As those of you who read that surprise midweek Newsletter will have seen, I’m delighted to announce that my comics series with artist Ryan Kelly Saucer Country, about a US Presidential candidate who’s abducted by aliens, has been optioned as a TV series! You can read the announcement with all the details here at Deadline. Much more on this over the coming months, of course.

Rachael Smith, the artist of Who Killed Nessie? went on BBC Radio Leicester’s Ady Dayman show to talk about our British Book Award nomination. If you live in the UK, you can hear her here (about 1 hour and 49 minutes in).

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.

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!

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.

Best Fancast: Telefantasy Time Jump.

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

Thanks!

My adaptation of Iain M. Banks’ The State of the Art is once again available on BBC Sounds (I believe that’s in the UK only, sorry).

It stars the late Sir Antony Sher, Nina Sosanya and Paterson Joseph, and was produced and directed by my frequent BBC audio collaborator, the great Nadia Molinari. Iain himself was heavily involved in the production, approving the script and being delighted by Sir Antony’s casting in particular. The result is one of the pieces of work I’m most proud of.

You can find it here (until 5th April).

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.

My company Cosmic Lighthouse is publishing its first graphic novel this summer: 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’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!

So that was another big week in terms of managing social media, given another big announcement! (There are three more big announcements to come and two smaller ones, though it’d be impolitic of me to label them as such when they arrive. I’m uncertain as to how soon any of the others will get announced, except to say they’re all happening this year.) Work-wise, during all that I’ve been finishing the first issue of an as-yet-unannounced comics series and sending in the second draft of the official sequel novel. (Both of which are relevant to those big announcements.)

The Saucer Country thing is huge, and it’s a great pleasure for a comics writer to be included in the writing of the TV show. (I knew that cross-media profile would count for something one day.) I like the producers, and how much they know about and are invested in the graphic novel. Having Chris Ryall about to provide his specialist knowledge builds a bridge also. All in all I couldn’t be more pleased. Now there will come a lot of hard work as I write that pilot and help plot the season.

Now that Spring has arrived (and with it a big boost to my mood, as always) I’ve started to take my telescope out into the garden on a regular basis. I’m pleased to still be able to see Jupiter and its moons. I’ve started to look into the business of using my phone to take some photographs through the telescope, so I might have those to show you soon.

Thomas, to my great pleasure, having agreed with his drum teacher Hannah that he would continue to rehearse the beats to Ed Sheeran’s ‘Azizam’ at home, after our weekly visit to the Arboretum on Sunday rushed upstairs, shut himself away and did just that. There’s still some distance between that and him playing for pleasure, but I was relieved and delighted by his willingness to use the unfamiliar home kit. He also took a look down the telescope the other night, but seemed nonplussed by Jupiter. Of course, I don’t know what his focal length is, and turning the focus while getting any sort of useful response from him… this is hard to explain to those who don’t have a special needs kid. I do hope he got something out of it, however. One day I’ll find something that unites our passions.

Today I’m going to be a guest on a podcast I think you might recognise!

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