For those of you nominating for the Hugo Awards, or any other sort of awards, please consider the following from me and mine:

Best Novella: Gnomes of Lychford. Published by Tordotcom Publishing.

Best Graphic Story: Who Killed Nessie? by me and Rachael Smith. Published by Avery Hill. (And I’ve nominated Free Planet vol.1 by Aubrey Sitterson and Jed Dougherty.)

Best Fancast: Telefantasy Time Jump.

Best Fan Writer: I’ll be nominating Lizbeth Myles for her excellent blog.

Thanks!

My partner on Telefantasy Time Jump Lizbeth Myles and I have written a comic strip together! It’s going to be one of the stories in Flash Gordon Quarterly #7, from Mad Cave, with the great Georges Jeanty on art! It’ll be out on April 29th (so please order from your local comic shop before the 6th), or you can order it direct from the publisher here.

I’m going to keep this here until Rachael Smith and I discover if we’ve won! (With our cosy comedy cryptozoological whodunnit graphic novel.)

The ceremony takes place on 11th May, and you can see the shortlist here.

And if you want to buy Nessie, you can get it here from the publisher, Avery Hill, or direct from me, signed and personalised.

My company Cosmic Lighthouse is publishing its first graphic novel: Salvation’s Child.

Salvation’s Child is the graphic novel Prologue to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s best-selling SFF novel series The Final Architecture. (So new readers can start here!) It’s by Adrian himself, artist Mike Collins, colour artist Pippa Bowland and letterer Simon Bowland. We’re publishing it together with our partners ComiXology.

Check out these pre-order links at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

And you can find Cosmic Lighthouse at this link on Instagram.

Salvation’s Child will now be released by ComiXology Originals on 26th May!

Up for pre-order now, and out on 16th June is The Lychford Collection 2, featuring my fourth, fifth and sixth Lychford novellas!

I’m one of a whole bunch of comickers contributing to Legendary Comics’ Monarch: The Lost Adventures, a graphic novel anthology which tells stories in the continuity of the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters TV series. (And we stick very closely to the lore.) My story, which I loved writing, concerns Bill Randa’s wartime encounter with the Ion Dragon, and is wonderfully rendered by Drew Zucker and Brad Simpson on art and colour art. The anthology is out on 14th July, and is up for pre-order now!

Because I’ve still got some copies of Who Killed Nessie? and a couple of other books, I decided I’d take a table at a new comics event in Gloucester. Comics Assemble isn’t a ‘comic con’, but a proper comics festival, with Jim Zub as a guest. It’s on August 15th, at Gloucester Leisure Centre. You can find all the details at the link.

Tickets will cost £10 for adults, but I’ve got 10 to give away! All you have to do is email me at [email protected] with the subject heading Comics Assemble. One each, first ten to email get them!

I’m writing the dialogue for a forthcoming comic based on the Summoner Wars game! The new comic is plotted by Justin Zimmerman, with art by Patrick Macchi, colouring by Mo Hollowell, a story by Plaid Hat Games, and covers by Plaid Hat’s Martin Abel. Battle Quest Comics is bringing the new release to stores this September. You can read all about it at Screen Rant here, and see some sample finished pages at AIPT here!

I’m once more a guest at the Thought Bubble convention in Harrograte this year on November 14th-15th, with Lizbeth Myles as always (she should have her own comics titles to sell this year!), and alongside our own table there’ll be one for my comics company, Cosmic Lighthouse!

I’ve re-stocked my Ko-fi online store, with all my current works, which you can get cheaper than anywhere else, plus you can have them signed and personalised! Right now, it’s just for UK residents, but that’ll change as I sort out international postage.

The new podcast from me and Lizbeth Myles covers the history of SFF on TV, from 1953 onward, with our regular episodes (on the 14th of every month) covering a show released that year in the UK, and the Patron Bonus episodes (on the 28th) covering a show from the rest of the world. The shows for March are The Prisoner and Princess Knight.

The main episode is available free wherever you get your podcasts. To get the bonus episode, you need to follow us on Patreon at £3/$3 or above. (And you get access to seven years of Hammer House of Podcast bonus episodes!) You can find all the info here.

You can now find all my social media links, my website/blog and links to where you can buy my books, in one place here, thanks to Linktree!

Alex Segura has a new Daredevil novel out now from Hyperion Ave/Disney/Marvel, Enemy of My Enemy. "Daredevil has to defend one of his deadliest foes, who is on trial for the murder of his worst enemy! When Daredevil realizes there's more to the death of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, than he first thought - he has to become Frank Castle's defense attorney by day, and try to prevent a bloody gang war from engulfing Hell's Kitchen by night. It's a gritty, hardboiled crime novel.” You can read all about it and order here.

Aubrey Sitterson and Jed Dougherty are making a final push for a Hugo Award nomination with their excellent Free Planet, vol.1, a very SFnal geopolitical space opera. If you have a spare Graphic Story nomination going, this is a great use of it!

And SF novelist Gareth L. Powell is moving into horror with two forthcoming books from Titan. Unleashed will be out in August 2027 and Afloat will follow in March 2028!

It’s been very exciting! I had my first Saucer Country creative meeting on Tuesday, talking about the beats of the first episode, and heard much good news about how the project’s coming together. It’s such a good team. I couldn’t be happier. Then on Wednesday I went into London to meet with a bunch of comicker friends, all of whom had been summoned to a particular pub by a particular publisher, in town on a mission. It was great to have a proper sit down (and lots of laughter) with Rachael Stott and Kieron Gillen, amongst many others.

Thomas has been looking forward to his school holidays next week, anticipating visits to the Lego workshop and going bowling, but I also have a more ambitious plan about perhaps taking him somewhere that requires an overnight stay and thus expanding his world a bit more. He’s very reticent about changes to his routine, but he sometimes surprises me. The other day, mind you, when I suggested we could see a movie at home on the TV (because he doesn’t like the loudness and intensity of the cinema) he cut the conversation short by just sprinting out of the room. I might start to do that in future.

Next week it’s one of my favourite times of the year. Cricket is back!

And I hope to see you all here again next week!