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Chapter 9 of Chimera Book 1 is a very important one to me. I took the decision at the outset of the very first draft of Chimera that the reader’s first experience of the novel should mirror Kyp Finnegan’s – a head-long rush down the rabbit hole, breathless, panicked, sensorially intense – a boy on…
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A short walk along Whitstable’s blustery sea front and you arrive at Tankerton Slopes, a long steep rise of scrubby grass, hog’s fennel and brambles. In the depths of winter, kids sledge down the slopes, speeding down towards the colourful beach huts and the shingle beach. Now, the long unkempt grasses are dry and bleached,…
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It’s 4pm on Sunday afternoon, which means, here in Red’s Kingdom, it’s time once again to gather around the wireless (or more probably your smart phone!) and continue Kyp Finnegan’s adventures in the curious, fantastical realm of Chimera – a world of peril, danger and excitement!
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John Carpenter’s 1978 Halloween is one of my favorite things. Here’s why.
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I was drinking Red Bull and eating handfuls of almonds to sustain me through my long night alone in the sprawling impressive house in which this image was taken. At this point, I’d made it as far as the top of the house, finding myself in a richly wall-papered room blossomed with damp, the ceiling…
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Our garden is full of threads at the moment; the elaborate, death-defying webs of the orb spiders, with their juicy brown bodies. When Graeme Daly over at Gentle Giant offered up the city of Ersilia from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as our starter-for-ten for the Kick-About#13, these spider-webs were utmost in mind’s eye as I…
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It’s always exciting when artist Phil Cooper sends me his new Chimera-themed paintings, not least because Phil has complete freedom in terms of which elements within each chapter he focuses on. For this week’s painting, Phil has chosen an image of the young evacuee mentioned by Atticus Weft when the sock-serpent explains how he first…
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Last time it was fairies and other flights of fancy. I think many of us enjoyed the opportunity for a spot of magical-thinking. This new edition of the Kick-About begins with the no less improbable city of Ersilia, one of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities – a conurbation of string!
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Long Weekend, directed by Colin Eggleston in 1978, is one of my favourite things. Here’s why.
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The clocks have gone back. The weather is rotten. It’s time to get comfortable with a cuppa and biscuit and pick-up where we left off with Kyp Finnegan and Atticus Weft at the mercy of the ankle-snatchers…
Red's Kingdom 