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Unbound journey and hysterectomy hell! 

I have been through what has seemed like hell. I was ill before I went into hospital and to be honest I did not think it could get any worse. It did. I had my hysterectomy and developed a heamatoma that got infected and I ended up being iller than I thought possible and in more pain than the last stages of labour. Needless to say the Unbound publishing process, which is extremely demanding, is not going to work for me. I have spent the last 10 days in hospital and the next 3 going as an outpatient for iv antibiotics to kill off the blood infection. It has been a terrifying and horrible experience and according to one nurse I came close to the end. I felt like I was drifting in and out of consciousness and time was surreal and what has been now a fortnight since my operation has passed in a haze of medication, sickness  and high fevers. However, I cannot blame this for unbound not working for me. It was hard even when I was well and I had pretty much written off that it was the way for
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Who do you turn to when everybody around you is telling you that you are mad? Cracked Cathy is a new psychological thriller by Victoria Ward - coming soon
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Unbound Publishing Journey for Cracked Cathy - Day 12

Day 12 Been really ill so went away for a rest for the weekend in a caravan in the woods. Still exhausted but managed to get into work today where I have been teaching women on probation about mind management - accessing their intuition and trusting it and using it to change their lives. Been working on Cracked Cathy over the weekend. Have just put another excerpt on the Unbound site and social media so hopefully will generate some more pledges but have to say after my mini-meltdown last week I resigned myself (only partly mind you) that crowdfunding is not going to work for me and I will end up having to self-publish Cracked Cathy as I did my comedy Jenna Jaghe. Still not giving up and will see it through to the end. I would benefit from an ongoing counsellor for this mood swing however have no money so just have to carry on counselling myself and pray that somehow people will see it, read it, love it and want to be part of the whole writing process – mood swings and all! https://un
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Asylum and Cathy's Only Comfort - Suicide

Cracked cathy And then Cathy had discovered the waste pipe – just in case she didn’t get out. It was suspended from the ceiling, in a side room off towards the laundry. The room was used to store the simple wooden chairs when space was needed in the group therapy room for twirling around like fucking fairies – dance therapy (with a pit faced, chunk of a woman who resembled a puck – both in the mythical sense and the small, fat inanimate object). Cathy fantasised about taking one of the chairs, that she now sat on, tying the piss stained, bed sheet around her neck, flinging the other end around that glorious waste pipe and kicking the chair over. How’s that for group therapy? It was only a pity she wouldn’t be around to see bitch nurses gaping face hole. Cathy had said this last part out loud again. Vow of silence unwillingly and temporarily broken: another side effect of her all-consuming troubled mind. Cathy blamed the drugs. A couple of the women nudged each other and sniggered, as i
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Cracked Cathy - Asylum Excerpt

Cathy Proctor slouched in a simple wooden chair; her head lolled forward like a ragdoll, chin on chest inflaming the chronic tension in her neck. She relished the moment of escape into the physical pain – a pithy respite from the emotional agony that was all consuming. Her drab, brown, itchy, mohair cardigan was pulled tightly around her tiny, fragile body as she picked at her hang nails. Her fingers sore and bleeding as she cradled them in her lap; much the same way that she had cradled her baby before she had been taken. Cathy’s once bouncy, copper hair now clumped in greasy strands like dripping candle wax, framing the harrowed face that shadowed her deep-set eyes, her liver iris’s drowning in inky sacks. Her once vibrant flame snuffed out. The softness of her delicate features, ravaged by the wretchedness that had become her life, left her weathering a haggard, stale, sallow look, much older than her twenty-five years – her youthful dew, stolen, slipping away like the memory of
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Unbound Publishing Journey - Day 9

Day 9 Just when you think things cannot get any worse…..Needed to work today, had to call in sick yesterday, woke at 6.45 in extreme pain (last stage of labour type of pain – no exaggeration) made it to bathroom then woke up 10 minutes later on the floor having passed out. Back to A&E to be prodded and pricked to be told that I probably passed out from the pain. Did not make it to work. Meanwhile while I have to rest I am working on Cathy’s decline into the asylum and updating the Unbound updates page. Nobody can ever accuse me of giving up. Even if I do not raise the funds at least I know I have given it my all even though it feels like I am being knocked down at every post. Can’t remember where I read this but it’s got me through the last five years: be prepared to spend 3-5 years trying to get a break: you need self-belief bordering on delusion! https://unbound.com/books/cracked-cathy
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Cathy's Grief - Cracked Cathy

An extract from the new psychological thriller Cracked Cathy out soon by Victoria Ward She had tried to adopt all the usual coping strategies. Had taken root in the library, read everything that had ever been written about grief but it was fruitless. The theory of the five stages of grief was bullshit. It was not systematic. There would never be any acceptance for Cathy. Her baby girl had disappeared. How did you ever accept that? And she had no parents to turn to, no best friend. The jester must have been rubbing his hands together in delight at this gem. You couldn’t put a person through much worse. Well you could. You could put an unwanted baby in her tummy so they couldn’t escape, so they had no choice but to endure. As a desperate attempt to function she told herself the baby inside her was Elisabeth reincarnate. It was the only way that she could get through the day anymore, especially after the will it took not to punch herself in the stomach at the first flutter of butterfly
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