Kirsten Irving, Author at Sidekick Books

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 15

Lots of us are planning on taking in a Christmas movie this December, which seems as good a reason as any to revisit one of our favourite Irregular Features articles, in which The Judge looks at the poetics of the movie trailer.

And by way of a segue, our gif is from The Dead Poets Society. RIP RW.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 13

Our Sidekick Advent Calendar strikes 13, and a small waif knocks at the door!

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope.

Today’s presence is Tiny Tim, in a poem written by Chrissy Williams, author of Twin-Peaks-meets-Cabot-Cove sinispectacular, Angela. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 11

Christmas being a time for magic, we thought we’d share an extract from one of our first micro-anthologies, way back in 2009. Pocket Spellbook was Dr Fulminare’s attempt to travel light, while retaining all of his important charms, curses and rants.

Here, we present a fireside extract to warm your cockles. Enjoy John Clegg‘s ‘Spell For A Furnace’ and the stunning illustrations of Saroj Patel.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 10

Day 10 of our Sidekick Advent Calendar, and it’s time for another ghostly visitation!

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope.

Today’s presence is The Ghost of Christmas Present, in a poem written by Holly Hopkins, whose work has appeared in our Birdbook series and in our games poetry anthology Coin Opera II. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 9

Run for the hills! We have a second visitation from a would-be Christmas monster!

Move over, Krampus!

Seriously, look how sad he is. His little face!

Today’s terror from another realm comes in a deceptively sweet guise. Do not be fooled by the twinset and half-moon specs, not the soothing keep fit videos. This soft-voiced slaughterer has left a horrifying body count in her wake.

Forget Gilles de Rais, Countess Bathory, Vlad the Impaler. Turn your gaze instead to sleepy Cabot Cove, lair of the one they call…

The truth is out. Poet Chrissy Williams and artist Howard Hardiman have written and illustrated Angela, a daring expose of the Artist Formerly Known As Jessica Fletcher. Make no mistake. They are one and the same, and wherever they go, there will be blood… *

*…and sausage dogs. Don’t ask.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 7

Christmas is a time for games, so each Sunday we’ll be hosting an advent quiz! First up, one familiar to those who attended Seven Player Co-op, our Coin Opera II games poetry reading at the Four Quarters Bar…

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 6

Day 6 of our Sidekick Advent Calendar, and, say, do you notice anything strange about that door knocker?

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope.

Today’s visitor is the coffin-nail-esque Jacob Marley, in a poem written by Sidekick editor Jon Stone. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 5

As the Spirit of Christmas Past took Scrooge back in time, so will we now whisk you back to glistening ice, opulence and crowds of people. But this is no party.

The year is 1912 and the location is the RMS Titanic. Sidekick proudly presents two extracts from drowned book and fragmentary masterpiece, The Debris Field, written by Simon Barraclough, Isobel Dixon and Chris McCabe.

Let’s begin with a festive memory.

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 4

What the Dickens? It must be the fourth day of our Sidekick Advent Calendar!

In 2011, we commissioned six splendid poems to print as Christmas cards, starring characters from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Now we’re giving each one away as a download, so you can print them yourself, and have a very moral Christmas (sort of)! Each card will fit a size DL envelope (Hobbycraft does some gorgeous ones).

Today’s star is old Humbug himself, Ebeneezer Scrooge, in a poem written by Ian McLachlan, author of Confronting The Danger of Art. Click here for the printable PDF and get customising your card!

A Sidekick Advent Calendar: Day 1

Well , well, well! Yes, yes, yes! Dr F and Sidekick are counting down to Christmas this year with an array of pleasant and disturbing seasonally-related items to dispense daily from the digital laboratory, via the Sidekick blog, Facebook and Twitter. The ghost-poems (ghoems?) of past, present and future are all accounted for, with previews, revisitations and brand new work all to come. And quizzes too!

On the first day of Christmas (which is technically the 25th December but to this end, it is the 1st), my true love gave to me …

… a partridge in a preview from Birdbook 3. Click here to view in pdf format.

The third and penultimate volume in our ongoing series (full title Birdbook: Farmland. Heathland, Mountain, Moorland) is currently circling a definitive release date early next year, once the good doctor has finished working through snowy reams of hand-written calculations reaching deep into the catacombs. Here’s an exclusive taster – the plump and chestnutty grey partridge, poem by Philip Cowell, paper-cutting by Lois Cordelia, who is also responsible for the book’s cover art.

Author: Kirsten Irving