Synopsis – your thoughts would be welcome.

https://unbound.com/books/twice-the-speed-of-dark

I have been re-looking at my synopsis, (which you can read by following the link above.) With an eye on the fact that my funding campaign now needs to appeal to strangers who have nothing invested in me, but will pledge only if they are interested in the actual book, I thought it could be improved, made a little snappier. I have a few days to consider an alternative before the Unbound team are up and running after the break again. Below is my latest version, anyone who would care to provide feedback, I would be immensely grateful:

In an isolated house surrounded by fields and woodland, Anna sits at her kitchen table, her cramped writing fills the notebook before her steadily, inexorably – people die at such a rate.

Anna scans the news for reports in which the victims of war or terror are presented only as a number. Dismayed by the indifference in the news stories to people who die in distant lands, she writes portraits, one for each of the victims, in an attempt to acknowledge the real impact of their deaths. Her own life is held in check, restrained by grief. It is only in this vigil, this act of love for strangers, that she allows herself an emotional connection to the world.

Her daughter Caitlin had wanted to be an engineer, to build bridges. But she was killed on the eve of her twentieth birthday by her violent boyfriend. Since her death Caitlin has been subject to a perplexing dark odyssey, pushed and pulled past stars and distant planets. Sometimes, with sweet relief she finds herself once more held by gravity, as the unpredictable journey brings her briefly back to the earth. She pieces together her story, combining what she has learnt since her death and what she knew before, until she is finally able to reclaim herself from the debilitating effects of the violence that eventually ended her life, freeing herself at last.

With the release from prison of Caitlin’s killer, Anna’s uneasy equilibrium is thrown into disarray and she falls into long-suppressed fury and mental breakdown. As Caitlin is able to free herself from the tyranny of violence, will Anna be able to unburden the debilitations of grief and live her life with love and happiness once more?