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.

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.

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.

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.

George Chopping at Unbound Live

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

This week, we are running a competition for you to win a signed, illustrated copy of Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious & the Monkeys, the charming story of how Precious Ramotswe (later of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) solved her very first case while still a schoolgirl.

To enter, all you have to do is pledge for the 26 Treasures book on the Unbound site (the book is a collection of poetry by various writers, including Alexander McCall Smith, inspired by items from UK museums). And once you’ve done that, then use the Promoters button on the book’s home page to encourage as many people as you can to pledge using your link. Not only do you earn a £1 credit for every pledge made via your personalised link, the person who gets the highest number of pledges by 5pm on Friday 24th February wins the signed, illustrated novella.

How the Frynch Stole Twitmas
(with deep gratitude and sincere apologies to dear Dr. Seuss)

Every Twit down in Twitville
Liked Twitter a lot,
But the Frynch,
Who lived just North of London,
Did NOT!

The Frynch hated Twitter!
The whole Twitmas season.
Now please don’t ask why,
No-one quite knows the reason.

It could be his laptop
Wasn’t plugged in quite right,
It could be perhaps
That his pants were too tight.

But I think the most likely reason of all,
May have been that his dongle was two sizes too small.

Whatever the reason,
His dongle or pants,
He stared at the screen,
Having one of his rants.

‘They’re tweeting their greetings!’
He started to shake.
‘Tomorrow is Twitmas,
This is too much to take!’

Then he growled, with his Frynch fingers nervously drumming,
‘I MUST find a way to keep Twitmas from coming!’

For tomorrow he knew all those twittering nerds,
Would wake bright and early, like little blue birds
And the words! The words! Oh, the words, words, words, words!
That’s the thing that he hated! The WORDS, WORDS, WORDS, WORDS!

For the Twits young and old would sit down on their seats,
And they’d tweet. And they’d tweet. And they’d TWEET, TWEET, TWEET, TWEET!

And the more the Frynch thought of this whole Twitmas row,
The more the Frynch thought, ‘I must stop Twitter now!
Why for more than three years, I’ve put up with this crap.
I must stop Twitter from working - Asap!’

Then he got an idea!
A devilish idea!
More devilish than anything got in Ikea!

And he grabbed some bin bags
And some old empty cases,
(He just couldn’t wait
To see all their Twit faces!)

And off, with a smirk, that naughty Frynch crept,
To the place where he knew all those silly Twits slept.

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile like a snadget,
Around the whole town, and he took every gadget!

He took all the mobiles, he took the PCs,
He took all the internet-ready TVs.
He took the computers, he took the laptops,
He took the iPhones, the iPads and iPlops.

And when he had grabbed all the items above,
He started to take other things the Twits love,
He took all their LOLs and their LMAOs,
He stole their hash tags from their little hash toes.

He snatched their Retweets and their mentions and then
He snaffled the Trending Topics Top Ten.
He kidnapped their followers, erased their Dms.
All went in his sack, which he threw in the Thames.

Then he sat on the bank and he nervously waited,
With his lip fully bit and his breath fully bated
Until the sun rose. But then the Frynch frowned,
‘They’re just waking up … but what is that strange sound?’

All the Twits down in Twitville, the princes and bums
Were talking - without a device near their thumbs!
They chatted, they laughed, they guffawed and they chortled,
They sang and they shouted, they sniffed and snortled.

The butchers, the bakers, the students and tourists,
The housewives, the bankers, the fish pedicurists,
The teachers, the stalkers, the geeks and the druids,
They actually met and swapped bodily fluids!

And the Frynch heard this sound, this unheard-of kerfuffle,
And he frowned and he blinked and he started to snuffle.

He HADN’T stopped Twitmas from coming!
It CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

The Frynch groped for hours, ‘till his dongle was sore.
Then the Frynch thought of something he hadn’t before!
‘Maybe Twitter,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a phone.
‘Maybe Twitter … perhaps … has a life of its own?’

And what happened then … ?
Well, in court they did say
That the Frynch’s small dongle
Grew three sizes that day!

And the minute his dongle had started to swell,
He looked at the gadgets and cried ‘Bloody Hell,
What a silly old git!’ and he fell to the floor,
‘What a nitwit-tit-git I have been, that’s for sure!’

And ashamed and aroused, he went back to the town,
Dongle proudly erect but his head hanging down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘But could you, at a pinch,
Bear to forgive me, this silly old Frynch?’

And the Twits took one look at this figure forlorn,
With his chin on his chest and his confidence torn,
‘Well, it’s true’ they replied, ‘that we do need some closure.‘
So they jailed him for theft and indecent exposure.

Mrs Stephen Fry’s book, How to Have an Almost Perfect Marriage, is now available for pre-order here.