Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter
For 25th October. What I'm doing at MCM!
I’m a Guest at London MCM Comic Con Tomorrow!
Tomorrow, Saturday, 26th October, I’ll be a guest at the London MCM Comic Con.
I’ll be doing signings at 2pm and 4.45pm at the Author Autographing Tables, and I’ll be appearing on the Artists’ Alley stage at 4pm for a Spotlight panel.
I look forward to seeing some of you there.
The Sequel to Hammer House of Podcast is… Telefantasy Time Jump!
Lizbeth Myles and I have just about completed our seven year journey as curators of the Hammer House of Podcast, with our final episode, a Christmas Special, coming out in December.
So, on January 13th, we’ll be starting our new podcast, Telefantasy Time Jump. It’s going to be about the history of fantastic television in the UK, going year by year, starting with 1953. (But we’ll be talking in the first episode about all the shows that came out before that date.) Each episode one of us will pick a UK series from that year for us to watch two examples of, and the other one of us will select a show from the rest of the world in that year to talk about on our extra monthly episode for Patreon supporters. (Everyone who’s at the £3/$3 level or above.)
If you’re a current Patron of HHoP, you don’t have to do anything (except set your patronage to the £3/$3 level if you want the extra episode). The HHoP Patreon site will simply turn into the TTJ site and memberships will be carried over. If you get HHoP through a podcast app, you may have to re-subscribe, but we’ll get into that as 2025 approaches.
HHoP will be leaving Twitter/X as soon as the podcast is finished. (I envisage our team of weirdies leaping on an ancient carriage driven by Christopher Lee that gallops off out of there.)
You can now find the new podcast at these links on Instagram (where it’s /telefantasytimejump/) and Bluesky (where it’s TelefantasyTJ.bsky.social).
I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved in our seven year run, and I hope you’ll follow us to our new monthly home!
How to Find Us at 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. And this year I’ve once again got guest status, which is a lovely gesture.
And they’ve just told us where our table will be. We’re going to be at A14 in the DSTLRY Hall, next to Rachael Smith!
Do drop by to see us!
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 available to pre-order on Amazon, and at all good bookstores and comic shops.
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. (These will also be coming along to Thought Bubble!)
The Current 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 October episode being about The Lodge.
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. (But you now might want to sign up at the £3/$3 level to get the bonus episodes for our sequel podcast!)
(That particular incarnation of Hammer made some great movies.)
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 friends Georgia Cook and Fio Trethewey, whose writing may be familiar to those who follow Doctor Who, have a Kickstarter in progress, for a new horror fiction podcast series, The Holmwood Foundation, a modern day sequel to Dracula.
“In the show, we follow Maddie Townsend (Rebecca Root) and Jeremy Larkin (Sean Carlsen), two co-workers at the Holmwood Foundation, a secretive organisation that has been maintaining and studying the remains of Count Dracula over the last 130 years, as they are possessed by the ghosts of Jonathan and Mina Harker and sent on a journey across the UK to end a battle that began over a century ago. This is a story about identity and self discovery, family loyalty and devotion, wrapped around a nightmare of a road trip with a rejuvenating severed head, incredibly sincere Victorian ghosts, and an analogue recorder. "
You can listen to the trailer and the pilot at the link above. Do check it out!
And my friend the SF novelist Adrian Tchaikovsky seems to have something in the works in terms of a comic project. At least, his name was included as part of ComiXology’s launch of new titles at New York Comic Con, though we have no further info concerning what that might be about. I await further developments eagerly!
My Week
So that biggest meeting ever I was due to have yesterday… didn’t happen, getting rescheduled one minute before it was due to start! The prep and the nervousness and then the thump of no payoff… gah. We await the new date. And breathe.
I’m still reading prose and comics as research for those two separate projects. Quite a nice way to spend one’s day, but I’m getting itchy to write. I did also fire off a comics pitch this week.
Thomas’ birthday party was lovely. He was very well-behaved through lunch with Grandma and Grandad, and enjoyed showing Grandma photos of his jigsaws, and then enjoyed the cake and the presents with his Godparents. In the evening, Nanny Louise looked after him while Caroline and I went to the 135th annual dinner of my local cricket club. Youngsters got their caps for their first appearance in the senior teams and bashful giants of fast bowlers didn’t want to make speeches. Just as it should be.
Tom’s been on half-term holiday since Wednesday, and now Nanny Louise has moved on to her new job, we’re dividing up our time with him. It’s tiring, because hanging out with a special needs child long term is. But Thomas has got more communicative since going to his specialist school, and slightly more open to the idea of doing new things. Though the first couple of days of holiday were marked by him really needing us to not sing along to the TV or answer quiz show questions. It seems his school energy expenditure results in him needing a break from anything that breaks the calmness of his time off. He was much better this morning, dancing with me and working on his latest jigsaw together.
One weird wrinkle is that Tom’s favourite apples, Pink Ladies, are now in short supply, because Ozzy Osbourne has revealed his addiction to them. You know what they say, if a bat flaps its wings in California…
I’m really hoping that meeting gets re-scheduled soon. I’ll let you know. Gah.
To Be Continued
I hope to see some of you at MCM tomorrow. If you’re a subscriber, do let me know.
And I’ll see you all again here next week!
Lovely seeing you again today! Hope that meeting gets rescheduled soon!