Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

Saucer Country: The Finale in Comic Stores Now! (And you can get a signed copy from my Ko-fi store!)

Courtesy of Image Comics and Chris Ryall’s Syzygy line, Saucer Country: Finale, the concluding part of the multi-company UFO saga from myself and artist Ryan Kelly is in your comic store, and available digitally, today!

You can order it here from Forbidden Planet mail-order.

And I’ve got a handful of copies, which you can get signed and personalised if you wish, available by mail order, in my Ko-fi store.

You can see the Previews entry for the issue, and see the first four complete pages, here and here it is on the Image site.

“First there was Saucer Country, a dark thriller that blended UFO lore and alien abduction with political intrigue, all set in the hauntingly beautiful Southwest. The story continued in Saucer State… and now, the series reaches its long-awaited conclusion in this special one-shot, as co-creators Cornell and Kelly present the final story of alien abductee Arcadia Alvarado’s campaign to be US President… and her search for the truth of what happened to her!”

If you get your copy of the Finale from Bird City Comics, you can get this exclusive textless cover variant by Peejay Catacutan, only available from them!

The Complete(d) Saucer Country is Available for General Pre-order!

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.)

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.

(I don’t know who the cover designer is, sorry.)

(Mathew McQuinn, Sarah Sutton, Micah Balfour, Janet Fielding, Natalie Gumede.)

The English Astronaut Continues in 2000AD! (And we’re talking about it on a podcast!)

Prog #2368 of weekly UK comics anthology 2000AD is out now, and it contains the second part of my three part strip The English Astronaut, with art by Laura Helsby, colours by Matt Soffe and letters by Jim Campbell. You can order direct from the publisher here, or find it in your comic store, or if you’re in the UK, your newsagent and supermarket!

And you can hear Laura and I chat about the strip on episode #291 of the WMQ@A Podcast! (We had a great time, and I learned a lot about basketball.)

(Cover by Simon Davis.)

The Word Balloon Vidcast!

I popped in yesterday to have a chat with Word Balloon host John Siuntres. You can see us on video here, talking about the latest stuff, but also just chatting about my whole career.

Who Killed Nessie? 

That’s the title of my forthcoming crowdfunding project from Zoop, with award-winning artist Rachael Smith, a comedy cryptozoological whodunnit about finding confidence through rationality and accepting a world of mysteries… by solving one.

If you’d like to be alerted when the crowdfunder launches, and get first go at early bird offers and exclusives, you can sign up here!

My Gallifrey One Schedule and Subscriber Meet-Up!

I’m delighted to once again be a guest at Gallifrey One, my home from home Doctor Who convention, on 16th-18th February at the L.A.X. Marriott in L.A.. You can find a list of all the program items I’m on here. Really pleased with what I’ve got this year.

And one thing that’s not on that schedule is this year’s meet-up for Subscribers to this Newsletter, that is you, if you’re reading this! It’s at 11am on Saturday, 17th February, beside the Starbucks in the hotel foyer. I’m looking forward to chatting with you all!

Hugo Awards Eligibility

If you’re nominating for the Hugo Awards, there are two items of mine eligible that I’d like you to consider: The Witches of World War Two by myself, Valeria Burzo and Jordie Bellaire, in the Best Graphic Story category, and, in the Best Fancast category, Hammer House of Podcast from myself and Lizbeth Myles. Thanks!

Con and On Collected Edition

The collected edition of Con and On, with all five issues plus some lovely extras, will be out from Ahoy on 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.)

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 (usually) out on the 13th of every month, with our January episode being about Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. 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.

(Emphasis on the top hat there.)

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

This week I’ve been working my arse off, frankly. A lot of it is that, with Gallifrey One coming up, myself and Liz are flying to L.A. on Tuesday, and so I have to finish up everything that needs doing before then. This includes, still to do: the final issue of a creator-owned comic that still hasn’t been announced; some high speed BBC radio pitching, because a deadline has been set to get drama pitches in; a big new comics pitch; some written notes for my manager for this big meeting I have while I’m out there. I’ve never actually been through this process before. My manager and I are meeting twice for pre-game prep. Yeah, it’s that big. (And when it all frazzles, you may wonder in future years what all that was about.) I also had to do quite a bit of promo this week, including, just before you read this, recording a Goth Opera interview for Big Finish. I like having my days full of work, and I’ve just about managed to stagger round 10,000 steps each day while all this is happening, but I am very much looking forward to crossing the finish line.

I’m also preparing The Cornell Collective for Gallifrey One. It may be only a little panel game show, but it’s a performance, and so I take it really seriously. I think we’ve got a great edition ready this year.

Thomas, meanwhile, has been missing Nanny Louise, who’s on sick leave this week, and has been regularly melting down over my inability to help with his Mathletics. (If he’d just wait a moment while I try to work out what each problem is about and how the way to show the working has changed since I did this…) I got quite down on Monday about that hard combo of ‘my child needs help’ and ‘he’s yelling at me because I can’t be as useful as he needs me to be, but that’s very stressful’.

Liz arrives tonight, so that’s going to be lovely as always. We recorded HHoP early this month, and now have to work out how we’re going to release it on the day we fly out. Before that happens I have another manager meeting and loads more radio pitches to do.

I can sleep on the plane, right?

To Be Continued

I look forward to meeting a whole bunch of you at Gallifrey One, especially at 11am on Saturday, 17th February, beside the Starbucks in the hotel foyer, for our annual Subscriber Meet-Up!

There won’t be a Newsletter next week, because convention, so I’ll see you all again on Friday, 23rd February!