Emory Lunn
The Vale Family
Two novels about a mother, two sons, and all the things nobody in a family ever says out loud.
Emory Lunn
Two novels about a mother, two sons, and all the things nobody in a family ever says out loud.
Book One · 296 pages
A chef who cannot stop giving. A young man whose life ends in the third quarter of a football game. An eighty-one-year-old woman on a fourth floor who tells her, in February, the truest and hardest thing anybody has ever said to her.
You put your whole self somewhere it's needed, and then there isn't any of you left over for the thing you actually want.
Book Two · 289 pages
A key left on a bar. Four hundred miles. Six months of silence between two people who would not ask each other for anything — and a mother who telephones a stranger every Tuesday and Friday for seven months and never once mentions her own son.
Because if I'd said his name, you'd have come back.
Two novels. 585 pages. Bought separately they are $38.
Both books, with your name printed inside.
This copy was made for — and your name, on its own page at the front. I make it myself and send it to you within two days.
One payment. Nothing recurring, ever.
Pay by card, PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Every option includes, within a minute:
If anything doesn't arrive, write to me and I'll send it myself. There is a person at this address.
I'll write your family's story the same way I wrote theirs.
Where your mother was born. How you met. The year that nearly broke you. What your kitchen smelled like. The one thing you want your grandchildren to know after you're gone.
Not a form letter and not a scrapbook. A proper book, with a cover, written as a story — the way you'd want somebody to tell it about you.
One page about one person.
You give me a name — your mother, your husband, your sister — and a few sentences. I write 400 words about them, in the voice of these books, on a single page with their name at the top. Made to be printed and framed.
Both novels included.
70 to 90 pages. Written from your answers, in ten days.
Both novels included.
150 to 180 pages. Twice the book, and it asks more of you: a second round of questions, and about forty minutes of you talking into your phone. Three weeks.
Both novels included.
Why the longer one costs more of you, not just more money.
A book can only hold what you put into it. Ninety pages comes out of the questions. A hundred and eighty needs your voice — the things people say out loud and would never write down. If you'd rather not do that, take the first one. It is a whole book and nobody will think it is short.
Family books are ordered through my shop, where you can also read what other families have said.
Full refund any time before I begin writing.
Emory Lunn writes quiet family stories about the people who carry things — the small thing somebody did that nobody ever mentioned, and the long life that grew out of it.
If you came here from a YouTube channel, you already know exactly the kind of story I mean.
Thank you for reading them. — E.L.
Yes. Payment is handled by Paddle, a licensed payment company that processes purchases for thousands of businesses. Your card details never touch this website — they go straight to Paddle. You'll get a receipt by email from them.
No. There is no subscription and no repeating payment of any kind. You pay once and that is the end of it.
You don't need to be. After you pay, a page appears with buttons on it — you press a button and the book opens. You'll also get an email with the same buttons, so you can come back to it whenever you like.
And if any of that goes wrong, write to me. I'll send the books to you myself.
Yes, and this is the main reason I made the books this way. On a phone or tablet you can make the text as large as you want. There is also a large-print version you can print at home.
Yes. Every purchase includes a printable version and a large-print version. Take either to a print shop if you'd rather have it bound.
The books: tell me and I'll refund you. No questions and no form to fill in.
A family book: full refund any time before I begin writing. Once I've started I can't undo the work — but I will keep correcting it until it's right, for as long as that takes. That has never yet failed to be enough.
Ten days from the day I receive your answers for the 90-page book. Three weeks for the long one. You'll hear from me twice before then, so you're never sitting wondering.
The novels are finished files — you pay and they arrive in a minute, so they go through my own checkout.
Anything I write by hand for you — a page, a book, a whole life — is made to order, one at a time. Those are ordered through my shop, where the ordering is built for made-to-order things and where you can read what other families have said about theirs. It costs me a little more. It is worth it for you to be able to see the reviews.
Yes, and many people do. Buy it, send the questions to the person it's about, and I'll write to them directly. Or answer the questions about them yourself — that works too, and those books are often the ones that make people cry.