I just wanted to thank everyone who voted for Blood of Aenarion in the David Gemmell Legend Award. It is a great honour to have made it onto the short list. http://gemmellaward.com/profiles/blogs/david-gemmell-legend-award-shortlist-2012 … [Read more...]
Another Blast From the Past: Rogue Traders
March 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Here is another background piece I did back when I was writing Farseer. There is actually a Rogue Trader character in Fist of Demetrius so this may still be relevant. Once again, everything here is very old and none of it was ever part of the official 40K background save where it appears in Farseer. An extract from the basic training lectures of Brother Guillame, Fabricator Scriptorum, Inquisition Library, Stalynheim. Reference: Light of Knowledge Clearance Level: Tertius Unauthorised Viewing May Result In Termination of Library Privileges and Life. Praise the Emperor. Brothers, our lesson today deals with those individuals variously known as merchant adventurers, free voyagers or more colloquially Rogue Traders. Most of us have heard … [Read more...]
Drinking With Wolves
March 21, 2012 By 10 Comments
For those of you considering having a beer with the Wolves of Space, a dire warning. Leo, one of the Imperial Guard heroes of Fist of Demetrius, has had some experience in this field. Extracted from the first draft of Fist of Demetrius “Kill me now,” I said. The room seemed to be whirling around as if someone had placed a gravitic rotator under my bed. It felt as if one of the Adeptus Astartes was banging on my head with a Thunder Hammer. My throat felt raw. My stomach churned as if I had the Brontovan Trots. “You saw Space Wolves,” said Anton. The skinny bastard was practically dancing with excitement. “You drank with Space Wolves.” “You pointed a shotgun at Space Wolves,” said Ivan, the light reflecting brilliantly on … [Read more...]
Wolfblades: Yet Another Blast From The Past
March 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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
March 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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...]
A Blast From The Past
March 7, 2012 By 11 Comments
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...]
Interrogated By Skaven
December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I was recently captured and interrogated by Skaven. The full horrific results can be found here. … [Read more...]
Malekith
October 14, 2011 By 3 Comments
So how do you go about portraying a Dark Lord? Tolkien keeps Sauron off-stage for the whole of the Lord of the Rings. (One reason I have heard for this is that he knew Satan was the most compelling character in Paradise Lost and he did not want Sauron to be the same in his great trilogy. I don't know whether that is true but it certainly sounds plausible.) The easiest way to deal with Malekith in the Tyrion and Teclis books would have been to do the same thing, just make the Witch King a vast, implacable presence and leave it at that. This was originally my plan but somehow Malekith inserted himself into the narrative and he did it in such a way as to make me think he was not quite as I had imagined him to be. For one thing he had a … [Read more...]
Writing the Warhammer Tie-in: Details
August 22, 2011 By 4 Comments
When I am writing a tie-in novel I try never to assume that the reader is familiar with the background. This sounds strange, I know. After all, the developers have spent years building the world, the artists have provided us with beautiful illustrations so we know what everything looks like and hey, players have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours enjoying the game. They know what an ork or Chaos Warrior looks like, don’t they? They may have read dozens of Warhammer novels already. It’s a fair assumption that someone picking up a Warhammer novel is going to be a Warhammer player, isn’t it? Well, yes and no. (You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?) It’s certainly true that the vast majority of people who purchase … [Read more...]
So What About Warhammer and Writing Then?
June 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
I know, I know it says Warhammer, Writing and Whatever Else Is On My Mind in the tagline above, and you come here and there's damn little about Warhammer or writing for that matter and a lot about operating systems and software and work habits instead. It's not that I don't have anything to say about Warhammer or writing. It's just at the moment I am deep in writing a Warhammer book and that pretty much guarantees it won't be something I want to talk about. At this stage of writing a book, the last thing I want to do is be forced to comment intelligently on what I am doing. It means that I have to think about it, that analysis becomes part of the process of writing and it won't even be the sort of analysis that is useful for writing a … [Read more...]
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