Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

My London Film and Comic Con Schedule

Tomorrow, Saturday, 8th July, I’ll be a guest at London Film and Comic Con. I don’t have a table, but here’s where you can find me:

10am: Signing.

11am: Magical Comics Panel. (With Doctor Strange and Iron Man both celebrating their 60th anniversaries, magic versus tech is still the eternal debate of comic fandom! Join our panel as they dissect the merits and pitfalls of magic in comics, unravelling the conundrum of introducing “real” magic. Is it a stroke of brilliance or a perilous leap? Torunn Grønbekk, Paul Cornell, Erica Schultz, Andy Diggle, Mark Buckingham. Moderator: Irma Page.)

3pm: Signing.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there. Do say hello.

Con and On #1 is Out Next Wednesday! (With Preview Pages!)

Con and On is my new 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 the first few pages here at IGN.

I’ve been doing a ton of press for it, and there are interviews with me up at Villain Media and GVN. (And probably on whatever your favourite comics podcast is.)

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

Con and On #1 is in your comic stores and online digitally next Wednesday, 12th July.

My San Diego Comic Con Schedule So Far

I’ve got a packed San Diego Comic Con this year, and my first two items have already been announced:

Thursday, July 20th at 10am: I’m on an excellent SF/science panel in the Neil Morgan Auditorium at San Diego Central Library: “Home Space: Stories Set in Our Solar System: We are in an age where we are looking to set a permanent habitat on the moon in the next decade and have our eyes set on landing on Mars. How do the rocky worlds that we can actually reach with rocketships and investigate with probes inform creators when spinning fictional tales? How can the real science from exploring our own solar system inspire near-earth space stories? Moderator Emily Lakdawalla (planetary scientist) talks with Corinna Bechko (The Expanse), Cecil Castellucci (Shifting Earth), Paul Cornell (Wild Cards), Brandon Easton (Star Trek: Year Five), and Mark Russell (Traveling to Mars), all of whom have crafted science fiction stories that are set a little bit closer to home.”

Thursday, July 20th at 3pm: I’ll be at the Tor Booth (#2802) to sign copies of my SF novella Rosebud. (You can see the rest of Tor’s programming here.)

The Witches of World War 2 UK Relaunch: July 25th

Given that Amazon UK and UK bookstores still think that’s the release date, I thought I’d just hang on and re-emphasise the book then.

It should now be easy to get your local UK comic shop to order WWW2, though. Just ask them to go to this page on the PreviewsWorld Pullbox.

Forbidden Planet Online has a lovely discount, so order it with them here.

If you’d like the digital edition, Amazon UK has that now.

If you’re in the USA, you can straightforwardly order either version from Amazon in the normal way at this link or from your local book or comic store.

“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.

Witches of Lychford: Night of the Gnomes Has Started!

My new sequel to my bestselling Witches of Lychford rural fantasy series (urban fantasy in the Cotswolds) is in the form of a serial right here on Substack, and lots of episodes are now out there!

On the first four Thursdays of every month, at 5pm BST (or GMT when we get there) paid subscribers will get an episode of the new serial. It’ll run until the end of November, then there’ll be a four-episode Christmas Special, then another new Lychford serial will run until the end of May, 2024. (So those who’ve subscribed for the whole year will get a full year of episodes.)

It’ll be absolutely fine for those who haven’t read the books to start reading with this serial, because we’ll re-introduce the whole concept. (Though you will be spoiled for what’s happened previously.) And paid subscribers can read all the previous episodes too, so you’ll be able to catch up if you join late.

Lychford is a little modern-day market town in the Cotswolds that borders many of the hidden worlds of the supernatural, the lands of the fairy folk, of demons, of a whole array of magical creatures. Protecting it are three very different women. There’s a lot of comedy in this series, mostly about the clash between everyday life and the world of magic, but there’s also some dark heartfelt emotional stuff and some real-world commentary on what life in such a town is like right now (because I live in such a town).

I’ve missed writing about Lizzie, Autumn, new coven member Zoya and their increasingly-large supporting cast of town councillors, pensioners and creatures of the night. I’m also looking forward to the rollercoaster of having to put fingers to keyboard on a regular basis.

To get this Lychford serial, just subscribe to the paid option on this Newsletter. It’s $8/month or $80/year.

And of course you’ll always get the Friday Newsletter and exclusive subscriber content for free. (And I don’t share your email address with anyone.)

If you’d like to catch up on the Lychford series up to now, five novellas have been published by Tor.com. You can find them all here at Bookshop.org and support UK indie bookstores, or here are links to the first one at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

And if you want to see the last story about my three heroines, it’s a Christmas story from a few years back, available for free here on my blog!

I’m looking forward to my adventure into serial fiction.

If you want to read the Prologue to Witches of Lychford: Night of the Gnomes, you can find it here for free.

Project: Cryptid

Ahoy comics have a new comedy horror anthology series coming out in September, Project: Cryptid, with a variety of stories by great creators concerning mysterious beasts. I have a story with the great monster artist P.J. Holden in the first issue (and another with a different artist in a later issue). You can read all about it here at Screen Rant, with a list of the other contributors and some choice quotes and art. I love being part of Ahoy’s bouncy, fun, extra-packed series, and this one looks excellent. (And it also features the first comics work of my urban fantasy writer friend Melissa F. Olson!) Project Cryptid #1 will be in your comic stores and out digitally on 6th September!

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 June episode being about 1972’s Vampire Circus. 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.

(Lovely poster, but can you spot the hidden, err… shapes?)

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!

My Linktree

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!

My Week

Really quite a great week. Firstly, for the first time in over a decade, I got to play cricket. On Wednesday evening I turned out for the Floggers and Sloggers social cricket club who were on that occasion playing, err, the USAF. Yes. Incredibly, we won, and so are now one of the few entities who can say we’ve defeated the United States Air Force. (Okay, so it was a handful of them from the local airbase who’d never played cricket before. I’ll take it. Take that, military industrial complex!) I only scored one run before seeing a newbie bowler waft a complete gift of a ball in my direction, tonking it hard, and seeing it, to my horror, head straight into the hands of a waiting fielder. I did, however, take two catches, one of which was a high ball that required me to run backwards and judge my leap. I was delighted as I landed hard on my backside, the ball clutched in my hand.

Quite a lot of beer was consumed before and during the game, and I was looking forward to ‘after’ as well when I wandered back into the pavillion, took my phone from my bag and saw, to my surprise, that I was due to appear on a podcast to promote Con and On… in eight minutes.

Reader, I made that interview on time. I made my apologies and sprinted back across the park, cricket bag in hand. And I’m absolutely sure those who listen to several comics podcasts won’t be able to discern which is the episode in question. The PR folk for C&O have been amazing, lining up loads of interviews for me both in print and in person, and they’d only dropped the ball, as it were, on this one occasion by scheduling something without my prior knowledge.

This has also been the week of urgent and exciting San Diego prep. I should have my full schedule for you next week, and if I may be so bold I’m going to experiment by sending out Substack notes to you an hour before each of my items. I have my first meetings and party invites sorted, and am watching the schedule appear on the website day by day. It takes quite a lot of work to have this much fun.

I’ve also got two exciting Zoom meetings lined up next week about completely new projects. It’s good to see green shoots appearing.

Thomas this week went on a school outing to a living museum, where it seems he experienced a Victorian school room and saw a Victorian sweet shop. (The latter is all we’ve heard about the trip from him, except that he described the whole thing, in his autistic manner of taking dialogue from TV shows, as ‘a great adventure’.) I feel like this year in San Diego I may be embarking on a great adventure too.

To Be Continued

I hope to see some of you at LFCC tomorrow, and in a couple of weeks, on the Rialto in San Diego!