Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I've been working as an editor for Arcbeatle Press since Down the Middle. I mostly work as a high school teacher and comics critic, and I have published two books.

What was your introduction to the Doctor Who universe?
The first Doctor Who story I ever watched was Daleks in Manhattan. Which should’ve been the end of it, all things considered. But I had a hankering for top 10 lists as a kid and saw one on the 9th Doctor, which made me curious. This being back when Doctor Who was on Hulu and Netflix, it was easy to watch an assortment of episodes, and I fell in love rather quickly.

What is your take on the character of Chris Cwej?
In spite of everything, he tries to do the right thing. He’s not an incompetent fool, but he’s someone who, on some level, knows he’s never seeing Heaven. He wants to live in a world where no one else would do the things he does, but he will forever be damned. There’s a kind of melancholy to him.

What makes your Cwej story unique?
I think it's the smallness of it all. While on the surface, a story about the concept of love being completely removed from the cosmos, the emphasis is on Cwej’s relationship with his past. I also think the exploration of the baddie, who I don’t think I can name, was a lot of fun. Having empathy for someone truly monstrous such that they lament killing only in the millions was fascinating and uncomfortable to enact.

Would you like to mention any influences or inspirations?
Douglas Adams, would be the obvious one. I often go for comedy when doing things like Cwej, highlighting the absurdity of the world. But there’s also a dagger of darkness within, especially the opening scene with the story’s baddie. There’s also a degree of musicality to it, such that the original ending had Cwej sing the Beatles song All You Need Is Love.

Did you face any interesting challenges in the course of writing?
I was actually assigned this story rather than pitching it. The original writer had to drop out due to things occuring outside of their personal life, and the editors thought I did a good job engaging with the mentality of the antagonist in my other story in the Seasons collection (coming later this year) that I was given the oppertunity to write this one. I went in a bit of a different direction than the original pitch, but that’s how writing often goes.

What’s your next creative project, and is there anywhere readers can follow you?
Currently, I’m working on two projects: one is a series of books about the complete history of Star Trek with Lena Mactíre and the other is a long gestating book on media criticism of the early 2000s and the rise of fascism. I can be followed on most social media apps @deathchrist2000.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m a freelance writer based in the south-west of England. I’m particularly interested in the intersection between sci-fi and fantasy, the pulpy and the mythic. 

What was your introduction to the Doctor Who universe?
In 2003, around Doctor Who’s 40th Anniversary, I watched Genesis of the Daleks, and became instantly fascinated by the worlds and characters of Doctor Who. 

What's your take on the character of Chris Cwej?
Chris has really been on quite a journey recently. In Lungbarrow by Loomlight, he regains all his old memories and experiences: this seems to have turned out to be a bit of a double-edged sword for him. Yes, he was able to use his memories as the impetus that drove him to save Totality from the Deathless and Lungbarrow, kick-starting reality from the moment of his mentor’s birth. However, through this act, he now seems to have deluded himself into viewing his old friend as a God, and himself as their acolyte. After the hurt and comfort in his rather traumatic reunion with Roz, this new-found frame of reference is almost like a crutch for him, as everything he held true about life is thrown into chaos once more. His more dogmatic tendencies are further reinforced when he encounters his long-lost granddaughter, the goddess of Time, and he isn’t quite able to save her, nor is he able to face up to the terrible hurt his old Superiors have put her through. It seems that, much like the Deathless, poor Chris is on a dark path. 

What makes your Cwej story unique?
It was great fun having a chance to explore the cosmic status-quo implied by Cwej: The Series, and how the various core characters react to, and deal with, this wild Totality. I was interested to see a glimpse of the relationship between Chris and his mystical granddaughter. There’s a sense of overlapping dualities—told through a series of inter-cutting conversations, between various pairs/groups of characters. Each character has their own mirror or contrast, Larles and Kwol, the Constable and the Deathless, Chris and Time, the two [redacted]. Equally, the invocation of Anaxia as the Constable’s/Deathless’ daughter creates a slight parallel to Chris and Time, to Vicky and her foremothers, to the [redacted] and her unknown makers. I was also glad to conclude an aspect of the Deathless’ story briefly set up in Loomlight — that being the character of the Constable. Here, his journey acts as an externalisation of the constant tug-of-war between the Deathless’ ego, his yearning for a sense of order / control, and his manic self-sabotaging nature. 

Would you like to mention any influences or inspirations?
I think there’s some Paul Cornell, Marc Platt, and David Lynch influences in this story. A little bit of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series too.

Did you face any interesting challenges in the course of writing?
I had a few health-scares while writing The First Spring (and its sequel that never came to fruition) so the process was a little feverish and dreamlike at times. 

What's your next creative project, and is there anywhere readers can follow you?
Currently, I’m in the process of writing two pieces, one for Cwej: Seasons Unseen, one for Cwej: Splintered Truths. After that, I have ideas for quite a few different projects across various genres. As of yet, I’m not sure where or when any of these would materialise. But my mind is constantly buzzing with ideas and characters, and so no doubt my further stories will find their home somewhere and some time.

In 2018, Jayce Black’s contributions to the iconic  duology of The Book of the Enemy and The Book of the Peace introduced Faction Paradox readers to Auteur, a skeletal Archon with the uncanny power to literally rewrite reality — and metafictional delusions of grandeur to match. Ever since then, the Mad God of Writing’s popped up hither and thither at Arcbeatle Press, putting in multiple appearances in our multi-series holiday anthologies and even menacing Graelyn Scythes of 10,000 Dawns in the novella White Canvas — but never quite as the headline feature.

Today, that changes! Under the creative leadership of Aristide Twain (Coloth: The Book of the Snowstorm, Cwej: The Flatwoods Fractal), the self-declared Author of History returns in a metafictionally mindbending but narratively newcomer-friendly anthology of thirteen original stories, with contributions from writers like L. Alves (Cwej: Always Be A Part Of Me), Nate Bumber (Faction Paradox: A Farewell to Arms), and Jamie H. Cowan ({{esquivalience}}), as well as exclusive illustrations from artists like Ari Bach (Valhalla Trilogy), Dante Vernor Katz (Faction Paradox: Great Pearl, Girl), Blair Shedd (Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor) — and many more! 

Says editor Aristide Twain, “For all that Auteur claims to be the singular author of reality itself, his world and his story would not be as rich without the plurality of tones, visions, genres, and setting that our writers have brought together in The Final World. It’s an off-beat journey through fiction, art, mythology, and history itself — each story incredibly distinct, but building on one another. It’s been amazing to see, and I can’t wait for new readers to meet not only Auteur, but the protagonists of each and every entry within this book. Each of them is a joy!” 

“Auteur is a destabilising force,” adds contributor L. Alves. “He can be thrown into any narrative and cause it to bend and collapse around him in fascinating new ways, which is part of what makes him so fun for a writer to play with. Any story in any form or genre can find itself subjected to a walking, talking, often-malevolent deconstruction.”

Auteur is a visionary, a genius, a god. The Author of All Creation. So he has claimed for centuries, and many believe him — who else could rewrite reality with one flick of a quill?

But the Cosmos has changed since he’s been away, and it keeps on changing. Old rules are broken, and new powers rise. What wonders and horrors might Auteur create, in his quixotic quest to get the final word? And what will he destroy?

From a Spire of Shadows to the direst diner on Earth, discover the truth beneath the lies in AUTEUR: VOLUME 1: THE FINAL WORD, featuring a dozen unforgettable stories from L. Alves, Erika de Atayde, Jayce Black, Nate Bumber, Galadriel Coffeen, Jamie H. Cowan, Thomas Keyton, Newton Locheye, James T. Mulholland, Louis Peacock, Plum Pudding, Aristide Twain, Molly Warton, and James Wylder — with exclusive illustrations from Ari Bach, Galadriel Coffeen, Dylan Livingston, Dante Vernor Katz, Holly Lucero, Plum Pudding, Raymond Inkwell, Blair Shedd, Robert Shepherd, Tabitha Marsh, Ophelien Twain, and Molly Warton!

Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m 21 but I’ve been doing paid creative work since about, I wanna say 17, but could’ve been later. I was doing minutes and writing the finalised script outlines for a yet to be released audio drama series, (also in the Who EU, and a franchise some readers here might be veryyyy interested in), that evolved into doing episodes and then the bug bit like no other and I’ve been doing odd jobs here ever since. I’ve written a lot of short films and I’ve helped a lot of other people with their scripts, but I shouldn’t kiss and tell. I’m currently a student at one of the UK’s leading industry educators. Outside of shoptalk (why wouldn’t you wanna talk shop?), I’m big into gaming, music, urban exploring, and I love a pub crawl. Nuff said?

What was your introduction to the Doctor Who universe?
Lots of near chance encounters, but I couldn’t for one tell you which is first. The memories all sit haphazardly beside each other. I remember doing a DVD swap with a primary school friend, I gave them that animated Buzz Lightyear film, the original one, and they gave me a double feature of End of Time and Eleventh Hour. Another moment when I caught the end of Death in Heaven on broadcast, I asked my mum for a screwdriver, like an actual one, so that I could play along. But it started being Doctor Who when I was able to actually watch the classic show all together on streaming. It was a show about literacy first and foremost, about creativity and opening your mind, looking outside, so it spoke to the curious burgeoning writer in me. Then came online communities, fandom, and the centre of all my Who related compulsions, the EDAs.

What's your take on the character of Chris Cwej?
He’s a really well centred character given that you can put him into basically any situation and it’d make for an interesting scene. As a companion, he was McCoy’s son slowly drifting away from him. Their awkward and understated finishing trip approach to Tardis travel, with so many things left unsaid, when they were on their own at the end of those books really hooked me. But I’ve gotta admit he didn’t really click for me until Dead Romance in the Benny books and you could see him under the hood a bit more. He’s quite classically pulpy in that sense, that naive well to do action-man boyishness as a front for a really avoidant, often directionless guy who’s bent on escaping himself through whatever mission he’s gotten wrapped up in this time. That cognitive dissonance with him fascinates me and I tried to emphasise it in my story by having him get hounded with genuine consequences and paired with a mirror with the same deep rooted issues but who expresses it in the opposite way and the clashes of that.

What makes your Cwej story unique?
I tried to go for this feverish stream of consciousness where the details and setting comes alive and bleeds together, there’s a lot of anthropomorphism in the prose and the tone shifts a lot  with perspective as you peel back the layers wading through someone’s head. I really wanted to hit that offbeat and often sinister creeping dream logic you get in works like Phantasm. And there’s a lot of pulp allusions, using that to inspect on the nature of Chris as this unchanging face of his genre and story engine who’s not really allowed to grow as a person and stop doing what he does, because then the story would be over. And what does he get out of that? The little things, it seems. At its heart it’s a story about angry clever boys who are scared of growing up and scared of staying where they are, and that applies for every main character.

Would you like to mention any influences or inspirations?
Moore’s Night Raven was how I pitched it, Chris faces his juvenile leaning tendencies in the power fantasy world of classic comic booky noire, but it drifted away from that into something a bit broader and less connected, more about using the stories that helped you to help yourself and tell your own to get by one day after another, best foot forward because sometimes that’s all you can do. The whole thing is very tongue in cheek British Invasion, a scummy rotten Ken Loach British realist world getting infected with this almost fiction virus, and becoming this Sapphire and Steel styled liminal space filled with larger than life titans of their respective genres (crime, western, warmags, and fantasy) and it becoming, rightly, a nightmare.

Did you face any interesting challenges in the course of writing?
Lots of them. Like I say, I’m a student with a two hour commute for three days a week, so a lot of writing had to be done on the train in a rush, and my fiancé’s family home got raided (nothing to do with me, though) and I spent the better part of a week helping fix the door and locks, which to someone with no handyman experience, was a lot harder than it looked. Yes, very surprising, I know. Generally life just kept getting into the way of me with this and I had to really bargain for my time alongside a lot of my other deadlines like videography for club work or course stuff. This was only helped by Gerard being the most gracious and patient editor on the crucking planet.

What's your next creative project, and is there anywhere readers can follow you?
Follow me on Twitter on @RG_Boyd. My next project is Simon Says, a web comic. Basically, girl vanishes from social. Dead beat and beaten down cop Imogen Hayes is the only person in the world who cares, she’s drawn into the middle of an ideological battleground for supremacy amongst Britain’s secret occult conspirators, and she’s forced to trust the deadpan possibly fictional occultist Simon Iff, who seems to only exist inside her head. It’s a horror noir for the internet age. We live in a world where people believe Etsy witches can create kill curses and the elite literally eat babies and our governments do untold acts of memetic warfare. Baudrillard hyperreality with demons, through the lens of an X Files meets Edge of Darkness paranoia thriller, and the aesthetic trappings of every conspiracy forum board you could think of. The scripts for issues 1-4 and central character designs complete and so pencilling will be beginning shortly and we’re aiming for an end of summer digital release. If you want a comic with body stealing war criminals, girl gangs using Francis Bacon’s flying witch elixir to astral project and beat up boys, teatime with LAM, and neonazis getting their comeuppance through self created memetic entities named (((them))), you’ve found the right place.

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