Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

Rosebud Digital Deal

Until this coming Monday, Jan 14th my gonzo SF novella Rosebud is available digitally in all stores for $1.99/£2.67!

It’s the story of a group of outsider captives sentenced to a very small spaceship and how they change the universe. If you like the comedy/pathos blend of my Doctor Who work, I think that’s what you’ll find here too!

Here’s the Amazon UK and Amazon US links. But it still applies whatever digital bookstore you use.

Game Republic Event Next Week!

Next Thursday, January 18th, I’m going to be on a panel at Narrative Design and Trends Forecast for 2024, a Game Republic event in Leeds with many other great guests, including co-director of multi-award winning Dreaming Methods Judi Alston, creator of Broken Sword Charles Cecil of Revolution Games and Rhianna Pratchett. The event will also include a short presentation by Ben Board from Epic Games. If you’re a member of Game Republic you can get in free, and if you’re not, tickets are on sale at that first link. The other panelists are bigtime games creatives, and I gather there are still some more to be added. If you’re in the industry and seek to mingle, check it out!

Saucer County: The Finale 

Those of you who didn’t back our incredibly successful Zoop crowdfunding campaign will be relieved to hear there’s going to be a comic store version of the conclusion to Saucer Country, the UFO mythology comic by myself and artist Ryan Kelly that survived two cancellations. This concluding issue wraps up the whole story and answers all the mysteries. Courtesy of Chris Ryall’s Syzygy company, it’s being published by Image and will be in comic stores on February 7th. But you can bet that almost the only way it’s going to appear in your local store is if you pre-order a copy with that store right now!

Zoop backers should rest assured that the version they’re getting (if they ordered the separate Finale comic rather than the Complete(d) graphic novel) is very different in design, a very limited edition item that will be easily distinguishable from the store version.

You can see the Previews entry for the issue, and see the first four complete pages, here.

“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!”

The Zoop comic and graphic novel have left the printers, and are at the Fulfillment Centre (seriously), so they should be being sent out to you very soon. Thanks again to everyone who supported us. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

And if you get your copy from Bird City Comics, you can get this exclusive textless cover variant by Peejay Catacutan, only available from them!

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 December episode being about Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (with special guest the urban fantasy author Melissa F. Olson). 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.

(The early days of cut and paste.)

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 Felicitations Book Club Podcast is a monthly YouTube where Felicia Day and my friend Bonnie Burton (all I mean by that is that I don’t know Felicia!) talk about interesting books. There are several episodes out already, and if you seek book fun and reading recs you really should check it out.

And #2 of my friend Emma Newman’s new podcast, Imagining Tomorrow, which is her looking for hope in the future with the aid of Friends of the Earth, is out now. It’s an extremely heartening listen.

My Week

I’d like to talk about two breakthroughs that happened in the same ninety minutes last Friday, one with me, one with Thomas. Tom had been worrying for weeks about diving into the deep end during swimming practice in order to retrieve some sinkers. His coach (who is wonderful, and understands Tom on an extraordinary level) had kept telling him he could do it, but he felt he really didn’t want to. So he set off at 4.30pm with Caroline feeling concerned. As always on a Friday, I popped down the pub for ninety minutes, returning just before Caroline and Tom did. I’m very invested in Dry January this year, because I felt I really let myself go across Christmas. (I’ve lost three pounds already and am heading back toward my target weight at high speed.) But I feel that I go to the pub for the company, not the beer, so that evening I tried the (paltry and downright awful) range of alchohol-free beers and ciders. The lads in the bar, who weren’t quite my usual lads but friends of friends, initially had a good chat with me about which alcohol free brands were actually good, but then a few more came in I didn’t know, and there was some joshing about me choosing the non-intoxicating option. I started feeling a little bullied. Given my history (you may have read my autobiographical horror novel Chalk) that’s an easy mode for me to fall into, and it can result in some very bad behaviour on my part. But this time I realised that the line-up at the bar were including me through their joshing. The one nearest me even gave me one of those gentle punches on the arm. ‘Down in one!’ they chanted as I finished up my last, truly horrible, pint, and I left with a genuine laugh from me and from them. I went home standing a little straighter, feeling I’d found that I could cope a little more, that I’m not as much a product of my history as I used to be. I’m not going back this evening, because of reasons I’ll go into in a moment, and next week I’m hoping for a slightly easier ride, because I go out for fun, not for epiphanies, but I won’t feel I have to retreat if the same crowd is back. And then Thomas got back from swimming saying he’d successfully dived and got the sinkers. He’d told Caroline, while waiting for the lesson to start, that he thought he could do it. And then he did. ‘It was better,’ he said, in his direct, autistic way. And so it was, for both of us.

Anyway, the reason I’m staying home tonight is that Caroline and Tom aren’t going swimming this week, because Caroline had her gall bladder out on Wednesday, and she can’t drive. (And I’m still prevented from driving because of the dizziness I reported to the licencing authorities, a dizziness which, thanks to my B12 supplements, has now completely vanished.) Caroline’s feeling very weak, so I’m doing all the childcare in the hours Nanny Louise isn’t here and providing my wife with regular coffee and porridge. I’m glad that she had said internal organ, with an enormous gallstone inside, out before she experienced any of the horrible pain I went through a few years back.

Work-wise, it’s been a cracking week, full of B12 energy. I sent in the first draft of #4 of an as-yet-unannounced new creator-owned comic, plus the pitch for another, plus the new novel pitch to my agent. (And I kept Lychford bubbling along.)

I’m really looking forward to the various conventions this year. And I hope across the year I’ll get more and more at ease not just with fan company, but with random sociability, because connection, acceptance, shared laughter… these are the things that continue to create me.

To Be Continued

Speaking of those upcoming conventions, as soon as the Gallifrey One schedule goes up I’ll sort out a time for our Subscriber Meet-Up.

And I hope I’ll see all of you again next week!