Scourge of the Cybermen

Feast your eyeballs on this glorious cover by Claudia Gironi for Doctor Who and the Scourge of the Cybermen, a six-hour original audio novel I've written which will be out in July. Cybermen and sunflowers, what more could you want?

The novel is read by Jon Culshaw, with Cyber voices done by Nick Briggs. The script editor was Roland Moore and the director David Richardson.

I'm delighted that it's Jon Culshaw on this as his perfect reading of Death to The Daleks has been a big influence here - that novelisation (of a 1974 TV story) had always been one of my favourites, and I hope what I've typed has a similar feel.

Masterful and the Switching

Just received my copy of the Masterful box set - a sumptuous collection of eight CDs comprising the epic adventure starring 10 incarnations of Doctor Who's old school pal, the Master. The bonus material includes my short story The Switching read by Duncan Wisby.

"Yesterday there were two Time Lord prisoners on Earth - the Master in his cell, the Doctor in his exile. But today the Doctor's not quite feeling himself. Today he's seeing things from a different perspective. And today the Master's going to escape..."

I'm very fond of The Switching, which was my first professional gig as a writer of fiction, written in August and September 2002 and published in Short Trips - Zodiac at the end of that year. It was also one of the first jobs I picked up after going freelance, and I'm very grateful to editor Jacqueline Rayner for taking a punt on me, and to Jonathan Morris who read my first, clumsy draft and applied a lot of red pen.

• The Short Trips stories I wrote
• Lesser Evils - another short story by me featuring the Master
• Duncan Wisby in Graceless IV by me

TARDIS 17.2

That splendid lot at the Doctor Who Appreciation Society are unleashing TARDIS magazine vol 17 issue 2, sold in aid of the mental health charity Mind. I'm particularly keen to see what editor Robbie Dunlop has unearthed about 1966 story The Celestial Toymaker...

Among the treats, there's me on the writing of my 2007 Doctor Who novel The Pirate Loop.

• TARDIS 17.2 - £7.99 for DWAS members
• TARDIS 17.2 - £9.99 for non-members
• Full details of TARDIS 17.2