love lay down beside me and we wept
By Helen Murray Taylor
A rare and lyrical memoir about the author's time in a psychiatric ward and her road to recovery
Friday, 3 February 2023
The big 7-0 and a triple-jointed cat
Friends,
We're over 70% funded! Why is that such a big deal? Because all of the Unbound books that have made it to 70% have gone on to be fully funded. Yes, there is still a way to go but this feels like a massive leap forward. I have to admit to having a confidence wobble in the mid-60s because I wasn't sure where the remaining supporters were going to come from. But after a pep talk with John, Aliya and Suze, the fantastic team at Unbound who are working with me, I took a deep breath, stopped panicking and realised I just had to trust the process. And what is really wonderful is that there are new supporters coming on board all the time. So if that is you, hello, welcome and many, many thanks.
Loads of you have been helping me spread the word which is just brilliant. I was trying to work out if I could do that thing that lots of online businesses/shops do... you know, where you recommend a friend and both the person recommending and the friend get some kind of benefit (like a discount on the next purchase). Unfortunately, it isn't practical to do this for my book because the system isn't set up for it. That said, if half of you guys could persaude one other person to support the book, we'd be over the finish line. If you fancied sharing the link with the excerpt with your friends and family, that would be amazing. There might not be an extra financial incentive in it but you'd have my undying gratitude :-)
https://unbound.com/books/love-lay-down-beside-me-and-we-wept/excerpt
Meanwhile, for no good reason other than to make you smile, here is a picture of one of my writing companions proving that he is triple-jointed. (I've been doing 30 Days of Yoga with Adrienne on Youtube to increase my flexibility and my terrible hunched-over-the-computer writer's posture but I can only dream of being able to contort myself like this).
Until next time
Helen xx
Top rewards
Uncorrected proof
PLUS:
- Signed hardback
- The ebook
- Your name in the back of the book
Signed Hardback
PLUS:
- The ebook

Comments
Great news Helen.
If you posted a video or a video link on YouTube etc of you reading an extract from the book, I could and maybe others could share it much easier and get to 100% by the end of the month???
posted 6th February 2023
Thanks, Rachael. I'll definitely do that. I've just discovered that the recording of the WayWORD festival event is finally up on Youtube so that is something that could be shared but it's quite long, over an hour. I'll record some shorter bits in the coming days. Meantime, here is the WayWORD link (I'll probably put this in a separate update shortly).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ4b8sYOen0
posted 7th February 2023
Great post! I appreciate your views. I thought I would share this article with my friends. Thanks for sharing.
posted 19th June 2023