'For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me...'

Sheridan Le Fanu's seductive tale of the world's first female vampire, Carmilla, has been the inspiration for countless films, TV series and books since its publication in 1872. It led directly to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), as well as a plethora of movie adaptations, notably Vampyr (1932) and The Vampire Lovers (1970). Indeed, 2011 will see not one but two big screen adaptations of the story: Carmilla starring Jennifer Ellison and Styria starring Stephen Rea.

But what none of these adaptations has done, or will be able to do, is to tell the whole story as Sheridan Le Fanu intended it to be told. Until now.

I run a bespoke audiobook company called Textbook Stuff, which specialises in producing unabridged audiobooks of classic works of literature, brought to life by state of the art sound design and incidental music. We have one of the best sound designers in the business, Howard Carter, who creates everything from scratch in order to produce a unique audio experience, where listeners are able to immerse themselves utterly in the world of the story. And we'd very much like to use all our expertise to resurrect Carmilla, so she can thrill a new generation of literature lovers and horror aficionados.

Understandably, making an audiobook of this nature is an expensive process and that's where you come in. With your help, we will hire a world class reader - previous Textbook Stuff readers have included Martin Jarvis, Miriam Margolyes, John Sessions, Andrew Sachs and David Soul - and produce an unabridged audiobook for download distribution on iTunes, Amazon MP3 and elsewhere.

If you invest in us, we can guarantee a top quality audiobook before the year is out. We already have eight titles available, including works by Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, M.R. James and Edgar Allan Poe, and we'd like to add Carmilla to our stable.

Everyone who invests, no matter how little, will get some goodies by way of a thank you. These range from special access to behind-the-scenes material on our web site, through to us actually recording a 30-minute audiobook of your choosing! (We may subsequently release this commercially, but you get to choose the text - so long as the author is out of copyright - and you will be the first person to have a copy of it.) Anyone pledging £15 or more will have free access their own download copy of the finished Carmilla audiobook.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. It's such an exciting project and we'd love to have you on board.

Barnaby Edwards
producer at Textbook Stuff

Barnaby has been working in radio and voice over for more than twenty years. His credits include Dostoevsky (BBC Radio Four), Cultural Baggage (BBC Radio Three), Manfred, A Pinch Of Sage And Dredly, numerous commercials and over 100 episodes of the audio series of Doctor Who, for which he also writes and directs. On stage, Barnaby has appeared in plays by Alan Ayckbourn, Ray Cooney, Brian Clemens and others, as well as numerous Shakespeare productions both on tour and in the West End, including Romeo and Juliet (as Mercutio), Twelfth Night (as Malvolio), As You Like It (as Touchstone), A Midsummer Night's Dream (as Quince), Macbeth (as Banquo) and most recently as Rugby in Shakespeare's Globe's hit production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. His screen credits include Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian thriller Children of Men, EastEnders, The Giblet Boys and Doctor Who (as principal Dalek Operator since 2005). He also voices various characters in the animated children's series Orsum Island. BBC Radio 7 recently broadcast a brand new adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera which Barnaby wrote, directed and produced.