More Book Bits!

No sooner had I put up the previous post about some reviews The Long Game has received, then another one popped up! An extremely generous one, too, written by Frank Danes for the Doctor Who Companion website. It's another incredibly kind review with lots of praise for the book, and should you wish to take a read you can find it by clicking here.

A page for The Long Game has also appeared on the Goodreads book review website, with a few reviews on there already and a four-star average rating so far, which is pretty bloody good! Again, the reviews are all very positive and kind. It seems to be going down well, this book! You can find the Goodreads page right here.

(Although it should be said that some of the other books Goodreads reckons are by the same author are very much not! I did not write, for example, Themes in Modern European History!)

My podcast book tour has also continued, with an appearance on an episode of the Bigger on the Inside podcast, which was again good fun. Talking about the book, and more generally about the enduring appeal of Doctor Who. I managed to bring both death and Norwich City's recent form into the conversation, which you can listen to here:

The latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine, issue 571, came out this week, and carried a little story about the book in its Gallifrey Guardian news section. I've been a reader of DWM for nearly 27 years now, never missing an issue in that time, and in recent years I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to write a few bits and pieces for the magazine and for some of its special editions. After all these years of reading the magazine, though, it is a unique thrill to feature as an item in the news!

I've also continued to receive some lovely messages on Twitter and on the Gallifrey Base forum, from people who've read and enjoyed the book. Including enough pictures of various people's copies to form another line on my little "rogues' gallery" of copies out and about in the wild!

There have been some very nice messages sans pictures, too, including one suggesting that The Long Game deserves to be nominated for a Hugo Award!

Whether or not it deserves that I can't say, but... You know... If anyone wants to put in a good word...

Absolutely stunning piece of work investigating a moment in Doctor Who and BBC history that uncovers all kinds of info not heard before. Plenty of, I bet he won’t mention, oh he has. Right. https://t.co/z3eB0UXFVT

— Stuart's (@feelinglistless) November 2, 2021

@the_questmaster Just finished your frankly stunning account of all those years Doctor Who never came back on TV, until it actually did. Reads like a thriller and your access to so many of the movers and shakers along the way is to be applauded. A ‘Long Game’ well worth the wait.

— Sean Alexander (@seanHolyhead) November 7, 2021

Finished my copy tonight, what a brilliant read. It brings back memories of discussing various rumours in the pub and waiting for the new series to arrive. Thanks @the_questmaster for all the work that went into it. https://t.co/tottwA7Cwn

— Jonathan Melville (@jon_melville) November 7, 2021

Just finished reading this. What a great, fascinating and entertaining read. Highly recommended for anyone with even the slightest interest in the struggles and dramas it took to get the Doctor back on our screens 👏🏼👏🏼

— Adrian Busby (@baznduffy) November 9, 2021

I've finished The Long Game 1996-2003: The Inside Story of How the BBC Brought Back Doctor Who by Paul Hayes. It's one of the best written and researched Doctor Who nonfiction books ever. It deserves a Best Related Work Hugo Award nomination. Highly recommended.

— Michael Damian Thomas (@michaeldthomas) November 12, 2021

Under Review

 

As well as the official release date on Monday, there has been another exciting development with The Long Game this week - reviews of the book have begun to appear! Three over the past three days, in fact, and I'm pleased to say that they have all been positive ones.

So let's take a look at them, shall we...? Well, it's my blog, and my book, and I'm showing off, so yes - we shall!

The first review appeared on Tuesday, on the website of the venerable old science-fiction magazine Starburst, which was first published back in 1977. Written by Paul Mount, it's an exceptionally positive review with which I am very pleased, particularly as he picked up on the fact that I really wanted to get across the background and context of what was going on at the BBC at that time, and how it then related to the story of Doctor Who coming to be recommissioned. A five-star review, no less, too!

You can read the piece on Starburst's website by clicking here.

"Astonishingly interesting and page-turning... Brilliantly collated and written with precision... An essential book for anyone interested in the arcane world of British television production."

Then yesterday, Wednesday, came the first review of the book in print. This was in the pages of another long-running and well-respected British science-fiction magazine, in this case SFX. I've often been a buyer of SFX down the years and have of course frequently perused their review pages, so it was an interesting experience to see a book of my own in there!

This review, by Calvin Baxter, was another positive one. In this case, I like that the fact that he realised that much of the point of the book was to try and collect together all those disparate elements which might have been chronicled in various other places before, but never all brought together into one whole story.

You can read Calvin's review in the current edition of SFX, issue 346, which should be available for the next month at Smith's and other good newsagents.

"The interviewee list is impressive... Future TV historians will be grateful."

Then today came the view from the website Sci-Fi Bulletin. This review by Nick Joy is fairly short, but again delivers a positive verdict. Nick picks up on an element which was another of my intentions, the fact that many of these stories will have been experienced by fans around at the time as news items in Doctor Who Magazine and the like back in the day, and The Long Game gets under the skin of them and explains what was actually happening in more detail.

Nick's review of the book is available to read on scifibulletin.com by clicking here.

"Filling a gap in the behind-the-scenes development of Doctor Who's return, you’re bound to discover a few new facts in this well-researched history."

So, all-in-all, a very positive set of reviews! I am of course keeping my eagle eye out for any more, but do let me know if you spot any! Or, of course, if you're involved with a publication or a website which might be interested in reviewing The Long Game.

And if any of this has whetted your appetite for the book but you don't yet have a copy, you can of course order one direct from my publishers Ten Acre by clicking here.

Publication Day!

 

Apologies for the crap graphic there - a very obvious sign of why my talents lay in writing rather than in anything visual! Stuart Manning and Andrew Orton who created the wonderful cover for The Long Game will be rolling their eyes if they see it, no doubt.

But I wanted to show off some of the lovely comments I have so far received from readers of the book. Because, frankly, who wouldn't?

Today is officially publication day for The Long Game. But thanks to the hard work and efficiency of publishers Ten Acre, most people who pre-ordered a copy of the first printing will probably have already received it over the course of the past week. Hence the very nice comments coming in, via Twitter and the Gallifrey Base message board, where this whole thing really started with me posting a timeline of this era for fun a few years ago.

The first printing has now completely sold out, but don't worry - the second will be ready very soon, and can of course be ordered via the Ten Acre website. 

Speaking of which, I ought to remind anyone reading this who doesn't yet have a copy that the book is only available online directly from Ten Acre. I mention this as during this week it cropped up on various top wishlists on Amazon, including in the top 20 for the "Most Wished For in Television". Which is very pleasing, of course, but ultimately rather pointless as you can't buy it on Amazon!

The book has certainly come a very long way this year. The manuscript was pretty much finished by the start of the year, but I could never have imagined that it would actually be out there in the world and being read and enjoyed by people before the end of it!

Here's the finished article alongside the print-out I had done back in the spring to use for checking for typing errors and any other assorted mistakes. Yes, the title did change - but for the better, I think. Although a little part of me will always think of it under the Resurrection name, as that's the working title it had for so long, and my folder with all the research, drafts, interviews and so forth in it still has that name!

On a publicity note, I have been continuing what I am now rather pleasingly but stupidly referring to as my "Podcast Book Tour"! I recorded an interview with another Doctor Who podcast on Friday evening, which should be out very soon. And then yesterday, Paul Kerensa released the latest episode of his excellent British Broadcasting Century podcast, which charts the earliest days of British broadcasting and the BBC. 

Obviously my book concerns a somewhat later era, but Paul often intersperses the historical elements of the podcast with guests discussing other bits of broadcasting history, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to come on and talk about The Long Game. In any case, I highly recommend the series to anybody with an interest in the history of the BBC. You can find the latest episode with my guest appearance here:

If anyone reading this happens to have their own podcast about either Doctor Who in particular or British television history in general and would like to have me on to talk about The Long Game, I'm very happy to consider any and all requests! Do please drop me a line.

Finally, I mentioned in the previous entry how much I was enjoying seeing people tweet photos of the book after they'd received their orders, and very pleasingly such pictures have continued to be posted throughout the week! There are a quite a few of them now, which is very nice. It's great to see something I only ever really wrote because I wanted to read it now being out there in the world and enjoyed by other people!