Monday, 25 October 2021

"Congratulations, it's a book!"


The Long Game exists! It's real, and it's out there in the world! The official release date isn't for another week yet, but Ten Acre have started sending out the pre-orders and some people have received their copies today - including me! Complete with a note from Stuart at Ten Acre telling me "Congratulations, it's a book!"

In fact, the entire first print run has now sold out ahead of the release date - although Ten Acre are already reprinting, so please do still order if you were thinking about doing so! This was probably helped by the Radio Times kindly publishing a piece about the book on their website on Saturday, using some preview quotes which we had arranged to give them. In fact, it was briefly the lead story on the site's main front page:


The Radio Times story also ended up being picked up by a few other sites, Yahoo News, the Metro newspaper and Digital Spy. Not quite in the same league as Morecambe-and-Wise-versus-Monty-Python back in August, but all good publicity for the book nonetheless!




I've also been doing some more personal publicity for the book with another podcast interview. This one was for the Something Who podcast and came out last week - it was great fun chatting not just about the book but about the story of my own personal fandom of the show, too. You can find that here:


But probably the most pleasing thing this week has been today, seeing tweets from people who have received their copies of the book and are either excited about starting to read it or have already started and have said very nice things:

It's hugely flattering to know that people are as interested in reading this as I was in writing it. And a relief too, of course! I'm incredibly pleased with how it's been received so far. And that I have a real, live book out there in the world again, after ten years since the Treasure Quest book!

If you would like to buy a copy of The Long Game, you can order one from Ten Acre's website by clicking here.

Monday, 11 October 2021

Party Like It's 1983!

Some more Doctor Who writing news, and thanks again to the good people at Doctor Who Magazine for running another of my pieces. In fact, this one was especially flattering as they actually asked me to write it rather than me pitching it.

The magazine has recently started a new range of special editions, each taking a detailed look at a particular year in Doctor Who's history. The third and latest of these specials, out now, looks at 1983, for which I was asked to write a piece about the legendary 20th anniversary convention held by the BBC at Longleat House.

It was good fun to put together, especially gathering people's memories of the event. I hope you enjoy it if you're picking up a copy of the special, which came out a couple of weeks ago.

On another note, some publicity for the forthcoming release of The Long Game! Thanks to some of my interviewees kindly giving their permission for some audio clips of my chats with them to be used, we have put together a little trail for the book, which you can see here:


In addition, as a further little tease we have also released the contents page!


And I have been doing some podcast interviews about the book, too. One of these was released over the weekend, with an Australian podcast called The Doctor Who Show. Many thanks to them for having me on - the interview with Rob hopefully gives more of an idea for those who are curious about what the book is about, why I wrote it and who I spoke to for it, without giving too much away and spoiling it for anybody. It was good fun chatting to Rob, and you can take a listen here:



The Long Game is released by Ten Acre Films on November 1, and you can pre-order a copy via their website.