I'll clarify some things regarding The First Heretic and that Horus Heresy meeting, as I'm already seeing talk spill out across the aether in some scary directions.

• The HH meeting I blogged about in my last post was, like, six months ago. As I said, there'll be another one in the next few months. Probably after BLL in Feb? I dunno, man, I just work here.
• The First Heretic, at this stage, is a 15-page outline that was, shall we say, "gloriously well received" by the people in charge a while ago.
• I start writing the novel next week.
• I talked to Neil Roberts loads about the cover, and I'm dying to see it when it's done. He was totally receptive to my idea and I think he dug my visual references (not that he needed help, but I do like to talk). As with Nemesis, it'll be something not seen on an HH cover before. Or any cover, I guess.
• If I say any more, Nick will chop off my balls.
• My cat Loken keeps sitting by my Resident Evil PS2 chainsaw controller and pawing at the map of Armageddon blu-tacked to my wall.
• I have to go pick up my girlfriend from work, and posting this will have made me about five minutes late. This is what our lovers must suffer for our art.
• I need to call Dan Abnett this week and am pretending to be brave about it.

If I'm judging time correctly, there'll be another Horus Heresy meeting soon.

This is good, and this is bad.

The last time we gathered for this, several of my preconception balloons were popped with the pin of harsh reality. To understand why I say this, you need to understand just what happens at a Horus Heresy meeting.

The last time we gathered, it was me, Jim, Graham and Dan, with Nick, Alex and Lindsey from the editorial corps overseeing it all and making notes on whatever left our mouths. Sat at the head of the table, eclipsing the metaphorical sun and threatening any idea with instant destruction, was Alan Merritt, the main intellectual property head honcho for Games Workshop, who shall hereafter be referred to as The Loremaster.

So picture the scene. I have several books in the pipeline, but nothing out yet. Nothing. I've been asked to join the Horus Heresy team and write for a best-selling novel series. I'm sat in a room with several guys whose work I've been reading and loving for years, and I'm sat directly opposite Dan Abnett. Oh, but there's more. To my immediate right is GW's IP Manager. To my left is Lindsey Priestley, who not only holds ultimate power over my career at this point, she is also married to the man that invented Warhammer.

In front of me, offering my only solace in the most terrifying room of my life, is a packet of biscuits. Over time, I inflict a hefty amount of damage to this biscuit-based supply cache, but that comes later.

Before this meeting even started, any semblance of coolness had already fucked off and left me high and dry. Dan Abnett walked into the office an hour earlier, and I'd hid on the other side of the room for a good 10 minutes before Lindsey called me over and forced me to be noticed. In my defence, I wasn't just hiding, I was also talking to Christian. But I digress.

"HI, DAN ABNETT," I said as I was forced to get closer, and I was so nervous I found myself unable to modulate the volume of my voice. Months later, at a pre-Games Day dinner, I would repeat this slice of ice-cool social interaction when I met someone else. "HI, RICK PRIESTLEY," I would say. But that's another tale, and one that made him seem infinitely less keen to talk to me.

Understandably so.

Graham and Jim arrived, and The Big Three relaxed into each others' company with the slick ease of professional gunslingers reminiscing about, like... gunslinging or whatever. I lurked around the edges of the sofa, trying to think of something cool to say and hating all three of them with almost supernatural ferocity. I was trying so hard to think of something rad to say that I could feel myself sweating, and worrying one of them would look at me. By this stage, I was relatively certain that if one of them glanced my way, I'd catch fire and turn to ash like a vampire caught shoplifting in the sunshine.

Into the meeting we go.

Ideas are passed back and forth. On several occasions, the ideas are so good (and currently, so absolutely secret) that I forget where I am and who I'm talking to. "That's fucking killer," leaves my lips on several occasions, and is answered by amused - almost paternal - smiles. Oh, new boy, they're all thinking. What entertaining enthusiasm you have. We plan the fate of worldwide intellectual properties and decide the answers for the greatest sci-fi mysteries every week.

They all laugh good-naturedly at a joke I make, but I hear the truth in their laughter. For you, they're saying, this is the coolest meeting of your life. For us, it is merely Sunday.

The moment I'm dreading finally comes. I have to mention The First Heretic. I look at Graham, because... shit, I have no idea why I'm looking at Graham. No, stop looking at Jim, he must be thinking you want to bum him by now. Don't look there, retard. That's Dan Abnett. Look at Lindsey. Where's Lindsey? Is she making tea? Shit, I should've asked for more tea, but Dan was talking about comics that I didn't understand and I was too scared to interrupt.

Balls.

I say the barest minimum possible about my core idea for The First Heretic. In my mind, I'm weaving a saga of immense personal tragedy, galactic disorder, and the death of innocent worlds. Love and hate collide in a touching drama between father and son, and brother pits themselves against brother as an interstellar empire burns.

What I actually say is, however, nothing like this. I whisper something anaemic that makes Graham nod and frown at the same time. In that moment, I vow to hurl myself in front of a train the moment I'm out of this terrifying building.

Alan Merritt arrives. His arrival casts an icy pall over proceedings. Everything discussed so far will be for naught if the Loremaster decides the words we babble are no more than meaningless spaz-noise.

He nods. He laughs. He makes the right noises and says the right things.

My blood literally runs cold at the sight of Dan Abnett pitching an idea to someone else. He... he has to pitch, too? He doesn't just get to do whatever he wants? This is something I'd not prepared myself to see. The alpha male has exposed his throat, showing his vulnerability. I could pounce now. I could end it all, and take his place.

I launch across the table, and my claws draw blood. Graham and Jim were ready for my treacherous strike, and I hear the racking of shotguns as they chamber shells. Gunfire fills the room like thunder on a rainy day. Nick Kyme goes down, crying out for mercy that will never come. And an ambulance.

My only escape route is the window. I run, jump, and penetrate the sheet of glass in a storm of diamond shards.

Gunfire follows me as I flee into the night.

As I lay twitching and cold beneath a shrubbery by the side of the Nottingham canal, my phone beeps. A text message.

"Next meeting in six months," it says. "Doctors say they can reattach my arm. Nick."

Yes. Six months.

In six months, I will be ready once more.

 I'm sorry, what were you saying?

I couldn't hear you over the sound of this.

I get asked this from time to time, and I suspect I'll get asked it that much more when Soul Hunter is released in March next year. I'm making this in a public move to have something to link to when I get asked in the future. 

The Question: "Aaron, will you write about the Night Lords in the Horus Heresy?"

The Answer: No. Probably not.

The Follow-Up: "Why not?"

The Reply: Well, there are five reasons.


The first reason is because I don't want to do it. In 25 years of conflicting lore, overlapping truths, fucked-up timelines and changing events, the Night Lords in the Horus Heresy are among the worst cases of "None of this shit makes sense"-ness. People are already hugely confused on just what events happen, and when. Hell, I'm one of them. We're at a point where the first books have made it look like the Traitor Legions are about to do nothing but make full speed to the Siege of Terra, when there's supposed to be 4 years or so before they arrive.

I don't want to go near the Night Lords Heresy timeline. I've tried to make notes on it before, and it was like listening to Cradle of Filth while a dwarf took a hammer to my balls. I enjoyed, like, zero percent of the experience. And that's rounding up. 

The second reason is because of Zso Sahaal. Zso Sahaal was the main character in Simon Spurrier's Lord of the Night - the one-off Night Lords book that was released by BL several years ago. Lord of the Night was a good book, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's certainly among the better-written BL novels out there, and Simon Spurrier is a fucking killer writer. 

I didn't really like Zso Sahaal that much, though. I felt the entire book was evocative and atmospheric, but not a great look at the Legion, and Zso Sahaal was the principle issue in that. He was all about how he alone was pure and awesome enough to be just like his primarch father's intentions, and absolutely everyone else was weak and corrupt. I got tired of constantly being told how he was the best. All right, I get it. Enough now, Drizzt.

Strangely, he fainted all the time, for no reasons I could really discern, like a woman in a 50s Tom & Jerry cartoon who happens to see a mouse. He was staggeringly self-important, not only in his own arrogance (which was a beautifully-written part of his character), but in how he was absolutely the most important Astartes in the entire Night Lords Legion (which was... just a bit silly). He claimed he was the primarch's heir, which is something many people could easily claim, and is an interesting aspect to his character arc. But then on the other hand, he tells us that he invented Raptors / Jump-pack Assault Squads.

No, Zso Sahaal. No, you really didn't. You, one little guy in the Night Lords, were not the one guy who invented Raptors and spread them to a million other Astartes across the burgeoning Imperium. I'm fairly certain, y'know, the Emperor... or one of his demigod primarch sons... I'm fairly certain these overlords in control of an entire galaxy didn't go to you for advice on how to get into close combat a little bit faster. The Mechanicum came right to you when they'd invented jump-packs? They were like "Hey, Wolverine, you want to have these and show them to the Emperor and the primarchs? Maybe take all the credit for the science part?" 

No.

All of this aside, I have a lot of love for Simon Spurrier's work, especially on Judge Dredd with the Simping Detective. He sweats talent. Just because I don't like Zso Sahaal doesn't mean I didn't like the book (which rocked) or his work (which rocks even harder). 

However, as First Captain of the Legion, a character I can't relate to would be pretty much everywhere in a Night Lords Horus Heresy Series story. So... no. That's reason 2, and while it's actually the least important, it's also the most difficult to explain (which is why it needed so many words compared to the others), and is certainly the one people will whine most at me about.  

The third reason is because of that freaking killer audio book Graham wrote. When it comes to reasons of "But another writer already did X, Y and Z..." this is the real deal.

At this stage, I'd rate The Dark King as part of Graham's best work, alongside Mechanicum and Fulgrim.  It's a killer part of the HH series, and it deals with the Night Lords' primarch: from his deviancy to his arrest and imprisonment by Rogal Dorn, to his escape and the destruction of Nostramo... all of which leads right into the Isstvan Massacres.  

With the greatest respect to Graham, those are the best fucking bits. 

That, I assume, is why he chose to write them, and in turn, why The Dark King is such a killer story. Why would I want to rehash that? Well, the answer is that I wouldn't. Could I expand upon something I already regard as next to perfect? Uh, sure. But I don't want to. Next. 

The fourth reason is because I'm already dealing with a lot of this stuff in the Night Lords series. Shadow Knight showed a glimpse of Night Lord warfare back then, and Talos's induction into the Legion. Soul Hunter has a great deal about how losing the Heresy has broken the Night Lords, and the repercussions of that defeat. It also has memories of the primarch, and events during the Heresy itself.

The Night Lords aren't like imperial Astartes; they can delve deep into the galaxy's ancient past, because to them it's not really the past at all. Given the way the warp eats time, for many of them, the Horus Heresy wasn't that long ago - and just as they are shaped by a conflict that's mere mythology to most people, they're still pissed off about it. They're still reacting to it. It defines a lot of them, and gives them purpose. 

The Night Lords I'm writing about in their own series were there, back in the Heresy. It's fresh in their memories. It's something they still dwell upon. So naturally, in flashbacks, thoughts and the ins 'n outs of cause and effect, there's a fair amount of stuff in these new books that will deal with what the Legion did back then.

This is essentially having my cake and eating it, but whatever. It's also a great way to tell an interesting story about Traitor Astartes. Dare I say it? The best way.

The fifth and final reason is the most important, and that's simply because I have other ideas. My dislike for writing a Horus Heresy novel about the Night Lords isn't founded on negativity, but positivity. I have other ideas I want to explore. Other, more interesting plots that I'd like to look into and bring to the light. It's less about avoiding a difficult issue than it is about being instinctively and creatively drawn to doing other things.

On one level, I think only a sucker would get given the invitation into the Horus Heresy circle and then say "Cool, yeah, I'll... keep doing exactly the same stuff I've been doing so far, about the same guys, in the same army, in the same fights."

Oh, no.

I have plans, me. 

As I said at Games Day, the working title for the novel I'm about to start writing is The First Heretic.

Now go. Tell the internet. See if I care.

I just had one of those moments where "That was the best thing I read all week" happened on a Monday.

It pre-empted the whole week, for real. 

Several people over the years have said Chuck Wendig and I write quite similarly, and while those people may have a little bit of a point, I'm pretty familiar with Chuck's writing. With that in mind, I think Chuck is what I'd sound like if I understood structure and - crucially - if I ever actually had a point to make. Chuck would sound more like me if he was English, but he'd sound even more like me if he was actually as much of a shithead as I am. 

I can go further with this. Take two people. One of them is slightly more handsome, and that one is me, but whatever. Give them both wildly divergent ambitions with their similar writing talents. One of them, sticking with the handsome and shaven-headed theme, looks at things like this:




...and thinks that the greatest thing in the world is a gigantic war machine with a cathedral on its back, annihilating the enemies of mankind with guns the size of city blocks. This guy also believes the greatest characterisation in the world means nothing next to having a cool-looking helmet, and - running with that logic - believes Boba Fett was a much deeper character than Hamlet.

The other guy looks at this picture, too. Perhaps he's trying to humour his younger kin in some way? He's that kind of guy. But he looks at that picture, and doesn't see an Imperator Titan bracing itself in the moments before firing both of its arm weapons. He looks at it, and he thinks "That man is made out of castles and he's taking a shit."

And that second guy is Chuck.   

Here's Chuck discussing how not to write dialogue. It doesn't matter if you have no interest at all in writing, in dialogue, or in clicking a link to some American fucker's blog. Just click it. It's hilarious.

It's the best thing you'll read all week.

terribleminds.com/ramble/2009/10/05/blah-blah-blah-how-not-to-write-dialogue/




"What a piece of work is a bounty hunter. How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension (of criminals), how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so. Now give me my fucking money. I've got a flamethrower on my arm, you know."

-- Shakespeare's 'Boba Fett', Act II, scene ii.

 "Are you all right in there, mate?"

There are some questions you just can't answer. I couldn't answer that one because I was on my hands and knees in the departure lounge toilets of East Midlands Airport, throwing up the most incredibly foul-tasting and poisonous liquid rainbow. I can't stand people seeing me being sick, and only slightly less hateful is people hearing me be sick. I tried to time each upchuck to someone using the hot air hand dryers, to mask the noise of me evacuating my stomach, but this jazz was coming out with no regard for my intentions whatsoever. My body was doing its own thing, and I was nothing more than a frightened, trembling witness. 

I hadn't been this confused and detached from what I was doing since I lost my virginity. And frankly, I had about as much fun then as I did on the airport floor. 

My first thought was actually "I'm not your fucking mate", because that's how my brain tends to work. My mummy raised a real nice guy. So there was me, wearing sunglasses indoors, on the floor of an airport toilet, yarking up my soul in chunky liquid form and thinking "I'm not your friend, asshole" to a stranger who asked if I was okay. I didn't picture myself doing this at 29. Really, I never saw it coming.

Also, I found it particularly unfair because I hadn't even had that much to drink the night before. I'd drunk the exact wrong amount of beer, where it's too much to pretend you've just "uh, caught food poisoning" and just enough to show that university was a while ago now, and you're not so awesome at holding your drink when you don't touch it very often.

I wasn't about to explain any of this. This was a situation that called for some truly excellent lies. 

"Yeah," I finally said, which was the first lie of the lie sandwich. I was the very opposite of okay. Indeed, I wasn't actually sure I had any bones left. "I just hate flying," I added the second layer. Telling this petty little lie to avoid admitting I was hungover actually made me laugh, which was a mistake, because laughing made me barf again. 

My sunglasses came off at that point. Only my catlike reflexes saved them from spinning tauntingly into the intriguing stew I was making in the toilet bowl. 

"You should take the train, mate."

I'm not your fucking mate.

"Yeah." Deep breaths. Focus. Stop drooling on yourself. "I will next time."

No I won't next time, because trains don't fly, you hilarious man. 


---   ---   ---


The day before that was Games Day. 

I was initially sorta worried about going there, because I only had Cadian Blood out recently, and while I think it's a decent first novel, it's not exactly a library of stuff to sign. I was worried I'd be sat there bored and embarrassed. Thankfully, naw, it was all good. 

By this point, the parts I remember are largely blended into one amorphous blob of looking up at people and doodling on the title pages of Cadian Blood. Anyone who knows me knows I very, very, very much hate people to touch my hands - especially if I don't know them - so shaking hands that many times was a pretty big thing for me to do, and I was pathetically proud of it. 

The best moment of the entire weekend was when me and Mark C Newton signed each other's novels. This might not seem a particularly inspiring-sounding event in one's life, but I had a bit of a moment of clarity. I'm almost thirty, I'm finally a professional novelist, I hang out with other professional novelists, and I still think it's hilarious to sign a book like this:

"Mark.
What are you? Gay?
Aaron."

...and have the reply be:

"Aaron.
Not as gay as you.
Mark."



The high points of the weekend:

- Graham's 80s dancing. Not much will ever beat that. You want this guy at a party.

- Seeing Nick again. That adorably cheeky northern miscreant.

- Mark and Christian, from the BL office. Why, I do believe we clicked, sirs. 

- Going to a teddy bear factory/shop and making Graham's new baby a teddy, with a birth certificate naming him Ventris McNeill. There was an option to put a little heart inside them as you made them, which you had to kiss and make a wish. Katie did the honours.

- Jim, from start to finish. Between him and Katie carrying me when I was too fucked to walk properly, and all the advice on how to write for my upcoming audiobook (how it'll differ from standard short stories, etc.), I literally have too much nice stuff to say about Jim to squeeze into a blog post. He's my hero, and he knows it. It was cool to point out all the references to his work in Cadian Blood - at last.

- Getting to show Katie off to friends, co-workers and stuff.

- Having the greatest work schedule in the history of mankind ahead of me.



The low points of the weekend:

- Not talking to the following people as much as I'd hoped/expected: Nihm/Anders (from Bolter and Chainsword), Xhalax (from the BL forum), Johnny G (from... just generally being Johnathon Greene). Anders is making the characters from the Night Lords series for me, and he handed over the first 2 at Games Day. They're breathtaking, and I can't thank him enough. Xhalax is a famously articulate and hot forumite who always knows what she's talking about (and made some killer cookies this year, of which I ate 3). Johnathon Greene is another writer, who turned out to be a dead nice guy, too. He was remarkably humble about writing children's books, which I've always thought has got to be one of the hardest genres to write well.  
 
- Photos of myself. I've lost weight recently, but it needs to come off faster than it is. Jesus Christ. Time to kick the weight loss up a gear.

- Puking like a bitch in no fewer than four separate places over a 2-day period. Really now. That's just embarrassing.

- Not buying enough Pez. 

- At one point, someone came up to our group at the aftershow party, and over the course of the conversation, mentioned they knew who I was. I laughed and said "You have no idea who I am," because, well, why the fuck would she? She took me aside and explained in patient, condescending detail exactly who I was, and said I should be more respectful in the future to the people that sell my books. I am still at a loss to grasp exactly what social misstep I committed here (the others present weren't sure what went wrong either), but it seemed both bizarrely and intriguingly dire.

- Boosted by alcohol, deciding that midnight on a Sunday night while dizzyingly drunk was the perfect time to call my ex-pal about that modem problem I had last month. Good going, Aaron. Let's be glad he either wasn't there, or chose not to pick up. Both are fine.

- Losing Katie's £300 camera, my favourite hat, and my £200 glasses in Bugman's Bar. Ohhhhhhh, shit.

- As I said, not buying enough Pez is still annoying me most of all. 

I require advice.

Today I received a bill for for a month's internet at my previous address, as well as a warning that I'd be charged a pretty nasty amount if I failed to return the modem to the company. 

There are several problems with this scenario. 

Firstly, I don't have the money at the moment. Not even close. I'm waiting for payment to clear from various angles, and with Katie still jobhunting, it's fair to say that we're in pretty grim shape financially.

Secondly, I moved out before my previous housemate, leaving the modem with him. I suspect, given that we didn't pay attention to the fact this was apparently renting a modem instead of buying one, he threw it out. I would have, too.

Thirdly - and this is the real problem - I've cut all contact with this friend. 

To keep a bitter story rather shorter and spare you the acidic bile involved, the friendship reached a point where I had completely supported him financially for a year. The amount he owed me was in excess of £4,000, and while that might not be much to most people, it was a fortune to me. It was, in fact, my savings for last years taxes and my laser eye surgery. To cover the former, I had to borrow money from my parents. To cover the latter, well... that just never happened at all. Food and rent were more important than getting laser beams shot at my eyes.

While money troubles between friends can break a lot of bonds, it wasn't the deciding factor in the termination of our friendship. That came a few months later, when he got together with a very difficult, very bitter, and very, very recent ex-girlfriend of mine. While I accept that he didn't do this out of malice in any way, I came to realise that we shared staggeringly different values of loyalty and closeness in the friendship. I would never have made him suffer like I did financially for a year, and I would never have wounded him by dating his recent ex - especially given that his "one rule in life" was never to mess around with his friends' exes.

So, I broke contact - and I add now that it was a very amicable thing. Amicable, but definite. I didn't want him in my life, nor could I deal with my ex. At best, her endless insults against Katie were venomous. At worst, well, she told me many, many things about how she feels that make me doubt their burgeoning relationship is, shall we say, entirely built on strong foundations. But whatever. The point is, contact is terminated, and we both went our own ways.

I assume he is as happy as I am, and I assume she is, too. 

The problem now is that this bill has arrived, almost 3 fucking months after I moved out, and I need to know what to do. I can't afford to cover this alone right now - not for several weeks - and technically (although I paid for all the internet as I paid for everything), half of it isn't my responsibility. Legally, of course, it's in my name, so all of it is my responsibility.

Right at the end of our friendship, I had practically no money left at all, so my birthday present to my friend was to let him out of the £4,000 he owed me. I said I was sorry I couldn't get him anything cool, but at least I could do that - and by this stage, it was such a huge amount that realistically, I was never going to see it coming back my way. I wasn't bothered, either. It had been an awesome year of living together, and I still believe that letting him free of the debt was the right thing to do. 

However, now I've got this new bill, and I don't know what to do. If I contact him and ask for the money, it looks petty beyond imagining, like I want some childish revenge. If I pay it all myself, it'll hurt me a lot at a time when my wallet can't take any more wounds. And I don't mean "having no money" in the sense of not being able to buy Space Hulk. I mean that until I get paid next in a few weeks, we're struggling to afford food.  

Now, how do I deal with this in a sane and reasonable way, without putting pressure on him? He's likely to have no money himself, I'm sure. Not only do I not want him to feel I'm somehow being a bastard, I also don't want to get back in touch with him with money pressure only months after I let him out of the previous debt. I doubt he needs the pressure any more than I do, after all.

Please advise.
  

My interview went up on the Black Library site today.

http://www.blacklibrary.com/free-extras/articles/interviews/qtp-adb.asp

It's evidently not yet linked on my author profile, or Cadian Blood preorders, or on the home page. BUT THAT'S FINE.

I mean, Henry Zou gets a photobanner for aaaaaaages linking his interview. BUT THAT'S COOL. 

I'M TAKING IT IN GOOD GRACE, PEOPLE.

IN GOOD GRACE. 

I hit all the vital notes of writing for the Black Library, like how Katie wants cover artist Jon Sullivan to do her, and how I deserve to be king of absolutely everything.

It's terrible to talk about yourself, but y'know, I've been reading at the dinner table since I was a kid, so what's gauche has no bearing on how I act. Let's talk about work, because I'm a little bit excited.

My first ever novel review is up, and Cadian Blood is now shuffling into preorders.

9 and 3/4 out of 10.

That's 9.75, kids.

Out of 10.   

http://www.graemesfantasybookreview.com/2009/07/cadian-blood-aaron-dembski-bowden-black.html

However, the best thing I've ever seen said about my work was by Satan on Warseer.com, recently linked to me by a pal:

"Wasn't he the guy who wrote the Night Lords story in the newest BL chapbook? Because that was great. Seriously, I mean - that was like real literature."

Think I owe that guy a beer.

Meanwhile, I'm acquiring a new copy of Microsoft Word so I can start work today. Let's not beat around the bush where Works vs. Word is concerned. One does the job with minimum fuss. The other hinders you - it actively obstructs what should be an easy process - like the word processor equivalent of needing to vault a barbed wire fence just to take a piss.

I have spent this week in a multiude of plusses and minuses:

(Yay!)
+ Intensely happy for my friend Rob, for various soul-lifting reasons. 
+ Thrilled with Northern Nick after one motherfucker of a Skype call.
+ Assuring people I would get details to them about the Halloween Party.
+ Reading a thousand D&D 4e books, and loving them all lots.
+ Looking at my girlfriend naked.
+ Watching Tombstone, Young Guns and Young Guns II in the same blessed, magnificent week.
+ Doing an interview that'll be on the Black Library website soon.
+ Hearing my niece's GCSE results. 


(Boo!)
- Editing the almost-final draft of Soul Hunter - i.e. with a highlighter through the printout.
- Being really, really poor.
- Having my RSI play up like a crazy amount.
- Cursing my computer for its various deficiencies and that rather classy 9K of Helsreach that it digested.
- Being a bit gutted that everyone I know has Space Hulk. 

Overall, the plusses beat the minuses. As it should be.

Now, to business: The Halloween Party is on.

The details are as follows:

Arrival:
Arrive either Friday 30th or Saturday 31st. Saturday is likely best, as that's when everyone seems to be showing up. Pretty much everyone is leaving Sunday afternoon/night.
 
Getting Here (Airport):
Belfast International or Belfast City - both are fine. Ryanair and Easyjet are your best bets, and note - for the record - that Belfast Intl. is slightly more convenient for picking up purposes.

Getting Here (Bus): 
There are buses/coaches from the airports, which rack up to a mighty £15 or so. Takes about 2 hours to get here from the airports.

Getting Here (Car):
By far the easiest way is to drive from the airport. Takes about an hour and a half. Rental cars are sometimes crazy-cheap, and sometimes ludicruosly expensive. I can pick up a few people, but too many, as loads have already asked - and certain people take priority - such as if they're dirt poor, asked ultra-nicely, or if I like them lots more than the standard beggars, scrubbers and barely-human filth that make uo most of our species.

Getting Back:
There's a fair chance I'll be significantly hungover on Sunday. That might - "might" - mean I'll not be in fine form to drive people back to the airport, necessitating a few extra souls on the return buses. Think of that as a plus. You'll be a pack of people, all hanging out hungover. I like that sentence.

Drink:
Yeah, there're places nearby we can go to get supplies.

Food:
Don't joke about this. We'll get loads of snacks, but no fast food places deliver out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. Plan accordingly, ladies and gentlefops.

Costumes:
People always seem to prefer fancy dress to specific horror themes, so just come as whatever. I promise not to use brown body paint and come as Mace Windu.



Evidently, if my Facebook and Gmail inboxes are anything to go by, I didn't give enough information on where I'm living right now.

Here's my address:

31 Old Junction Road
Trillick
Omagh
Co. Tyrone
BT78 3RN
United Kingdom

We actually live in a tiny place called Kilskeery. Wikipedia has this to say about it: "Kilskeery (Irish: Cill Scire) is a small village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, between Ballinamallard and Trillick. In the 2001 census it had a population of 57 people."

57 people. Teehee. 

And here's a photo of Katie looking ginger, Irish, green-eyed, pale and freckled, which is both very pretty and extremely entertaining on the nights I try to count her freckles:





Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get my D&D character done before my group eats me alive for the endless delays.

Fuck what you think. I like Dragonborn.

 


Yesterday, somewhere close to midnight, as a light rain fell from the night-time sky, Katie's aunt and cousin turned up at our door, bearing this scruffy and ragged creature. Apparently it had been found wandering lost on their lane, and as we all live in the countryside a healthily paranoid distance from other human beings, that meant this kitten was very lost indeed.

Katie got to the door first, which means she learned all of this first. I took my headphones off, left my laptop on the kitchen table, and arrived several seconds too late to really have any influence over proceedings. By the time I got there, Katie had the kitten in her arms, and hit me with a look that said "Isn't it great? Now we have two kittens!"

Very rarely has eye contact conveyed such a clear message.

I made grumbling, semi-responsible noises - essentially the sounds I'd hear my dad make when I was a kid and wanted something unrealistic, stupid, or both. I copied those sounds now, feeling as if I could somehow gather authority to myself. When I accidentally saw the look in Katie's eyes again, I knew the game was over. Suddenly... suddenly we had two kittens.

I had not been expecting this.

The vet cleaned her up and is thankfully providing a lot of healthcare for free under Pet Protection, because we took her in as a stray, like the charitable and wonderful soul I a-- I mean, we are. So she had ear mites, fleas, and a gash on her hind leg from what was most likely barbed wire.

She was also starving, grimy, loud and affectionate. Mew, she'd say, over and over while I was trying to write about the fucking Black Templars. Mew. Mew. Mew.

Mew.

I took my laptop upstairs.

Here I shall remain, sighing to myself, while Katie makes various squealing girl-noises that, to my ears, all sound very much the same as Mew. 

The new beast... She must be named.

My brother acdb is chronicling the degeneration of our grandmother as senility takes hold of her with very rapid claws. I can't lock my feelings down about this, except to admit that I'm glued to his updates. I know a few of my friends are, too.

He's doing it with brutal honesty, and that makes it both easier and harder to read. On one hand, I know and love all the characters in this little drama. Seeing my brother so frustrated, seeing my grandmother so confused and upset, and being able to read between the lines to know my dad must be in hell with this... It all adds up to a pretty depressing read, even if I have to infer a lot of it where my dad's concerned.

On the other hand, when people are ruthlessly honest about these things, it's easy to find the funny stuff. Call it a coping mechanism if you want; I'm not sure that's what it is. I think it's just a very real and human reaction to the fact that when people are dying, they can say and do some pretty hilarious things. 

One of my grandfathers - my father's father, who had a hefty stake in why I ended up with a passion for language - died of lung cancer when I was in my early teens. It was such a slow and drawn-out process that I barely felt like I had much to deal with when the end finally came. I was relieved when he finally died, because I hated seeing him go inch by inch like that. My last words to him, spoken with excruciating awkwardness to a bedridden man who could barely open his eyes, were as follows:

"So... what are you doing lately?"
"Oh," and he smiled the nicest, most sincere smile I'd ever seen on his face. "I sleep. I sleep."
"Well... have fun." 

He died a few days later. I was relieved, not upset. At the funeral, when I saw my family in tears, that was when I started grieving, too. But I digress.

A few weeks before he died, he got up in the middle of the night (and this was when he could barely walk around at the best of times) and left a Post-It note about the texture of his pillows. Apparently, he didn't want vegetable-lined pillows anymore, they were too soft. He wanted pillows lined with steel. 

There was even a diagram highlighting the respective benefits and drawbacks of both. 

That kept me laughing for quite a while. It was a grim time, and it was horrible to see him fading from us like that, but say what you will: the fact someone draws a diagram of a pillow lined with cabbages is pretty fucking funny. I never felt guilty for laughing. I loved him, he loved me, and that's all that mattered. 

It's not really the same for my grandmother. I'm older, I'm taking more into consideration, and this is a (relatively) slower degeneration that's not terminal. But still, I'm reading this look into my grandmother's fading months, and my brother's raw honesty makes a lot of it hilarious, just as it makes me feel terrible for her, for him, and for my father.

His entries are interpersed with chatter about art and life that make me feel primitive and unintelligent - and may do the same for you - but his blog's well worth a read if you're curious about how a guy in his 20s is looking after the senile grandmother he's named 'Mental'.

"Time to take a hold of what belongs to me.
Time to walk away with no apology."

-- Birthright, 'Celldweller'.


There's never been a month where I've been subjected to so much reflection and discussion about my life, life in general, and where I slam into all the other blocks, Tetris-style.

Not many people have friends like I do. My mother once told me in a moment of very cold sincerity that I didn't deserve my friends, and that's something I've always found true - to a degree. It's not that I'm a particularly bad guy, but I tend to inspire intense loyalty in my friends, which will stick for a long time, even when I treat them pretty badly or ignore them for months (and years...) on end. You could say this is because I'm just so fucking charming, and I'd nod sagely and give you 75% of my best smile, but bullshit aside, it's because the people around me are extremely patient with how I am as a person. 

I said in an interview once that I was a hard person to like, and an even harder person to love. That's also true, and depending on my mood, I think it makes me either interesting, insular, or both. Overall, it's nothing to worry about. Pretty self-indulgent thing to bring up in a book interview, but whatever.

Lately, I've been changing the way I look at a lot of things. I won't presume to bore anyone to tears with it, but the short version is that several of my friends approached me saying the same thing in different ways, and for the first time since I broke up with Jessica almost three years ago, I'm managing to act like a human being rather than a series of chaotic fluxes behind a perpetual sneer.  

Someone more inclined to brevity would say they've found their feet again. I would say that, but it implies I did most of the work. Ultimately, the fact I'm coming back into myself is the result of a great deal of talk with various people who saw a lot of things I didn't. I've been able to reconnect with my family because of what my brother Adam and my ex Jessica have told me, and the ways they suggested I show my thoughts more often in my behaviour. I've been able to come to terms with a lot of anxieties I'd been sitting on for almost three years, and the reason I got to grips with all that was because of the newfound closeness with not only with my brother and Jessica, but also Nik, Amy, Hollie, Rob and Katie.

There are many questions that a lot of my friends and relatives have asked in the past year, and that have - for reasons that no longer matter - gone unanswered. Since I went to Oslo and subsequently returned, I've been on a form of silent running. Because I understood so little (and could relate to so little) around me, my defence was to shield myself off from a lot of things and defend the very few aspects and relationships I could either utterly control, or completely quantify.

At one point, I tried to explain my state of mind to 2 different doctors, and they told me I was suffering every single ticked box for manic-depression. I didn't buy that, and told them so. I said I knew what depression was, and although it might might make me sound more dark and interesting to start moodily swallowing pills in public places, the truth was I was just working very hard in an antisocial job, and I'd lost touch with how to ever fucking relax. They disagreed, and I never saw them again. The good thing about free healthcare is that you don't get pissed off about wasting your money, just your time.

So for all of you that are still wondering where I'm at right now, why I'm here, and who I'm here with, here are the answers I've owed you for so long, and the first proper look at myself I've taken since my feet hit the ground for the first time in three years. 

Claire (who is now married, but still very much My Claire in my mind) and Naze (who is now a nation-hopping pharmacological bounty hunter, or something): if you ever end up reading this, I'd like you to know that these answers are for you perhaps more than most, and that I'm ready to make the efforts you've made for me so often in the past.

I'll try to keep this brief.

Ish.


( Click here for the rest of the entry... )

Teehee. Front page.

http://www.blacklibrary.com/authors/


---   ---   ---

You know, that's not entirely true. I worked part-time in a bookshop for a year and a half after uni, doing writing gigs on the side.

But whatever. 

---   ---   --- 

Though I joked about this quite a lot, yesterday my oldest friend almost died. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8149912.stm

For some reason, my Real Player won't download it properly, so I can't upload the damn thing to YouTube and link it properly, but there's a video there. Nik on the news. Who'd've thunk.

I was pretty casual about this until I tried to get to sleep last night, and ended up staring at the ceiling for several hours, thinking: "Holy shit, Nik almost died." 

The report doesn't mention the part where he went to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation. In fact, I think he looks rather jovial about it all.

 This book is a bastard.

I've restarted it 3 times now. I am literally able to scroll back up and read the the fourth versions of Chapters One, Two and Three, as well as the prologue.

The fourth versions. I've thrown away enough text to make up half of a novel, and my head, it aches.

Something my editors are slowly coming to understand is that the drafts I hand in at various milestones are not usually representative of the final piece. Soul Hunter changed hugely between the half I threw at my editors and the finished first draft that I handed in for them to give feedback for. Similarly, when it comes time to send in a synopsis, over half of the words in the document are just there to fill space, assure Nick that I'm still awake, and convince him to give me a juicy combination of money and the freedom to start writing.

I plot as I write - a planner, I am not - and this has served me well in the past.

So when I say this book is going slowly, you might think my hubris has finally caught up with me and that I'm struggling without a plan. This isn't the case. What we have here is a classic case of "Damn it, it's better if...".

Each time I sink my mental teeth into this bastard and the clickety-clack of fingertips on G15 Logitech keys starts to really cycle up into the chorus of production, I have a better idea for how the book should go. Specifically, the style in which the story is told. I've never encountered this before. Usually my first instinct has carried on without wavering. Now, in the fouth version of the first quarter of this novel, I feel I've finally got it nailed. 

After this book comes my Horus Heresy Series novel. It's pretty fucked up that such a grand project is going to feel like a holiday after this one. 


---   ---   ---


The kitten's name is Loken. 

As I write these words, he's tumbling across the floor of my office, bending like no living thing should bend, acting like he has a spine made from rubber, and gnawing ferociously on the pull-strings of my White & Nerdy sweater. 

I regard the moment our lives crossed paths as something of a sentimental mistake. I'm sure he's adorable if you like tumbling, soft-pawed fuckheads that bite your toes and go to sleep on your lap while you're trying to write about future war. But I don't like those things. I tend to regard pain (and indeed blood) around my toes as a negative, not a positive. I like to be able to shift in my seat without disturbing weaker, worse-tempered life forms into waking up and attacking my goatee. 

It's not like I ask for much, really. 



---   ---   ---

Last night, I finished Dragon Keeper, by Robin Hobb. She's been my favourite author for a very long time, for too many reasons to go into. However, after devouring her latest novel, I think I'm starting to feel her characterisation tricks grating on me. Specifically, the sheer weasel-arsed nastiness of every story's Guy You Love To Hate has reached a peak here, with someone so irritatingly petty - and a protagonist so simperingly passive about dealing with it - that it's no longer good characterisation. It's just annoying. 

That said, it was still a wonderful read. Next up is Salamander, by Nickarama. He's lost points already for starting on a fight. Start during a war, in media res, yes. Start during a fight and describe weaponry and its effects, no. I don't care that everyone disagrees with me. I'm entitled to be pig-headed in my adamant opinionalising. (Yes, it's a word, go away.)

Still, I have high hopes. I threatened (I mean... promised) Nick a secret review.

After Salamander is Nights of Villjamur, by Mark Charan Newton. I'm looking forward to this because the blurb reads like exactly the kind of book I love. I don't particularly care about a book's reviews (though, incidentally, the ones for this are all absolutely glowing), but there is no arguing with this as a blurb:

"An ice age strikes a chain of islands, and thousands come to seek sanctuary at the gates of Villjamur: a city of ancient spires and bridges, a place where cultists use forgotten technology for their own gain and where, further out, the dead have been seen walking across the tundra."

Fuck me running, right?

"When the Emperor commits suicide, his elder daughter, Rika, is brought home to lead the Jamur Empire, but the sinister Chancellor plans to get rid of her and claim the throne for himself. 

Meanwhile, a senior investigator in the city inquisition must solve the high-profile and savage murder of a city politician, whilst battling evils within his own life, and a handsome and serial womanizer manipulates his way into the imperial residence with a hidden agenda."

There's more, but you get the point. If this book is bad, with a build-up like that, I will eat my own head.

I know Mark, by the way. Not well - certainly not well enough to feel the need to be nice to him - and only really well enough to mildly dislike him for being better-looking than me. But bullshit aside, that's the kind of blurb that sells me on a book. It's the kind of Fantasy I want to write, when I can get myself 'round to doing "my own trilogy" one day.

I have a habit of instantly throwing out dustcovers on hardback books, as I love the feel of the books themselves - the texture, the heft - and the way they look on the shelf. I buy hardbacks whenever I can, partially because of that l'il tendency. The covers for both Dragon Keeper and Nights of Villjamur were a bit on the awesome side. I binned them just as I bin them all, but not without a long backwards glance at the kitchen gargabe. They sat there, crumpled yet salvageable, appealing in their prettiness to the wrong soul. 

After Salamander and Nights, next on the reading block is Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny, and The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. Previews and reviews when I get closer to gracing them with my eyeballs, but we're dealing with established classics, here. I've read a lot by both of them already, and massively looking forward to these.

---   ---   ---


Cathy finished Cadian Blood, my first novel. Barney read it first, when it was still so many pages of A4 photocopies, but in book form, Katie was the first to finish it. 

Her gleaming eyes right afterwards, and the way she talked about certain characters and parts... it revived my faith in it, to be honest. Previously, I'd felt it was written so long ago and untouched since, that I was going to have trouble sticking by it as an example of my current work. But I re-read chunks of it, and the confidence I felt when writing it came right back to me. 

Rob was up for the weekend, and it was wonderful to see him again. He's part of my monthly D&D group that ventures out here to the wilds of Northern Ireland, in the middle of the crunchyside, but this visit was purely personal rather than based around the bleeding of goblins and the looting of their tormented, murdered bodies. I gave him my proof copy of Cadian Blood to take home to my mum in England. Christ only knows what she'll think of it (a sense of vague but very real pride, no doubt), but I'm looking forward to hearing my brother's opinion (and Luke's, my brother's squeeze) if and when it gets to them.


---   ---   ---
 

I am currently missing the following things:

- Barney.
- Nik.
- Naze.
- A cafetiere.
- The many years of my life that my left shoulder didn't hurt.

Yesterday was my first Horus Heresy meeting, which essentially involved sitting around with fellow authors Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill and James Swallow in a too-hot room for 4 hours, guided and prodded by our editors and overlords: Lindsey, Nick and Alan Merrett. 

Yes, yes, I know Nick's an author, too. Stop ruining the flow of my sentence.

Due to various (non-life-threatening) upheavals, I've had to cut back on a lot of work, to the point where I'm now only writing novels. I guess that makes me a full-time novelist. While I was hardly thrilled to be leaving my Judge Dredd series, I was in a situation where I didn't have much choice due to lifestyle changes, house-moves, and so on. It was a heavy investment of time that I couldn't commit to any more.

So.

Novelist.

I'm not sure if this is financially sustainable for a significant period of time, but given the amount of work I'm doing for the Black Library - and the fact I can free up time now to slowly write my own story ideas into something vaguely marketable - I think there's a good chance it will work out.  

One of the coolest parts of yesterday was getting to meet all of the office staff. While half of my brain was aghast at being in such a public place while in such desperate need of losing about 2 stone in weight, the other half was enjoying meeting people properly, rather than three seconds of rapid "Mhm"-ing at Black Library Live! the other month.

It wasn't all smooth sailing, mind you. Dan and Lindsey were talking Blood Pact (the next Gaunt's Ghosts novel) over the lunch table, and while I'm sure a great many people would've killed to be in my seat, I was desperate to avoid any spoilers. If you can imagine me sat between Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill, literally with my fingers in my ears and a scowl on my face, you'll have a pretty accurate image of what was going on in Bugman's Bar right then.

The meeting was a hell of a lot of fun. Obviously, details can't be chucked hither and thither into the aether, but I think it's okay to say that my 4th book for the Black Library will most likely be a Horus Heresy novel. If I delete that line and Nick takes my balls as some kind of grotesque trophy, then you know that: a) I wasn't allowed to reveal that, and b) Nick Kyme is a sick man.

I chose what aspect of the HH I wanted to write about, and got reassuring nods from everyone around the table. Graham had some advice that stirred the idea cauldron so hard I had trouble sleeping last night. 

I should add that Lindsey brought a lot of biscuits. I'm prepared to admit that I ate most of them.

2010 looks like I'll have 3 novels and 2 short stories releasing, spread across the 12 months like full-fat butter on soft, yummy bread. 2009 has stoked the flames of impatience, with Cadian Blood (that tasty first novel) finally drawing closer to release in October, and my short in Heroes of the Space Marines out a few months back. But 2010 looks much jucier.

2010 even sounds cooler. Twenty-Ten. 

Futuristic, yo.

One of the 2010 novels is obviously Soul Hunter. The second will be announced pretty soon, I think, as it just got shunted ahead in the schedule. The third will be the Heresy novel - though I'm just guessing at a 2010 release, I think it's a safe guess. BL already announced 4 HH novels in 2010, after all.  

Unfortunately, I can't break up this self-reverential screed with any actual content about the meeting itself, but I had one of the coolest days I can remember (I'm not used to it enough to play it all casual, like the other guys), and we laughed our asses off as well as threw 800 ideas back and forth. 

Jim's next HH novel is going to be a motherfucker. Of that, I have no doubt. The idea is awesome. Graham and Dan are obviously doing Prospero and A Thousand Sons, which ties them both into one of the Heresy's defining battles, and morale is understandably high on that score. I'll be throwing in my lot with this batch, as the Horus Heresy series gears up for what Dan and Graham have publically labelled "The Great Darkness" and "The Dark Ages" - and at the meeting as "The Long, Dark Teatime".

Big things ahead...

Jon Sullivan's cover for Soul Hunter, the first of the new Night Lords series.

I got this in my inbox a couple of weeks ago, but it was first shown officially today. You can't imagine how happy I was to see this was going to be the cover. 

As a keen Warhammer 40,000 reader, and a similarly keen reader of Warhammer 40,000 novel reviews, I've noticed a trend that spreads across licensed fiction and its respective fanbases.

It's a trend that, sadly, that has been around forever and will never go away, which I guess makes it less of a trend and more something destined to reach out both ways into the infinite. A stalwart tendency, firmly entrenched in the whole deal. In many ways, I regret using the word "trend" in the first place, but you can put that down to my attempt to make light of a situation that pisses me off.

With licensed fiction, there's a sense of expectation within the fanbase. Readers have very reasonable expectations to enjoy the book as part of the setting, and aren't wrong in expecting it to blend with the established lore, mood, themes - and whatever else - of the license it's part of. I've no issue with this, and the only reason someone would have an issue with it, is if they were missing the point by a pretty staggering margin.

Whether you're writing to interpret the lore, add to it, put a fresh spin on it or recapture some feeling from it wholesale, you're writing something that's ultimately part of it. That's the crux of the matter.

What I find a little disquieting is the sense of expectation that bleeds into entitlement. 

I'm not one to rail against every bad review a Warhammer 40,000 book has ever had, and insist it's high literature. Like anything in the world, quality varies greatly. What I do know is that I stick to a certain end of it with my reading, and that my eyes are gracing some good stories by good writers, and great stories by great ones.

So this isn't about positive or negative reviews. They don't annoy me.

I am used to the notion that taste affects reviews. I don't like it, but I've seen some excellently-written novels (and films, and everything else) given bad reviews because it wasn't the reader's kind of thing. These people often say something sucks, instead of saying it's not their thing, but I can understand that. For sure. I do it, too. It's human nature.

But couple that with a sense of powerful expectation and entitlement (which will hereafter be referred to as expectitlement), and you have a melting pot of people who just miss the fucking point.

Nowhere is this effect more pronounced than the Horus Heresy series.

Legion comes under a lot of fire. Many of the "bad" reviews I've seen of it all unite on the same thing. "It's a placeholder," they say. "It had nothing to do with the main plot." 

They are reviewing one of the best books Warhammer 40,000 has ever seen - with excellent characters, stylish writing, and solid pacing - and giving it 2 out of 5 stars because they've missed the point. The Horus Heresy series is a collection of books based during and around the events of the Horus Heresy. A billion potential characters in a million potential factions are doing a trillion things. Stories set in this era should be exploring every aspect they can, not confining themselves to the actions of a few people.

So some of the best books, which don't explore the limited story arcs of the same 6 characters in a galaxy of bajillions, are downrated constantly. 

And this is what I mean about when entitlement and expectation meet. Excellent books are given shitty scores because "It's not what I expected" or "I wanted to read about another Legion and have to wait months because of this book."

What? Fuck you, man. The books sucks because your love muscles twitch for one gang of guys? No one is allowed to explore anything else in the galaxy because you want to another trilogy about the same small group of people? There are no other stories worth knowing about, anywhere, involving anyone else?

This goes both ways, too. There are certain key characters/factions/whatevers in any licensed setting, where their popularity is a potent force. More discerning readers will sometimes say "Uh, that wasn't all that great" and include in the review that they felt Character X or Faction Y didn't really feel right to them, didn't represent the lore too well, but unless the book's trash, they're usually the minority.

Effectively, an insanely popular character or faction means that, just sometimes, mediocrity is hailed as awesome. People come into those books with a lot of love for the characters, and like it because the characters are there, not because the story or writing is any good. I suspect we've all got examples, over a range of media.

The best example I can think of is World of WarCraft, a game I whore portions my life into and absolutely love. But the lore is... well... generic, faking depth by shallow complexity, very uncoordinated and pretty boring overall. Yet many hail it as a wonderful Fantasy setting, because of the whole package of its media and its place in their affections, and say the lore is excellent.  

Especially effective examples where mediocrity can shine are when some extra nugget of the lore is dredged up. The story can be pish, can be average, can be a fraction south of good - but all that matters is that it "rocked", purely because of the excitement about revealing a new slice of lore. 

It bugs me. Christ, does it ever.

Seeing these powerful loopholes in license work - it saps the soul. Choose a cool faction, do an okay story, and BAM, great reviews. Someone like Dan Abnett can write a killer novel with some of the coolest and most thematic characters the setting has ever seen, and BAM - 2 out of 5 because he chose the wrong faction for X amount of people, who wanted to know more about Y and have to wait Z more months for the next novel in the series. They genuinely think it makes something bad, because they were expecting something else.

I'm not underappreciated. I'm not in a foul mood about bad reviews. Fortunately for me, I do very well on that score, thankee-sai. I'm not in any way worried or unhappy about what I write; neither seeking to hide out in other avenues of writing, nor bail publically elsewhere. I like what I do.

And this isn't specifically about Warhammer 40,000. That's just the easiest example I can give. The same is said of Judge Dredd, Star Wars, Star Trek, and whatever else I've briefly rubbed shoulders with.

But, man. People missing the point has always bugged the hell out of me, and this is an example of it that's deliciously dear to my black heart.

When I first met Jim Swallow, he advised me specifically not to let this kind of thing ever get to me. 

In my defence, I'm trying.

I need to make decisions about my father's funeral, and the shit just keeps wracking my head. Guilt, mainly. Guilt is the lamer, weaker substitute for real emotion, yet strangely no less invasive to a headspace. I didn't think him dying would mess me up internally the way it has, which may sound odd, but given our relationship... it's a valid statement. 

Anyway, in brighter news, Shadow Knight is on sale now. What copies remain, anyway. 

http://www.blacklibrary.com/product.asp?prod=60049981016&type=Book

"Aaron Dembski–Bowden’s ‘Shadow Knight’ gives a glimpse into a new Night Lords series coming in 2010, and shows us the journey of a normal child to become a deadly Chaos Space Marine. When a group of Blood Angels come to reclaim a holy artefact, these two old enemies will be thrust into combat again…"

So now you know.

Shadow Knight / The Dark Path Cover for the BLL! 2009 chapbook.

Me and Graham McNeill A blurry pic of me and Graham McNeill, taken by a Black Library forumite by the name of Toni. Must. Lose. Weight.

Black Library Live! '09 Give me 3 years. 3 years, and I'll have a photo up there, too. Just watch. I'm not even kidding.

Firstly, my icon in the previous entry is Cim-Lite. Not a necron. Not the Terminator. Not even a Terminator. Cim-Lite. Cim-Lite from the peerless, the incredible, the ultimate video game experience: Hired Guns, in 1995, on the Amiga.

Fuck yes.


Currently, I'm working on two gigs: one full-time and one part-time. Without a shadow of a doubt, these are the two best jobs I've ever held.

The first is on a year-long contract with Mongoose Publishing, on something we'll poorly-mask by calling it The Black Archives. It's not RPG work; I'm still pretty convinced I'm done with that, though I'd never say never. The Black Archives is one of the coolest things I've ever had the chance to write, and some days as I'm planning this (admittedly immense and difficult bastard of a) project, I find myself thanking various false gods for the opportunity I have with it. It's also great to be back with Mongoose. Even making decentish money on Age of Conan, I missed the people at the 'goose. No other job has ever felt as homey and welcoming; so make of that what you will.

The second project is my ongoing career with Black Library, which is finally starting to see the light of day. Cadian Blood (my first pitch to them) was finished a year ago, and is finally nearing release. Ish. Sept/Oct, I think. Either way, it was insane to be talking to a GW store manager and having him describe his plans for a twin-table setup for a huge game based on Cadian Blood at the Games Day later in the year. It sounded fucking rad; I can't wait to see it. 

Before I go on to where I met the manager in question (Mark Harrison from GW Oxford Plaza - hey, man. Great talking to you), here're the disclosable details of my release schedule: Cadian Blood, my first novel, is out Sept/Oct this year. My short story One Hate is in Heroes of the Space Marines, which is out next month, I think. Please note that it's one of those things that I've read back and thought "Wow... I sure wrote that a year ago..." and can't stand to look at it anymore. Luckily, I don't think that about Cadian Blood. 

My second novel has just been finished, so I'd estimate a release of around this time next year. That's Soul Hunter, the first in the Night Lords series. At Black Library Live!, the thing I was signing more often than not (and the main reason I was asked to be there) was centred around this. Specially for the event, a "prelude" short story to the series, Shadow Knight, was done for the day, and on sale there.

As for the future, there's been a lot of talk and planning, and all of it great. Yes, I know what my next few novels are likely to be. Nothing's set in stone, but "promising" and "holy fucking hell" really don't quite encompass everything.

All in all, one hell of a part-time gig, really.

Black Library Live! was yesterday, and my excitement for the whole thing hasn't quite dimmed down yet. I have next to nothing released yet - with the publishing schedule over at Black Library, you're often waiting a long-ass time to see your stuff hit shelves after you've handed it in -so I was very, very hesitant to go to this. I almost, at 6am in the morning, called in sick, which was face-achingly, cringingly lame of me to even consider. It was just a momentary bolt of panic, and I'm glad I ignored that shit.

I ended up meeting Dan Abnett right before he went home, but he wasn't the only person I was pretty nervous about seeing. 

I was trying very hard to fight being starstruck, but I was miles from being 100% in cool-control, shall we say. It took me several hours to get over calling certain people by their full names. Highlights of the day were... well, the whole day was bright and badass. I did a short reading from Shadow Knight in the morning, and Gav Thorpe did a short reading from The Dark Path. After answering a few questions, that was the chapbook reading done.

Me, Gav and Jon Sullivan had an hour signing together, and I was stunned that I had so much to do. For the whole hour, I think I had maybe two minutes in total where I had nothing to do. A lot of people had Heroes of the Space Marines, and even more had the limited edition chapbook with Shadow Knight in it. All the BL fans I met were awesome; I had a blast. And I've been signing my name the same way that's been annoying my friends for years. 

Oh, yes. 



After that, I wasted a little time, had lunch, talked to my editor Nick Kyme for a while about something so skullfuckingly awesome I was trying not to hyperventilate, and headed off to a "So you want to write for the Black Library?" seminar. The advice was varied, but nothing groundbreakingly unexpected - no new avenues of forcing oneself into publishing, anyway. I tried to be serious when I advised buying Stephen King On Writing, and "Don't pitch with an extract from a fight scene". Best advice I could ever give anyone, I guess.

I later found out that Jon Sullivan is doing the work for Soul Hunter's cover. I caught him before he left and said I was damn glad it was him on it, because, well... who the hell wouldn't be glad if their work was under this kind of stuff? Man, that was a great discovery to make.

During the writing seminar, I was sat next to James Swallow. After a little resistance, I stopped seeing him as James "Flight of the Eisenstein" Swallow, and started seeing him as Jim. That happened during the time we hung out for a few hours, had a couple of beers and ended up judging the Chaos Lord conversion competition. Jim gave me the lowdown on a lot of stuff, and gave me a mentor-style talk that was filled with the kind of things I'll be using in the future, when I look thoughtful at signings and nod: "Jim Swallow once told me...".

In a day of highlights, I have to say that was something pretty damn special. In the middle of the Golden Demon/Citadel Miniature Museum tour, he mentioned he has a blog, by the way. Et voila: jmswallow. He also taught me about drive-by signings. Cunning, that guy. Dastardly so. And I loved his attitude and outlook. 

Lastly, and running a damn fine close second to hanging out all afternoon with Jim, was the post-event drink with Graham McNeill. Well, Graham and his heavily-pregnant wife. (I suspect, judging from the two of them, they're destined for great-looking kids, much like the McFarlands). I'd read more of Graham's work than I had of Jim's, so couldn't resist badgering him about it with several questions, which he took with good grace. 

On the verge of dropping the shop-talk, the bar was closing and we had to bail, but hanging out with the McNeills definitely ranked right up there. I like that he didn't point out how I looked nervous. My towering arrogance couldn't have taken that blow, let me tell you.



But no, that's not all. If only it was.

My biological father (who I've seen a handful of times since I turned 7, and only once since I turned 13) died earlier in the month. I'm 28 now, incidentally. The last contact we had was me ignoring a very rare birthday card from him when I was 20, when he asked to "rebuild bridges". I remember thinking at the time how it was a strange choice of words, as there were no real bridges between us to rebuild. 

In hindsight, that was another instance of the needless pedantry that swirls around my mind, but there's a core of truth in there. To rebuild something, to fix it up, implies there was something there in the first place. And there wasn't. There never has been. I'm not emotionally deadened to his passing because I'm cold-hearted and able to bypass my emotions when I choose to. I'm devoid of any real feeling here because he was practically nothing to me. I didn't love him for bringing me into the world. I didn't even hate him for being an alcoholic and smacking my mother around. I nothinged him. He was more myth than man to me. When I remembered he existed, on the few occasions I did so, there was nothing there beyond the faint tug of emotionless curiosity.

And yet, the fallout from his death has hit me relatively hard. I've been talking to my older sisters, my aunt, my brother, my mum... It's a heavy list, and I'm getting pretty beaten down emotionally-speaking by the expectations, the explanations, the considerations and - if we're being 100% honest - the regrets. I don't want to go into massive detail, so I'll draw a close here. Suffice to say the event is taking its toll on my thoughtspace to no small degree. My friend Rob especially has been a huge salve to my psyche, of late. 


The great quest to reconnect with humanity and become less of a shut-in continues apace. Rob, Nik and English Greg - they are the cornerstones of The Great Project, which will be revealed in sickeningly loving detail very shortly. It's sad that this new thing has me even more excited than my day job and my side gig, but Goddamn, I can't wait until it kicks off.

Also, I hear Jessica's abseiling down the Liver Building for charity. I shit you not: http://www.justgiving.com/jessicamoody. I'm going to donate a tenner to her adorable and heartwarming death-defying madness.