Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

For 19th May. Can we talk about the Gnome in the room?

Welcome to my Friday Newsletter. Hope you enjoyed the Gnomes!

If You Haven’t Seen it Already, Have the Prologue to the New Witches of Lychford for Free!

So, I’ve decided to begin a serial on Substack. And it’s going to be a sequel to my bestselling Lychford series of rural fantasy novellas! (Though it’ll be absolutely fine for those who haven’t read the books too, because we’ll re-introduce the whole concept. Though you will be spoiled for what’s happened previously.)

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). It’s at the cosier end of the Urban Fantasy genre, but it’s in the country, so I call it Rural Fantasy.

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.

The new serial is entitled Night of the Gnomes, and it’ll begin in the first week of June.

I’ll be sending out four 1000 word + episodes every calendar month (not necessarily weekly, but they’ll all have arrived by the end of each month). Night of the Gnomes and possibly a second story will run for a year, then I’ll reassess how successful this experiment has been, but rest assured the story won’t stop mid-way, and if it’s worked out fine I’ll continue with another Lychford tale after that point. If you miss the start, you’ll be able to catch up with previous episodes.

To get this Lychford serial, just sign up for the paid option on your subscription. It’s $8/month or $80/year.

And of course you’ll continue to get the Friday Newsletter and all the other content for free.

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’ve missed my mailout of the Prologue to everyone earlier this week, you can find it here.

I’m looking forward to my adventure into serial fiction. Do join me!

Pay What You Like for I Walk With Monsters!

I Walk With Monsters, my heartfelt horror comic with artist Sally Cantirino and colour artist Dearbhla Kelly is part of a range-spanning Humble Bundle from The Vault, including their bestselling Barbaric and such great titles as Money Shot and The Autumnal. You can pay whatever you wish for this amazing collection of digital comics and help out the charity Room to Read (which promotes literacy and education for girls worldwide) at the same time! Check it out here!

How to Get The Witches of World War 2 in the UK

#ThisMagicKillsFascists

Forbidden Planet Online now have my new graphic novel The Witches of World War 2, with artist Valeria Burzo and colour artist Jordie Bellaire, and there’s a lovely discount, so order it with them here.

Your local book or comic shop should also now be able to order it for you, and some of them may have it on their shelves.

Amazon UK is proving a tougher nut to crack, but TKO are working on convincing them that the book is out before July.

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

If you’re in the USA, you can order either version from Amazon in the normal way at this link.

As soon as TKO sort this, I’ll let you know and do something of a relaunch for the UK. Meanwhile, here’s our blurb:

“Inspired by a true story, writer Paul Cornell (Doctor Who, Saucer Country), artist Valeria Burzo, (Castle Full of Blackbirds) and color artist Jordie Bellaire (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pretty Deadly) introduce a coven of witches embarking on a mission to help defeat the Nazis…with magic!

In the darkest hours of World War II, Doreen Valiente (then known as Doreen Dominy), an expert on British folklore and the occult, is approached by British intelligence at Bletchley Park who tell her they know she’s a witch…and that’s how she can best serve her country.

Together with the ‘most evil man in the world’, a hard-nosed white witch, the grizzled founder of Wicca, and a professional exorcist and con man, Valiente will travel deep into the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe and gamble her life, her belief, and her powers on a mission to help capture Rudolf Hess, second in command to Adolf Hitler himself.”

I’m so proud of this book, and love the 1940s glamour and detail Valeria and Jordie have brought to it. It’s a passionate story about fighting fascism with all one’s heart and how the small things of life are precious in the face of tyranny.And TKO and I have come up with some lovely character graphics for each of our leads. Here’s the third of them.

Two Convention Appearances

I’m going to be at Portsmouth Comic Con on Saturday, 3rd June and London Film and Comic Con on Saturday, 8th July. Do come along and say hello!

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!

Download My Horror Audio Drama for Free! (3 Days Left!)

My horror radio play Something in the Water, directed by Nadia Molinari and starring James Nickerson, part of the All the Dark Corners series, is back on the BBC Sounds app, available for download, for free, anywhere in the world, at the above link. It’s about a sceptic who encounters a community with a lake monster, and I’m very proud of it. (Available for the next 3 days.)

I’ve Got a Story in Weird Tales #367

I’m proud to say I have a story in a forthcoming issue of that most renowned of genre magazines, Weird Tales, which is 100 years old this month. Not only that, but I share the issue with Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola, on a new Hellboy story, and the great Ramsey Campbell. Weird Tales #367 ships in May, and can be pre-ordered here, where you can also read about the rest of this fabulous issue. (I wonder who else has had a piece in both WT and The Cricketer? Maybe Conan Doyle?)

Fairford Festival Book Fest 2023

I retired as the organiser of Fairford’s literary festival last year, but I’m delighted to report that my successor has put together a brilliant line-up, including Emma Reeves, Paul Martin and Dom Joly, for this year’s re-christened event, which is on 9th-10th June as part of the larger Fairford Festival. I’ll be there, cheering them on. You can pre-order tickets here.

Con and On is in Previews, and All Over the Comics Media!

Con and On is my forthcoming series from Ahoy Comics with artist Marika Cresta. It’s a tragicomic satire of five decades of the world’s biggest comics festival, and the industry that parties there. This is a heartfelt insider comedy history of the rollercoaster that is the comics industry, with bite but also with love. It’s about the romance of every big convention, the bittersweet journey through time and success, the highs and the lows and the silliness. It’s the story of every fan and every pro and everyone who’s just trying to make a buck in the midst of extremity. Through the narratives of our large cast of characters we see, in miniature, the story of the last few decades of modern comics: how some things have changed and how some things have stayed exactly the damn same.

You can read all about it here at Broken Frontier. (And in loads of other pleaces too, because we’re getting serious coverage!)

And here’s the link to Previews, with all the ordering info.

Con and On #1 is out on 12th July.

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 May episode being about 1971’s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. 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.

My New-Look Website and Geek Radio

Check out my new -look website! It’s still a work in progress, but I think it looks great. Every Sunday on there I feature my Geek Radio blog, listing geeky BBC speech radio delights, downloadable for free worldwide, in the coming week.

My Linktree

You can now find all my social media links, plus links to where you can buy my books, in one place here, thanks to Linktree!

My Online Store is Mothballed

I have an online store at Ko-Fi, where right now you can put some coins in my tipjar if you like, but there’s no stock, because of several conventions coming up where I’ll need something to put on my table! At some point in the future I hope to balance the needs of online and right there customers, sorry!

My Week

I’ve been very fortunate this week, clear-headed and free from anxiety from Monday morning onwards. I’ve been doing a lot of exercise, which help a great deal, I think. The weekend, particularly last Friday evening, was very tough indeed, perhaps the worst my mental health has ever been. I fell asleep during a Zoom gathering of friends, because I was so exhausted from the continual ‘fight or flight’ in my system.

Still, as I said, everything got better from Monday. (Though I’m not feeling so great today. I think I do much better with the quiet routine of weekdays than I do with my day off on Saturdays. Work lets me feel meaningful. The creation of story feels to me like the reinforcement of self. Being anyone when I have leisure is tough. I suspect I’ve now gone way past the point of anyone other than fellow freelancers nodding along.)

The big in person meeting in London on Tuesday went about as well as it could have gone, though I think my game was still off slightly. I wrote a big chunk of Gnomes, which I’m enjoying enormously, and in one big rush yesterday plotted a new UK-format TV spec script which my manager has been asking for.

The big news this week, though, and one which filled me with joy, was all down to this guy.

That’s my son Thomas with his trophy for becoming Times Table Rock Stars Champion of his entire school, 40 correct answers ahead of his nearest competitor, despite having a whole year group above him. (His autism doesn’t prevent him from achieving highly in maths, and may indeed help, though I’m wary of the idea of autistic super powers.) He was so pleased that he even went to collect his trophy onstage in the big hall, and all the other children, bless them, gave him silent applause. It’s such a great school. And both Nanny Louise and his Teaching Assistant Mrs. Reed have done done such a great job with the app that runs this contest.

I love it when Thomas gets quietly proud of something without it being too much emotion. (He did stop us from going on about it later that evening, but he allowed himself to take pride for a while.) He’s starting to ride for short bursts on his bike unaided, and (having lost a ball in the hedge for a while), we’re back to enjoying Thomas/Daddy time with the surprisingly complex game of ‘Ball’ in the garden.

When I’m not feeling great, Tom can make me feel good with something like this, one of those moments when his talents become obvious.

To Be Continued

So, err, wish me luck with my day off. I’m having a new set of publicity photos taken today, just because I felt the previous lot were a bit old now, so you should see those this week. I’ve been in training to get in shape for them!