DRACA: IN SUPPORT OF COMBAT STRESS
CHALFONT ST GILES AND JORDANS LITERARY FESTIVAL
SATURDAY 15TH MAY, 5PM, ONLINE
As you know, Draca was due to launch last year at the Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival until covid forced its cancellation. This year the organisers have invited me back to talk about Draca, the story behind the book, and my partnership with the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress.
With social distancing rules still in force, all the festival’s presentations this year will be online. The upside is that my talk will no longer be constrained by the capacity of the lovely 17th century Friends’ Meeting House in Jordans. The downside is that I will not be able to offer you hospitality afterwards. I would love to have been able to celebrate Draca’s success with the supporters who helped her to launch.
The talk will last for about 40 minutes plus Q&A, and is ticketed. If you would like to join me online please click here to buy a ticket (£5) or see the festival’s full programme. All my speaker fees go directly to Combat Stress.
HOW ARE WE DOING?
Many supporters have asked me how Draca is faring, and the short answer is that until I receive a royalty statement, I don’t know. November’s royalties, of which a little over £600 went to Combat Stress, only covered receipts preceding the launch. The lack of bookshops, libraries, and speaking engagements since then won’t have helped sales, but I can say is that Draca is collecting a gratifying number of brilliant reviews. In July and August last year Draca was also selected for the online book club The Pigeonhole, and I had the pleasure of seeing the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reactions of nearly 200 readers around the globe as they read and discussed each daily instalment. The Pigeonhole themselves commented ‘we love discovering gems like this’, and I honestly don’t know the club reader who said it was ‘the best book I’ve ever read’.
NEW DIRECTIONS
Nearly a year on from launch, this may be my last update via Unbound. A similar note about the talk will go out to my mailing list in a couple of days. In that I'll also include a glimpse of a new and exciting direction for my writing. If you’re not already on my mailing list, and would like to hear about work in progress and future releases, do please sign up via my web site here. Scroll down and click 'subscribe'. There's a free collection of short stories to download by way of a welcome.
Once again many thanks for your support, and for helping me to bring Draca into being. I hope to ‘see’ you online on 15th May.
Geoff