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 Monday, 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 April are The Champions and Land of the Giants.

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!

In some ways it’s been a very challenging week. I spent a lot of it dealing with what, in retrospect, I think was the most extreme depression I’ve ever encountered. The texture of reality felt different. ‘It feels like I might be already dead,’ I said to Caroline, in a moment which I didn’t mean to sound as spooky as that. What I was trying to get at was that the standard background feeling of, I don’t know, the world, had been replaced by a completely different sensation. Perhaps ‘like I’m in another dimension’ would have been a better way to put it. Nothing was important, there was nothing to look forward to, everything was painful and I was continually anxious and angry. Sleep seemed to have a strange texture to it, and became very important, somehow deeper.

And then, on Wednesday, the feeling was suddenly gone. It was there a little when I woke up, but then, blissfully, reality was back to normal. I’m still luxuriating in the absence of pain.

Work-wise, I’ve been writing character notes for Saucer Country, on reduced hours because Thomas is on school holidays. Reasons to be cheerful: seeing the recovered ‘Daleks’ Masterplan’ episodes of Doctor Who this morning (see my Bluesky feed for what I thought); the County Championship cricket begins today and I have my fantasy team ready. The Artemis mission has also enthused me. NASA feels like its old self in the midst of an administration that doesn’t align with its values. ‘Where no one has gone before’ feels wonderful right now. When the crew first said ‘Houston-’ I burst into tears.

But the biggest reasons to be cheerful: Thomas has been loving returning to the Lego workshop this week, going on several days to keep working on an enormous Technic build of a helicopter. He’s very pleased about the cogwheels. We’re going back today. And yesterday, he and I walked to the bridge by the old mill to see if we could find the swans on the river. They were right there, and Tom stayed put for about 45 minutes, watching them and the ducks, with me talking to him about the birds and the river. It was the most sustained interest I’ve seen from him about something outside his specialist autistic subjects. I felt very nourished by it. We only went home when he decided it was time to get lunch.

I have so much to look forward to, and so much love in my life. I know, however, that how I felt earlier in the week is chemical, and not about my circumstances. I can only hope it stays away. But I have some good memories to hold tight to if it doesn’t.

Next week Thomas is still on holiday. We’ll go see the swans again.

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