Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

For 23rd August. My Worldcon.

Goth Opera Interview

Myself and Lizbeth Myles were interviewed by Warren Frey for the Radio Free Skaro podcast about Liz’s fabulous audio adaptation of my Doctor Who novel Goth Opera! You can hear the results here.

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Two Forthcoming Conventions

On Saturday, 14th September, I’ll be a guest at To Be Continued, a comic art expo in Bedford.

And on Saturday, 26th October, I’ll be a guest at the London MCM Comic Con.

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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 on September 4th, and is now available for pre-order from Amazon! (That has it at September 17th.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 August episode being about The Quiet Ones. These modern Hammers 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.

(It’s really not based on the terrifying true experiment.)

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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!

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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!

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The Work of Friends

My friends Jendia Gammon and Gareth L. Powell are crowdfunding a rather splended SFF anthology, Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers, with a stellar raft of contributors, myself included. They’re funding it on Ko-fi, and you can see all the details, and all the updates of how the work’s going, here. I’d very much like to see this happen, and I think you’d enjoy a book featuring such a wonderful array of talent!

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My Week(s)

I tested negative for Covid on Tuesday, which was quite the relief, after arriving home from Glasgow with it. I’d been isolating for Caroline and Thomas, for the sake of Caroline’s vulnerable congregation, and I managed not to infect them (or Liz, who was in a car with me right at the end of Worldcon). I’m quite astonished that I managed two San Diegos in a row without even a cold and managed to get Covid in Glasgow. I’m full of energy once again, and am feeling back to my usual self. Phew!

Worldcon was… well, a mixed bag. Love and friendship was very much in the positive column, with a Whatsapp group keeping my gang of friends always handy, and the mutual support felt great. But if SDCC is my natural home, where I feel most alive and feel entirely entitled to be there, Worldcon always makes me feel… like I’m not quite included. I like to think of myself as a prose author first and foremost, amazing as that might sound, so at this sort of convention I always ask for panels about novels… and always get panels about comics and Doctor Who. So these days I tend to just dump most panels I’m offered. I did two about the joy of comics this time and they were… okay. They were perfectly fine panels on that subject with some great guests and they kind of did what they were meant to do and left. The Hugo Awards organiser, at our rehearsal, joked that they were thinking of letting nominees nominate walk-up music if they won. I muttered later that whatever I asked for I’d get the Doctor Who theme.

This is, of course, all my own fault for neglecting the prose side of my career. All I need is a big enough novel (all!) and I’m sure I’ll find myself connecting to this sort of fandom again. Well, maybe several novels… okay, maybe if I went back in time? A number of my fellow media types, new to this sort of con, made all sorts of business connections and felt the experience worthwhile. For me it was more of a holiday. Which I guess is no small thing.

One thing I did love about the convention was the experiences I could only enjoy there. There was the composer of the Interstellar score, playing it on an organ. There was a symphony orchestra playing suites of SFF music. There was another orchestra doing a concert of video game music. All absolutely wonderful. And there were the publishing parties, which I always love. Give me a glass of bubbly and a mission to connect people and I’m in my element. Lauren Beukes told me a name for what I do in those circumstances. She called me a ‘praise singer’. I love that.

I did two interviews during the con, the Goth Opera one, and a forthcoming one with Scott Edelman for his Eating the Fantastic podcast. (We were virtually nose to nose in a tiny cafe, and I managed not to infect him either, thank goodness.) I think I must have caught Covid right at the end of the weekend.

For the Hugo Awards, I wore a full kilt evening wear ensemble. You can see it below.

(Photo by Lizbeth Myles.)

I was really pleased at the reaction it got, though someone later told me the kilt needed turning on its axis. Paul Weimer, the offical convention photographer, took a lovely picture of me in it. Olav Rockne, who did the Hugo photos, asked me if I ‘really wanted to do the weird eye thing’, which made me sigh a bit. That weird eye thing is what I do to avoid smiling, not being willing to show my teeth even decades after they were fixed.

At the ceremony, the row in front of me, Liz, Adrian Tchaikovsky and his wife Annie turned out to be occupied by a whole bunch of Chinese fans, the ‘plus ones’ of various nominees, who were enormous Doctor Who fans, and were delighted to discover what Liz and I had written. One of them, who had Tardis ribbons in her hair, was the translator of Who books for China. So that was a happy encounter.

None of my gang won a Hugo, myself included, but that’s by the by, it’s an honour, as they say, just to be nominated. It was great to meet for the first time fellow Comics nominee Kelly Sue DeConnick. And who can honestly object to losing to Saga?

I tell you something that was great about the weekend, though. When I went into shops on that first afternoon in Glasgow, including the wonderful City Centre Comics, which is tucked away down a back alley in a gorgeously boho fashion, I was warned that fascists were gathering in the city that night in a particular square, just as they’d met to cause havoc in many British cities that week. That evening, Ken McLeod’s partner noticed one tailing a group of Pakistani kids, and notified the police of what he was muttering into his phone. And… nothing happened. They might have abandoned it because of small numbers or seen the response that was just then getting in gear and decided better of it. Whatever shadows stretch across me from Worldcon, they’re tiny compared to the shadow the city of Glasgow passed under.

Thomas found me being masked and distant hard to deal with, of course. He’s had a couple of major meltdowns this week, both of them about disturbances to his routine. Hopefully that’s now all behind us. His jigsaw habit has now moved on to the 2000 piece Lord of the Rings set I found in the dealers’ room. He’s also watching Lego builder videos of LOTR settings. I can but hope this bodes well for the future.

And this week I also did a lovely little homecoming gig at Faringdon Library, Faringdon being the town where Caroline and I used to live. My God-daughter asked lots of good questions. It felt cosy. Only twelve days until Thomas starts Big School. Then I can throw myself back into the new novel, and aim at the prize… which is maybe feeling more comfortable in my skin at Worldcon?

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To Be Continued

I’m sure I’ll feel a bit less mopey next week. Getting back into actually writing the new novel will help, I’m sure. At any rate, I hope to see you all next week.