Hello!  As The Bookseller revealed yesterday, I now have a two-book deal with Orbit Books.

​This is a great big bag of wonderful.

Founded in 1974, Orbit have published the late Iain Banks’ work.  As if any more Impressive Info were needed, they’ve also published some of the finest genre novels I’ve read in recent times.  I’m talking about the likes of MR Carey’s The Girl With All The Gifts, which I absolutely loved, and Claire North’s mind-bogglingly great novels The Fifteen Lives Of Harry August and Touch.

My God.  Talk about esteemed company.

This deal was the result of a four-way auction between publishing houses, which confirmed my long-held suspicion that my AM Heath agent Oli Munson is an evil genius, disguised as a charming and dapper gentleman. 

The two Orbit books will be unrelated standalones.  The first, The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, finally tells the full story of tragic celebrity journalist and social media star Jack Sparks, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2014.  Many questions will be answered.  For instance: why was he so convinced that the exorcism he saw in Italy was fake?  And what was the true origin of the creepy video which he insisted he didn’t make himself, despite it having appeared on his YouTube account?  

It’s been an honour to work on this project, because I’ll admit to having always seen redeeming features in Jack, however controversial and even hated he often was.  Back when I was a rock journalist writing for Kerrang! magazine, and he was working on the NME, Jack and I would often find ourselves waiting to interview the same bands.  This became a running gag and we’d often have a drink afterwards (or even before.)  There's no question that Jack strutted vainly along the thin line between confidence and arrogance, and his forthright views certainly upset a lot of people of faith, but he was also a very funny guy with his head screwed on in many ways.  It’s been an incredible, if disturbing and often upsetting process, to work on Jack’s final book alongside his brother Alistair, and I sincerely hope it brings some form of closure to the millions of Jack Sparks fans worldwide.

Jack’s personal website remains online at JackSparks.co.uk in an edited and curated form, as an enduring tribute to him.  Take a look and you’ll get an idea of his personality.  Maybe a sense of the downward spiral his life took during his final year on Earth.  You’ll also read anecdotes about meeting Jack from the likes of multi-talented Derren Brown collaborator Andy Nyman and the tremendous authors Sarah Lotz, MR Carey, Christopher Brookmyre and John Higgs. 

The first editions of The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, for quick-on-the-draw early adopters, will be the trade paperback and ebook in March 2016.  These will be followed by the main release, a mass-market paperback in July.  There will of course be plenty more exciting details to come, but for now I just wanted to finally announce this deal – on Halloween!  I’m very excited to have found the ideal publishing partner for my first original novels as a ‘solo’ writer.  One of the greatest things about the news being out, is I can now publicly thank legends like Oli, who ‘got’ the Jack Sparks project from the very beginning, and my brilliant editor Anna Jackson who helped take it to new levels, again and again.

For irregular non-spammy updates, plus the insider’s view on what’s going on with The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, sign up for my e-mailing list The Necronoppicon here.  Also be sure to sign up to Orbit’s own Jack Sparks list, in order to be one of the first to read the full book!

​Oh, and one of the pages at JackSparks.co.uk contains a link to a hearty extract from the start of the book: the Foreword and the whole of Chapter One, to be precise.  If you enjoy it, feel free to spread the word and/or the link, using the Twitter hashtag #JackSparks if you’re so inclined.  Thank you!

I often like to use Twitter to gather opinions on the Issues That Matter.  See below for a sterling example from last night.

Hey there, you!  Stop doing that, it's illegal.  I've written a whole load of stuff for the new Doctor Who Magazine, out today.  Thirteen whole pages of it.  As I always say, this is a shame for me, because it means there's less DWM for me to read.  There's still a great deal written by other people, mind you, including a big chat with Steven Moffat about Davros and Part Two of Simon Guerrier's interview with Millennium FX's Kate Walshe.  

Here's how my 13 pages break down:

Nine pages: my bumper interview with Toby Whithouse, the writer of recent spooky two-parter Under The Lake/Before The Flood (as well as previous stories like The God Complex and School Reunion) and the creator of Being Human and The Game.  This was the product of a chat which ended up being literally three hours long.  That Whithouse is a very patient man.

Two pages: my preview of this Saturday's Viking spectacular The Girl Who Died, with chatter from its co-writer Jamie Mathieson (who wrote last year's Flatline and Mummy On The Orient Express).  Like his mate Toby, Jamie lives in Brighton, which made it even more of a pleasure to stroll up London Road and quiz him for hours too.  There'll be much more from Jamie in next month's issue.

Two pages: my preview of highwayman-tastic The Woman Who Died, with quotes aplenty from scribe Catherine Tregenna, who previously wrote several episodes of Torchwood.  Infuriatingly and inconsiderately, Catherine does not live in Brighton, which meant I had to physically get a train and travel to Cardiff.  Outrageous. But she's lovely and, again, there'll be more from her next issue.

Yesterday, I interviewed another Series Nine writer at length, who was also lovely.  I also read a brilliantly mad script from later in this run, which flat-out blew my mind, but I won't even say which one, because Confidential.  Bye then!
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My Doctor Who audio story The Demons Of Red Lodge aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra this weekend, and you can still hear it via BBC iPlayer for the next five days.

This was the title-story of Big Finish's 2010 anthology, starring Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.  It was also my attempt to bring a little Blair Witch Project atmosphere to Doctor Who's world.

I wanted to see what would happen if I dropped the Fifth Doctor – the most fragile and vulnerable of them all – into Blair Witch territory, complete with scary woods, no compass, no short-term memory and no TARDIS. What if he woke up in darkness, in the middle of nowhere, alongside a similarly petrified Nyssa? Without even a Blair Witch-esque legend to focus his imagination on, the Doctor would have no idea of the nature or magnitude of the threat he’s facing or even a recollection of where or when he is.

That’s the initial premise of The Demons Of Red Lodge. The Doctor, afraid in the dark, without even knowing why he’s afraid.  He and Nyssa have nothing to fear but fear itself.  Or do they?  While attending the story's recording, I was happy to see how Peter and Sarah seized the script and made it all look so effortless, aided and abetted by director Ken Bentley.  Susan Kyd is great in two roles here and it was also lovely to have a contribution from Duncan Wisbey - a great voice artist who starred in one of the sketches I wrote for Radio 4's Laurence & Gus: Hearts & Minds a while back.

On the day of recording, Peter had something of a gravelly throat from shoutingalot in the West End's Spamalot.  This almost certainly helped him lend the Doctor's voice a nicely raw edge during the Demons sessions.  I was delighted with the results and proud to be a part of such a consistent release, which seems to have gone down quite well with fans.

You can hear The Demons Of Red Lodge on BBC iPlayer here, for the next five days.  Looks like the anthology's other stories - The Entropy Composition (Rick Briggs), Doing Time (William Gallagher) and Special Features (John Dorney) - are set to follow on BBC Radio 4 Extra on a weekly basis.