Richard Wright

My contributor copy of the (massive) Short Trips Re:Collections turned up the other day, and looks very smart indeed. It’s supposed to present some of the best Doctor Who short fiction published in the Short Trips range since 2002 (which must be a pool of three or four hundred tales, at least, and includes my own contribution ‘Lonely’. Lovely looking book, and I’m looking forward to reading the other twenty-seven stories while I’m stuck in hotels over the next few weeks. If you haven’t already done so, you can grab a copy from the publisher right now, and I’m sure it will turn up on Amazon and the usual outlets shortly.

I can also now look forward to wading through William Shatner’s memoir Up Till Now, presented to me by a proud daughter this morning for Father’s Day. I’m quite looking forward to it, although I feel strongly that a better title would simply have been SHAT! He’s a curious fellow, so I’m looking forward to being entertained.

But today, I’m on the move again, packing up for the first of three weeks of hotel living in the South. It’s quite a nice hotel, but as it’s day job stuff instead of a vacation, that’s the best I can say about what awaits. If I have wi-fi in my room, I may be in touch, but if you’re waiting for emails, that will be the reason for any delays.

News is piling up, all unannounced, so a quick blog is called for…

Firstly, issue five of Shroud magazine, the Hiram Grange special edition, is now shipping. It features a hefty and exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming novella Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow. If you pre-ordered a copy, you should be receiving it soon, but Shroud warn that orders are a little backed up, and there may be a small delay getting it to you (I’m waiting for mine… pesky Atlantic ocean). If you do have it, what do you think? If you’re tempted to dip into Hiram’s world ahead of the novella series, this is where you need to go.

Secondly, Short Trips – Re:Collections, the new Doctor Who anthology from Big Finish, licenced by the BBC, is also now shipping. It reprints some of the very best of the short stories featured in the previous twenty-eight volumes in the Short Trips range, including my tale ‘Lonely’ (dead chuffed to have made that cut). Since announcing that this will be the final such anthology, Big Finish seem to have been swamped with orders for the whole range, and so are also reporting shipping delays. Again, if you pre-ordered but haven’t seen the book yet, bear with them, it will be with you soon. I’m in the same boat, having not yet seen a contributor’s copy. No special privileges for authors, I’m afraid. If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, go here and do so. It’s a bumper crop of great stories, all with the Doctor in them. Can’t say fairer than that.

It’s May. That means you can grab the hardback anthology Short Trips: Transmissions for half the cover price, £7.50, direct from the publisher. It contains my story ‘Lonely’, and is just about to go out of print – the sale runs for exactly as long as stocks last. Don’t hang about, if you want one.

It won’t be the very last appearance of the story, as it’s been selected to appear in the ‘Best Of’ final volume of the Short Trips range later this month, cover price £20. After that though… well, because I don’t own the rights to Doctor Who, I won’t be able to publish the story anywhere else. Read it in one of these books, or be left forever wondering what I did to the Eighth Doctor in a chatroom…

Go on. You know you want to.

Official announcements have now been made by the right and proper people, so I can finally pass you the details of the ‘mystery’ anthology I’ll be in at the end of May. To the dismay of many, Big Finish productions are about to cease publishing their Short Trips series of short story anthologies featuring the Doctor (from Doctor Who – do keep up). To celebrate the range, they’re putting out one final, mammoth hardback volume in May, featuring one story from each of the previous twenty-eight volumes (published regularly since 2002). These stories are intended to represent the best of each book, as selected by the editors of each.

‘Lonely’, my contribution to the 2008 anthology Doctor Who: Short Trips – Transmissions, has been picked out by editor Richard Salter to represent his book, which is very flattering indeed, particularly given the stories and authors he had at his disposal.

I’m a little sad to see the range end, as it was the last bastion of official Doctor Who fiction in written form that was not marketed squarely at kids (writers had to bear in mind that a lot of kids might be reading, but had flexibility within that remit to tell some sophisticated, mature fiction if they chose to), but delighted to be featured in this celebration of what the books achieved.

If you’re a fan of the Doctor, but have never sampled the Short Trips range, then grab this monster collection, as it promises the best there was. It’s out at the end of May, priced £19.99, and you can pre-order it here.

There’s also some good news for those of you who might be less interested in Doctor Who per se, but do want to get a copy of ‘Lonely’ while you can (or indeed, those feeling the credit crunch a little). From the 1st of May, the remaining copies of the previous anthologies that Big Finish have in stock will go on sale for £7.50 – about half the original price. That means you’ll be able to get the original Doctor Who: Short Trips – Transmissions for a steal, while stocks last. It’s a really, really good book. Really. I’m prepared to bet that the editor, Richard Salter, agonised long and hard about which story he wanted to put forward for Recollections, because there are some very juicy tales in there (indeed, when he told me he was putting ‘Lonely’ forward, I had to fight the urge to decline in embarrassment, and recommend one of the others instead).

Whichever you choose, if you’re at all interested in reading ‘Lonely’ you need to get one or the other while you can. As I don’t own the rights to Doctor Who(you can tell by my lack of conspicuous wealth), I can’t do anything else with this story. Ever. Even if I’m ever fortunate enough to have my short fiction professionally collected by a publisher, ‘Lonely’ won’t be there. It’s a shame. I’m proud of the story, a creepy tale set entirely within an internet (really!) chatroom, and it would otherwise sit proudly between those hypothetical future pages. As that can’t happen, this is your one shot.

Go to it!

Pleased to see that issue five of Shroud magazine is at the printers, and taking pre-orders right now. This is of interest to you, because the intense looking chap on the cover is Hiram Grange. Later this year, as you know if you’ve been reading here a while, Shroud Publishing will be releasing a series of linked novellas about his scandalous misadventures. The fifth and final in the series is my own Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow.

Buying the magazine gets you a sneak preview of each of the Hiram novellas, each excerpt being short story sized. From Krakow, you get the whole first section of the book. In true pulp style, this is almost a self-contained story in itself, the tail end of a mostly unseen escapade, which leads into the action proper. Like the start of an Indiana Jones movie, but with something huge, and slavering, with wings. It is, I hope, a lot of fun, and a cheap way to find out if the book’s going to be for you when it comes out.

Do go and order a copy. From issue 6, Shroud is going to be distributed nationally in the US, and will be pretty easy to get hold of from B&N among others. Issue 5 is still going to be a bit of a well kept secret though, available to those in the know. People like you.

Go to it.