#18thWall

[the-last-teabender]

Beautiful art for a very cool book… which I have a story in!

New book cover! This time for Overdue, published by 18thWall.

[fiotrethewey]

2024 post!

Back in the days of LiveJournal, I used to do round-ups of my year, and then that went to Facebook, but as I have Tumblr, I decided to post here as well.

So, this year has been both amazing and stressful, and I thought it good to summarise it all to look back on...

WORK:

Work-wise, I was promoted just before the end of last year to Deputy Manager Cover, which was my role until October. Navigating a new work role was stressful, but at least I survived on a slightly better London Wage.

Unfortunately, that didn't become a permanent job as we hoped. Still, it did get me the respect of my peers and a recognition award at the end of the year, and now an opportunity to work with another team 1 day a week, so there's a lot to be thankful for and to look forward to seeing how that progresses next year.

CREATIVE WORK:

I had a short story 'In The Heart of Lads' published this year, which I wrote in 2018 for "Overdue: Mystery, Adventure, and the World’s Lost Books." It is about four boys who stumble across a missing Wilfred Owen—and a dangerous treasure hunter on their heels as they travel overseas to get it into safe hands. Thank you to everyone at 18thWall Productions!

There were two Big Finish releases this year, Twelfth Doctor Chronicles You Only Die Twice and the Gallifrey Echoes of Eternity Release - The Questing Beast. There's still a lot I can't talk about, but that being said, it's been an honour and privilege to work with Georgia Cook this year on @theholmwoodfoundation, which was our original audio project that not only meant we could work with some fantastic new friends and old friends, but we got to learn production as well as writing and how to successfully hit a very hard Kickstarter target so we could finish Season One, and tell the rest of this story!

Being part of the Independent Podcast Community this year and working with Karim C Kronfli and Sarah Golding has been amazing. Generally, I hope to be a force for good in the space, even though Georgia and I are incredibly new to the world.

MISC:

Here's a list of some of the stuff I did this year:

LOS ANGELES - Back to Gally One (cries in FOMO about not going next year)

I celebrated my birthday in style at Mirror Room at Rosewood London, where I had afternoon tea with Georgia inspired by famous artists!

I went to two Concerts! Hozier and Seth Lakeman!! And, of course, Doctor Who Proms!

I started learning the drums again. (This is parked for now until I can get my own drumkit in a permanent place!)

I saw Hadestown and The Stranger Things Play, and I went to the Globe for the first time, where I watched Anne Odeke's incredible Princess Essex!

I visited the family in Cornwall and went to the Fowey Regatta to watch the fireworks in August.

I've been participating in a TTRG Livestream - Explorers of Elsewhere!

I also visited the Eden Project for the first time since 2008

Three Conventions as Guests - DWAS Capitol Event, Big Finish Day and Whooverville. We also helped with Audio Hub PodFest and attended the Premiere of Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters, celebrating 90 years of Hammer!

TRANSITION:

Lastly, it would be amiss of me to not mention my transition, which at the end of last year saw me announce that I'm a transgender man. Well, this year, I was able to start Hormone Therapy - in my case, applying Testosterone or Testogel every day, which I've now been taking for almost ten months, and it's honestly been such an eye-opener to just how dysphoric it was to present in a feminine way. My new voice, my new hairline, my beard, and how I'm now perceived in public make a massive difference in my confidence and how I go about in the world. So much so that I was asked to talk about it at work, and I got a photo taken for our work newsletter and was on a podcast!

THE FUTURE:

Looking forward to next year, as Georgia and I are imminently moving to Manchester, to be able to survive a bit easier and live together in a little 2 bed flat we've found. We've got more Holmwood to make, and looking forward to a year where we get to make decisions together.

As always, I am incredibly grateful to friends and family for their love and support. I will take this opportunity to express my utter joy about starting to live with the love of my life next year. Every stressful thing has been manageable because my darling @georgiacooked has been there with me. Thank you for everything!

[theholmwoodfoundation]

THE HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION PILOT EPISODE CAST/CREW - PART THREE

GEORGIA COOK - CO-WRITER AND CO-PRODUCER

Georgia Cook is an illustrator and scribe-award nominated writer from London. She has written for publications such as Baffling, Vastarien Lit, and Flame Tree press, as well as the Doctor Who range with Big Finish. Her Doctor Who Novel, Ruby Red, is currently available from Penguin books. She frequently writes and narrates for various horror anthology podcasts such as 'Creepy', 'The Other Stories', and 'The Night's End'. She can be found on twitter at @georgiacooked and on her website at https://www.georgiacookwriter.com/

FIO TRETHEWEY - CO-WRITER AND CO-PRODUCER

Fio Trethewey is a writer and artist known for their love of Doctor Who, Arthurian Legend and 80s cult classics. Alongside working for the Lancet as a Deputy Operations Manager he has written a variety of audio dramas and short stories for Big Finish Productions for their Doctor Who box sets, most recently writing for the Gallifrey War Room Series both ‘The Last Days of Phaidon” (2022), “Transference” (2023) and The Twelfth Doctor Chronicles finale "You Only Die Twice.' Fio has also contributed their prose work to various anthologies including Overdue: Mystery, Adventure, and the World’s Lost Books, Shadows Over Avalon Volume 2 and Sockhops and Seances for 18thWall Productions. Lastly, as a writer and artist to charity anthologies and raised money on a charity drawing stream for FareShare UK back in October 2020 raising $4,762.

KATHARINE ARMITAGE - SCRIPT EDITOR

Katharine is a writer, script editor and director in drama and comedy. Most recently she directed new Radio 4 sitcom 'Tom and Lauren Are Going OOT!' and wrote scripts including 'The Beautiful Game' and 'Nowhere, Never' for Big Finish's Doctor Who audio dramas.  She also wrote and directed an adaptation of 'Dracula', back in 2017, so was delighted to return to the Count's world in working on 'The Holmwood Foundation'.

BENJI CLIFFORD - SOUND DESIGNER/ ENGINEER

Benji is a sound designer, musician, and presenter from the UK who specialises in post-production audio design. Whether creating cinematic multi-cast productions or intimate storytelling through audiobooks, Benji ensures that you get the highest quality, professional-sounding production. Throughout his time as a sound designer, Benji has worked on many famous properties such as BBC's Doctor Who and Torchwood, ITV's iconic Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Stingray, as well as cult tv revivals such as Terry Nation's Survivors, Space 1999, Adam Adamant Lives and Blake's 7, to name a few. Using the latest industry-standard equipment, software, and a fully loaded sound effects library consisting of thousands of recordings, Benji delivers a clean and contemporary sound regardless of your budgetary requirements. In addition to working in his own studio, Benji has extensive experience engineering in some of London's busiest recording studios. He has also helped many companies and productions continue working during remote working restrictions, ensuring high quality can be achieved even in less-than-ideal environments. Since 2017, Benji has co-hosted the weekly Big Finish Podcast alongside Nicholas Briggs. This podcast has a worldwide reach with thousands of listeners, and he has also performed it live across the UK and in the USA.

PART ONE: HERE

PART TWO: HERE

[jmreynolds]

Four tales of occult detection and adventure, from the creator of the Royal Occultist! This collection includes:

"Wendy-Smythe’s Worm"- St. Cyprian, the Royal Occultist, battles a rapacious and ever-expanding serpent of malevolent proportions…

"Evil Fruit" - Bartolomeo Corsi, cursed monk, confronts a fungal horror in the depths of an old monastery.

"On Dark Wings"- Baron Vordenburg, monster-hunter, pursues a flock of flying monsters in the Ionian Sea.

"The Yoth Protocols"- Indrid Cold, immortal secret agent, uncovers a Soviet plot to infiltrate the lightless depths of Yoth.

Note: "Wendy-Smythe's Worm" previously appeared in the collection Monmouth's Giants from 18thWall Productions. "Evil Fruit" previously appeared in the anthology Monkpunk, from Static Movement. "On Dark Wings" has appeared online on Patreon, Ko-Fi and Substack. "The Yoth Protocols" first appeared in Atomic Age Cthulhu, from Chaosium.

[raiyine]

SHORT STORY: A Different Kind of Soldier by John Linwood Grant

SHORT STORY: A Different Kind of Soldier by John Linwood Grant

I learned of the amazing John Linwood Grant when I read the book A Study in Grey. I instantly fell in love with Major Redvers Blake and have been wishing and hoping I could read more about him. Well, Virginia, dreams really do come true… A Different Kind of Soldier Autumn bleeds in tawny shades, a suspicion of winter hiding under sodden foliage. And if I have an ‘autumnal’ character in my…

[forgottenlivesobverse]

Q&A with Simon Bucher-Jones

Another Q&A, this time with prolific and much-loved author Simon Bucher-Jones, whose story ‘The Knocking in the Mineshaft’ kicks off Forgotten Lives with the Christopher Barry Doctor. It opens like this:

‘The following account is taken from the personal papers of the Rev. Daveth Malcolm* (1740-1804) of St. Winwaloe’s, Gunwalloe, Cornwall. This peculiar story was discovered there, and achieved some notoriety in the early days of the present century.

‘* As the account is in the third person, some historians have dismissed Daveth Malcolm’s account as a work of fiction – Ed.’

 FL: Tell us a little about yourself.

SBJ: I’m well meaning but often functionally inept. I held down a job as a civil servant for 30 years. I’ve been a published writer for 24. I’m older than I’ve ever been, and now I’m even older.

I’ve been very lucky as a writer to have had the opportunities provided by Virgin Books, BBC Books, and Obverse. I’ve also written for 18thWall Publications, Titan Books, and Arcbeatle, as well as for charity fanthologies. I’m glad to be able to support charities doing good works through writing. This year I’ve contributed to Doctor Who: Journey into Time, The Curse of Fanfic, and seen into print the novella: Professor Howe and the Furious Foam. I also have a story in a forthcoming Sarah-Jane Smith tribute volume. I’m also drawing a very peculiar graphic novel version of the play The King in Yellow, now halfway through in only five years!

 FL: What attracted you to this project?

It just stuck me as an immensely good idea (which is perhaps only to be expected of Philip Purser-Hallard and Obverse Books). The ‘faces’ have always been there in The Brain of Morbius and their recent return to the TV screen in The Timeless Children has brought them back to light not just for fans who would have seen the 1976 story, but the wider audience of 21st century Who fans and casual BBC viewers. This opens up a further range of possible Doctors for exploration while remaining more grounded than arbitrary ‘other’ Doctors. Coupled too with the excellent art from Paul Hanley which was included in the publicity about the project, the prospect looked both thematically interesting and physically gorgeous.

FL: Each story in the book features a different incarnation of the Doctor. Tell us about yours.

I’m leading off with the first of the ‘Morbius’ Doctors (on the assumption that they appear in reverse order on screen as the Doctor is forced back through his incarnations). Portrayed by Christopher Barry, this Doctor is a bearded man with a sardonic expression and a twinkle in his eye. As the first one to appear in the book more of him is a mystery than explained, he’s of his time yet out of it, a puzzle to his temporary companions in the adventure – a knowledgeable outsider capable of flashes of anger and yet also of kindness.

 FL: These Doctors only exist in a couple of photos. How did you approach the characterisation of your incarnation?

I wanted if possible to reflect Christopher Barry’s personality and did try to do my research but aside from mentions in others memoirs and a couple of interviews, he’s a lot less well documented than some of the others. He wrote the foreword to Michael E Briant’s memoir (Briant confirms that Chris was ‘creative, imaginative, and […] a very nice man’ but that wasn’t a lot to go on) but not – alas – as yet, one of his own. So… I did what any author would do I made it up. He looks to me like an amused Doctor, and yet one who can sometimes have a harsh word for stupidity and folly. He’s dressed in Elizabethan garb so may have absorbed something of the period’s strengths and weaknesses. I see him as well mannered until his ire is raised.

 FL: What's your story about?

I’d been reading a lot of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Cornwall-set fiction trying to track down a supposed ‘living disembodied hand’ reference for The Hand of Fear Black Archive, and wanted to set something in the Cornwall he wrote about. My story deals with the legend of the Knockers, strange noises in the tin mines that may be the ghosts of dead miners or something else striving in the dark.

The Doctor – Doctor Medec is the name he goes by in my story – has come to Cornwall just as strange discoveries are being made.

 FL: The stories are intended to represent a ‘prehistory’ of Doctor Who before 1963. How did that affect your approach?

SBJ: I got a bit carried away by that and invented a prehistory in which Doctor Who grew out of an earlier ‘mysterious Doctor looks at true historical mysteries’ show – but very wisely Philip Purser-Hallard pared that back so it’s only a shadow cast by the finished story. I have to admit an influence from Poldark, as well as Cornish folklore – it was a big hit with my mum when I was growing up, and I’ve read the original family saga.

 FL: Who would be your ideal casting for a pre-Hartnell Doctor?

SBJ: In literature I very much like the producer / director angle and think logically we should have a Verity Lambert Doctor and Waris Hussein Doctor as soon as possible! If we’re talking about TV presentation then ‘ideal’ is hard, Vincent Price if I had a time machine. Of living actors: Doug Jones out of make-up, Leni Parker? Any great actor of any colour, sex or gender.

 FL: What other projects are you working on at present?

SBJ: I have a fantasy novel I’m trying to sell, set in an Atlantis that may not fall. That needs a full second draft in 2021. I’m halfway through the aforementioned graphic novel. I’m writing a couple of things I can’t talk about yet. I also have to find a paying job, so if anyone needs anything done let me know. I’ve enjoyed two years just writing, but the coffers will need fresh gold soon.

[weirdletter]

The Chromatic Court, edited by Peter Rawlik, 18thWall Productions, 2019. Cover art and internal illustrations by Johannes Chazot, info: 18thwall.com.

Have you ever been haunted by a work of art? You may not be merely captured by the craft, but by something that lies in the work’s depths. Something admiring you as you admire it. Do you know the King in Yellow? The Sepia Prince? The Duke of Rust? Have you heard their whispers coming to you from dried up parchment and faded photographs? Maybe another member of the King’s court has lit upon your life, casting shadows and doubts. Do you worship them, fear them, revere them, or simply seek to understand them? These hallowed nobles who hold court around the King. Each noble holds an artform in their wavelength. For their color to shine, that art must practiced. There are no older or younger members of the court. Each has existed since before time was a concept they entertained. All of culture has evolved to suit their needs. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and color is only an abstract concept. The Chromatic Court is very real, you reading this has assured that...

A Lovecraftian dark fantasy collection from Peter Rawlik, featuring all new stories by: Glynn Owen Barass, David Bernard, Jon Black, Simon Butcher-Jones, John Linwood Grant, Micah S. Harris, Rick Lai, MaTT Loughlin, Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Christine Morgan, Logan Noble, & Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

[gingernutsofhorrorposts]

(via BOOK EXCERPT AND GIVEAWAY FOR GABRIEL'S TRUMPET BY JON BLACK ) Today we welcome author Jon Black to the site with an excerpt from his new novel Gabriel's Trumpet, plus we are giving you the chance to win one of three copies fo his book courtesy of 18thWall Productions​

[jpatrickallen]

Now on sale for less than a dollar!

Everyone brought something from the old country. Grandfather's watch, and grandmother's china; great-grandfather's folklore, and great-great-grandmother's fairy tales. What is never discussed, however, are the undying characters of the folklore: nix and fairy, goblin and vampire, dragon and eldritch things who all came to America's shores in time with the rhyme of their tales.

After Charlie's father is murdered by something impossible, he discovers a letter that leads him across the wild west. The man who wrote the letter promised to help, if things went wrong.

And things could not go more wrong. His father's murderer is on his trail, materializing from lakes, rivers, and stray pools of water. He will not rest until Charlie has joined his father...

Dead West: West of Pale is the first book in J. Patrick Allen's Dead West series. This novel picks up right where his Pulp Ark New Pulp Awards (2016) nominated short story, "Dragonfly Shadow," left off (featured in 18thWall Productions' From the Dragon Lord's Library: Volume One).

[johannesviii]

The illustrations I made for the book The Chromatic Court. It's a collection of stories trying to re-center the lovecraft mythos around the King In Yellow, and it's very good! Please give it a try.

[Image 1: Watercolor painting mainly in yellow tones. A humanoid figure sitting on a wall above an orange lake, under a yellow sky full of black stars and two black suns. There’s a ruined city on the opposite shore of the lake. The figure seems to have at least five arms, is dressed in long brown and yellow clothes and a plain lozenge mask with no eyes, colorful ribbons on their thin antlers, and seven organic colorful "petals" of sorts are deployed around their head. They are sitting among piles of books, reading one of them.

Image 2: Watercolor painting in red and green tones. In a very badly lit attic or loft under a roof full of paintings and discarded artist’s tools, a character wearing a long coat and a hat is looking at a cubist painting of a woman. Behind him, all the other cubist paintings in the room put together are creating the vague shape of a gigantic green woman, extending a hand in his direction.

Image 3: Watercolor painting in brown and blue tones. A white man in a brown suit, sitting at a desk, frowning and turning a blue sistrum in his hands. There’s a pile of books next to him and four pages of notes and drawings of the sistrum on the desk. Some curved abstract shapes are forming behind him, through which a strange blue desert with dunes can be seen.]

[johannesviii]

(...) The cover blurb lured me in with talk of new authors mingling with veterans of the Mythos, as well as the fact that lesser-known deities within the Mythos would be covered; while I can happily read about Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep and Tsathoggua for eons at a time, it is nice to see some different Great Old Ones and their hangers-on get some time in the limelight. However what made me want to review the collection more than anything was Johannes Chazot’s gorgeous piece of cover art, a wonderfully ethereal piece with a striking use of colour which perfectly evokes the dream-like realm of Carcosa, and its enigmatic patron entity The King in Yellow. (...)

I can’t stop crying guys I’m so happy

[johannesviii]

It’s finally published, guys! I’m so happy!

[johannesviii]

Look what was in the mail!! Speakeasies and Spiritualists! The first book cover I ever made! I’m so happy!

[johannesviii]

The full illustration for the cover of Inzignanin.

[Image: watercolor painting in green and brown tones. In the middle of a blur of sand and white dust, a scaly lizard man, mouth wide open in anger, is clawing frantically at what looks like a very crude face made of rocks and dust, which is trying to wrap tendrils of sand and dust around the lizard man’s arms.]

[johannesviii]

The full illustration for the cover of Rumble.

[image: watercolor painting in red, purple and yellow tones. Under a full moon, three enormous blood-red wurm-like worms with spikes and teeth are erupting from the sand right in front of smaller creatures with pointy ears, short fur, short fangs and long limbs, which were clearly trying to attack a smaller, baby worm. One of the creatures has already been eaten by the giant worm on the left.]

[johannesviii]

The full illustration for the cover of The Himalayan Horror.

[image: watercolor painting in brown, black and blueish white tones. There’s a lot of snow everywhere. In the middle of a devastated mountain camp full of broken tents and bits of items scattered everywhere, a huge, purple-faced white Yeti is barring his pointy teeth at a huge dog with shaggy black fur. They both seem to be wounded, and there's some blood-stained snow here and there between them.]