Who are we?
Hello, I’m Paul. I am a writer, director and maker of things. I like to make things that are funny and sad and fantastic and everyday, because it is in between that something true and useful lies. Recently I made a stage show called 'Bug Camp', which won an award. And I made a short film called 'fleur de lis', which has played in a bunch of film festivals. Check out my website!
Hello, I'm Phoebe. I am a doodler and illustrator. I love how lines can capture whole moments and complicated characters and stories. I draw every day because I think it's important to be creative if you want to be whole. I also believe that everyone has it in them to create something. To see more of my doodles and drawings check out my blog.
So this thing we’re making, what is it?
Paul wrote The Case of the Thinking Man’s Trumpet. He showed the story to his talented artist chum Phoebe, to see if she would be interested in creating illustrations for a self-published book. She only needed some convincing. We are now ready to gift it to the world and help it find its way to those who will enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed creating it.
We are self-publishing our book for people who like to read funny, fantastical and joyful things. They are the sort who are tantalised when reading a blurb like this:
Have you ever felt trapped in a Sunday? Ever caught your pocket on a door handle? Ever regarded the buttons on someone’s coat as edible? Ever thought the sun a lozenge? Felt that roundabouts are the last colonised spaces in the world?
Bumble and Nitsy have, and their boundless awareness and imagination have made them the most renowned Detectors in the world.
Semi-retired after solving the murder of Penelope Loveslice, the Detectors now find themselves drawn into a fresh mystery. A new killing and the apparent reappearance of a powerful enemy place the pair on the trail to find a stolen musical mind control device before reality itself is nobbled.
Brought to life in the words of Paul Macauley and through the illustrations of Phoebe Munson, this is a witty, warm and bonkers trip into a world where everything ordinary and extraordinary alike is as fundamentally connected and wondrous as you know it really is.
The book will have a hardback cover with a colour dust jacket, which will look like this:
The inside will be around 120 black and white pages, like this:
It’ll have chapter, and other, illustrations like this:
What do you get if you cough up some cash?
Oh my gosh, so many things. Mainly a first run copy of our amazing book with YOUR name it in recognition of your support of the project. We have some nicely designed little trinkets on offer too. And of course there are a highly limited and highly spectacular number of special rewards, including The Gift of Music and The Gift of Creativity. For more details check out the rewards section!
What’s the cash-money for?
Good question. Think of our £400 budget as a pizza in 8 slices.
- 5 of those slices are the cost of publishing the book, that’s the main thing.
- 2 slices are the cost of creating other rewards and shipping everything to our backers.
- The final slice covers our Kickstarter fees and a contingency sum to help us handle unforeseen eventualities.
Ping! One delicious pizza. Book. One delicious pizzabook.
When do you get your stuff?
Key dates for your dizzle:
- We're running our Kickstarter campaign for 28 days from Monday 5th February until Monday 5th March
- If you're a supporter we'll be in touch to organise getting you your stuff by 14th March
- Everyone should have their stuff by the end of April
What happens if we bust through our target like a vigorous velociraptor?
Holy cheesepuffs, that would be immense wouldn’t it? We’d be all like ‘reeeeooooor!’ And then we’d make more copies of our book and, encouraged, pursue our next step to make the book available through selected high street stockists and online platforms.
What happens if we don’t make it?
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. You can do it wearing a hat, for example. Or on an ice rink. And it’s that kind of creative thinking that means we’ll just come up with another way of getting where we want to go. But we’d much rather make it here and now and have you come along for the ride.
Why do we care?
Paul says: “The things people create to share our ideas are magical. I write because a) I have all feelings and stuff and I enjoy making myself laugh/cry and b) I reckon if those ideas mean something to me then others might get something from them. I turn writings into things because I have loved all my life stories, films and plays and books. And, these days more than ever, you don’t need to wait for someone else to make your ideas real, you can do it yourself. And so now I am excited to be making with my friend a real actual illustrated story book.”
Phoebe says: “I love this story and have had a lot of fun making it. For me drawing is something I have done primarily on my own so to open up and work with someone else has been exposing and delightful. I would love it to find an audience who can share some of that joy. With a book you don't need a charger or a wifi connection, you just need a hot beverage of your choice and somewhere comfy to sit and put your feet up.”
Risks and challenges
What are the risks in this? There can’t be any, right? This is foolproof, it’s airtight, it’s kevlar Tupperware. What could go wrong?
Well what if there isn’t a book? What if we’ve made it up? But wait, BOOM! There is a book! And it’s because we made it up. The power of imagination and graft. That’s right, it’s all written and drawn and existing as an electronic thing waiting to be made tangible. Check.
The main risk we see is that this whole campaign requires a minimum level of support so that we can realise all the things we’re offering. We could have pitched it to one person and asked them to support us, but part of the reason for doing this is that we want to reach people who might like the book that we don’t even know about. We’ve mitigated that by keeping our costs as low as possible and making the amount we are looking for a realistic target based on the kind of support we think we can attract.
We are facing a challenge of finding a way to describe the book in a way that will help us connect with an audience. And that’s another point of doing this. We know we’ve got something good, and those who have seen the book have been glowing with lovely vibes about it, but we’re still working out a way to describe that as a ‘oh you know, it’s for people of ages 4-21 and 36-41 who like surreal death-pink steam fiction and single prop planes’. So the challenge we are excitedly accepting is to find our audience and love them and find out why they love us.
We are holding a risk around rewards delivery (doesn’t everyone, right?). Basically the book and the extra reward items are dependent on third party peeps being good to their word and delivering on the lead times they have quoted. We have accounted for this whole thang in our timeline and built in some bagginess to make sure we’re not promising anything on which we aren’t reasonably confident we can deliver.
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Funding period
- (28 days)