Flight Updates

If you thought I wasn't going to take each and every opportunity I could to chronicle all of the stages of my first professional piece of fiction's journey to publication in as much detail as possible here, then I'm afraid you were very sadly mistaken. Anyway, I'm comfortable in the knowledge that very few people actively read this blog, and that it mostly functions as a sort of chronicle for myself to look back on at various things I've done over the years, so I know I'm only writing to please myself anyway. Which is, as is often pointed out, often the best reason to write something anyway.

Star Flight got what I'm certain is its first podcast mention just over a week ago, on an episode of Radio Free Skaro. This is a Canadian Doctor Who podcast to which I have been a listener, off-and-on, since around 2013 or so, and for which I have kindly been interviewed a couple of times, when The Long Game and Pull to Open came out.

On this occasion they were interviewing BBC Audiobooks editor Michael Stevens, during which he talked about the range and what they have coming up next year, with Star Flight getting a nice little mention. It was also brought up earlier in the episode, too, before the interview, when they do their news round-up at the start and talked briefly about it having been announced as an upcoming title. Not much, as there obviously isn't yet much to say, but some very kind comments about The Long Game and Pull to Open, which is of course much appreciated. You can have a listen to the episode here:

Aside from that, the website CultBox also put up a short news article briefly summarising the news of Star Flight and John Peel's The Mind Trap having been the first two BBC Audiobooks Doctor Who 'audio originals' announced for 2026:

But the main action, such as it is, has been over on Amazon, where after going up for pre-order Star Flight briefly reached the dizzy heights of number 6317 in the charts. Which, I admit, doesn't sound all that impressive, but when you consider how many thousand, probably millions of books and audiobooks are available via Amazon, I think it's pretty good going!

It also made number two their 'Hot New Releases' chart for Doctor Who books and audiobooks:

And got up to number four in their general Doctor Who books chart:

All of which I am, as you can imagine, pretty proud of and pleased with! I'm not sure there will be a lot more to say now until the cover artwork is released; I'm not sure when exactly that will be, but I have seen the draft and I am very pleased with it! I couldn't stop looking at it when it was first sent to me. It made the whole thing feel that much more 'real', of course.

Oh, something else I can share with you, as it doesn't give anything away, is a bit of the email I was sent with the contract to sign when I was commissioned to write the story. This was particularly pleasing as, because it's an audiobook, they obviously refer to it as a 'script': so I was being formally commissioned, by the BBC, to write a Doctor Who script, with the paperwork looking and feeling a bit like that for all those actual, proper, TV Doctor Who writers whose work I have watched, enjoyed, read about and written about down the years...