In the last few months of 2009 we asked people to help us publicise Chinese Whisperings by twittering and encouraging people to come to the site and acquaint themselves with the writers, their stories and the project in general, and comment or ask questions.

As a deal sweetener we threw in The Red Book Reversed which is a special edition, electronic copy of the anthology told backwards – thus major characters bleed into the background, becoming minor characters from story to story.

It came about after an editorial bungle which saw a new writer come on board while Paul and I were both away from home. When I sent through the stories I didn’t think to say which order the stories actually ran in. When I returned home there were some questions waiting for me in my inbox about how the stories went together – one character seemed out of place.

I realised, the stories had been read out of order – but it gave Paul and I the spark of an idea – what would happen if you read the stories backwards? Would a new and unique narrative emerge?

You can decide.

The Red Book Reversed has a unique front cover and an afterword which doesn’t appear anywhere else. It is worth owning a copy just for the afterword alone.

For those of you who missed out on winning a copy last year, there are two copies left to go to new Twitter followers.