Dearest Bookbackers,

It has been six months since I launched this crowdfunding campaign, we've just hit 130% funded, and I am only two chapters away from finishing the book!

To celebrate all this, there'll be 15% off all orders up to £100 until Monday with promo code OUTOFLOVE. That goes for new pledges and upgrades to existing pledges so if you were thinking of upgrading, now's the time to do it.

I can't quite believe I almost have a completed first draft and I am very, very excited to hold the physical manuscript in my hands. I'm also excited to start working more with the team at Unbound on the edit, artwork and plans for the coming year, as well as having more time to share the process with you.

In the meantime, here's a little extract from the third chapter, Bodies, to tide you over...

I’m lying awake in bed when the phone rings. It’s Theo. I don’t pick up. Two minutes later I call him back.

    “Are you drunk?” I ask when he answers.

    “No.”

    “Are you done ignoring me then?”

    “I wasn’t ignoring you,” he says.

    “Well it sure fucking felt like it,” I snap.

    There’s a pause.

    “My gran died,” says Theo. His voice cracks slightly. He sniffs.

    I sit up in bed and switch the light on.

“My mum says she died peacefully, in her sleep,” he says, then sniffs again.

I couldn’t care less how she died. Theo’s grandmother, Augusta, was a cruel, carping, racist old bitch who spoke with great fondness of a post-war Britain, when “people knew their place”. From what I could glean, Augusta had never been particularly kind to Theo—and she grew even meaner when he brought home an Irish girl—but he loved her in the same way he loves his mother, with naivety and a selective blindness.

   “Oh, honey," I say, "I’m so sorry.”