Bookish Ramblings: Unbound and my book pledge to Seas of Snow

Unbound is a crowdfunding publisher. You can read all the details on their website but basically, authors pitch their idea and if the team at Unbound think the book will be a success, a contract is drawn up and the book is launched on their platform and people can begin pledging on it. When the funding target is met, the book begins it’s journey to professional publication. Once complete, everyone who has pledged, receives a copy of the book and the book is also sold in bookshops by Penguin Random House.

All the supporters of the book will have their name printed in every edition, as a patron, at the back of the book or as a super patron with their name at the front. Pledges start at £10, usually for the ebook edition, and £20 for the hardback edition and go all the way up to £2000. Depending on the amount you pledge depends on the perks you get.

They have books in a range of genres.

Blind Side by Jennie Ensor was published by Unbound Digital so they have an eye for talented writers.

That’s the basic-Janel-condensed version of Unbound, do head over to their website for full details.

I pledged

Seas of Snow by Kerensa Jennings

Book Description:

Is evil born or made?

Seas of Snow is a story of broken trust and shattered dreams. Of consequences. Of a life lifted and liberated by poetry. Of a life haunted by darkness and lived in fear.

This is the tale of Gracie Scott, who becomes fascinated by the work of Rainer Maria Rilke and delights in his words for guidance and succour. But when her psychopath uncle Joe enters her life, is poetry enough?

Alternating between contemporary North Tyneside and around the time of World War Two, Seas of Snow dances through time, backwards and forwards between the literary reveries and troubles of the young girl, and the old woman of today, frail and isolated in a nursing home.

Seas of Snow is a bleak psychological thriller about trust and betrayal told with a distinctive and complex narrative voice.

My Pledge:

Amount: £20

What I get: 1st edition hardback book, e-book edition, and access to the shed.

What is the shed you ask? It’s access to updates on the book’s journey to publication, for example, I now know the cover art for the book has been finalised and the publication date is set for 9th February 2017.

I’m looking forward to this #bookmail, I can’t wait to see my name in print as a patron. Even though this book was fully funded when I discovered it, I still had to pledge, I’m so excited to continue reading it!

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the book:

Prologue

Its low, guttural kraaa pierced the air and echoed into nothingness.

Powdered whiteness bleached the horizon.

A silver sun hung low in the sky.

Something glinted on the ground, discarded in the snow.

The chill of a wing’s breath swooped past.

A trace of something lingered on the breeze.

Chapter One – Claws

She could still feel the retching stench of his presence. Soap suds were melting away around her, softly.

The cold water shivered into her.

His darkness had breathed into the room and the ash-treacle-bitter foulness of him enveloped her small, white form.

He had reached down and seared her skin with his touch. She looked down and tucked her chin onto her knees.

++++++++

Of course, the picture she presented to the world was a mask. What choice did she have?

Outside, the view was hazy through the spray. Splashes of green and grey. The odd moment of purple or yellow.

Spring then.

Her heart was beginning to beat with that familiar anxiety. Inside, she knew she just had to get through it. Again. Deep breaths.

There was a straggly set of daffodils squatting in a white china vase downstairs. The formica gleamed. A scent of polish lingering in the air. It was a house that looked like one of those dream homes you saw on pictures. But this wasn’t what anyone could call a home. Wasn’t home meant to mean something warm and inviting? Safe and cosy. Hearth and heart. Home, sweet home.

This house was a dream that never was. More like a pristine laboratory of hate.

continue reading…