While I was away last week the Being Dad Kickstarter kicked off. I’ve been unable to blog about it until today though, as I returned home from the First Story Young writers’ Festival to find my broadband (and I say broadband but here in rural Lincolnshire it’s more ‘moderately-wideband’) was on the blink. Normal (slow) service has been resumed today, so I wanted to shout about the brilliant Kickstarter and why you might think about pledging some cash to help make the book a reality

For those of you new to Kickstarter, it’s a crowdfunding site. You can visit the Being Dad page at Kickstarter via this link, read a bit about the book, see what editor Dan Coxon has planned. Then you can pre-order the book (for a mere £10 inc. P&P), or pledge a bit more and get some wonderful extras thrown in (Being Dad beer mats, signed copies of books by our contributors, limited edition chapbooks). You won’t be charged immediately – you only have to pay if the project reaches its funding target. So you can see why it’s so important that we get people signing up and pre-ordering the book!

If you like short stories, dads or, even better, short stories about dads, you will need a copy of this anthology of brand new fiction about fatherhood, featuring stories by a whole host of top talent from the world of short fiction. Don’t believe me? Check out the list of talent

Toby Litt, Nikesh Shukla, Dan Rhodes, Courttia Newland, Nicholas Royle, Dan Powell, Rodge Glass, R.J. Price, Tim Sykes, Lander Hawes, Andrew McDonnell, Iain Robinson, Richard W. Strachan, Richard V. Hirst and Samuel Wright.

and tell me those aren’t some quality short fictions, right there.

If that doesn’t convince you, here’s some great writers giving great blurb about the stories in the collection:

“Let us be gentle when we question our fathers, wrote poet Anne Carson. In Being Dad, fathers and those who are fathered are gently and variously examined from angles tender, comic and disturbing. These stories beautifully evoke the joyousness, confusion and pain of family, the tangled threads that wrap around us from the past and fling us, with hope, into our future.”

Tania Hershman, author of My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions

“Editor Dan Coxon has put together a mixture of the best short story writers in the UK and rising stars of the genre, all under the theme of fatherhood. I for one will be picking up a copy of Being Dad especially to be the first to read new work from the excellent Toby Litt, Nick Royle and Nikesh Shukla.”

Paul McVeigh, author of The Good Son and co-founder of the London Short Story Festival

“I was thrilled with the quality of the stories… If this is a mere sample of the standard then I look forward to seeing the finished product.”

Stuart Buck, reviewing Being Dad for Under The Fable

All that info and loads more can be found over on the Being Dad Kickstarter page. If this collection sounds like your kind of thing, please do head over there and take a look at the full details. There’s loads of info about the book and loads of goodies available with pledge levels to suit all pockets. Plus, if you make a £15 pledge by the end of the week you’ll be entered in a draw to be bumped up to the £40 reward FOR FREE. That means you could also get an extra two beer mats, a limited edition chapbook of micro-fiction by the contributors, AND an invite to the London launch next year. Just pledge your £15 before midnight on Sunday 27th September to be entered, and Dan Coxon will announce the lucky winner next week on the Being Dad Facebook page and beyond.

So, there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain, not least the satisfaction of helping a truly great collection of stories get out into the big wide world. So get yourself over to the Being Dad Kickstarter page and get pledging. You know you want to.