November Update!

Here's Dr Fulminare as a pumpkin. It's hard to make out, but he's even got his hat on.

So where are we, two months before the end of the year? On the Fuselit front, we are, as ever, somewhat vexed. My creative solution to our long run of failing home printers was to outsource the pages to a printing company, who would print and cut (but not bind) them and send them back to us for sewing and adding the covers. The company we used have always been reliable before, but for a reason not yet entirely clear to us (although initially it was problems with their printers!) it's now coming up to three weeks since we were supposed to see a proof. I guess I'll phone them up again after I've finished writing this update. Hopefully, the curse of Fuselit hasn't destroyed all their equipment as well.

It's fair to say we have to make some changes to people's expectations with Fuselit. So I'll say this now, and convey it clearly in the new site when it goes live: Fuselit cannot keep to a schedule. It is, as I say, cursed. Your poems may be stuck with us for a year or more while we struggle to get the thing rolling. We will get there eventually, but only though sheer bloody-mindedness.

Things are more positive and exciting on the Sidekick Books front. We're just about to launch our first pamphlet (an artist/poet team-up), scheduled at the moment for mid-November. I'm getting towards the finishing stages of a new site that will incorporate its own blog (albeit it will just be a mirror to this one!), feature a new, simpler layout and hopefully be more welcoming to newcomers. There'll be a link on the front page to whatever we've uploaded lately to our Sidekick Flicks youtube channel, which we aim to populate with readings from our books and interesting audio-visual poetical experiments. Dr F is also getting his own Twitter feed.

Bookswise, we're still aiming to realise Coin Opera 2 before Christmas, although I can make no promises. Birdbook 2 commissions are rolling in at a good rate now, which means it's on target for an April/May release next year. After that, it's all top secret but very exciting.

Besides all this, we have begun, in recent months, a very productive relationship with the chaps at giveapoem.com. If I wasn't up to my eyeballs in ... well, everything, I would have blogged a lot more about this recently. Kirsty and I are now programming the poetry content of their amazing We Eat Poets fine-cuisine-and-entertainment nights, and the recent Hallowe'en special was a huge success, with Mike West and Abigail Parry delivering blistering sets. The next one is a Christmas special on 14th December with Simon Barraclough and Niall O'Sullivan.

And that's just the start. Stay tuned for more news, including a very exciting competition we'll be co-running ...