Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

I’m Gareth’s First Interviewee!

My friend the author Gareth L. Powell has a new feature on his Substack Newsletter: Writer Wednesdays, in which he invites another author over for a cup of tea, and asks them to share their nuggets of inspiration and advice.

So here’s me doing my best. Do take a look.

I’m on the SDConCast!

Myself and editor Tom Peyer pop up on the video version of one of my favourite podcasts, the SDConCast, the chatty version of The San Diego Comic Con Unofficial Blog, who do great coverage in the run up to SDCC. We’re talking about Con and On, of course, and we appear about 28 minutes in, after a genuinely fascinating chat with a guy from the San Diego Marriott about what they’ve got planned for the Con. So great to have been on this, thanks all!

If you’re interested in Con and On after hearing all that, here are all the details: it’s 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 here’s the link to Previews, with all the info.

Con and On #1 is out on 12th July.

I’m in The Big Issue! Plus new Witches of WW2 UK Ordering Info and Another New Interview.

Here I am in The Big Issue, talking about the historical basis for my new graphic novel The Witches of World War 2. (With artist Valeria Burzo and colour artist Jordie Bellaire.)

And there’s a lovely new piece up at Newsarama about it, including an interview with me.

And it should now be easy to get your local UK comic shop to order the book. 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.

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 straightforwardly order either version from Amazon in the normal way at this link or from your local book or comic store.

“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.

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 episodes one to four 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.

London Film and Comic Con

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

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 June episode being about 1972’s Vampire Circus. 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.

(Lovely poster, but can you spot the hidden, err… shapes?)

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

I’ve become very relaxed this week. The solstice always makes me feel wonderful, all that sunlight, all those hours in which I’m full of energy, doing stuff. I always feel like I can keep going into the early hours and get up with the dawn, and I get the most wonderful sleep, often in the middle of the day.

You know cricket is my favourite, well, only, sport? The Test Match this week, the first in the Ashes series, England vs. Australia, was a classic, a full on, high energy, confrontation in which both sides gave it their all. Australia won, but it was on a knife edge right up until the end, and we emerged bloodied but brave, strong, ready to face them across four more Tests, twenty more days. It was an emotional rollercoaster, but I felt enthused, rather than crushed, at the end. My team had given all they could, and the Aussies only won because their Captain was, in the very last hour, exceptional.

Work-wise I’m near to completion on my UK crime drama spec script. It’s a whole new field for me, and I feel very invested in this script, which I think is way punchier than any of my previous efforts. I’ve also continued to pick up meetings and panels at Comic Con, and I hope that soon I’ll be able to tell you about some of them!

I was also very pleased to record an edition this week of the Greymalkin Lane Podcast, talking about a particular couple of issues of a Marvel comic from 1970, plus my career in general. I had a great time. You should be able to hear the results on July 17th.

Thomas, my autistic son (hello, new readers!) has had a good week, with only a couple of bursts of grumpiness. One was about me really not letting him bounce in his trampoline with the sound of thunder approaching. That resulted in him running around the garden trying to evade me in the pelting rain and a major meltdown before bedtime, but better that than the (tiny, I admit) risk of lightning. He’s very proud of his latest Lego creation, a seaside tower, with pizzas on a table with an umbrella outside it, and a Lego ocean, with improvised waves that look great. He’s asked me about it several times, so one can tell he’s proud. The other night he closed all the doors to the kitchen and Caroline and I could hear him inside, preparing something. We looked in, kind of worried, to find he’d just poured himself a glass of cold milk. ‘Sorry, Daddy,’ he said, as if he’d been caught at the drinks cabinet, ‘I got carried away.’

To Be Continued

I’ve got two comicker friend houseguests later today, so there should be some fun photos next week. Beer and curry ahoy!