Nessie Campaign Update, Might be the Last One!
If you don’t know what this is, I do the basics at the bottom of this section!
There are just 7 days left of the Who Killed Nessie? crowdfunding campaign, but whether of not that means the next Newsletter will be in time for the very end of it, I don’t know. So if you haven’t yet had a look, or are planning to back us, please act now!
Co-creator Rachael Smith and I have this week been interviewed by the Comic Book Couples Counselling podcast (which I’m a huge fan of), and we’re also interviewed about the project in the new issue (#467) of The Judge Dredd Megazine. And Smash Pages have included us in their new regular roundup of crowdfunding projects.
Who Killed Nessie? is a cosy whodunnit comedy cryptozoology graphic novel by me and the great cartoonist Rachael Smith, about an intern at a hotel where mysterious beasts hold their annual convention. She’s called upon to solve the murder of the Loch Ness Monster.
If you love cute art, do take a look at our Zoop campaign here, where you can see many more pages like the ones below. (And we’ve got some lovely backer levels, some of which are nearly sold out, where you can buy the original art, or even watch Rachael draw live on Zoom with me chatting away.)
“It’s like you dreamed up a comic just for me” – JOE HILL (creator of Locke & Key).
Please take a look, and spread the word!
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!
My Week
I spent the week pushing hard at the Nessie campaign, while also starting to really like the new novel I’m writing (something that happens when I get what the tone is going to be, and find myself writing fan fiction about the parts I’ve already written). Yesterday, with seven days to go on the campaign, I tried to post something about it every hour on my social media. (That is Bluesky, Insta and Threads.) The prospect of possibly failing in public is really getting to me. Apart from that, I had some really big meetings (two about different things on the same day), participated in the annual San Diego Comic Con Hotel Room Havoc (let’s see if I get one), and really enjoyed appearing on a podcast I’m a fan of, Comic Book Couples Counselling.
Last Friday, Tom enjoyed going down to see his in-laws, who have some lovely new dogs for him to get to know. With Nanny Louise back, he’s had the reassurance of his regular routine entirely back in place. (And so have I, to be honest.) He’s been doing a lot better with his road safety, now we’ve framed it as a series of actions he has to always do.
I’ve also been out and about in my community, putting posters up in this little town for the appearance of Joanne Harris at the Festival, and going along to the first cricket nets of the year, where me and a few more of the local Social Side (the Fourths, basically, with no expectation of ability), practiced batting and bowling ahead of our forthcoming season of odd matches here and there against various pubs and, err, the USAF. I’m working on my bowling, which used to be respectable for a batsman who bowls the odd over, and is now ridiculously bad. The first ball I let loose flew upward and landed on the top of the next net over, leading to the other players spending five minutes trying to knock it down with bats and thrown balls. That really could put a dent in one’s confidence, but they were all incredibly kind about it, and offered gentle advice and support as I tried to get past what cricketers call ‘the yips’, an inability to perform the right actions when one is too acutely aware of being watched and judged. This kindness felt like great therapy for my childhood trauma, and, having had a couple of pints with the team afterwards I returned home feeling very satisfied and calm.
Hey, listen, if you just read this bit, please do me a favour and check Nessie out. The idea that it won’t happen if we don’t hit that target is weird and difficult. Much like this writer’s bowling.
To Be Continued
I have no idea what this Newsletter will be like next week in terms of Nessie. Maybe it’ll be done, maybe not!
But at any rate, I hope to see you all next week.
I want to send a link for Who Killed Nessie to some local stores. I'm bad at pitches. Do you have a couple sentences I can post in the shop's comment box when I send them a link?
Hi Paul,
If the crowdfunding for Nessie doesn't reach it's goal, I wouldn't call that failing. Your public for a crowdfunding like this is a lot smaller due to the high postage and/or tax and import costs for foreign countries.
Furthermore there's been a new development in crowdfunding recently. It used to be you could only buy the book via crowdfunfing. Nowadays after the crowdfunding is done you can still get the book trough your normal channels without paying a huge extra cost.
I suspect the majority of backers will be American.
I backed the book for 23 dollars, postage will be 19 dollars and income tax for Belgium will be more than 20 dollars. This discourages a lot of possible backers.
So it's kind of a failure of the crowdfunding model and not of you.
So don't let it get you down if it doesn't reach it's goal. I Love your work, everything I've ever read by you. And a crowdfunding that doesn't reach it's goal won't change that.
Keep up the good work!