Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

We’re Nearly Halfway with Who Killed Nessie?!

As I write this, we’re past $8k funding for me and Rachael Smith’s cosy cryptozoological crime caper graphic novel, in which a hotel intern has to solve the murder of the Loch Ness Monster during a cryptid convention. We’re after $20k to make it work, and we’ve got twenty days left, so I’m told we’re doing fine. But if you love cute art, do take a look at our Zoop campaign here, where you can see many more pages like the one below. (And we’ve got some lovely backer levels, some of which are nearly sold out, where you can buy the original art, or even watch Rachael draw live on Zoom.)

“It’s like you dreamed up a comic just for me” – JOE HILL (creator of Locke & Key).

Rachael and I are doing loads of interviews and podcasts. You can find us chatting to Fanbase Press here, and on YouTube talking to The Comics Multiverse here and to John Siuntres at Word Balloon here.

We’re Going Back to Thought Bubble!

Lizbeth Myles and I will once more be running at table at the great Thought Bubble comics convention in Harrogate on 16th-17th November! I’m looking forward to meeting once again so many lovely comics fans.

The Collected Con and On is Out Now! (And you can read the first twenty pages for free! And hear me talk about it!)

Here’s something else I’m guesting on lots of podcast episodes about! Including this episode of Comics For Fun and Profit!

The collected edition of Con and On, with all five issues plus some lovely extras, will be out from Ahoy next Tuesday, 26th March, and is now available to pre-order from these links at Amazon UK and Amazon US. (And here it is at B&N.)

And Popverse have put up an exclusive free look at the first twenty pages of this story I’m so proud of. Do take a look.

The Collected Project: Cyptid is Out in May!

The first collection of Ahoy’s comics anthology series Project: Cryptid, including a Mongolian Death Worm strip by me and artist P.J.Holden as well as the work of many, many other great creators, including the first ever comics work of my friend Melissa Olson, is out on 14th May.

Joanne Harris at Fairford Festival

So to help out my local Festival, I’ve had a hand in arranging for award-winning author Joanne Harris to make a personal appearance. If you’re going to be in the Cotswolds this summer, why not pop in? She’ll be appearing on Saturday, 8th June at 4pm as part of the Fairford Festival. You can see all the details and get tickets here.

I’m a Speaker at Develop: Brighton

Courtesy of Game Republic, I’m going to be on a panel at the Develop: Brighton gaming conference, which runs from 9th-11th July, though when my panel is still hasn’t been announced.

The panel is called Tips and Insights on Narrative Design from Leading Writers.

“Award-winning writers Rhianna Pratchett, Charles Cecil (Revolution, Broken Sword), Paul Cornell (Doctor Who, Marvel) and Judi Alston (Dreaming Methods) share their experiences, insights, learnings and tips for creating high quality narrative games with Dr Jackie Mulligan (Game Republic). The panelists will explore how to make narrative games on a budget, techniques to explore character, using new technology like AI and VR to enhance storytelling in games and trends in narrative design in particular stories being interpreted across multiple media. The session will also include a Q&A.”

I’m delighted to be part of such an excellent line-up.

Doctor Who: Goth Opera

It’s just been announced that my podcast partner Lizbeth Myles, already one of Big Finish’s most acclaimed writers, is going to be adapting for into audio drama for them my Doctor Who novel Goth Opera!

This Fifth Doctor vampire adventure with Nyssa and Tegan guest stars Richard Armitage, Natalie Gumede and Micah Balfour, and will be out in July!

You can read all about it here at Sci-Fi Bulletin and pre-order at Big Finish’s site here.

(This lovely final cover art by Sean Longmore.)

I’m a Hugo Awards Finalist!

The graphic novel by myself, artist Valeria Burzo and colour artist Jordie Bellaire, The Witches of World War 2, is a Finalist in the Best Graphic Story or Comic category in this year’s Hugo Awards!

The Awards will be given out at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow (August 8th-12th), and I’ll be at the ceremony. So wish me luck!

Those of you who are members of the convention, and thus able to vote, will find the complete digital version of the graphic novel in their Voter Packets, courtesy of our kind publishers, TKO.

Thanks again to everyone who nominated us!

The Complete(d) Saucer Country is in Stores in September!

The Syzygy/Image edition of The Complete(d) Saucer Country, which has an entirely different design from the Zoop crowdfunded edition, will be in comic and book stores in September, and is now available for pre-order from Amazon! (Amazon release date: September 3rd.)

Witches of Lychford: Fantasy Cricket

That’s the title of the second and final new Lychford novella that paid subscribers to this Newsletter have now started recieving in serial form. (Because of Substack’s platforming of Nazis, I’m getting rid of the paid option when this serial is completed.) Episodes of the new serial will appear, as with the previous ones, at 5pm UK time on the first four Thursdays of every month.

If you subscribe now, you get to read all of the previous episodes, that is the whole last novella, Night of the Gnomes plus the Christmas Special Don’t Forget to Catch Me, as well as getting the new episodes going forward. It’s $8 (or the equivalent in your currency) per month, or $80 per year.

My Ko-fi and eBay Stores

I’ve re-stocked my Ko-fi store, where you can buy my books and comics, signed and personalised, and now I’ve set up shipping to a range of international destinations.

Similarly, I’ve now re-stocked my ebay store, full of Bronze Age Marvel comics at bargain prices, a Doctor Who item or two and, err, a guide to learning Japanese!

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 March episode being about To the Devil a Daughter, thus completing our mission of watching all of the classic era Hammer horrors! We’re now moving on to the modern Hammer movies, which will take us until the end of the year, and then we’ll be announcing our sequel podcast!

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.

(They were keen on ‘…’. What was the sentence before?)

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

The great comics creator, novelist and librettist Cecil Castellucci is creating a piece of performance art through Kickstarter, with her wearing original temporary tattoos of an ongoing comics story, drawn by some major artists, making her into a comic book with 24 chapters. The backer levels draw from all across her remarkable career, engaging some of the greatest talents in the field. Do take a look and support her if you can.

My Week

I suspect I’m not the ideal candidate to run a crowdfunding project. My energy works for the first two days, when the early bird deals are on and I’m yelling our offers to people like a market trader. (Indeed, I really love that bit, because it satisfies some primal part of me that loves selling directly. I heard a scrap metal collector go past in my little town the other day, shouting from the window of his truck in pure trade patois the like of which you don’t hear much any more, an ancient cry that summoned people to run down their drives clutching old saucepans and only infrequently contained actual words, and I thought ‘oh, I’d love to do that’. Maybe at Thought Bubble I’ll evolve a cry about comics.) But after that, in the part where sales become less frequent, I get very itchy and I wonder if I go on about the project too much… or not enough? Not being on Twitter or Facebook means my pitching of Who Killed Nessie? is limited to Bluesky, Insta, LinkedIn and Threads, the latter of which I joined specifically to do this. Will that be enough? Actually, we’re doing fine at this point, but you know how I worry. Do spread the word about the project if you can.

Thomas continues to have a fun half-term break. Nanny Louise has taken him to a lot of soft play, and later today Caroline and I will be taking him to the Lego Store to spend the last of his vouchers and then to have his choice of lunch: Pizza Express. He’s still making his way through his Easter Eggs, and his latest 1000 piece jigsaw (‘I can do any jigsaw now!’ he proudly exclaimed) is of a steam engine.

(Photo by Nanny Louise.)

Work-wise, I delivered a comics project you’ll hear about later this year, and co-wrote another at high speed to meet a deadline. Any work this week, and me getting my 10k steps in, has been found in-between stretches of keeping Tom company, so him returning to school on Monday will suddenly give me ridiculous amounts of work time. I feel like I’m going to need it for all the Nessie promotion!

To Be Continued

There are now several events lined up at which I look forward to seeing some of you this year. And more to come!

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