Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter
For May 3rd. I won the Terrance Dicks Award! (I told you there'd be something special this week.)
The Terrance Dicks Award
I’m honoured beyond measure to be the recipient of the Terrance Dicks Award for lifetime achievement in Doctor Who writing. The award winner is decided upon by the executive of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, and I couldn’t be more delighted to be given a trophy (and it’s such a lovely trophy) named after my great friend and mentor.
The trophy was presented to me last Saturday at the Capitol convention near Birmingham. I gave a little speech, and it was especially pleasing to have so many other Doctor Who writers, old and new, present. All in all, I couldn’t be more delighted. Thanks again to the DWAS Exec and to Elsa and the Dicks family.
The Death of Wolverine
As announced here on ICv2, on 27th November Marvel will be releasing an omnibus edition of the Death of Wolverine storyline, featuring not only the miniseries of that name, but also my entire run on the comic. I’m very pleased that all this material will now be available in one volume.
There are going to be two covers, this regular one from Alex Ross…
And this direct market exclusive version from Joe Quesada.
It’s already available to pre-order on Amazon, and at all good bookstores and comic shops.
The Collected Project: Cyptid is Out This Month!
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 (and I’m on the bill!)
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.
And I’ll now be one of three writers added as a full supporting programme! (We’ll cost £5 for the lot of us, times TBC.)
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. (The guide to learning Japanese has now been sold!)
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
My friend Alec Nevala-Lee, the SF writer and author of Astounding, that amazing book about the early days of the genre, is also now the writer of the first comprehensive biography of legendary inventor Buckminster Fuller, and will be lecturing on that subject in New York on May 13th and 20th as a short course. You can attend virtually and keep the recording, and there will also be interactive opportunities during the sessions. Check out all the details here.
My Week
So last Saturday I drove up to Birmingham (by way of the Out of This World comic shop in Worcester) and was met in secret in a hotel car park by representives of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. I’d known about the Terrance Dicks Award for several weeks, but had managed to keep quiet about it, and Tony Jordan of the DWAS was keen to keep my appearance at the convention to accept the award as a secret. I was snuck into the green room, where it was great to see Rob Shearman, Phil Ford and Sophie Aldred. Then I had to go around to a side door and wait outside in the rain, getting more and more nervous as I listened to the run up speech. I needn’t have worried. The audience was lovely, and, though I’d forgotten my notes, I said just about all I’d planned to say. I feel now like maybe I didn’t mention Terrance enough, but then, what could be enough? The reaction online was equally lovely, with both local and international folk I didn’t expect to hear from offering congratulations. The trophy now sits in my office, and it’s good to be able to look over at something that one did for many decades, that formed the golden thread to one’s career, the road to everything else. If there’s a point to such awards it’s that they’re a comfort, a defence against meaninglessness, and a target, as I said in my speech, for new writers to aim for. It’s made some small part of me that was stormy forever calm, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Speaking of storminess, it’s been a week of both the real thing, shaking the house in the early hours, and a lot of stormy anxiousness in my head. Last week’s blood pressure and pulse worries haven’t really gone away, and I still get sudden bursts of weakness as I walk along. What made it a lot better, and what I should have done a lot earlier, was looking at the parent satisfaction stats with the specialist secondary school Thomas is due to move to in the autumn. There was a news story this week about a special school that was literally torturing their pupils, and I guess that got to me on a pretty deep level. With my own educational history, which I wrote a horror novel about, I was always going to find Thomas moving to secondary school a difficult time, but that account ramped everything up. But last year’s figures for the autistic school he’s going to, across categories like bullying and communication, were pretty stellar. I don’t think I’ll feel truly comfortable until I’ve looked a few teachers in the eye, though, and got a gut feeling for what sort of people they are.
Work-wise this week I’ve been turning my Who Killed Nessie? plot into a page-by-page summary, and met with Rachael to get her input on the shape of the story. (I also thus got to wave to little Henry and make him laugh by joining in with him pointing to different bits of his face.) I’ve also been taking meetings about a couple of huge things which you’ll hear about soon.
An award can’t protect you from fear, I’m a test case for that. But it can remind you of how many friends you’ve got, and that at least something you’ve done might be remembered.
To Be Continued
I can’t top that next week, but I look forward to seeing you all here anyway!