Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

Vault Teaser

As you can see from the graphics below, Vault Comics have announced that I’ll be part of their line-up next year, and what great company I’m in, and that’s all I can say about that for now!

But another thing I can say about Vault in the meantime is take a look at their current Kickstarter for Slash’s (yes, him from Guns ‘n’ Roses), comic Deathstalker. Maximum sword and sorcery, very metal, already funded with lovely stretch goals! (And that’s a very reasonably priced softcover!)

Starblazer

I’ve written the introduction for this second collection of classic strips from D.C. Thomson’s SF digest comic Starblazer, this one containing early work from Grant Morrison. It’s out on 25th October, and you can order here. (I’m really pleased with how much comics history I managed to bring to this one!)

Con & On #4 is Out Next Wednesday, Plus Preview Pages!

The next issue of my satire about the comics industry across decades, from Ahoy Comics, with artist Marika Cresta, Con and On #4, will be out next Wednesday, October 18th. ‘An apparition of the greatest super hero heralds the most tragic change.’ Regular readers may want to buckle their seatbelts. Here’s the entry in Previews. And now, courtesy of Comiccon.com, you can read the start of the issue here. (‘More fun’ really should read ‘more bellowing at the comics industry’.)

Where to Find Us at Thought Bubble

It’s that wonderful time of year when the Thought Bubble festival in Harrogate, with its convention on November 11th-12th, start releasing their details, and they’ve just put out their map of where to find all us exhibitors. Myself and Lizbeth Myles will again be running a table full of my recent stuff, including copies of my Secret Invasion novel. And you can find us in the Bubbleboy Hall at table K12. We’re once again neighbours with Rachael Smith, so that’ll be lovely.

My eBay Page

So, I decided that rather than run individual auctions I’d put up all my duplicate comics (and a few Doctor Who items and other random stuff) in one place. It’s a work in progress, lots more stuff still to be added. What do you reckon?

October Subscriber Meet-Up

I’ll be Zoom meeting with paid subscribers again at 9pm UK time on Sunday, 29th October. The first one was great fun, so I’m going to keep this going for at least a while, see where it goes. Those subscribers will get an invite on the Friday before.

Witches of Lychford: Night of the Gnomes

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.

Subscribed

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.

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 October episode being about 1972’s Demons of the Mind. 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.

(What a frustrating mess of a movie.)

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 has been a good work for work, friendship and trying to let myself off the hook, just a bit. I’ve been mainly doing some games work, as well as sending off a comics pitch (of a very exciting kind), plus a meeting about some more comics work and a meeting about a TV project. The friendship came from two directions: from going down the pub last Friday afternoon and running into a friend of mine who’s a ploughman and from going down the cricket club last Saturday to watch some rugby (a game about which I know nothing). Politically, these were ventures in two different directions: the Friday evening crowd at the pub are working people, largely builders, somewhat to the right of me, but kind and fun. My friend the ploughman and I talked about the legal problems he was having with being a licenced shotgun owner, the fact that it seemed to get in the way even for things like boundary disputes. His mate tried to connect that to ‘you can’t do anything these days’, but I indicated I wouldn’t follow them there, because I don’t believe that old chestnut, and the ploughman diplomatically established a middle ground. I went away feeling pleased I was still able to have a friendly conversation with those different to me, something that’s virtually a requirement to drink in this town. But then, the cricket club turned out to be a cell of secret Labour supporters, every one of them around the table, us sharing our pleasure at the current Labour team while I heard a lot of expert rugby chat. I came away from that feeling I had made some more real friends in this town. (And don’t come at me about Labour being anti-trans. J.K.Rowling recently attacked one of their front bench, and when an SNP MP defected from her party because of their pro-trans stance, she didn’t feel able to join Labour and went to the Tories.)

Hmm, bit of a political/personal stream of consciousness there, but I’m hoping that’s what you subscribe for. Or rather that and Tom news. He had a Brilliant Day yesterday, attending a concert in school, actually taking part and not even needing his ear defenders! He’s showing so many signs of greater communication skills, putting new concepts together and experimenting with more complicated phrases.

As for letting myself off the hook, Liz’s visit kind of demonstrated to me what a regimented life I’d been living, entirely of my own choosing. Her coming to stay is always a holiday, and I always gain weight during it, mostly from all the beer. But rather than go back to my rigid 10k steps a day, I set up the running machine in the garage again, and have been experimenting with runs to get the steps in more quickly, while listening to the classic SF radio series Journey Into Space. (Even that makes me feel a little guilty, because I should really be listening to modern stuff to be in conversation with my genre for work.) Still, the slightly varied regime is paying off, and I’m losing the pounds I put on. Also, the rush of a high heart rate is doing wonders for my mood. But I also have a few low-calorie treats set aside for myself. I’ve nearly finished the process of re-grading and shelving my comic collection, so soon I’ll need another project to occupy the autistic parts of my brain.

With a number of projects now paying off, and the future looking comfortable economically for me, all the above will hopefully lead to a calmer, happier, Paul. I’ll be off down the pub again this evening, and hope for continuing good relations with the ploughman.

To Be Continued

I’m now very much in the endgame of Gnomes, by the way. That’ll finish at the start of December, there’ll be a quick Lychford Christmas Special, and then a second novella will complete paid subscribers’ purchases taking us to a full year of episodes.

And I hope to see you all again next week!