more radical outsiders than Mishima who took his life by traditional seppuku (ritualised self-disembowelling of the Samurai warrior class) after failing to persuade a detachment the army to join a coup d'etat.

10) Jefferson Airplane - "Rejoyce"
Who let the stoners read "Ulysses"? What next, death metal does Samuel Beckett? New Romantics do Flann O'Brien? As impenetrable as the original tome.

11) Iron Maiden - "Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner"
And yet... Heavy Metal, always associated with anti-intellectualism, well Iron Maiden had several songs inspired by literary works so just goes to show you can't judge a band by their hair length. From the album "Power Slave", oh well, you can't have everything. Did someone say "Spinal Tap"?

12) Hawkwind - "Farenheit 451"
I find myself undergoing a worrying transformation as I hit my 50s. I'm starting to get into Hawkwind, space rock drug excessives from the 1970s and still just about going strong I think. I credit it's that period when their paranoid frontman Robert Calvert wrote lots of songs about terrorism which seems somewhat apt today. I dunno.

13) Magazine - "Song From Under The Floorboards"
Howard Devoto is another one of those New Wave music frontmen who drew hecvaily from literature for their lyrics. Dostoevsky's "Rashkolnikov" is name-checked in the song "Philadelphia" and here devoto draws on the opening to "Notes From The Underground".

14) Bomb The Bass - "5Ml Barrel"
And to finish up, a couple of songs which are the result of collaborations between musicians/producers and actual authors reading their own words, or having them sampled. Bomb The Bass (Tim Simenon) did a song based on William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" but here goes one better and has the hard-bitten and yet also simultaneously world-weary tones of Will Self also exploring the theme of drug-taking. And mighty fine it is too.

15) William Burroughs/ Gus Van Sant - "Millions Of Images"
Van Sant's cast Burroughs in his second movie "Drugstore Cowboy" and from that emerged a rather wonderful 4-track EP called "The Elvis Of Letters". Burroughs of course had such a characterful Southern drawl, he never actually would need to sing, the music is there in his delivery anyway.

Reflecting on the Writing Process for my new book

I'm currently writing a new novel and I thought I'd share the various stages of the process for any readers who might be interested and for any writers so they can go 'yes that's an interesting approach' or 'no way can you possibly make that work!'

After quite a long period without an idea for a novel, during which I published two new collections of flash fiction, around November an idea came together in my head. For some reason it always seems to be around November when I undertake a major writing project, but that's probably because it has two advantages; 1) I can shadow NaNoWriMo (write a novel in a month) which means I can share some of the impetus of that whole thing of others writing feverishly during November and 2) it's not too long for the extended holiday period in December when I usually get a lot of uninterrupted time to write.

So last November I sat down and started to write. I'm not a planner (of which a bit more below), but usually I sit with an idea for about 6 months to let it seethe away in my sub-conscious, so that a bit like baking a cake, at the end of the period it's ready to come out nicely risen. However, my previous novel hadn't followed this process and neither did this one. Usually during the seething period, I make no attempt to start writing anything but a few notes, certainly I don't start on the first draft. But in this case before I formally started on the first draft, I did do some detailed sketches of some of the chapters.

1st Draft: This is my favourite part of the whole process. Because anything goes! I refer to it as like playing in a sandpit. Throwing sand around. Filling moulds with sand and turning them out to make solid structures. Turning some out and seeing them collapse in front of your eyes! That's why I say I'm not a planner. I often hit upon sections of the writing that surprise me and if they come as fresh to my eye, then hopefully they will be equally fresh for any reader.

When I'm on this draft, I don't go back over what I've written but keep ploughing on through. That way I keep the creativity rather than start to lose some of the flow and momentum with editing and thoughts of shrinking and reducing. I trust I can do those necessary things in editing drafts down the line. I know other writers are different, but I don't think it matters which preference you have, it's just what works for you personally.

I have a day job at 28 hours a week, so I was writing a chapter here or there up until Christmas, then got about 6 chapters done over the holidays and carried on into the new year at about 2 chapters a week, one during the week and one at weekends. By the end of February I'd finished the first draft, 31 chapters in all, 60,000 words in length.

I left it about a week then started the 2nd draft, always a big moment. It's big because this is really where the writer sees if they've got a viable project. It's akin to having a dream that half wakes you out of your sleep and you write it down because it seems very important that you remember it; but when you read it back the next morning, at best you wonder why you thought it so meaningful and at worst it's complete gibberish. Well, after the playtime of the 1st draft, the second draft reveals the critical verdict. Is your project viable? Is it coherent and does it hang together? Reading through the 2nd draft often reacquaints you with the early bits of the 1st draft that you may have forgotten as you pressed on deeper into the book. And if on rereading you feel that hey, actually there's some pretty good bits of writing here in these early parts, then you're probably going to be alright across the whole piece.

Plenty of writers will tell you that in all cases, their first draft is gibberish and that the book is only made viable through vigorous editing and rewriting. I don't concur that it has to be that way at all. Some writers have almost perfectly formed 1st drafts emerge. I think if you are very plot-bound as a writer, you are more likely to have to make surgical changes to a first draft to resolve plot issues which may require an overhaul of the whole structure. The same can be for a character when you decide to introduce and additional emotion or motive, then you have to go back throughout the whole novel sewing that in seamlessly and how that may impact what you'd already written. All in all in my  case, I'd left three of the chapters unfinished in how I ended them  as I pressed on with writing the 1st draft. I knew I'd complete and fix them in the 2nd draft.

The 2nd draft took a fortnight, starting rewriting bits but I knew the book worked. I ended up taking out 1 chapter, because the writing wasn't up to the standard of the others, nor the ideas in it (which probably explains the less confident writing also), bringing it down to 30 chapters, though in rewriting some of the more clumsy sections as well as completing the unfinished chapters the word count stayed at around 60,000.

The third draft. Normally this is the draft where the real detailed revisions comes, drilling down into every word of every sentence. But that will actually be my 4th draft (see below). This is because the nature of this particular book is that the 30 chapters are linked thematically rather than through a protagonist carrying the action of a plot. So the 3rd draft is the key but really difficult process of deciding which order the chapters will be. I know how tricky this process is from having published short story collections. But there's another muddying factor. I actually envisage that this book can be read in any order, that the reader can pick and choose how they want to read the chapters. Whether this happens or not will probably come down to convincing the editor/publisher and whether there is a budget for such a production as the chapters will have to be loose leaf in some manner. So in the consequence that I can't bring that about, I will need the contingency of having ordered the chapters. This is where I am currently. It involves a spreadsheet as each chapter is laid out with its theme, tone (comedic/heavy, stylised etc) as you're trying to avoid chapters with similar feel or theme next to each other. So far I've got to separating the 30 chapters into 1st half or second half  of the book, so that now I've only got to order 15 at a time.

The 4th draft will be the detailed revision. I will go over a chapter as many times as necessary until I almost have every word pulsing inside me. That way I can recognise repeated words, check the flow of sentences. I  really do work at the level of each individual word during this phase. I won't read any of the other chapters until I am satisfied the one under current review is finished (unless I need to cross-check whether I've repeated myself in a different chapter).

The 5th draft is a real chore but a vital one. I read aloud each chapter., Doing this really helps you judge the flow for the reader. You'd be amazed how many sentences running three or four lines long you pick up at this stage which don't reveal themselves even during the process of draft 4, because of the difference between reading something silently inside your head and reading it aloud. Reading aloud the whole book chapter by chapter is a long haul, but a valuable one in the editing process.

The 6th draft may make some of you laugh. I do a word search for every your and you're and its and it's because even though I have some 112 books behind me now, I still get these wrong from time to time. I think it's a product of the speed at which I write the first draft, nothing is to slow me down, so I'm writing it how I hear it inside my head which may involve getting these mixed up. It doesn't take too long and  can be done in one session. I may also do a word search for words that seem to crop up a lot in the book and see if I can't change some of them out. I already know that in this work which is about the different stages of development and maturity as children grow into adults, that the word juncture seems to put in a lot of appearances and may need to be pruned out. This would be the 'juncture' for doing that here in this draft.

The 7th draft is the penultimate one, a final read through of the full work, since the previous detailed edit was done on a chapter by chapter basis and I just need to check the piece as a whole. This may be done more than once, it just depends how the book is flowing as a read.

The 8th draft is a final proof copying one. Do NOT rely on Microsoft Word's spelling and grammar check. It will not pick up words that are homonyms, that is correctly spelled but not the right word you'd intended; eg one I perennially fall foul of sew/sow. Hopefully reading aloud in draft 5 picked all these up.

And there you have it. My A-Z, or perhaps 1-8 of the writing process. Hope it was either or both of some help and interest for you. I'm really excited about this book. It encapsulates many of my ideas about literature that I've explored in my writing and discussed with other writers in the most comprehensive and I hope coherent manner that I've yet been able to attain.

Watch this space...

Guest Post - Author Virginia Moffatt

I've asked one of my favourite writers Virginia back for a guest post (her post on my blog for her debut flash collection can be found here) as she has an exciting new project to talk about. I say new, but I know she's been working on this novel for a while as I was lucky enough to read an early part-draft of the book "Echo Hall". It's a book I really hope gets published and here's Virginia to tell you a bit more about the process and the book itself.

After ten years of writing  my novel, ‘Echo Hall’ and two years of submitting to agents and independent presses, I’ve finally been signed by the publisher Unbound.  I couldn’t be happier, and  I’m very grateful to Marc for inviting me here to tell you about it.

Unbound is a relatively new and unusual publisher. Formed in 2011 by three writers - Dan Kieran, Justin Pollard and John Mitchinson – it produces books by crowdfunding, inviting readers to get involved. The company is both a funding platform and a publisher, offering authors 50:50 royalties once the book achieves its target.

I first heard about Unbound in 2013, through Shaun Usher’s ‘Letters of Note’ twitterfeed.  I loved reading the letters on twitter so I was really pleased to hear they were going to be published.  ‘Letters of Note’ went on my Christmas list and I thought no more about the company until after my copy had arrived a few months later.

I was visiting my friends Hugh and Zoe one day, when Hugh rushed in hugely excited to have his hands on the copy of their friend’s Unbound book. That friend was Paul Kingsnorth, and the book, ‘The Wake’ has done extremely well. (Deservedly so, it’s a remarkable novel). At that point, I sat up and paid attention. Two great books in a few months suggested Unbound was on to something

After that I followed Unbound with interest, and though my first pitch to them was unsuccessful, I was delighted when my second was accepted by Scott Pack earlier this year. Although, the idea of raising the funds is daunting, I am also excited about the possibility of working with readers before the book is even produced. And, I love being part of this young, vibrant company, whose enthusiastic staff are all book fans and produce beautiful hardback and paperbacks.

I’m also delighted to have been signed by  Unbound, because I love the idea of working with readers to make the book happen. I’ve kept going with ‘Echo Hall’ for all these years because I really believe in my novel and am excited about finally getting it out into the world.

Set against the backdrop of three wars – the 1991 Gulf War, World War 2 and World War 1 – the novel follows the fortunes of three women who become involved with the Flint family, the owners of Echo Hall.

The book concerns the impact of unresolved conflict within families and nations, which asks does history always have to repeat itself, or can we find another way?  I have peopled it with characters who go to war, characters who don’t and I hope, as well as being a gripping yarn it will make readers think about the questions I’m raising. Although this is a book set in the past, it is very much a book of the present as the  origin of today’s wars in the Middle East can be traced right back to World War 1.

If you are interested in backing this book, it is easy. All you have to do is sign up to Unbound and pledge here https://unbound.co.uk/books/echo-hall.  (But be warned there are some great titles on there, pledging can be a bit addictive!)

If you are interested in pitching to Unbound, that too is easy. Just send your details via this link https://unbound.co.uk/authors/work-with-us.  Alternatively, it is worth following Associate Editor, Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) on twitter. Before Christmas he invited people to pitch to him directly and has promised to do it again. Really worth doing, it worked for me!