Baneblade unleashed!

Baneblade, my first Black Library novel, is out today! Hoorah! Or I think it is, anyway. You can buy it on Amazon at any rate, although the Black Library’s own site still has it down as a preorder. As I’m cut off from the real world, alone in my garret (an actual garret), and have no clue as to the doings of planet Earth beyond what Twitter and Doctor Magnus the dog tell me, I am taking the unilateral step of officially declaring today Official Baneblade Birthday day, and that’s official. In the kingdom of Guy and the goblins, if nowhere else. (It’s a bit like North Korea up here, but smellier, and without the thermonuclear posturing).

It’s a funny thing, publishing. Baneblade is actually only the second book I wrote — a long time ago it feels like too — but the fourth to be released. However, the loosening of this one particular scheduling stone precipitates an avalanche of Black Library stories and novels from me this year. Watch out!

During my obsessive checking of Amazon sales ranks (I have an app on my iPhone. Now that’s tragic), I have been well pleased with Baneblade‘s performance thus far, so thanks to everyone who has bought it already.

Here’s the art again. It depicts awesome tanks. Nuff said.

Boom! Dakkadakkadakka! Vroom!

Coming soon to an event near you…

I’ll be appearing at a several events next year. Details to follow in good time for most, but I can say for sure that I will be attending Black Library Live in Nottingham on 2nd March, and the second day of the Sci-Fi Weekender  near Pwllheli the following day (that’s 3rd March, obviously). Tickets and information and all that business are but a click of the links away.

Come along, have a chat. If you say nice things about my books, I may give you a hug or buy you a drink. Better yet, buy me a drink. I like that idea.

Strike and Fade: Salamanders in living sound!

In the grim darkness of the 31st Millennium, there is even more war than in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, ain’t that a fact? I’ve been lucky enough to write a piece set in this period of galactic-scale civil war, and it is published today! Friday the 14th will forever be remembered by me as a day of firsts. Strike and Fade,  my first Horus Heresy piece and my first audio drama, is story fourteen on the Black Library’s advent calendar, a war-packed countdown to Christmas penned by the brightest and best in BL’s firmament of writerly stars (and, er,  me).

There have been some fantastic pieces this year. Each story is around 1000 words long, with the occasional audio, like Strike and Fade, salted in for extra spice. This is short Warhammer and 40k fiction at its most exciting; pithily told and as sweetsome as a Christmas chocolate, and boy, are there are plenty of nice chocolates in that tin. Go and check it out!

This is the latest in a string of Black Library stories and novels you’ll be seeing from me over the coming year, some of which I have revealed earlier on this blog, others are hush-hush, top-secret, so don’t ask. The pace is picking up, and stories will be arriving thicker and faster as we go into spring.  2013 is going to be an exciting year, and I hope some of you feel inclined to join me there.

And yet, spring is a ways away, so if Strike and Fade whets your appetite, you can always try my Blood Drinkers story,  The Rite of Holos in Hammer and Bolter 24. Or perhaps I could tempt you with some of my non-BL fiction? Freebies on the drop-down “Fiction” menu at top of the site, and details of my novels down the side to the left.

The Death of Integrity

As I mentioned earlier this week, the cover for The Death of Integrity was revealed on Amazon a while back. Here it is, and very nice I think it is too. The warrior in the Terminator Armour is none other than Chapter Master Caedis of the Blood Drinkers, and yes, he’s chopping up a Genestealer.

The Death of Integrity is a Space Marines Battles book from the Black Library. It’ll be out next September (more or less), and features both the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers. In the story, the two chapters scour a space hulk named, you guessed it, The Death of Integrity, so it’s kind of an unofficial Space Hulk book too. Cool eh? There’s plenty of goodies in there for Space Marine fans, not least the detailing of two whole chapters, low-g combat, and some other exciting elements that it would be a shame to reveal right now (and my lords and masters would send a Callidus assassin disguised as my dog to kill me).  Still, ask yourself why Caedis is not wearing red. It’s not as straightforward as you might think…

The book’s currently with the editors, so it’s close to being locked and loaded to be shot out of the big publishing lascannon for the end of next summer. It’s a long time away, no? Clever-clogs might realise that my Blood Drinkers short story, ‘The Rite of Holos’, is a prequel to the novel, so if you fancy reading about these lesser-known scions of Sanguinius taking apart a Genestealer cult in the meantime, it’s in Hammer and Bolter 24.

Next big thing? Aw shucks

I’ve been away from this blog for nigh on three months owing to huge building work upheaval. I’m tired of working at the top of the stairs, I said, let’s convert the attic, I said. I’ll do a good chunk o f the work myself, I said. It should take, oh, two to four weeks, I said.

Optimistic chump, I’m saying now.

Ten weeks later, it’s finished. I’ve spent every goddamn waking minute for two months hammering bits of wood together and plasterboarding (okay, I did some work work, had two very short holidays, and have been ill, but apart from that: Hammers. Nails. Swearing. All the way baby, I’m like a foul-mouthed Bob the Builder). And I added terracotta roof tiling to my repertoire of earthy man skills (I’ve done some roofing before, but with corrugated iron sheets, so this was a bit more involved). The result is that I am sitting in a new room, which is kind of weird, like one of those dreams where one discovers one’s house has whole, undiscovered wings crammed with sinister secrets. Or is that just me? I call this haven from the world below THE GOBLINARIUM. Because it’s full of Goblins, alright? Not for any other reason. Sheesh.

I have no stairs, just a ladder. I can’t afford stairs until next year, but other than that, it’s tickety-boo.

Anyway, I’m well behind on my work, and wasn’t going to post for a while longer, but then Richard Ford and Cavan Scott both tagged me in this Next Big Thing meme/blog/pass-the-parcel game, so it’d be rude not to respond. Not that I give much of a fig about being rude sometimes, but now is a more civilised phase in my lunar-linked egocentric psychosis path.  I’ll be back later this week with the covers to my next two books, The Crash and The Death of Integrity. Until then, answers to the meme’s ten questions below. Thanks for the nod, Cav and Fordy.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

It ain’t no working title, guv’nor, it’s called The Crash, and it’s out next June, so I better finish it. Technically, mind, it’s not my next book – I have Baneblade and Skarsnik out from the Black Library first, and then there’s The Death of Integrity out after The Crash, which is currently in the hands of the editors. But The Crash is what I am currently writing. And I am behind on it, so let’s keep this brief.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book.

I like books about planetary colonisation efforts that go horribly wrong. This book is about a planetary colonisation effort that goes horribly wrong.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Science fiction, planetary colonisation efforts that go horribly wrong sub-genre.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I don’t know yet, as I am still getting to know them.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A planetary colonisation effort goes horribly wrong.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’s out from Solaris, God bless ‘em.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I am still writing it. I usually give myself three months to write a book’s first draft, but I redraft a lot as I’m writing, so what I end up with at the end of that is closer to a second or third draft than a first. Then I plead for more time, about a fortnight, to polish it up.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Hmmm. Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss, the Colsec books by Douglas Hill. There’s a fair bit of social commentary in there too, I suppose, but not so much as you might get in something by Charles Stross or Ian Macleod. But they are both more intelligent and well-read than I, so I’m sticking with alien space monsters.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Tricky one that. Lifelong immersion in SF that is neither Star Trek nor Doctor Who, I s’pose.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Alien monsters, how the continued entrenchment of plutocratic elements in our society might play out, a cool planet, and a frickin’ big twist in the tail. There’ll be fights, and some weirdness, and hopefully sequels. Hell, you might as well read the back blurb, mightn’t you?

The Market rules all, plotting the rise and fall of fortunes without human intervention. Mankind, trapped by a rigid hierarchy of wealth, bends to its every whim. To function, the Market must expand without end. The Earth is finite, and cannot hold it, and so a bold venture to the stars is begun, offering a rare chance at freedom to a select few people. But when the colony fleet is sabotaged, a small group finds itself marooned upon the tidally locked world of Nychthemeron, a world where one hemisphere is bathed in perpetual daylight, the other hidden by eternal night. Isolated and beset, the stricken colony members must fight for survival on the hostile planet, while secrets about both the nature of their shipwreck and Nychthemeron itself threaten to tear their fragile society apart.

It’s on US Amazon already, although how they know it will be 384 pages when even I don’t know how long it will be is a little freaky…

And now I need to tag some more people. I choose: Nick Kyme, Andy Smillie, and Matt Keefe.

Baneblade

Look, look! Artwork for my book Baneblade! This atmospheric piece of the eponymous tanks in action was created by Adam Tooby, and a fine job he’s done too. I first saw this some time ago, and have been itching to show you ever since, now I can! I’ve also been given permission to reveal a little of the plot of the book, hooray! Here goes:

Imperial Guard fight Blood Axe Orks across a treacherous world!

Colaron Bannick is a young officer of noble birth. Posted to hostile Kalidar – a place wracked by deadly storms, covered in choking dust and troubled by bizarre psychic phenomenon – his heroic actions in his first engagement see him seconded to join the crew of the ancient Baneblade, Mars Triumphant, where he faces a terrifying enemy…

Although the story is set at the time of the Macharian Crusade, the war on Kalidar is not a part of this grand campaign (read Bill King’s Angel of Fire for that), instead the book shows an army group stretched to the limit as resources are siphoned off to fuel the Warmaster’s conquests.

In a parallel story depicted in a series of flashbacks, we also see why Bannick fled his comfortable existence as a privileged nobleman for a hard life in the Guard.

Expect big tanks, big battles and the will of the Emperor and the Omnissiah done by man and machine against terrible odds.

Baneblade will be released in April next year. In fact, you can preorder it on Amazon already.

The Horus Heresy

This feature, written for SFX 213, is a primer for Black Library’s best-selling Horus Heresy series, and includes some nice quotes from two of its authors, Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill.

Heretical Texts

Intricately detailed universes are not the sole province of lone authors. They can also come from games.

After 30 years in business, Games Workshop’s toy soldiers are now a part of many people’s childhood; the motifs of its Warhammer 40,000 (or “40K”) have imprinted themselves upon the public conscience, not least in the shape of those multi-coloured guardians of humanity, the Space Marines.

The worlds of GW began as disparate scraps, concepts dreamt up or borrowed in isolation to provide backstory to a model or rule. But by the cumulative efforts of many creative minds over many years, these elements have grown together into something vibrant. Publisher The Black Library was set up to explore these rich worlds in novel form, it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to the Horus Heresy, one of 40K’s most important events.

“The weight of responsibility is huge,” says Dan Abnett, one of the series authors. “This is the mythology of the 40K Universe (although Horus Heresy is set 10,000 years earlier, so we refer to it as ‘30K’). It’s been mentioned in background text for more than two decades, sometimes in quite contradictory ways. We’ve got to make sense of the facts and weave a story that doesn’t disappoint anyone. The rules are very different to mainstream 40K novels, there’s a lot more to invent, and the scale is bigger: these are galaxy-changing events, not ‘just’ big space wars. Plus, it’s a team effort. Authors, who are solitary beasts by nature, have to work with other authors. It’s great fun, but you have to leave your ego at the door and come to the table in collaboration mode.”

With several of the books entering The New York Times bestseller list, the series’ appeal has reached far beyond the gaming fraternity. Author Graham McNeill maintains this is an SF epic the equal of anything. “The Heresy novels are exciting, chock full of interesting characters, high stakes and a plot that offers as many inventive twists and turns as any other series out there. In fact, when you think you know it back to front, that’s when you’re more likely to get surprised.”

Senior range editor Nick Kyme sums it up. “The worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 have a certain rigour and identity that our fans clearly love. In worlds that are so utterly bleak, the heroes shine that much more brightly, their deeds are more heroic, the conflicts greater and tragedies more cutting. There’s depth to them, a gravitas brought about by a weight of imagination and creativity over thirty years. The Horus Heresy is the seminal event that sets up what comes after it in the Warhammer 40,000 ‘now’. That has resonance.”

In fact, it’s all that and more. It’s nigh on impossible to get across the complexity of a universe like Warhammer 40,000 here. It truly is one of the richest collaborative worlds out there – Star Trek and Star Wars are frankly simplistic in comparison. And the Horus Heresy is its greatest story.

“Imagine a science fiction Paradise Lost,” says Abnett. “It’s a HUGE scale, epic story of the fight to control a massive empire. It’s set in a gothic universe that’s brilliantly realised. And despite the fact that there’s a large amount of thunking action going on, it’s pretty clever stuff with great characters and ideas. You don’t have to be a fan or player of Warhammer 40,000 to get into it.”

Future Imperfect

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

In the 41^st Millennium mankind stands upon the brink of utter destruction.

In these dying days, the human Imperium is beset by aliens, but the greatest threat is that of Chaos. A second universe of energy exists alongside our own. Travel and communication through this “warp” allows interstellar civilisation, but it is not empty. The warp’s energy is moulded by the emotions of sentient beings, aggregating into four powerful consciousnesses – the Chaos Gods.

The Imperium’s Emperor is a psyker of godlike power, but he is near death, his shattered body trapped in stasis for 10,000 years. His multitudinous servants try to interpret his will as best they can, but without his direct guidance, mankind is doomed.

It was not always so. The Emperor once walked among men. In the 31st Millennium, a time when the wonders of the Dark Age of technology were millennia past, and humanity was deep in an age of barbarism, the Emperor revealed himself. From where he came, no one knows, although some say he was an ancient immortal and had been manipulating history for long ages. The Emperor resolved to save mankind, creating twenty superhuman sons from his own genetic material to aid him.

As these “Primarchs” grew, the powers of Chaos stole them away, scattering them across the galaxy. Thinking his sons lost, the Emperor proceeded with his plans. From the genetic templates of the Primarchs, he made legions of super soldiers, the Space Marines. With these he conquered Earth, and headed into the heavens on his Great Crusade.

As his armies advanced, The Emperor rediscovered the Primarchs one after another, and appointed them leaders of the legions. Returning to Earth, the Emperor left his most favoured son Horus to lead the reconquest of the galaxy.

Terrified of the Emperor, the Chaos gods set a conspiracy underway to seduce Horus. The Primarchs had not been untouched by Chaos during their childhood transit through the warp, and under Horus’ influence half of them renounced their oaths, turned on their brothers, and plunged the galaxy into civil war.

The Horus Heresy had begun.

Forbidden Knowledge

The novels of the Horus Heresy

Horus Rising (2006, Dan Abnett)

The seeds of heresy are sown

Horus is appointed “Warmaster”, and leads the Emperor’s armies to victory.

False Gods (2006, Graham McNeill)

The heresy takes root

Horus is wounded by a Chaos-tainted weapon. His fate is sealed.

Galaxy in Flames (2006, Ben Counter)

The heresy revealed

Horus, corrupted, becomes brutal, destroying the planet of Istvaan IV with virus bombs. The Luna Wolves, World Eaters and the Death Guard legions turn traitor, but loyalists within their ranks stage a desperate fight back.

Flight of the Eisenstein (2007, James Swallow)

The heresy unfolds

Captain Garro of the Death Guard witnesses Horus’ betrayal and flees in the frigate Eisenstein to warn the Emperor.

Fulgrim (2007, Graham McNeill)

Visions of treachery

Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor’s Children is perverted by Chaos. The book is also the first to detail the dropsite massacres of Istvaan V, a pivotal event in Warhammer 40,000 history.

Descent of Angels (2007, Michael Scanlon)

Loyalty and honour

The early life of the Primarch Lion El’Jonson is revealed as a future schism in his legion, the Dark Angels, is hinted at.

Legion (2008, Dan Abnett)

Secrets and lies

The twin Primarchs of the Alpha Legion, Alpharius-Omegon, join the Warmaster but their motivations are perhaps not what they seem.

Battle for the Abyss (2008, Ben Counter)

My brother, my enemy

The loyal Ultramarines attempt to stop the Word Bearers assaulting their homeworld of Ultramar.

Mechanicum (2008, Graham McNeill)

War comes to Mars

Horus tries to subvert the Techpriests of Mars to his cause.

Tales of Heresy (2009, edited by Lindsey Priestley and Nick Kyme)

A collection of short stories providing background to the Horus Heresy, the Great Crusade and The Imperium.

Fallen Angels (2009, Mike Lee)

Deceit and betrayal

As Lion El’Jonson tries to prevent Horus seizing control of an important world, the Dark Angels’ homeworld of Caliban is riven with strife.

A Thousand Sons  (2010, Graham McNeill)

All is dust…

Magnus, cyclopean Primarch of the Thousand Sons, has a thirst for arcane knowledge. Despite being forbidden him, Magnus uses magic to warn the Emperor of Horus’ perfidy, but only succeeds in enraging him…

Nemesis (2010, James Swallow)

War within the shadows

Treason in high places is revealed as super-assassins clash.

The First Heretic (2010, Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

Fall to Chaos

Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, turns to Chaos when the Emperor rebukes him for worshipping him as a god.

Prospero Burns (2011, Dan Abnett)

The wolves unleashed

Much is revealed of how the Chaos plot came to be, leading up to and covering the destruction of the Thousand Sons’ homeworld by the Space Wolves legion.

Age of Darkness (2011, edited by Christian Done)

Short stories covering the seven years between the Istvaan V massacre and the campaign to seize Terra.

SFX Weekender

Wassup.

A brief post regarding the SFX Weekender. It’s like, wow, the end of this week.  I’ll be there, will you? As a publicity pig and part-time SFX flunky I’ll be hosting a couple of panels and yes, doing some signings. Also, I’ll be in the bar. A lot. So come and have a drink, because I like drinking even more than I like science fiction.

I’m confirmed for another convention already this year, more on that later, so don’t weep if you’re not coming and you really, really want to stand near me. I’m putting myself around a bit in 2012.

Friday

16.00 – Screening Zone

How to Get Published

I’ll be moderating the panel How to Get Published, a self-explanatory title. With me will be editors Anne Clarke of Orbit, Anne Lyle of Angry Robot, Simon Spanton of Gollancz, and David Howe of Telos. That’s a really good mix, covering two of the biggest imprints, the fast-rising new star on the block and a small press.  Referring back to my earlier posts on this matter, if these guys say something is so in this field, then that’s the way it is. A great opportunity to find a bit about how the publishing industry works, and tailor your writing plans accordingly.

As I’ll be directing the discussion, I’m not supposed to say much, but I’m sure if you want to ask me a few questions about how I got my words into the datasphere, I’ll be allowed to coyly answer.

18.00 – Bartertown

I’ll be signing my book Reality 36 alongside living legend Gav Thorpe at the Angry Robot stand in Bartertown. Come along and say hi. Maybe you could give me a cuddle. Gav’s great, but he’s not the cuddling sort.

Saturday

10.00 – Bartertown

I’ll be on the Solaris stand with fellow author Jonathan Green. Although Champion of Mars isn’t out until May, please come along and I’ll tell you all about it. I’m sure I can sign Reality 36 too, if my publisher isn’t looking. This is a great chance to see what I look like with a hangover, by the way.

15.00 – Screening Zone

We’re All Doomed!

Another day, another panel to moderate, this one on apocalypses in SF. Generally more famous authors than me will be commenting, including Simon Bestwick, Ken MacLeod, Paul McAuley, and Gareth L Powell. I’ll be passing the conch.