The Lion & The Unicorn

Hello everyone,

With it being World Book Day today, I thought it'd be a good idea to share some mock covers I've been working on for The Lion and The Unicorn. They won't neccessarily be options for the actual cover (Unbound will work with me on that) but hopefully they can help conceptualise the book as we continue into the 50% plus area of funding.

So, while these covers don't probably represent…

My 'Meet The Author' series continues with Josephine Greenland whose novel Embers is now available to pre-order, and sounds fantastic. Billed as a story in which "two siblings investigate the slaughter of reindeer in northern Sweden", Embers immediately caught my attention, and I had to ask Josephine about the book's origins, folklore, and Sweden's isolated communities.

Embers has a brilliant…

This is a somewhat special installment of these Author Updates. Today I'm talking to Maximilian Hawker, who has just TEN DAYS REMAINING to fund his novel Rory Hobble and the Voyage to Haligogen. The reason this book is special to me is because it concerns a boy, struggling with OCD who must journey with his social worker through space to rescue his mother. As someone who struggled with OCD as a child…

Jason Cobley's A Hundred Years To Arras tackles conflict head on. Specifically, through the lens of the First World War. As the synopsis reads it is a book about "one man's coming of age through land, love and blood." Set in Somerset and France, it's one of the most exciting projects currently funding with Unbound, and deserves your support. To find out more about the novel, I spoke to Jason about…

My series of interviews with interesting Unbound authors about their interesting books continues with James Wilkins, Creative Director at Joe.co.uk discussing DARK, an easily digestible guide to the Universe in a handy A-Z format. Illustrated by Andreas Brooks, DARK aims to shed light onto some of science's biggest questions.

"Despite not pursuing physics beyond GCSE, his love for all things space…

Of all the books currently funding with Unbound, Lulu Allison's Salt Lick jumped out as one I desperately wanted to read. The book follows Jesse and Isolde, a boy and a woman, linked across time and the feral fields of wild England at a time when most food production has moved abroad. As Lulu points out, it isn't dystopian, but it's further along the 'wrong road'. Here she and I discuss the islandification…

There are some great Unbound projects currently funding, many of which share some DNA with The Lion and The Unicorn. In order to celebrate these books, and hopefully bring them to an even wider audience, I’ll be sharing interviews with interesting Unbound authors, right here. First up is Set Sharp, talking about his funding novel Survival.

Here’s the official synopsis:

In Survival, book two…

Hey everyone,

As the year comes to an end, The Lion & The Unicorn is at 48%! It's fantastic that so many of you wanted to support, and I'm sure the final book won't dissapoint.

Obviously Christmas is a time for giving, so I wanted to remind everyone that personalised short stories and poems are available as pledge packages. Want one for your gran / partner / dog? Say the word and I'll get it…

Hello supporters,

The Lion and The Unicorn borrows more from the dystopian world than the sci-fi, but another Unbound book, Red Soil by Jamie Chipperfield, caught my attention nevertheless.

In Jamie’s book, humans have colonised Mars – not out of innovation or for the advancement of science, but necessity. Now, Leon Richardson, Mars’ Chief Custodian, has to contend with not only having left…

We stole the car from beneath a broken streetlight at the end of a quiet road then headed north out of the city. We must have passed a thousand surveillance cameras, and every light overhead took the shape of security drones patrolling, lenses penetrating through the smog, searching out renegade bombers and AWOL police officers wanted for murder. Despite my paranoia, it seemed that the checkpoints…

It was almost dark by the time I reached the International Zone. I parked the car in the police compound, a rough, concrete building standing between two wire fences. On one side stood Commercial Road. On the other: the collected human detritus of war-torn nations near and far – all safely locked away in a permanent refugee community that few police officers and zero civilians ever ventured into.

Thank you to everyone who has supported THE LION AND THE UNICORN so far. We're currently on 31% funded. As a thank you, I wanted to share this excerpt, from the second chapter!

Bagby had bought his flat high up in The Barbican back when that was still something people did. Over the years he’d dug in as best he could, collecting books and records and paintings and piling them up like a man trying…