Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

So here we go, first Friday Newsletter on the new platform! If you’re new to this (and lots of you are) I’ll be sharing all my work news, and then there’s a section called My Week (which is often about the ups and downs associated with being the parent of an autistic child). It’s a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Long-term readers, welcome back, and thank you so much for sticking around. (I don’t think we lost *anyone*!)

Witches of World War 2 is Out Now! (Plus: Win a Digital Copy! And an apology to UK readers for some confusion.)

#ThisMagicKillsFascists

My new original graphic novel from TKO Studios, The Witches of World War 2, is in your comic shops and book stores now, physically and digitally. But UK readers could be forgiven for thinking that’s not true, but Amazon UK is still saying the physical edition isn’t out until July. TKO are aware of the problem and working on it, indeed they’ve already fixed it with Amazon US, but my apologies to UK readers, and rest assured that if you order now you’ll get your copies way before July. In the meantime, comic shop and bookstore orders should be fine.

The artists on this project are Valeria Burzo (pencils) and Jordie Bellaire (colours) and they’re both amazing.

This is the story of five real life figures (Doreen Valiente, Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Dion Fortune, Rollo Ahmed) from the British magical community in the 1940s, historical fiction rather than fantasy, though I keep the question of whether magic is real unresolved. I’m very proud of the research I put in, consulting with the Doreen Valiente Foundation (Doreen being our lead character) and others in the UK occult community. I certainly take our heroes on an adventure into Nazi-occupied Europe they didn’t have in real life, but I also feature a lot of real events, and I think portray them as they’d want to be seen. (Except Crowley, who I doubt one could ever please in this regard.)

We’re already getting some great reviews:

‘Excellent… you don’t want to mess with these witches.’ (5 stars) – SFX Magazine.

‘Vengefully imaginative…Full of sharp knife twists, proving yet again that Cornell is a storyteller to cherish.’ – Chuck Wendig.

‘Paul Cornell has foraged some highly-charged elements from the historical record — and brewed up something magikal.’ – Matthew Sweet.

You can read all about the book, and see more finished pages here.

You can order The Witches of World War 2 from Bookstore.org in the UK, helping out independent bookshops. You can find that link (and all my other books they have) here.

And you can find the book on Amazon US (right now) and Amazon UK (asap) at those links.

Here’s our blurb:

“Inspired by a true story, writer Paul Cornell (Doctor Who, Saucer Country), artist Valeria Burzo, (Castle Full of Blackbirds) and color artist Jordie Bellaire (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pretty Deadly) introduce a coven of witches embarking on a mission to help defeat the Nazis…with magic!

In the darkest hours of World War II, Doreen Valiente (then known as Doreen Dominy), an expert on British folklore and the occult, is approached by British intelligence at Bletchley Park who tell her they know she’s a witch…and that’s how she can best serve her country.

Together with the ‘most evil man in the world’, a hard-nosed white witch, the grizzled founder of Wicca, and a professional exorcist and con man, Valiente will travel deep into the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe and gamble her life, her belief, and her powers on a mission to help capture Rudolf Hess, second in command to Adolf Hitler himself.”

I’m so proud of this book, and love the 1940s glamour and detail Valeria and Jordie have brought to it. It’s a passionate story about fighting fascism with all one’s heart and how the small things of life are precious in the face of tyranny.

And you can win yourself a digital copy!

To win one of five digital copies of The Witches of World War 2, just send the answer to the following question to [email protected] before midnight on Tuesday, 2nd May. The winners will be revealed on next week’s blog:

Name one of the real-life characters depicted on the cover of Witches of World War 2.

Good luck!

Two Convention Appearances

I’m going to be at Portsmouth Comic Con on Saturday, 3rd June and London Film and Comic Con on Saturday, 8th July. Do come along and say hello!

Find my Books at Bookshop.Org and Help Out Indie Booksellers!

Bookshop.org is a collective selling tool that sets up a marketplace for all indie bookstores in the UK, functioning exactly like Amazon, except you’re supporting your local bookshop. You can find a selection of my books here, and I get a little cut of the proceeds too if you order from here!

Download My Horror Audio Drama for Free!

My horror radio play Something in the Water, directed by Nadia Molinari and starring James Nickerson, part of the All the Dark Corners series, is back on the BBC Sounds app, available for download, for free, anywhere in the world, at the above link. It’s about a sceptic who encounters a community with a lake monster, and I’m very proud of it.

I’ve Got a Story in Weird Tales #367

I’m proud to say I have a story in a forthcoming issue of that most renowned of genre magazines, Weird Tales, which is 100 years old this month. Not only that, but I share the issue with Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola, on a new Hellboy story, and the great Ramsey Campbell. Weird Tales #367 ships in May, and can be pre-ordered here, where you can also read about the rest of this fabulous issue. (I wonder who else has had a piece in both WT and The Cricketer? Maybe Conan Doyle?)

Fairford Festival Book Fest 2023

I retired as the organiser of Fairford’s literary festival last year, but I’m delighted to report that my successor has put together a brilliant line-up, including Emma Reeves, Paul Martin and Dom Joly, for this year’s re-christened event, which is on 9th-10th June as part of the larger Fairford Festival. I’ll be there, cheering them on. You can pre-order tickets here.

Con and On is in Previews, and All Over the Comics Media!

Con and On is my forthcoming series from Ahoy Comics with artist Marika Cresta. It’s a tragicomic satire of five decades of the world’s biggest comics festival, and the industry that parties there. This is a heartfelt insider comedy history of the rollercoaster that is the comics industry, with bite but also with love. It’s about the romance of every big convention, the bittersweet journey through time and success, the highs and the lows and the silliness. It’s the story of every fan and every pro and everyone who’s just trying to make a buck in the midst of extremity. Through the narratives of our large cast of characters we see, in miniature, the story of the last few decades of modern comics: how some things have changed and how some things have stayed exactly the damn same.

You can read all about it here at Broken Frontier. (And in loads of other pleaces too, because we’re getting serious coverage!)

And here’s the link to Previews, with all the ordering info.

Con and On #1 is out on 12th July.

Secret Invasion

I’m writing the novel of the acclaimed Marvel comic series Secret Invasion, which was originally written by Brian Michael Bendis with art (on the main title) by Leinil Francis Yu. The novel will be covering the central mini-series of that name, plus lots of excursions into the other comics involved in the crossover, my own Captain Britain and MI-13 included. I’m excited to be once again grappling with the Marvel Universe. The novel will be out from Titan on 9th September, and you can read all the details here at Forces of Geek.

And you can now pre-order the book from Amazon UK and Amazon US at those links.

Hammer House of Podcast

Hammer House of Podcast, in which myself and Lizbeth Myles watch the Hammer horror movies in UK release order, is out on the 13th of every month, with our April episode being about 1971’s Twins of Evil. You can get these episodes free wherever you normally get your podcasts, as well as on our site, but if you sign up to our Patreon, for any sum of money from £1/$1, you get an extra episode every month too, on the 27th, in which we watch Patron requested movies and films from other horror studios of the same era.

We’re also now offering advertising slots (on the regular episodes only) to anyone who’s got something they’d like to sell to that highly engaged audience. If you’d like to ask us about advertising something of yours, just drop us a line at [email protected] with HHoP in the subject line. (We reserve the right to not take your ad for any reason.)

My New-Look Website and Geek Radio

Check out my new -look website! It’s still a work in progress, but I think it looks great. Every Sunday on there I feature my Geek Radio blog, listing geeky BBC speech radio delights, downloadable for free worldwide, in the coming week.

My Linktree

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

My Online Store is Mothballed

I have an online store at Ko-Fi, where right now you can put some coins in my tipjar if you like, but there’s no stock, because of several conventions coming up where I’ll need something to put on my table! At some point in the future I hope to balance the needs of online and right there customers, sorry!

The Work of Friends

This is the section where I feature things my freelancer friends have been up to, and what with recent disruption to the Newsletter, it’s backed up a bit, so there are a few items this week.

Jump Leads is an SF audio comedy series, starring Marissa Meizel and Ben Paddon (who also created the show). Wide-eyed Meaney and perpetual cynic Llewellyn are Cadets in the Lead Service, an organization that has appointed itself police of the whole of the Multiverse. And, as luck would have it, they’re the first Cadets in decades to go on actual field-training exercises in actual, proper parallel Universes.

Guided by their chaperone, the eccentric but capable Captain Lucas, their journey into alternate Universes will see them encountering rampaging aliens, bloodthirsty gods, and one-or-more robots of varying degrees of deadliness. But it’s not all bad! Probably!

Based on the critically-acclaimed webcomic which ran from 2007 to 2013 and was positively compared to shows like Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Jump Leads is everything you love about your favourite British science-fiction series* wrapped up in one big comedy bundle.

*Blake’s 7 not included.

There are three days left to support Won’t Back Down an (already successfully crowdfunded) comics anthology from Zoop in support of Planned Parenthood, featuring such greats as Trina Robbins, Christopher Golden and Alison Sampson. It’s a worthy cause and a great line-up.

And finally, my friend the great novelist Geoff Ryman has a new book coming out. Him, which I’ve had the pleasure of reading, is an extraordinary science-fiction novel about identity, divinity and alternate reality. Here’s the blurb:

‘Women, of course, can not be sons of God.’

‘In the village of Nazareth, virgin Maryam and the wife of Yosef barLevi gives birth to a miracle: a little girl. She is named Avigayil, after her grandmother.

But as Avigayil grows, it’s clear she believes that she is destined to be someone greater than just the daughter of Maryam. From leading a gang of village boys to challenging the priests in the temple, Avigayil is determined to find her way as Yeshu, a man.

Yeshu can work miracles. He can see futures. He can speak for God.

A gripping, thoughtful SF novel, tackling family, the multiverse and the survival of love through immense change and crisis.’

It’s sure to get Geoff in trouble, but it’ll be good trouble.

It’s out on December 5th, and, US readers, if you order from Barnes & Noble before then, at this link, using the code PREORDER25, you get a 25% discount.

My Week

So, new readers, this bit sometimes is something of an emotional rollercoaster, because it’s where I talk honestly about what it’s like being the parent of a ten year old autistic boy, my son Thomas. This guy:

Regular readers will know things have been especially difficult lately, with Thomas struggling to adapt to the increasing demands of Year Five at his school. But this week has been a lot more positive. He was struggling with attempting to ride a bike, and very angry with us for having retired his (far too small now, with stabilisers) model and put it away in the garage. We’d visited a local bike seller, and got one that fit him, with no stabiliserss, and a beat-up £10 wreck without pedals, that the seller suggested would be a good balance bike for him to practice on, getting the hang of the shape while being able to scoot himself along using his feet. It was the amazing Nanny Louise who suggested we might skip that stage, and took Thomas out onto the back lawn on his proper new book, holding onto him as he pedalled (and he even took a short stretch without support!) So this week my wife Caroline and I have taken turns supporting him as he rode his proper bike to school, and he’s getting the hang of it. (Though the next challenge will be, for this individual who very much likes his established routines, to get him to balance on his own.)

The game of Ball has also improved my own relationship with Tom this week. We have a whole evening routine with him, where we watch exactly the same TV shows (half an hour of CBBC, usually hilariously serious teen dance soap The Next Step, then Richard Osman’s House of Games, then an old Top of the Pops, then cricket) and do the same things before bed. As part of that, he always had a burst of Tickling with Mummy, where Caroline has an evolving game of making him laugh, but I didn’t have a similar bonding thing with him until a couple of weeks ago, when he started taking a football out to the trampoline in the garden. I have to throw it to him as he bounces, he then kicks it back. He started to follow some secret rules of his own, involving successfully kicking it back several times in a row. I found being there for him until he decided the game was over really satisfying. It was great to be able to give him my full attention on something we could both enjoy. But then, when his stress about the bike got to its worst point, he had an evening where he pursued the achievement of twenty successful kicks in a row, and got furious at himself (and me) when he couldn’t do it, driving himself way too hard. (I know, chip off the old block.) I came back inside miserable that our bonding experience had become another stress-making situation. But things got swiftly better after that, and last night, after we’d played for ten minutes, I asked him what the score was. ‘I don’t know, Daddy,’ he replied, and he looked puzzled when I was so pleased about that.

Work-wise this week, I’ve been delighted that my agent has sent out my big SF novel to many publishers, and we’re now waiting to hear the results. I’ve been working away on my spec US TV script, which my manager says is nearly there. I’ve sorted out our hotel room for San Diego Comic Con (phew!) and there have been the usual exciting meetings. Plus, I got to enjoy the launch day for WWW2!

To Be Continued

There you go! It’s usually a bit shorter than this, I promise. Thanks for coming along on this journey with me.

I hope to see you all next week!