Who better to write a guide for keeping it together that the author of the memoir The Elegant Art of Falling Apart. Luckily for us Jessica Jones put herself back together and shares with us her tips for staying sane. Follow Jessica’s guide and stay sane.

‘After decades of in-depth research and field-testing (read: cancer; addiction; car-crash relationships; financial disasters and occasional fashion faux-pas.) I have developed Jessy’s Patented Daily Stress Reduction Programme. It is oh-so simple and takes a maximum of 30 minutes out of my busy, busy day.

1. Write a gratitude list each morning. Just five things - but make it a different five things each day.

2. Meditate for 10-20 minutes. Because I am far from self-motivated I get help from the scion of serenity Andy Puddicombe at Headspace.

3. Stop. Whenever you’re feeling stressed during the day - stop. Now, imagine a ball of sparkling light above your head. Take five calming breaths - breathe in love and light, breathe out fear and darkness.

4. H.A.L.T. throughout the day. Ask yourself: “Am I feeling too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired?” If the answer is yes, take action: eat; breathe; phone a friend; close your eyes for ten minutes.

You can click here to read the rest; and you can click here to find out more about Jessica’s book, The Elegant Art of Falling Apart, which is being crowd-funded for UK publication by Unbound, and you can get involved in its publication!

Don’t forget to enter the Flash Fiction Prize we are running in celebration of The Elegant Art of Falling Apart by Jessica Jones, which we are crowd-funding for UK publication. The deadline for entry is tonight (31st May) at midnight.

Click here to find out more about the writing competition and how to enter, and you can click here to read an excerpt of Jessica Jones’ book as well as find out how to get involved in its publication in return for anything from an ebook and first edition hardback (with your name in the back of every copy ever) to a goodie bag of natural beauty products and invites to the launch party.

Author Jessica Jones, whose book, The Elegant Art of Falling Apart is being crowd-funded for UK publication with Unbound, has been featured in The Independent this week, where she discusses how her experience of being paralysed for a period at the age of 25 eventually led to her writing the book.

(You can click here to find out more about the process of “crowd-funding” a book for publication, and how you can get involved and support the publication of The Elegant Art of Falling Apart in return for anything from your name in the back of every copy of the book, a signed first edition hardback, photographic prints, a goody bag of natural beauty products (The Good Glamour Natural Beauty Bag) and even lunch with Jessica.)

Also, we’ve launched a Flash Fiction Writing Prize in celebration of Jessica and her book, and you can find out more about the competition and how to enter by clicking here.

Read on for an extract from The Independent’s piece:

1987 – I was twenty-five years old and holed up in the intensive care unit at the National Neurological Hospital in London, stricken from head to toe with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Symptoms: total paralysis. Prognosis: uncertain.

Guillain Barré Syndrome is a bizarre illness. It attacks the myelin sheath that transmits messages along one’s peripheral nerves. One day my toes went numb. A week later I found myself in hospital, unable to move, breathe or speak. An unscratchable itch on my leg could propel me to the brink of insanity. Dust fell into my eyes and I couldn’t blink or wipe it away. I could not call out for assistance.

Upon learning of my perilous condition, my mother had dropped everything, packed a suitcase and flown from Sydney. Now she sat by my bedside for twelve hours a day, every day.

Each night mum grabbed a few hours sleep at her friends’ house; Chrissy and Ralph were devotees of an Indian guru by the name of Swamiji. When Swamiji heard of my situation he began to call my mother and tell her of his visions for me. ‘I see yellow,’ spake the guru. The next day mum arrived at the hospital laden with armfuls of daffodils and yellow tulips. She filled all the vases in the room with them. Two days later, Swamiji called again: ‘I see purple.’ Out went the daffodils, replaced by swathes of irises. Mum herself was dressed in a purple silk kimono that she’d borrowed from Chrissy. Then Swamiji made a personal appearance at the ICU, without shoes. Through his flowing grey beard he blew into my chakras. Matron tried to hustle him from the room but Swamiji resisted her. At that point Sister Mary entered the scene.

Sister Mary had been hospitalised for an acute attack of Multiple Sclerosis but was now on the bounce back. She busied herself by ambling from ward to ward with her walking stick, rescuing the souls of fellow patients. Some of those ingrates did not wish to be saved but in me she found a compliant mark. Being fully paralysed I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Sister Mary visited most days and sprinkled my motionless body with Lourdes water that she kept in a plastic bottle. She left a specimen jar by my bed containing some small pieces of black stuff. ‘Relics of Padre Pio,’ Sister Mary said. Not being much of a Christian I didn’t cotton on to the significance of these. I was quite taken aback when I later learned that they were bits of the charred remains of a revered Catholic priest.

Click here to read the rest…

And the winner is… CHRISTINE BEVERIDGE for her photo ‘Guest Room’.

Congratulations Christine! Please email your details to zita@unbound.co.uk to get your prize.

NEWS!: we have teamed up with The Independent’s books blog to feature some our best upcoming books. First up: The Elegant Art of Falling Apart by Jessica Jones.

                                  


Here’s an extract from the first blog post, in which founder Justin Pollard explains the Unbound way of publishing books and introduces Jessica Jones’ new novel.

The death of books has been proclaimed many times, with digital assumed to be the chief assassin. Print can’t last they say, as Kindles and e-books take a larger share of a market in apparent crisis. The truth is that it’s not the format that dead, there’s room for paper and digital editions – but the business model is looking a bit peaky. In troubled times, publishers become more risk averse, only taking on what’s guaranteed to sell. And that limits the flow of new writing.

So we at Unbound have come up with a new approach to book publishing. We’re flipping the commissioning model – publishers don’t decide what gets published, readers do. It works like this – authors upload their ideas to Unbound and readers then choose the ideas that they like and pledge their support (from £10 to funding the entire book). The idea is to get more and more people involved in the creation of books. If we build a wider community (including Facebook and Twitter), then we can help people find, and create, new writing.

So over the next few weeks, we’ll be parading some of the best projects in front of discerning Independent readers. We’d be interested in your feedback, just as much as your pledges (but don’t hold back).

So, for starters, The Elegant Art of Falling Apart…

Written by Jessica Jones, an Australian who has been a long-time resident in London, this about as far away from a misery memoir as you can get. For one thing, it is entirely free of self-pity and very, very funny.

Go here to read the rest…

We are really interested in getting your feedback (both good and bad) about it all, so please do join in on the comments at The Independent’s site- or just let us know what you think right here!

You can go here to find out more about how to support the UK publication of this inspiring and hilarious bestselling Australian memoir by Jessica Jones from the Chemo Chic blog (A Guide to Surviving Breast Cancer With Style) - in return for your name printed in the back of the book, plus an ebook or a beautifully produced first-edition hardback, and a whole range of other things from afternoon tea with the author herself, a cometics goody bag, and even a portrait done by Jessica.

The Elegant Art of Falling Apart by Jessica Jones is a bestselling novel in Australia, and we are excited to now be crowdfunding it for UK publication.

Jessica Jones grew up in Australia and New Guinea. After being ‘asked to leave’ high school she ran away to London to drown herself in music and fashion. Life then became a non-stop rollercoaster of what self-help writers often call ‘opportunities for growth’ until, a decade or so ago, it became imperative to ease up on the insanity (although not entirely, as you shall see). Following her diagnosis with breast cancer, she started the blog Chemo Chic – A Guide to Surviving Breast Cancer With Style. With its focus on natural and organic beauty, it was  acclaimed by The Times as one of ‘40 Blogs That Really Count’ and was recently chosen by Channel 4’s 4Beauty as one of the best health blogs.


The Elegant Art of Falling Apart is the brilliant, witty story of how her life completely fell apart and how she survived. But it is not a self-help book, as Jessica herself says: “Whilst the book is full of (I hope) useful tips about how to survive serious illness with style, it doesn’t offer medical advice or quacky recovery programmes aimed at saving your life. This book is about saving your sanity.”

“I’d done the hard yards: booze; drugs; bad boyfriends. But that was all in the past. Now, my life was almost perfect: living and working in London, a city I adore, in love with a man who loved me back. Then in May 2009, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. With the help of doctors, nurses, friends and family, I stumbled through the horror of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

I felt so lucky to have survived it all. On Christmas Eve I flew to Sydney to be with Nick, the man who had stuck by my side through all the pain and the fear, only to be told on arrival that he’d been seeing someone else… that he didn’t love me after all. That emotional rejection felt more devastating, and difficult to recover from, than the cancer.

So what is this book really about? It’s about learning to ask for and to accept help. It’s about living in and enjoying the moment. It’s about freeing yourself from our culture’s obsession with romantic love. It’s about how looking good makes you feel good. Above all it is about staggering through the darkness with laughter and with friends.

And you don’t need to get cancer to find yourself on the wrong side of that line…”

Click here to read an Excerpt.
And you can find out more about how to support the book here, in return for which you will get your name printed in the back of the book, plus an ebook or a beautifully produced first-edition hardback, and a variety of other things from afternoon tea with the author herself, a cometics goody bag, and even a portrait done by Jessica.

You can find Jessica and the book on Twitter and Facebook