Storytelling sells

I've been invited to write about my forthcoming book Where are the Fellows who Cut the Hay? by two magazines for their March issue. One is widely read in Leiston, the town where I am now living and where the book opens, and the other is a farming title. My publisher Unbound is crowdfunding a hardback first edition, and I'm hoping these two features will bring in the final few pledges (effectively pre-orders) we need to take the book from 84% to 100% funded.

It was tempting to simply use these as opportunities to publish short extracts from the book, but there are already a number of extracts available online, for example here on the Little Toller website. Instead I set out to explain why the book was one I'd wanted to write for more than 50 years, ever since I'd read Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay, by George Ewart Evans, a Suffolk based oral historian. His wife had taught me at primary school, and in my teens I'd worked on farms alongside relatives of those whose stories Evans had told in his book.

Researching the book meant many visits to the Suffolk countryside, interviewing people bringing back almost forgotten ways as they strive to balance profitability with environmental impact. It meant sitting on and starting the engine of a tractor I first drove when I was 16, that is still on a farm at Aldringham where I spent that summer and taking my father in law, a retired farmer, on a number of nostalgic visits to see Suffolk Punch horses, a ploughing match and a family friend's cattle.

All this prompted us to move back to Leiston; the town where we both grew up. I'm now a member of the Leiston Quaker Meeting, so each Sunday sit in the room where George's wife Florence Evans also sat in the 1950s, as she too was a Quaker. It is these emotional connections that have made the book such a powerful project to work on, and why Miles, my friend and my beta reader found the book powerful too.

So in both magazines, I've told the story of how this book came about, because that I think will prompt them to find out more and I hope, pre-order a copy. Now I have to wait to see what happens when the magazines are published in a few weeks time. Of course you don't have to wait - you can make sure of your copy by following this link!