The story so far...

My novel The Continuity Girl is to be published in a very modern way that is actually centuries old. Just as Dr Johnson would have petitioned for subscribers before embarking on his great projects - his dictionary, his complete works of Shakespeare - so Unbound authors crowdfund the initial costs of their books before the publisher takes over. Unbound also encourage their writers to share their creative processes with patrons and potential readers. Here is a short guide to my own Unbound updates.

In March, with my campaign well underway, I gave an interview about the novel and specifically about its connection to Billy Wilder's extraordinary film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). Later, I wrote about how Wilder's film contributed to the way Sherlock Holmes was being portrayed on screen in the 1960s, and how this changed the way the detective was viewed pretty much from then on. This theme was touched on again by the novelist and critic Kim Newman, when I interviewed him in May. Earlier, in February, I had interviewed an extra from the film who had drunk coffee as a teenager with Christopher Lee - and at midnight no less.

Another important element in the novel is the search for evidence of Loch Ness Monsters that was carried out by iconoclastic scientists during the 1960s. In April, I chatted with Adrian Shine, the world's foremost authority on Loch Ness phenomena, and the post that followed is still my most popular to date.

One of the things that I enjoyed playing about with while writing the novel was its double timeline. I made this the subject of three updates, beginning with the thorny issue of its title. I then discussed the strange times we live in now, and the strange times my older characters lived in then.

I will continue to post updates about The Continuity Girl on my campaign page, and will alert you to them when I do. But subscribe there too - I'm determined not to post things twice, so you ought to get value in subscribing both there and here.

You can pre-order the special edition of The Continuity Girl from the Unbound website now. The digital and standard paperback will be on general release from Amazon and other booksellers shortly.