Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

Hugo Awards Deadline Approaches

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! (Deadline: 9th March.)

Con and On Collected Edition is Out This Month!

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.)

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.

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.)

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!

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 February episode being about The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. 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.

(Amazing Tom Chantrell poster!)

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

(Lots of these after two weeks and lots of socialising!)

My friend the editor Harrington Leigh, who knows of what he speaks, is crowdfunding The Author’s Guide to Traditional Publishing. It's aimed at authors, current or aspiring, who want to know more about the business of selling a book, and also for people new to working in the publishing industry. There’s a website here, and you can find the Kickstarter prelaunch sign-up page here.

My friend Alison Sampson, the comics artist, reports that in September IDW is releasing the complete collection of Owen King & Stephen King’s graphic novel Sleeping Beauties, with both an all-new cover from herself (she also drew the series), and fully reworked and remastered lettering by Shawn Lee, which, she says, makes a huge difference in the reading experience. Go seek wherever comics are sold.

My writer friends Eddie Robson and Dianne Dotson both have stories in the new anthology from Cybersalon Press All Tomorrow’s Futures, which mixes experts and authors to create a book of futurist speculation. It’s out March 31st and you can find all the details here.

My friend the comics writer Karla Pacheco tells me she and artist Pere Perez have an omnibus edition of their complete Spider-Woman run (which is such a fun jam) out now.

My friend Zoe Chant’s latest paranormal romance, Wear Wolf (he’s a werewolf and a tailor!) is out now!

And finally, my friend Bonnie Burton had the director of The Love Witch, Anna Biller, guesting on her YouTube horror film podcast The Night Shift.

My Week(s)

Thank you for bearing with me last week. It wasn’t just jet lag, but some really tough con crud which I still honestly haven’t got rid of. (It’s a cough that’s lasted eleven days, but it seems to be easing. So in the second of these two weeks I’m talking about, I didn’t do very much (well, finished and sent off two pitches). But in the first…

Let’s start with Lizbeth Myles excitedly showing me around Universal Studios. She was very aware that I’d never done a US theme park before, and was watching out for the glee on my face, and there was loads of it. Thanks to her fan knowledge of the park, and the smaller February crowds, we got to do everything and didn’t wait very long in any line. A lot of this stuff couldn’t really be captured in photographs, but I must say the art of the thrill ride has come a long way. (I think of the actual rides the very wet Jurassic World one was my favourite.) But the best thing of all was… the Waterworld Live Show. No, really. This is the only instance of Waterworld continuing as a franchise, for a ridiculously long time, and it does so because the live show is amazing. There’s a ton of stunt work, and huge prop-related stuff happening that you don’t expect, with boats and jet skiers zooming around right in front of you, but what really makes it is that, uniquely at the park, this is an actual show, with actors (all credited on the gate and taking a bow after) doing their bit and a big, hissable villain loving the reactions he’s getting from the audience. It feels very apt when one is at a movie-based theme park to be seeing live actors doing their thing. (I also loved the board listing which shows were being filmed on which soundstages just across the way.)

‘Boooo!’

‘My work shall continue! I shall create a parking facility the likes of which the world has never seen!’

There was also a tiny bit of Universal Monsters about the place, particularly in the gift shops, which I appreciated.

The next day I had my big meeting, but before that, my writer friend Brandon Easton had arranged to pick us up in his, wow, actual sports car, and zoom us over to that amazing L.A. store The Comic Bug. The owner’s daughter had just got into Doctor Who, so, wanting to hear some anecdotes, he opened up an hour early and we had breakfast with him and his (very funny) crew. I felt this kindness had to be repayed, so, err, I bought a very rare issue of Adventure into Fear (featuring the Man-Thing), ticking off an item on my Steve Gerber wants list and, I hope, making his generosity worthwhile. We were joined by our friends Brian Schirmer and Sarah Miles, both of whom collect, but to our surprise Liz also joined in with some choice X-Men and Action Comics purhases.

Comic Bug owner Jun Goeku and his wonderful Who-fan wingman doing ‘Doctor Who DVD cover’ acting with me.

Lt. to rt.: Sarah Miles; Brian Schirmer; me; Brandon Easton.

All of which sent me off to my meeting in high spirits, which was just as well, because… okay, so I think the reason a lot of you read this Newsletter is that I’m honest about stuff… it was a great meeting, and I really liked the execs I met with, but, to boil it all down, I didn’t get the gig. In retrospect, it was pleasing, an honour, even, just to have got to that point. But at the time I felt pretty crushed. I guess one has to put all one’s energy into every pitch, and accept that sometimes stuff just doesn’t work out.

Liz and I went shopping, and had a really enjoyable evening walk, rather than take a Uber, between the shops and the bar where our friends were meeting. Finding little L.A. things like a swappable book library on a pole and folk sitting on their steps made me feel better. And having friends in the business who will slap you on your back and put a beer in your hand… that’s so valuable at times like that.

(Lt. to rt.: Jody Houser; Brian Schirmer; Jackson Lanzing; me; Lizbeth Myles; Dani Colman; Sarah Miles; Ryka Aoki; Cecil Castellucci; Bonnie Burton.)

And next day was Gallifrey One. It’s home, it’s work, it’s relaxation, it’s also sometimes stressful, but this year it was very welcome too. (Especially when you’ve got old friends like Marv Wolfman and David Gerrold holding court in the green room.) As someone who’s forever trying to work out where they stand on the fan/pro dividing line, ‘Galley’ is a sort of measuring instrument for me. How should a fan turned pro who’s never really stopped being a fan and loves fan culture behave? Should one deny oneself fun in order to not seem… fannish in the wrong sort of way? It all feels a bit beyond my autistic nature/mainstream nurture brain. Someone who marches straight across all those lines is Rachel Tallalay, who just does what she likes. We’d never really met, but this time she marched over and said hi, and we had a really good chat.

(Rachel’s selfies are very directed.)

Also saying hi was Shaun Dingwall, who I got to know a lot better at this convention, via the ancient British custom of making an appointment to have beer. He seemed to enjoy the audience that gradually built up around the two of us across the course of an evening in the bar. (That’s one of the great things about Galley: there’ll be guests in the bar.) He’s a very charming, canny actor who listens and learns in whatever situation. And he seems to have got younger since ‘Father’s Day’.

(We tried several takes, believe it or not.)

Having been encouraged by Shaun (‘He’s an actor, actors love being approached!’) Liz and I also said hello to Sir Derek Jacobi, who had around him in the green room a very British exclusion zone, the energy of which resulted from being not wanting to bother the great actor, but the result of which was him at a table all by himself. He was sweet, sharp and fun, and accepted joyfully the idea that we’d both written for him.

(Note my Uncanny Podcast ‘Bloody Hell, Ken!’ t-shirt.)

My favourite panel that I did that weekend was, as is often the case, The Cornell Collective. This is my late night panel game show, and in some ways it’s the thing I do every year that’s most creatively satisfying. It’s the only time I get to write and perform live comedy. The panelists this time round (Jody Houser, Becca McGlynn, Lisa McMulin, Amanda Rae Prescott, Joseph Scrimshaw, Riley Silverman) was very witty, and we had some wonderful pieces of good luck. During a ‘guess the mystery guest’ segment, Big Finish actor Jonathon Carley put on a Tom Baker voice, and the panel made various guesses as to who the impersonator might be, only for all of those guessed to turn out to be in the room too, and also responding as Tom Baker!

I did a serious panel that I thought was of a very high quality too, a ‘religion in Doctor Who’ one, which not only featured a theologian, Conner Wilson, but was a kind, respectful and insightful overview of the show from the point of view of many faiths and none. Lacy Baugher Milas and (charming new Who novelist) Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson did so well.

It was a great pleasure to meet up with so many subscribers to this Newsletter. (You all wanted Tom pictures!) The tradition of having a specific time and place for us to gather at Galley is a useful one, I think. Thank you all so much for coming along. I was also delighted by the standing room only turnout at my first ever writing workshop, where I previewed parts of the ‘how to write’ book I’m pottering along with in my spare moments, and answered some specific writing questions. That turned out to be a great pleasure.

There was also a Big Finish dinner where I ate a steak as big as my head and discovered that actor Jaye Griffiths is a huge cricket fan. (We talked past a bemused Alfie Shaw, who’d been seated between us.)

There were so many wonderful interactions with old friends, so much business was quietly done in the margins, and so many more events I didn’t participate in, but enjoyed being in the audience of. (Verity podcast’s raucous In Defence Of game show, for example.) The video message from Ncuti Gatwa was the cherry on the cake, the confirmation, yet again, that fan run/officially respected is another of those lines Galley stands on the boundary of. At one point I was sauntering between two groups of friends, one at the pool and one at the bar. At some point, when I retire, that’s where you’ll find me, between those two worlds but settled into one or the other otherwise. But not yet.

However, I know what a lot of you are here for is cosplay photos. They’re weren’t as many costumes as usual, mind you, but from what there was…

(The con had a vague Christmas theme this year, weirdly.)

(‘This Barbie likes to exterminate.’)

(A very goth Time Lord.)

(I think this was the radio controlled Dalek.)

(Davros had an electronically-treated voice and remained in character.)

(I have no idea how heavy that was.)

(Cally from Blake’s 7 had even got the hairdo.)

But one of the best things about taking a journey across the Atlantic is finding a present for Tom in the Universal gift store and immediately thinking ‘he’ll have a great time with that’.

Roarrr!

To Be Continued

I hope to see you all for a more usual edition of the Newsletter next week!