Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

The Collected Project: Cyptid is Out Now!

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 now!

I’m In a New Anthology!

I’m one of many authors who’ll have stories in Jendia Gammon’s forthcoming cross-genre anthology, which she’s funding on Ko-fi! Check it out here!

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.)

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 Death of Wolverine

As announced here on ICv2, on 27th November Marvel will be releasing an omnibus edition of the Death of Wolverine storyline, featuring not only the miniseries of that name, but also my entire run on the comic. I’m very pleased that all this material will now be available in one volume.

There are going to be two covers, this regular one from Alex Ross…

And this direct market exclusive version from Joe Quesada.

It’s available to pre-order on Amazon, and at all good bookstores and comic shops.

Witches of Lychford: Fantasy Cricket (only two episodes left!)

Paid subscribers to this Newsletter have for the last year been getting a second and final new Lychford novella in serial form. Episodes of the new serial will appear, as with the previous ones, at 5pm UK time on the first four Thursdays of every month. And now there are only two left to come!

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 the last two episodes of Fantasy Cricket.

After the serial is over I’ll be switching off the paid option, so if you want to read all the installments, sign up now, and then make sure to stop paying me when you’ve done so.

My Ko-fi and eBay Stores (new comics in the eBay store!)

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, with some X-Men added in the last week!

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 May episode being about The Resident. These modern Hammers 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.

Liz and I really disagreed about this one.

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

So last weekend me and Liz went to Cardiff! As well as checking out some amazing restaurants, we did the museums and Cardiff Castle, and I discovered that Cardiff has more old comics per square mile than just about any other British city. From The Cardiff Comic Shop (the oldest independent comic store in the UK), to Troutmark Books to a store in the covered market to just about every charity shop, there were back issues aplenty. In a first for me, went to the cinema to see a National Theatre Live production, Nye starring Michael Sheen. The play, about the life of NHS founder Aneurin Bevan, was absolutely brilliant, and included in the cast my friend David Monteith, whose voice many of you will know from Baldur’s Gate III. The rhythms of theatre are very different from watching a movie, but you soon get used to the difference, and at the end a number of the audience, myself included, applauded even though the cast couldn’t hear us. The feeling of a live performance is still very much in place. It’s an experience I’d recommend to anyone. I was in tears at several points during the production, with resonances both political and personal. A grand, emotionally-rewarding experience. As was the whole weekend. Getting some distance on the stress which had settled on my shoulders in the previous couple of weeks was enormously healing. I literally got away from it all, and came back with tons more energy. And what a great travelling companion Liz was, picking the places to eat and encouraging me to just wander randomly through the parks. All in all, phew, I feel so much better.

The Norman castle inside Cardiff Castle’s fantastical exterior wall.

Everywhere we went there were dragons and sheep.

And I really liked this guy in the park.

Thomas has been doing his SATs this week, which meant exam conditions and a much earlier start to the day for Monday-Thursday (and a long lie-in today). He once again had a couple of near misses on his bike going into and back from school, so Caroline and I have started to go out and wait for him on the dangerous corner. His behaviour with Nanny Louise hasn’t been up to his usual standards either. I’m hoping that with the hard work week over, next week, Activity Week, when his class go out on an outing every day, might be better. But then again, to Thomas, change is the enemy, so ‘something new every day’ might be even harder than this week. But we’ll see. (Today, with the school offering a free choice of what pupils could wear, he consciously decided to pick his uniform.)

Work-wise, I’ve been going at high speed post-Cardiff, doing five pages of Nessie a day, so Rachael Smith can start drawing it as soon as possible, sending off some radio pitches and a comics pitch, and having some very exciting Zoom meetings.

The feeling of gathering excitement about San Diego Comic Con is something I always love about this time of the year. The SDCC Unofficial Blog has started up their podcasts again, there are almost daily updates about what’s happening, and I’ve put in my order to pick up at the Yesterdays booth.

So there’s another break from the routine, albeit one that’s also hugely important for work, coming up. I have so much to look forward to.

To Be Continued

Next week is the first meeting with a teacher from Tom’s senior school. This is something I’ve been anticipating for months. Let’s hope it goes well.

And I hope to see you all here next week!