DOCTOR WHO FAQ - All That's Left To Know About The Most Famous Time Lord In the Universe by Dave Thompson

It may have escaped your attention, but the BBC TV series DOCTOR WHO celebrated its fiftieth birthday recently. This was as good a reason for a few million more words to be written about what must be one the most written about television series of all time. What, indeed, can there be left to know?

Quibbles first - title and subtitle. This is not a book of frequently asked questions. And as for its claim that it contains 'all that's left to know' about the Doctor, well that's just nonsense. 'All that's left to know' after what?

Don't get me wrong, author Dave Thompson knows his stuff and certainly has opinions on his stuff, but there is very little here that even a semi-knowledgeable viewer like me didn't already know, or certainly couldn't have found out pretty quickly on the internet. True enough, the chapters on the Big Finish audio productions and the music inspired by Doctor Who were news to me, but then I did say that I was only semi-knowledgeable.

What this book really is, is a comprehensive overview of the show for someone who knows a little and wants to know a lot  more. This is for people who are new to the series in its modern incarnation and want to be indoctrinated in the history.

It is also, make no bones about it, for Americans. The opening chapter is entitled 'The TARDIS in America'.

It is also out of date, containing nothing of the fiftieth year's celebrations, but that's a minor point since any book like this is out of date as soon as it's printed (if it's lucky).

So, what's good about it? Well, if you don't already have an overview of the show then you could certainly do worse than this and it does cover those Big Finish audio productions and books and music as well. There's a comprehensive listing of TV episodes, audio productions, original books and even comic books featuring the 'most famous time lord in the universe'.

It's also pretty easy to read. Thompson has a clean style and isn't shy about coming forward with what he thinks. That he didn't like Adric or Mel is no surprise to any right-thinking individual, but his views on the Moffat era might not go down so well with some others.

There's an eclectic mix of illustrations (black and white) to break up the text and at 258 pages of history and opinions, there ought to be something for everyone to find of interest.

We're back, though, to that thorny question of who exactly this book is for. Completists will want it for, well, completeness, but there's very little in it to make it indispensable. Then again, after so much has been written about the show, what on earth could there be left to know?

THEY CAME FROM BEYOND PULP - now available for the kindle on all flavours of Amazon

Finally, after ages of agonising over cover design and the hours of formatting that these things require (for me, at least) THEY CAME FROM BEYOND PULP has finally hit Amazon stores worldwide.

Here comes the blurb

Pulp fiction (n) - tawdry tales trapped between bright and lurid covers.

In They Came From Beyond Pulp, Darren Humphries takes a stroll down the shadier side of the street in these stories of murder, mayhem and madness, all presented with an added dash of mischief that combines the two strands of pulp fiction - crime and sci-fi/fantasy.

Warning: slightly darker than my usual stuff and contains occasional bad language.

The Return of the Cover Dilemma

 Since people weren't necessarily impressed with the cover concept that I had come up with for the forthcoming THEY CAME FROM BEYOND PULP,  I decided to give it a total overhaul to see if I could make it work better for people. The result is on the right and I actually prefer the original that I had, so I don't think that I'll be using this one.

Since I wasn't happy with the one that I had, I went back to the drawing board and came up with the new concept that you can see below. Since the stories in the collection are meant to be based around murder and crime and punishment and various dark-themed things like that, the blood motif has to stay and I really liked the bright yellow background for making a bold statement. It certainly catches the attention.

The question is whether it does enough to make people want to read the blurb and decide whether or not they want to read the book. That is, after all the main purpose of the cover.

The stories are finished, the beta readers are working on cleaning up the text of all the errors that I failed to spot and hopefully I'll be able to release it soon.

If I can get the cover right.

There are times when not being able to afford to hire people to do this stuff is a real pain.

Anyway, the images are here. Give me some hints on whether it's a complete failure on my Goodreads thread.

The good news is that I have so many story ideas rattling around inside my head that I don't think I'll be running out of projects any time soon. Of course, they'll need covers too!