Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

New Book Announcement: Gnomes of Lychford!

On 9th September, Tor.com Publishing is releasing the sixth book in my Lychford series of rural fantasy novellas, Gnomes of Lychford. It’s a re-editing of the serial I ran on this newsletter, and I’ve taken the opportunity to sort out a couple of little plot problems.

I think it’s my best Lychford book, and, weirdly, it’s a great jumping-on point, because everything about the series is explained at the start.

You can read all about it here.

“An unlikely group of supernatural creatures terrorizes the sleepy village of Lychford. Okay, they're gnomes. That's not a spoiler: you worked it out it from the title. When an ancient prophecy clashes with an unfortunate modern design aesthetic, the people of Lychford must band together to put out fires (both literal and metaphorical) to save their town before the king of the Gnomes (King Greg, and it's dangerous to laugh at a gnome) calls in the terms of an old promise.

Trouble is: no one knows what the promise is, nor how to fulfil it.

It's going to be a long night.”

(Cover design by FORT.)

If You’re a Telefantasy Time Jump Patron, Watch Space Command With Us!

The first episode of the new podcast from me and Lizbeth Myles, Telefantasy Time Jump, is out now. In this series, every month we’ll be covering a show from the history of UK Science Fiction and Fantasy TV, as we make our way through that history, starting with 1953 and The Quatermass Experiment. We also cover all the many UK SF TV shows from before 1953, and talk about what else was being made in the genre in the UK in that year.

Episodes will be released on the 14th of every month, and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

If you become a Patron at £3/$3 or above, you also get an extra monthly episode on the 28th of every month, covering what the rest of the world was doing in SFF TV in that same year. For 1953, on January 28th, we’ll be covering the young James Doohan in the Canadian show Space Command. (You also get access to seven years of bonus episodes from the Hammer House of Podcast archive.) You can watch the only remaining episode of Space Command here.

We hope you’ll join us on our new journey. You can find all the details, and listen to the episodes, here.

Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers

I have a new short story in a new original anthology, Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers, edited by Jendia Gammon and Gareth L. Powell, and I’m alongside a stellar group of authors, including Adrian Tchaikovsky, David Quantick, Stark Holborn and Lizbeth Myles! The book is out on February 11th, and is available for pre-order from all these different vendors!

There’s also an in-store event featuring many of the authors at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy bookstore on February 22nd at 2pm!

For Your Awards Consideration

The project I’ve had out in 2024 that I’d like to put forward for any award nominations you might be considering this year is The Complete(d) Saucer Country by myself and artist Ryan Kelly, published by Image. (It’s weird not to have put out anything that would qualify for the Scribe Awards, but having had a Hugo Awards Best Graphic Story or Comic run last year I might have a shot there.) Thanks very much for considering it.

My Ko-fi and eBay Stores Re-Stocked!

I’ve re-stocked my Ko-fi store, where you can buy my books and comics, signed and personalised, for shipping worldwide.

Similarly, I’ve now re-stocked my ebay store, full of Bronze Age Marvel comics at bargain prices.

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!

The Work of Friends

My friend the writer (and bookshop maven) Danie Ware has a new book out in her ECKO fantasy universe, Lugan Vision Quest. These are always a good time.

“An ageing biker (who's had enough of your shit), a fuckton of psychotropics and a Shamanic pathwalking, right back into ECKO's fantasy world. What could possibly go wrong?”

You can find it here.

My Week

This week, while trying not to be pummelled by the news from the US, I’ve been working hard on the fantasy novel. Working on prose is something that gives me a good feeling of freedom and control. Besides that, I’ve been doing regular exercise, with one of those TV trainer apps (Mvmnt, which I can recommend). Unfortunately, during one of the routines, I got a noseful of carpet dust, resulting in a two-day sinus headache that’s now being relieved by nasal sprays. (You can imagine that, before I knew what that was, I was pretty worried. The first spray easing it immediately gave me a huge sense of relief that I hadn’t had some sort of blood on the brain event.)

Oh, and I’ve been delighted to see lots more Who Killed Nessie? pages from Rachael Smith. We’re way ahead on our deadline now. Rest assured, Zoop backers, something very special will be heading your way in a few months.

I’m sorry, by the way, that I didn’t end up going to that games event this week. Sometimes things crop up at home that I just can’t control, and that was one of those times. Apologies to anyone who came along to see me. I’m sure the panel did fine without me.

I mostly want to talk this week about a Thomas thing that has given me a sense of underlying happiness all week all on its own. A while back, I read about The Clem Burke Drumming Project (Clem being the drummer from Blondie, a band whose drum tracks I’ve always admired). It was said that learning the drums can benefit autistic children in lots of ways. So on Monday after school, I drove Thomas over to a nearby music teaching studio. (I’d been mentioning it to him so often in the run up that he’d started to say ‘I know’.) He was a little nervous about doing something different, but once he’d sat down at the drum kit, the first time he’d ever encountered one, he was in his element. He immediately started hitting drums, but listened when the wonderful Hannah, the tutour, started to get him to hit them in order. Then she started the rhythm from Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. You know, boom boom tish, boom boom tish. Thomas was able to copy pretty much straight away, and then, unbidden, added a perfectly coherent (I wish I had the musical language to express this) extra two beats on two different drums before the ‘tish’. Boom boom bam bam tish! Boom boom bam bam tish! Cue amazed expression from Hannah. In half an hour, he got through what she described as three lessons worth of progress (playing with his arms crossed and the like) and skipped all the way back to the car. He’s very happy that we’re going back next week.

I’m absurdly happy that I’ve managed to add a new skill to his life, one, like swimming, which he might be able to say he does better than most people. (He’s already doing better than I could.) That’s so rare for him and so valuable. Just for once, I feel like I’ve earned my Top Dad mug.

To Be Continued

Some of those big announcements should be happening soon. A comic series which was planned for this year is now a graphic novel coming out in 2026, but it’s going to be a bit longer, so I don’t mind at all.

I hope to see you all again next week. Boom boom bam bam tish!