In honour of Macharius's recent encounter with the Wolves of Space I have decided to reprint yet another old post of mine from the Trollslayer.net website. (And yes, I admit it, because I am feeling lazy.) Once again, I would like to thank Jimmy Carmine for pointing me in the direction of the archive.org and allowing me to retrieve this post from oblivion. Once again, I would just like to make it clear that none of this stuff is an official part of the background save where it actually appears in the Space Wolf novels and has not been superceded by new developments. I would also like to state that it is entirely possible, indeed extremely likely, that Macharius will encounter some Wolfblades in The Fist of Demetrius. Wolfblades An … [Read more...]
Another Blast From The Past
Here are some more mad ramblings from the recently rediscovered files of Wilhelm of Praag, strangely still relevant to the Tyrion and Teclis Trilogy. (I would like to thank Jimmy Carmine for pointing me in the direction of archive.org in the comments to the previous Blast From the Past). I should point out that this comes from my old website, was written over 10 years ago and was never part of the official background anyway. Still bearing all that in mind, let us proceed! The Paths of the Old Ones Some Speculations on their nature by Wilhelm of Praag. Recently there fell into my hands some of the texts translated from old Elvish into the common tongue of men, by the Elvish mage, Tasirion of Turmir, before his unfortunate demise at the … [Read more...]
Ten Thousand
On Saturday evening, some time between 10 pm and 11 pm, I sold my 10,000th e-book. That may not seem much in the grand scheme of things but if you consider the fact that my e-books are essentially put together by my wife and myself in our living room and have been on sale for roughly eight months, you can see why I consider this an achievement. For those of you interested in the actual breakdown of numbers, they were (as of 11:20 pm on the 10th of March): Death's Angels: 3607 The Serpent Tower: 1845 The Queen's Assassin: 1625 Shadowblood: 1418 The Inquiry Agent: 680 Sky Pirates: 84 Assorted Short Stories: 741 As you can see the vast majority of sales (8495) have been in my Terrarch series. Since December I have been averaging well … [Read more...]
A Blast From The Past
So that's Black Library Live been and gone and it was a lot of fun. I even managed to pick up a copy of Slaves To Darkness, one of the very first projects I ever worked on at Games Workshop back in the day. It contains the very first encounter of the Emperor and Horus ever written as far as I know (written by me too!), and Adrian Smith's excellent black and white picture in which I modelled for the Warmaster. I very much enjoyed doing the Warhammer panel with Gav Thorpe, Sarah Cawkwell and Josh Reynolds and it brought a whole lot of ideas bubbling to the surface of my mind, particularly about elves and dwarves. It reminded me that I had actually written posts on the subject for my old Trollslayer.net site. I checked back and it seems … [Read more...]
Back To The Crusade
My current 40K novel, The Fist of Demetrius, is starting to shape up. I am about 25000 words in. An ominous cloud of intrigue looms over Macharius as he reaches the absolute zenith of his power at the height of the Crusade. The Dark Eldar are moving across the event horizon. Multiple conflicts loom, with the xenos, with ambitious generals and corrupt Imperial politicians. Macharius ,although he does not know it, is about to experience the pivotal event of his life, a confrontation with something that will turn him from the golden reflection of Alexander the Great into the dark, ruthless fanatic we know from the background texts. Slowly, a bit at a time, a book is coming into being. It's fun to watch and at the same time frustrating, … [Read more...]
Create Your Own Ebook Cover, Step By Step, With Pictures
Fair warning, you are about to get advice on creating your cover from a man with all the artistic talent of a slug. Indeed, so small are my gifts in this area that several slugs have written in to complain that my statement is demeaning to their creative abilities. It also has to be said you're going to be taking PowerPoint advice from a man who is not particularly adept with PowerPoint, especially its Windows variant. So why am I doing this exactly? Because I can, of course, and because I want to make a point; that even a man with my stunning lack of skill can create an acceptable ebook cover in a few minutes with a minimum of fuss. And if I can, then you can too. I am going to use the cover I create here for the ebook version of my … [Read more...]
High Elves, Dark Elves, All Elves
Central to the struggle in the Tyrion and Teclis trilogy is the conflict between High Elves and Dark Elves. We all know what that means, don't we? High Elves are glittering and noble, proud and good. Dark Elves are decadent and wicked, drugged out and crazy, given to torture and malice. They are as different as two peoples can be, aren't they? Actually, I don't think so. I think they are exactly the same people. They are just the products of two very different societies. I believe that in every High Elf is a potential Dark Elf, and in every Dark Elf there is the seed of a High Elf. Consider this. They were all one people once, before the coming of Chaos, before Aenarion and the Godslayer, before Morathi and Malekith. There once were only … [Read more...]
The Utility of Free: Some Thoughts on Free EBooks
I was planning on posting my guide to creating ebook covers in PowerPoint today but these posts are quite labour intensive and yesterday was Valentine's Day and I decided I would rather go out for a nice dinner with my lovely wife than spend the evening making annotated screenshots. Go figure, huh! So it's next week for the PowerPoint guide unless my monkey brain gets distracted by something else... Over at Terribleminds Chuck Wendig has an excellent and thoughtful post about the costs and uses of going free in ebook publication. Go read it, I will still be here when you get back. A warning for the easily shocked, Chuck is somewhat more profane than I am, just so you know. He has put into words some of my own reservations about making … [Read more...]
Go Read This…
...if you have any interest in self-publishing your own ebook. Dean Wesley Smith has put up an excellent post on the costs of indie publishing. I can confirm that everything Dean says here is 100% accurate. At some point in the next few weeks I'll stick up a post about the actual mechanics of doing your own covers with PowerPoint. I am a man with the artistic talent of a slug (and that is probably insulting slugs) and I can do this. If I can, anyone can. … [Read more...]
Create Your Own Kindle EBook, Step by Step, With Pictures
Today I am starting a series on how to publish your own ebook. I have had a fair amount of interest in my posts on this subject over the past few months and I wanted to give some substance to my claim that self-publishing an ebook is not much harder than pushing Save on your word-processor. Honestly, this is really true, with the proviso that you are producing a novel or a short story and that you do things correctly right from the start. I won't talk about picture books or books with footnotes, citations and references because I have no experience of such things. I have, however, as of this date, published six of my own novels and a few of my own short stories and I have found the process absurdly simple. I recommend reading Mark … [Read more...]
Two Different Paths
I have been experimenting with writing 2000 words of new fiction every working day since the New Year. This is in addition to outlining, planning, revising and producing new ebooks. It's led to some interesting (for me, at least) consequences. Right now I am working on two different projects and my methods are about as different as I can possibly imagine. The first is The Fist of Demetrius, my second Macharius novel for Warhammer 40K. This started off last year as a simple first person narrative and mutated into something else as it progressed. The second project is my sword and sorcery novel The Stealer of Flesh about a monster hunter named Kormak. The Macharius book is part of a series within a greater series. It fits into Games … [Read more...]
Sky Pirates Released
I can remember the exact moment when I got the idea for Sky Pirates. I was reading one of Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian books, The Gods Of Mars. I came across his descriptions of the savage green men and, of course, I thought of orcs. For some reason, from then on the idea of Burroughs Green Men and orcs became conjoined in my mind. My brain was filled with the idea of orcish hordes rampaging across the desiccated landscapes of a dying world not unlike Barsoom. Thuvia, Maid of Mars is one of the very first SF novels I can remember reading as a small kid. I can still picture the cover (by Bruce Pennington I think) in my mind. It had a very scantily clad Thuvia and a Thark on it. It made a lasting impression on me. There's something very … [Read more...]
Order Out of Chaos
So the end of the month is sneaking closer and I am still working away. As I mentioned at the start of the month, I planned on writing 2K of new fiction every working day this year as well as revising work for publication. I also mentioned that I was having trouble settling down into a routine. (New babies and lack of sleep tend to have that effect!) Of late, I have been plagued by the flu and persecuted by the Machine God as well. However, in spite of all this, I have started to get the feeling that my goals for this year are at least possible. I am settling down into a new method of working, which is just as well, because I need to. I begin each day by revising what I wrote the work day before. (Obviously this means that on Monday I … [Read more...]
SOPA Strike
No post today. Like many other people I am protesting against SOPA which I believe is not a good thing. But Bill, I hear you say, this is a post. Fair enough but you know what I mean! … [Read more...]
The Hundredth Post
Back in the 80s my brother sold insurance. He occasionally attended sales conferences and sometimes came back with motivational books. One day, bored, with nothing better to do, I read one. It started a life-long habit of reading books about selling and the life of a salesman. In case you are wondering what possible relevance any of those could have to the life of a writer, let me just point out that writers and salesmen have more in common than you might think. Both writers and salesmen need to be self-starters. There is usually no one else around to motivate you. Both live in worlds where the possibility of rejection arises daily, and both need to be able to keep going in the face of that rejection. Both have jobs where they are entirely … [Read more...]
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