Happy Yule, God Jul, from the dragon

There’s a dragon in Draca; a restored figurehead with a dark history. The Vikings who carved and venerated that fearsome head would have celebrated not Christmas but Yule, the midwinter solstice and the birth of the new year. So Happy Yule, God Jul, or, in Old Norse, Gleðileg jól.

About Draca & Unbound

If you’d like to know more about Draca’s dragon figurehead, there’s a synopsis of the book here and extracts here and here. It’s my second novel (Saxon’s Bane actually reached #1 in its genre) and I took an unusual route to publication so that I could share financially meaningful royalties with the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress. The book’s hero is a PTSD-afflicted survivor of Afghanistan. Is he haunted by his past, or just haunted?

Unbound are highly selective, like any publisher, but wait until pre-orders have passed a threshold before committing to publication. They are new but making an impact, with a Man Booker long-lister to their credit and, this year, a Rathbones Folio finalist. And Draca? With the help of over 250 supporters, many of them committing to multiple copies, Unbound’s threshold for publication was reached three months ago.

Publication is coming closer…

Since then there has been lots of editing, all now complete, and Unbound are moving towards final cover design and launch scheduling. They plan to despatch supporters’ copies in mid May, in time for the first of the launch events; I’m speaking at a literary festival on 21st. Unbound say general release is likely to be in July. That’s when we can all start helping veterans whose wounds are more than physical. Combat Stress will receive half the royalties.

Last chance for your name inside!

Unbound will close the supporters’ list soon, before typesetting. All supporters names appear in every edition of the book, so if you’re lost for gift ideas, how about pre-ordering a paperback and putting the recipient’s name inside the covers? Or your own? Click here for all you need to know.

And meanwhile, God Jul. Gleðileg jól.

Happy Christmas.

Geoff