Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

Splinter Cell Won a Scribe Award!

I’m delighted to say that, at San Diego Comic Con, Sebastian Baczkiewicz and I won a Scribe Award in the audio drama category for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall.

The Scribes are given out annually by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. You can see the full list of winners here.

I don’t have a photo of the award itself, because they weren’t delivered to the convention in time, so I’ll show it to you when it arrives in the mail. But I’m so pleased!

Con and On #2

The second issue of my satire across decades of the comics industry and its biggest conventions continues on August 9th when Con and On #2 arrives in your comic stores and online via Amazon.

“Continuing the ‘comics history-infused tale loaded with heart’ (Alex Segura)! Another year, another comic con: Eddie’s writing career brings him money and fame while his ex-friend Deja still struggles to get her artwork seen. All around them, British creators pound Guinesses, a TV actor dons a disguise, editors sneer at portfolios, and fans hold on to their places in epically endless lines! Featuring the usual AHOY assortment of extra prose stories and illustrations.”

Art by Marika Cresta, colour art by Paul Little, letters by Rob Steen, all wrapped up in this very to the point Steve Yeowell cover.

Three New Podcast Interviews!

I’ve recently appeared on the Graymalkin Lane podcast to talk about some old Avengers issues (in a sprawling chat that covered my whole career), and on Comic Book Couples Counseling (Brad from whom I ran into at SDCC) and Wayne’s Comics Podcast to talk about Con and On. All great times in different ways, do check them out!

The Witches of World War 2 Arrives on Amazon UK (Sort of)!

So you can now order The Witches of World War 2 via Amazon UK, albeit only from third party sellers, but hey, it’s something!

It should now be easy to get your local UK comic shop to order it. Just ask them to go to this page on the PreviewsWorld Pullbox.

Forbidden Planet Online has a lovely discount, so order it with them here.

If you’d like the digital edition, Amazon UK has that now.

If you’re in the USA, you can straightforwardly order either version from Amazon in the normal way at this link or from your local book or comic store

Witches of Lychford: Night of the Gnomes Has Started!

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.

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.

Project: Cryptid

Ahoy comics have a new comedy horror anthology series coming out in September, Project: Cryptid, with a variety of stories by great creators concerning mysterious beasts. I have a story with the great monster artist P.J. Holden in the first issue (and another with a different artist in a later issue). You can read all about it here at Screen Rant, with a list of the other contributors and some choice quotes and art. I love being part of Ahoy’s bouncy, fun, extra-packed series, and this one looks excellent. (And it also features the first comics work of my urban fantasy writer friend Melissa F. Olson!) Project Cryptid #1 will be in your comic stores and out digitally on 6th September!

Secret Invasion

I’m writing the novel of the acclaimed Marvel comic series Secret Invasion, which was originally written by Brian Michael Bendis with art (on the main title) by Leinil Francis Yu. The novel will be covering the central mini-series of that name, plus lots of excursions into the other comics involved in the crossover, my own Captain Britain and MI-13 included. I’m excited to be once again grappling with the Marvel Universe. The novel will be out from Titan on 9th September, and you can read all the details here at Forces of Geek.

And you can now pre-order the book from Amazon UK and Amazon US at those links.

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 July episode being about 1972’s Straight on Till Morning. 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 movie’s a bit… urgh?)

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(s)

You know what an enormous fan of San Diego Comic Con I am. This year that went double, because I was seeing it through the eyes of newbie travelling companion Liz Myles, and quadruple, because for the first time I’d been following the run-up to it on social media like the Unoffical Blog and the Parks and Cons podcast. I was even watching KAP Media’s Instagram videos of the enormous ‘wraps’ they put up on the major buildings, resulting in the lovely Star Trek ‘flag’ that flew over the site.

We had a day to explore the city first, heading to the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore and the Now or Never comic shop, then checking out the Comic Con Museum before picking up our badges. (And then I went to the first of my *twenty* meetings that weekend before meeting up with a satisfyingly large group of friends for that annual dinner I mentioned last time.)

(Photo by Liz Myles.)

Liz had quite the memorable convention, with several meetings of her own. It started very auspiciously, with the greeter at the top of the escalators when we first entered the Convention Center, whose job it is to direct people to where to pick up their badges, recognised her! Liz also managed to buy an exclusive, this 14th Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor Who and Strange New Worlds booths were both extremely impressive. One of the best things about SDCC I think is that the layout of the floor largely doesn’t change year by year, so one develops a feeling of being at home there in ‘neighbourhoods’ like the back issue region or Artists’ Alley. This year, on top of that feeling of familiarity as we went between floor, panels, Hilton and Marriott poolside for meetings, there was also an amazing feeling of mutual joy. The actors and writers striking, many thought, would hurt Comic Con. Instead, it made it. The feeling of everyone and everything being about the comics and, actually, it all still being huge. Well, that was a hell of a thing to be a part of.

(This ‘Baby Yoda’ was animatronic, reaching out to customers and waving.)

(The My Neighbour Totoro Catbus was big enough to sit in.)

I did a couple of panels. Cecil Castellucci had invited me onto her panel about fictional exploration of the Solar System, and it was a joy to be up there not just with fellow writers but with planetary scientists too. The Ahoy Comics panel was great fun, as was the company’s dinner afterwards, with so many witty writers indulging themselves. The hit of it was newbie Melissa Olson, who got just about all the audience questions about her forthcoming Ahoy series, set on an island where gods who are no longer worshipped live in exile.

I expected to be on the Scribe Awards panel just to offer commentary and talk about my own experiences in spinoff writing, but then… it was such a joy to have been in the same category as Liz and James Moran and to have so many other friends in other categories that, no, genuinely, winning seemed like such a small cherry on the top. But that doesn’t mean to say I wasn’t enormously pleased. A member of the judging panel approached Liz and I afterwards and said how strong the audio category had been that year, which was much appreciated.

It was also great to sign at the Tor booth beside Charlie Jane Anders (who obviously drew a much bigger crowd). So many long-time readers, so many first-timers buying Rosebud because they thought it sounded weird.

The AWA Studios Party was raucous and illuminating, and the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund Party was, as always, where comickers mingle for the best cause. So many old friends: Bob Wayne; Becky Cloonan; Joe Harris; Chris Thompson and Tony Parker. There is always one person you see everywhere without planning to - this year, Mark Buckingham - and one person you expect to see but don’t - this year, Gerry Duggan - and the people are as much a part of the architecture of the recurring experience as the con floor layout is. These are the densely-stacked memories upon which comickers build their years and their lives. Normally, I’d expect to have at least a few meetings away from the ‘game board’ of the major hotels, but this year it was just one before the con started. (I suspect that’s down to the lack of film and TV meetings.) Normally, I’d expect to spend at least a few hours in the Hyatt bar, but this year my course brought me to that southernmost outpost not at all, except for going slightly beyond it for a lovely dinner with Javier Grillo-Marxuach and friends.

You’ll be wondering about the cosplay. Well -

Mr. Fantastic.

The Scorpion seems delighted.

‘Doom tires of this queue!’

Well, it’s one place to keep him.

I did a couple of things for the first time at the con. I queued for an exclusive item (a Yesterdays pin badge that said ‘I love SDCC 2023’ which I failed to get even having sprinted to get in the line when the hall first opened) and we went to an ‘offsite’, one of the many pop-up experiences across the city, in this case the Star Trek-themed Energize Cafe. It sold rather nice Trek-branded ground coffee and featured this Lower Decks mural.

The mornings, when I was often to be found hanging around the Hilton restaurant for breakfast meetings, were misty and cool, the evenings blazing and full of beer.

I wanted to attend the panels of so many friends, but in the end meetings always took precedence. I’m there to work, after all. We did, however, manage to get to the panel where modern special effects experts watched (really very respectfully) clips of classic Doctor Who and the moderator Geoffrey Mark then challenged them as to how they’d replicate the effects on $20 or less. ‘Hot glue gun,’ husked the excellent Laurah Grijalva , the doyen of practical wizardry.

Who’d have thought we’d go to SDCC 2023 to watch clips from ‘The Power of Kroll’?

I always try to get Thomas something special from San Diego, and this year what I got actually came along to my interview with the great comics journalist Jimmy Aquino.

Across the whole several days, there were only a few moments of low blood sugar to get in the way of joy about comics, joy about the usefulness of the San Diego Trolley Bus system, joy at experiencing it all with my travelling companion. At the very last, I found myself in a sudden huddle, gossiping with my closest comicker friends, and then a second huddle, immediately after, of the great and the good in the medium. And I thought that was the moment when really, it was time to take my goose and leave the floor. Liz and I walked out of the doors and said goodbye out loud to the convention that had so welcomed us. It had opened up so many new possibilities for me, as it always does.

And a day later, I got to open my suitcase and share the joy with Thomas.

To Be Continued

Next week I should have that Jimmy Aquino interview for you, and all sorts of other bits and pieces and fallout and recovery from this enormous event continues.

I hope to see you all then!