Join us for Unbound Live at the Birmingham Library Theatre from 7pm on 10th July.

Pitching/performing will be George Chopping, Stevyn Colgan, Robert Llewellyn and Adrian Teal.

“The authors will be going head-to-head pitching to raise funding for their book ideas, in a cross between an election hustings and a literary Dragons’ Den. Listen to the pitches, the extracts, the carefully framed arguments, the wit , the passion, the pleading and then you - the potential reader - can decide which books you’d like to see published and pledge for them on the night.”

More details about each of the 4 authors, the event and how to get tickets: here.

John Simmons, of “26 Treasures” (a book that has now been fully funded and is on its way to publication by Unbound - click here to find out more about how that worked) has written a guest blog over at the bookstore Foyles’ website on how the book came to be:

The 26 Treasures project began with an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2010 and then spread to Aberystwyth, Belfast and Edinburgh. In each case, an exhibition of 26 artefacts reflecting national culture was accompanied by a booklet in which 26 writers each had 62 words to write about one of the objects. This autumn the concept is taken up by the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, with writers picking one object for each year of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. New crowd-sourcing publisher Unbound publish a limited edition anthology of all the contributions shortly, with a regular edition following in September.

Here the co-founder of the project, John Simmons, reveals its origins, coins a new literary term and asks for the treasures from your childhood.

What’s your treasure? It might sound like an idle thought, a question from a conversation over a cup of coffee. Actually that was exactly how it started. I was sitting in the National Gallery café talking to Rob Self-Pierson. We’re both members of 26 www.26.org.uk a writers’ group - and we were wondering, just between ourselves, how we might write about the Gallery’s collection in a different way. We wanted to find a way that would be more personal, taking us (and others) away from that desultory state of mind when you trail around a gallery or museum, not really connecting with the objects you’re supposed to be looking at in a reverent way.

So the idea grew in and out of the conversation. We decided we would write about individual ‘treasures’ in a way that was not scholarly or academic. Just asking: what does this object say to me? We took the idea to Ben Evans at the London Design Festival and he put us in touch with the Victoria & Albert Museum. We refined the idea: we would ask each of 26 writers to write exactly 62 words (26 in reflection). And we would randomly pair writers and objects.

The V&A loved the idea and their curators chose 26 treasures from the British Galleries. ‘Treasures’ came in all shapes and sizes: the Great Bed of Ware (enormous), a locket (tiny). When we paired writers with objects sometimes it was love at first sight, sometimes it wasn’t. I didn’t warm to my 18th century Rococo candle stand that was almost hidden away in a badly-lit display case. But as I got to know it better, and think about its situation, I came to feel sorry for this curiosity fallen on hard times. I wrote 62 words in its rather petulant voice.

We had 26 pieces, each 62 words. I thought we needed a name for this form so I called it a ‘sestude’. The next thought was: can this go national? So we approached the National Library of Wales, the Ulster Museum and the National Museum of Scotland. The museums chose the treasures, we provided 26 writers to write a sestude each, and the museums then put our words alongside the objects.

That would have been it if I hadn’t had lunch with John Mitchinson. John’s an old friend, ex-Waterstone’s, ex-Harvill Press, founder of QI and now founder of Unbound, a new crowd-sourcing approach to publishing. www.unbound.co.uk I explained 26 Treasures to John, said that writers like Andrew Motion, Paul Muldoon, Alexander McCall Smith, Gillian Clarke and Michael Longley had taken part. Actually there were more - more than 100 writers in all. “Sounds like a great book.” It was a good lunch too. We agreed to publish 26 Treasures through Unbound.

Click here to read the rest.

The Cherry Tree in my Sister’s Room

Sophie cried when they chopped the tree down. She hadn’t realised what it meant.

She looked out the window at the tarmac where petals used to make confetti. The Neruda she was reading was face down on the window ledge, the spine split. Men in yellow jackets were chopping down the tree in the school grounds at the back of our house. Their saws buzzed through branches like wasps. My sister shook.

She stayed in her room, staring at the stump, then, she sat on the edge of my bed.

‘Touch,’ she said, ‘Smell.’

She was quivering, excited and nervous looking at the same time. I sniffed the upturned petal of her palm. It had the feint smell of flowers in the rain.

I looked at my sister closely, her smooth cheek and hands. Sophie’s skin was cherry blossom, flawlessly soft. It looked as if a wrong move would through it. If I squeezed her hand too hard it would weep and bruise.

All April my sister blushed. She was a shock of pink, swept up, out she rushed to touch the boy next door.  Mid May, bits of her started to dry up. Sophie rested by the open window in her room.

‘Why?’ I cried.

‘I wanted someone to be to me what wind is to the trees, just once,’ she said.

Sophie smiled, then, her lips, courted by a breeze, blew out into the almost summer day.

Sit with me a little

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

We can hear the screaming.

Can you hear the screaming?

How does it sound to you?

Is it loud or is it drowned out?

There is a little clump of dandelions out there

in my garden.  Their flowers are yellow.

The cherry tree has a blight of blossom

on some of its branches.  They wave in the wind.

I want to get closer to the dandelions but

there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un spoken.

I can hear the gulls now.

They were here before

And they will be here after.

A striped towel is flapping on the washing line

and the bucket of pegs is full of water.

I want to count the dandelions,

I want to wait and tell the time with their clocks.

But there is a square of darkness, a fall,

a cross, a burden, a thing un clean

un manageable, un speakable.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me.

I will fill you with sorrow, will dark you,

un hinge you, un understand you,

demolish you.

Together we can watch as the world

disintegrates, breaks up, dies.

Sit with me a little, and listen with me,

this April afternoon.

Just Aphasia I’m Going Through

The Doctor points out the bubble-like alien parasiting my brain. Looked like an embryo was growing there. A second me. Swiping a second-hand consciousness. Paying me neither rent nor mind. Yet taxing me a tithe of my cells. The bare faced cheek of it. Tithe not shaved in a month now. To my delugeded pain receptors, the razor felt like it was scooping out the inside of my skull. He indicated that the tumours were now squatting against the language centres of my brain. Journeying to the centre of me. I say squatting, squat-trusting may be more opposite, I mean apple sit. I doughnut what I mean. Less than hole.

These days find I can’t finish my sentences. Used to finish those of others in my eagle anticipation. I was agnawing like that. The shoe on the other boot now. The ironing being others have to guest my words, to figure out what I’m trying to slay. This thing willow the death of me. Though there will no me to speak of, since I would have longing surrended any bill utility to espresso myself. The memories will be longing lost, since I will lactate the romps reculling them. I will an empty, wordless shell. Like cancel the crab, chew more up of me (that one I did on purpossum, I’m not quiet shotput yet, not when I shotput what’s left of my mind to it).

They slay I’m slearning my words. Languish is defecting me. Splaying possum. I wish langwish…

By Marc Nash

That Tearing

By Bernise Marie D. Carolino

Let’s read a story you say with the book open on your lap as you sit me down next to you and we turn the pages and as we are reading we are also writing the story as we go along and as the papers rustle they echo strangely in this empty room and it is all a lie because the book is on the table and my hands are on the pages and they are all mixed up because at some point the book got so worn it lost its spine and its order and you say let’s read a story but you were lying and I am lying to myself and you aren’t here anymore and I crumple the pages and I fold what I can’t bear to discard and I know I will hide them all over the house so that I can forget them and keep finding them for years to come and so maybe I still can’t forget you completely but the point is a paper that’s open and unfolded is so much more easily torn.

Li Shin thought about how she wanted them to find her.  She would rest her head to the side.  Her grey hair, which she twisted into a bun every morning, and held together with six small black pins and no more, would face them as they entered the kitchen.

At the doorway they would see her bun and the strawberries laid out on the table. Skin washed and leaves cut off, ready for them to eat.  That morning she was the only customer at the fruit stall.  The Japanese seller and she did not say a word as she pointed to the strawberries and he signalled the cost.  

In Tokyo she did not interact with the Japanese outside of their stores, though she had once been in a ballroom filled with Americans, British and a few other Chinese.  Her son, in his uniform, had taken her hand and told her how beautiful she looked as she followed his lead, in a bright green dress, around the room.

Since her daughter in law arrived from Shanghai, Li Shin spent almost all her time inside.  She cleaned and prepared meals and listened to their talk.

When the war ended, Li Shin ran out onto the streets with her neighbours and cried and laughed and screamed.  It had been years since she stepped outside without rubbing her face with dirt or excrement.  When she died, she left her face clean, untouched, in Japan.  She thought of her son’s life here.

Karla Ch’ien

Him & Her.

‘I’m falling apart’, he joked, rubbing his throbbing left wrist.

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even look up from the television that blared out like a wall between them.

He sloped off to bed and slept, despite the noise from the room below and the jolts of pain shooting down his left arm.

She went to the pantry and returned with the gingerbread man and bit down.

He awoke screaming. His left hand was missing, like it had never existed in the first place. The skin had perfectly sealed the stub of his arm.

Her tongue licked at the gingerbread crotch.

He produced an exuberant erection.

She continued.

He cried for his missing left hand, but couldn’t resist reaching down to touch himself with his right.

She bit the gingerbread man’s right hand clean off.

He thrashed and shrieked and shouted as his right hand disappeared before his very eyes.

She yanked up the volume on the television.

He wept like a deserted baby.

Her teeth chipped off the icing mouth.

He couldn’t scream or shout any more.

She ate it all up until it was just a head with confectionary eyes.

He took up significantly less space in the bed.

She picked the eyes off, one by one.

He was left in the dark.

She finished him off with a crunch.

Silence.

She walked upstairs.

He wasn’t there.

She brushed the gingerbread crumbs off the sheets.

He had fallen apart.

She finally laughed.

If you’re at the Hay festival today, don’t forget to catch Unbound Live (with our authors Katy Brand, Jessica Jones, George Chopping and Hardeep Singh Kohli) today at 2:30 in the Sky Arts Studio.

Katy Brand at Unbound Live.
You can click here to find out more about the book, Brenda Monk is Funny, and how you can get involved in its publication.

For more videos of the event go to: www.youtube.com/unboundvideos

Anonymous asked: Dear Sir/Madam, I'm currently in the process of writing a fantasy novel, the first fifty or so pages are complete. I have outlined the structure of this book along with another two books to follow and I am really enjoying writing it now the storyline is building. I know that you probably hear this question on a daily basis but it would be great if you could give me a few tips on getting this book published or in line for publishing when it is completed? Many thanks, Paul.

Hi Paul,

In the future we hope to do a series of interviews with our authors and editors to give more in-depth advice on this kind of thing for aspiring authors such as yourself, so keep an eye out for that.

For now, a few basic tips:

• First, this is rather obvious, but given some of the submissions we receive it needs to be restated: always follow the submission guidelines. Read and re-read them carefully, whether for publishing houses or literary agents. Make sure that you have formatted your work correctly, and that the content of your story is in line with whatever the publisher or agent is looking for.
  
  
• The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook is always a great source of helpful information on getting books in any genre published, so if you haven’t got a copy yet, you should probably get one.
  
  
• The most important thing, of course, is the quality of your writing - which means that you should edit and re-edit (and re-edit again) as much as possible once you are finished.
  Give it to friends who love reading critically and try to consider their advice objectively (naturally, this will be extremely difficult to do).
  
  
• But since you are still in the process of writing the first draft, have fun with it! Difficult as it may be, try not to think too much about getting published, but rather, focus on making the book as great a book as you could wish to read.
  
  
• Furthermore, as a fantasy author, it would be a good idea to cut back on reading fantasy works for the period while you are writing, and focus on expanding your reading in a whole range of other genres. Assuming you have already read lots of fantasy and are comfortable with and clear on the genre, taking a step back for a short while could be a good move. This could help you to ensure that your writing doesn’t automatically emerge steeped in the tropes of the genre and instead is fresh/original/different.

www.unbound.co.uk

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.

Comedian Katy Brand and the novel she is crowd-funding for publishing with Unbound, (Brenda Monk is Funny - a story about a woman who decides to try and be a comedian), have been featured in the Daily Mail this week. You can see an excerpt of the article below.

And you can click here to find out more about Brenda Monk is Funny, read an excerpt of the book, and also find out how to get involved with its publication of  (in return for anything from an e-book and signed first edition hardback with your name printed in the back of each copy of the book, to invites to the launch party and comedy advice from Katy herself).

The book where you’re the story: TV comedian Katy Brand offering fans the chance to be a character in her first novel… for £2,500

By Emily Allen

Comedian Katy Brand is offering her fans the chance to have a character named after them in her first novel - for £2,500.

Her startling offer, which includes advice on any comedy script or stand-up and an invitation to the book’s launch lunch, is featured on a pay-to-publish website offering writers a new way of connecting with their readers and funding their publishing dreams.

On Unbound authors pitch their book ideas directly to readers and they can stump up cash to contribute towards its publication if they like the idea - in return for rewards.

If the authors raise enough money, the book will be written and published. The author will get half of the proceeds and Unbound the other half.

The books will always be available in digital form but if enough money is raised then it will be published in a paperback or hardback.

Ms Brand, who has appeared in numerous films, TV, radio and live shows including Have I Got News For You and Peep Show, wrote on the website: ‘I have always wanted to write a novel about comedy, maybe even several novels, so here I am, just a girl, standing in front of an internet, asking it to pay.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150626/The-book-youre-story-TV-comedian-Katy-Brand-offering-fans-chance-character-novel—2-500.html#ixzz1wALmKHLs

George Chopping at Unbound Live

For more videos of author performances at the event go to: www.youtube.com/unboundvideos