what do you need?

The brain demons are lying. It’s totally okay to never do a book two or do it ten years after book one. Deep breath. One day at a time. Slowly and well is much better than fast and bad to some arbitrary deadline that only exists in your head

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.”

ugh exactly this

The Mekon doesn’t show up until Book 2, though

Sir Hubert, Hank and Pierre, the Mekon (obviously). Ivor Dare. Plus a bunch of new characters—a couple other British Space Fleet pilots, and a character who probably could have been Galileo McHoo if I shoehorned hard enough, but I preferred to create someone new

Guessing many of them are essentially packaging deals too—they come to you with a concept and if your outline is good enough you get a WFH contract

Even if you’re not a fan of Dan Dare there is something here for you. @alexdecampi.bsky.social has written a superb sci fi trilogy that honours the past but is full updated for today - This is not your grandad’s Dan Dare and I’m hugely honoured and excited to bring it to life - Kickstarting in 2026

it’s just a promo image. she’s still a very smart scientist who has zero tolerance for fools in general and the Dare family in particular

831’s first book (Big Fan, last summer) seemed to do quite well just based on the number of goodreads/amazon reviews, but none of the rest of their books seem to have landed with much success since—hence perhaps the big NYT interview

I’m going to “but actually” this because the book you’re looking at is a sequel to this book where the scandal is caused by the husband and she dumps him for a guy in a boyband: bookshop.org/p/books/big-...

The characters (Dan, Digby, Peabody, Sir Hubert, etc) were also a lot of fun to work with.