My next book, Imogen Imagine, is being published in September. I’m desperately proud of this one, and I think it’s the best thing I’ve written yet. It’s also opened doors to me doing things that I never expected, but more of that later. I'll blog again about it between now and then (of course I will) but for now, here's a brief introduction.

The book is about a young woman, Immy, whose life is derailed when her ex-boyfriend has a massive hit single with a song about their breakup. When she attempts to get her side of the story out into the world… well, let’s just say it doesn’t go as she anticipated.

The book takes its title from the breakup song that causes Immy so much aggravation. In the course of writing the book, I included snatches of the song’s lyrics (as I did with the song Let You Go in Dead Man Singing) and this time I decided I should try to write the complete lyric. I’ve never written a song before, so once I was happy with what I’d done, I showed my friend (and regular partner for the Dead Man Singing Live musically-enhanced readings) Olly Hopper-Pay to see what he thought. His answer was that until there was music behind them, it was hard to tell whether my lyrics worked or not: would I like him to try to add music? Would I ever!

Olly has done an amazing job, going outside his usual genre (if you ever get the chance to see him playing with the OHP Band, or his covers band The Country Tones, you won’t regret doing so) to create something that fits my brief of a contemporary pop hit, given the right production. So far I’ve only heard Olly playing an acoustic version of it, but it would be great to hear it the way it would sound on radios and concert stages in the world of the book. If I say so myself, I think we've ended up with a really good, hooky song that is certainly sustaining repeat listens to my ears, though I'd love to let other people experience that and make their own minds up.

And that brings us to the other thing that I never anticipated doing. Olly knows the musicians, producers, and so on that we need to make it happen, but that all costs money. Not an unrealistic amount, but enough that I’m looking for help. We’ve started a crowdfunder to raise the cash to turn Imogen Imagine from a figment of my imagination into reality. I'm not just looking for a hand-out, I'm offering three different tiers of rewards for donors, depending on how much money they are able to give. These include hefty discounts when you buy the book, having your name listed in the book itself, and even signed limited edition sprayed edge copies of the book, so please do take a look at the crowdfunder page and, if you can, consider slipping it some cash to help bring the song to life.

To those who don’t feel able (or inclined!) to support it, thanks for reading this far. And to those who do help us to get the song recorded, you can’t imagine (see what I did there?) how grateful I am or how much it means to me. Thank you.