Nessie is Fully Funded!
Thanks to so many of you backing us and spreading the word, Who Killed Nessie?, the graphic novel from me and Rachael Smith is fully funded, a total of $21,925, and will be out toward the end of the year. (We’ll be sending backers regular updates.) Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the book!
Worth sharing here just because it’s great fun, Lizbeth Myles interviewed me about the project for a non-episode of Hammer House of Podcast, and it’s just us bantering without having a Hammer movie to talk about. We have a really great time.
The Collected Project: Cyptid is Out in May!
The first collection of Ahoy’s comics anthology series Project: Cryptid, including a Mongolian Death Worm strip by me and artist P.J.Holden as well as the work of many, many other great creators, including the first ever comics work of my friend Melissa Olson, is out on 14th May.
Joanne Harris at Fairford Festival
So to help out my local Festival, I’ve had a hand in arranging for award-winning author Joanne Harris to make a personal appearance. If you’re going to be in the Cotswolds this summer, why not pop in? She’ll be appearing on Saturday, 8th June at 4pm as part of the Fairford Festival. You can see all the details and get tickets here.
I’m a Speaker at Develop: Brighton
Courtesy of Game Republic, I’m going to be on a panel at the Develop: Brighton gaming conference, which runs from 9th-11th July, though when my panel is still hasn’t been announced.
The panel is called Tips and Insights on Narrative Design from Leading Writers.
“Award-winning writers Rhianna Pratchett, Charles Cecil (Revolution, Broken Sword), Paul Cornell (Doctor Who, Marvel) and Judi Alston (Dreaming Methods) share their experiences, insights, learnings and tips for creating high quality narrative games with Dr Jackie Mulligan (Game Republic). The panelists will explore how to make narrative games on a budget, techniques to explore character, using new technology like AI and VR to enhance storytelling in games and trends in narrative design in particular stories being interpreted across multiple media. The session will also include a Q&A.”
I’m delighted to be part of such an excellent line-up.
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.
(This lovely final cover art by Sean Longmore.)
I’m a Hugo Awards Finalist!
The graphic novel by myself, artist Valeria Burzo and colour artist Jordie Bellaire, The Witches of World War 2, is a Finalist in the Best Graphic Story or Comic category in this year’s Hugo Awards!
The Awards will be given out at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow (August 8th-12th), and I’ll be at the ceremony. So wish me luck!
Those of you who are members of the convention, and thus able to vote, will find the complete digital version of the graphic novel in their Voter Packets, courtesy of our kind publishers, TKO.
Thanks again to everyone who nominated us!
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.)
We’re Going Back to Thought Bubble!
Lizbeth Myles and I will once more be running at table at the great Thought Bubble comics convention in Harrogate on 16th-17th November! I’m looking forward to meeting once again so many lovely comics fans.
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 out on the 13th of every month, with our April episode being about Let Me In, the first of the modern Hammer horror movies! These will take us until the end of the year, and then we’ll be announcing our sequel podcast!
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.
(An excellent movie to begin this new run.)
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/Remembering Friends
A whole bunch of friends of mine are working on this: a Kickstarter to create a comics museum in Portland, where so many comickers are now based. Check it out!
Now I want to mention two friends who are no longer with us. Jeffrey Veregge was an amazing artist and a lovely human being. I got to know him when he did the variant covers on Saucer State, and, learning that he collected editions of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, sent him one from Mum’s attic. He suffered from lupus for the longest time, and finally passed away after a heart attack. His family, who supported him across those years, are trying to make some money, and continue the legacy of his work, with a range of t-shirts supporting his designs, showcasing his unique style of pop culture/Native American art. They are thus, of course, amazing shirts! Check them out here.
My friends Lynne & Michael Thomas, who run Uncanny Magazine, have recently lost their daughter Caitlin, who they looked after wonderfully for many years. Mary Robinette Kowal has set up a fundraiser to help them with their medical expenses. They’re great parents. You can imagine how hard this is. Do take a look.
My Week
Well, that was a wild ride. At various times during the crowdfunding campaign I’ve felt very low; this was, after all, a literal index of one’s popularity and ability to attract attention as a creator. But as we approached the ending, and especially as our goal started to look possible, I started to really enjoy the process. My Dad always loved selling directly to people, and I think I’ve inherited that trait. It’s why I take a table at Thought Bubble. It’s not just selling one’s wares, it’s meeting people with a purpose, immediately having a subject to talk about. The campaign felt like being at Comic Con, that sense of always being on a mission. A freelancer often has to generate their own purpose, and this gave me a great sense of purpose. Horribly, I may now be addicted to crowdfunding.
Weirdly, I did the last day of the campaign wearing something that looks like a Star Trek medical scanner, you know, the sort of thing Bones carried over his shoulder. The pharmacist in my little town stopped me as I was buying B12 and told me I was qualified for a blood pressure check. I took them up on that, and they found I was in the Amber Zone, which is slightly concerning. (The Red Zone means dial 999.) I did mention to them that I was in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign. They also noted that my heartbeat was really slow. All of which made sense to me given my (now very occasional) feelings of dizziness and weakness. So I had to go back the next day and be fitted with a 24-hour blood pressure monitor, the aforementioned pack slung over my shoulder, which is connected to a blood pressure cuff on the other arm. At intervals it pings me to sit down, then inflates the cuff and measures everything. I’ll have returned it and its data just before you read this. I had to wear it in bed overnight too. Surprisingly, it didn’t wake me up. The oddest moment was when it went off twice while I was playing ball with Thomas, really crushing the cuff and making one of my arms useless for a few moments. Maybe it wondered what I was doing. It’s entirely possible it will show that my reading in the pharmacy was a one-off, or it might suggest a new course of treatment. I’m quite pleased all this happened while my mind was completely taken up with doing something else. I’m also quite pleased that I haven’t had to socialise wearing a device that makes it sound like I’m breaking wind for a full minute.
To Be Continued
Next week I can promise you an exciting announcement that will come as a complete surprise! There I go, selling again. But it’s true!
And thus I hope to see you all then.