GULA + Other Works by Elliott Dunstan

Thank you so much everybody! The Book Bazaar has come to an EXTREMELY triumphant close -- all of us, all 22 projects, have FULLY FUNDED!!

Thank you so much for your support, everybody. Pledge fulfillment and surveys won't be til after the holidays, for the shared reasons of "everybody is busy for the holidays and has plenty to worry about", "don't ever ship something during the holidays if you want it to arrive in one piece", and "I will be briefly out of the country". (Bizarre, that. I'm a homebody normally.)

A reminder as well to vote in the poll (attached below this update!) I need to know for sure where the extra money is going before anything else can get nailed down. So far we're seesawing between two options.

I'll be putting out a call for ARC readers some time in January -- if you have friends who wanted to pledge but couldn't for financial reasons, please let them know! I'll only have physical ARCs available for Canadian readers, sadly, but digital/ebook ARCs will be for anybody. 

Finally, a heads up that while all campaign-related updates will still be coming through BackerKit, I also have a website (elliottdunstan.com) and a SubscribeStar If you're curious about other projects and work, those are both the places to be. 

Cheers! 

Hello everyone! I'm astonished that I get to make this post, but GULA is FULLY FUNDED! Of course, this comes with some caveats. Cancellations and whatnot happen, so please do keep pledging if you haven't already; at the time that I'm posting this, we're only $6 above the goal, which is a VERY slim margin. But it's still a great feeling, and we've got a little while longer to go!

Before I get into the administrative stuff, I also want to acknowledge that I hit this goal last night and in the last few hours of World AIDS Day -- the 37th day this has been commemorated and, for the first time, with genuine hope of a cure and vaccine in the near future. GULA covers a lot of ground, and it's impossible to capture all of it without just essentially long-forming the poem over again, but the AIDS crisis is one of those historical moments that's very close to my heart. Certainly after living through (and continuing to live through) another neglected pandemic, all of the essays and notes from the AIDS crisis hit that much harder. It's an honor and a privilege, and a testament to the hard work of thousands and thousands of queers and allies around the world, that I and my comrades can live and thrive and do the work today. In particular, I and so many other avant-garde, surrealist, club-kid queers would not be who and what we are without the oft-unsung work of Klaus Nomi, one of the earliest losses to the AIDS crisis. May his memory, forever and always, be a blessing.

Onto some admin notes. A few things--

1) Stretch goal! At 3,000$ (CAD, as all my stuff is) GULA is possible to do in color. Now, I don't expect this to happen in less than 24 hours.... but the option is on the table! It's incentive to keep it going (and to give me the aforementioned cushion). Even within that goal, though, more money means more room for quality control, nicer materials, printing upgrades, etc. [Why is it double the amount? The type of color-work I want to do not only costs more because color, it a) expands the pages needed, and b) makes the creation of an accessible version a bit more of an involved process.)

2) UNRWA! While final numbers will be crunched after everything is said and done, preliminary data gives us $231.40! (Why are there decimal points after you rounded everything, Elliott, you ask? I had some $1 tiers I forgot to account for, but it's all good.) However -- please see my new poll at the bottom (for backers only) asking about a fundamental thing I overlooked! When I was figuring out UNRWA donations I forgot to account for add-ons and donations. So I'm asking you, friends, how best to handle it!

3) The Book Bazaar! At the moment, there is still one project unfunded. Obviously this simply won't do -- so please check out The Primal Rift! We're hoping for a 100% funded Bazaar, and we're SO CLOSE to getting it! The Primal Rift is the third in The Chaos Portal, a trilogy of YA dark fantasy books.

That's all for now! Thank you SO MUCH for getting us this far -- now onwards!! 

I'm so happy to be able to post that we are over halfway funded! There's a few days left to get us the rest of the way there and it's very touch and go at this point, but I'm feeling more and more confident about it all the time. Thank you so much to everybody showing up!!

I'd like to share a snippet of one of the pieces of dialogue in between the poetic parts of GULA. These are presented as translated fragments of lost plays from the ancient or medieval eras, and as such are written in a very particular style (I'm particularly fond of Lattimore and Fagles translation-wise and I think it shows :P)

Heads up for sexual assault imagery, although it's not terribly explicit:

BEELZEBUB:

What's modest about the robe ripped off?

Or the bleeding mouth?

Excess upon excess, excess of excess

and still she bears it well.

Come now, nameless thing – where did it come from?

The title that was etched upon your heart

Now at last you're free to wipe the surface of it clean

and become something that's more than the sum of all your parts.
In the chambers of your heart

between the beating drums

rise now from the ashes and let's see what you've become.

CHARMIDES:

I do not want to look--

I must avert my eyes in shame.

BEELZEBUB:

Does it shame you more to look upon

the details of the aftermath?

One would think you were the ravaged one

and it was your tongue in the fire.

Hello everyone! We're in the last week of the Book Bazaar and still stubbornly stuck at just over 1/3rd funded, but hope springs eternal! Still, hope can always use a little help -- so please do share GULA on social media, with friends and (cool) family (although hey, money is money...) and wherever you can! 

Additionally, the poll has spoken! So as long as GULA funds, the paperback bonus material will include some essays :D (maybe just one, mine have a tendency to run long. As one professor of mine put it, "those aren't footnotes, they're hobnailed boot notes!")

In the meantime, to celebrate what has been a lovely time - win or lose -- I'm sharing another little snippet from the GULA draft. This is from section 4, "Per Aspera Ad Astra".

Cheerful, I know! But it's one of my favourite sections, and I think it encapsulates the core concept of Carrion City very well.

Hello everyone! I'm so glad to say that GULA has passed the 1/3rd mark -- woohoo!

There's now a poll up to help decide on GULA's bonus material - go vote! And if you're in the Ottawa area, come find me at the Small Press Fair at the Tom Brown arena, Saturday the 22nd from 12-5.

Let's keep going!