It was Evan’s birthday on Tuesday the 24th, so we took him to Twycross Zoo for a trip out and it was a fantastic day. Little man loved the monkeys (perhaps recognising kindred spirits…) and enjoyed taking his first ride on a merry-go-round. Here’s a picture of the two of us at the elephant enclosure, where you can see he’s a chip off the old block – wearing a coat Anita bought him so he could look just like his daddy.

 

A year old now. I can hardly believe it. Seems like only yesterday I was announcing his birth on the blog, and at other times it feels like a lifetime ago. I guess it’s that weird time dilation effect that happens as you get older and proper, grown-up things start happening to you. Also, when he’s old enough to get into 40k, I’m pretty sure he’s going to be an Ork player. Every time he gets happy, he starts muttering, “Dakkadakkadakkkadakkadakka…”

 

Work, work, work…

Though I still can’t talk about Project X yet, there’s a few other things that have passed through my keyboard that I can talk about. Last week I finished a short story for the forthcoming Horus Heresy anthology, Age of Darkness. It’s called Rules of Engagement, and touches on a brand new story arc, as well detailing some unusual happenings involving a Legion close to my heart. Having finished that, I dived straight into a new audio drama for the Ultramarines, a story set during the events of The Chapter’s Due, but which stands apart from it as a stand-alone tale. It’s well underway, but I can’t wait to get to the real meat of the story, as it has lots of potential for gribbly strangeness at its heart. Then after that, at the beginning of September, I start Sons of Ellyrion, the long-awaited conclusion to the High Elf story begun in Defenders of Ulthuan.

 

Shiny new website

I’ve been working with a mate of mine to create a brand new website, with funky new graphics, different layout and a more up-to-date interface that will have all new features and content. The blog will stay the same, though it’ll be getting the updates it deserves (at least until the next crucial deadline looms…). As the website’s being put together in his spare time, it’s taking a little longer than you might expect, but the final effort will be well worth it. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

 

A new skill

I own a jacket. That’s not a newsworthy item as such, but this jacket is very dear to me. It is the coolest jacket I’ve ever owned. Its fits like it was made just for me, making me instantly 50% cooler whenever I wear it. In fact, it's the jacket in the picture above. I’ve owned it for years, and those years are beginning to take their toll. There’s a tear over the right shoulder, one on the right arm, and one in the right hand pocket (which caused me to lose my car keys one rainy day…). It was getting to the stage where people were telling me to throw it out, but that was like asking me to discard an old friend just because he was looking a bit tatty. So I resolved to fix the problem, and decided to sew those rips closed myself. I mean, how hard could it be…? After watching two instructional videos on the web on the subject, I tackled the problem with needle and thread, and managed to do a pretty decent job of it (though threading the needle proved to be the hardest part of the process…). Well, I say decent, but what I really mean is that the rips are sealed with stitches that wouldn’t look out of place on the neck of Frankenstein’s monster. But the way I look at it is that they’re sealed and I can add ‘able to seal a tear with a blind stitch’ to my CV.

Everybody’s Reading

If you check out the Fantasyliterature.com website, you’ll find a piece I did for them as part of their ‘Why you should read…’ feature. Instead of picking someone conventional, or indeed a person who writes novels, you should head over there to hear what I have to say about the sublime work of Rich Burlew. Enjoy.

Reading

I’ve just finished Aaron’s The First Heretic, and all I’ll say is that when you have some of that hard-earned cash to hand, you should get yourself to your nearest BL webstore and purchase yourself a copy. It’s a cracking read, and is a sterling addition to the Horus Heresy range. Coming hot on the heels of my reading of Nemesis and Prospero Burns, I know I’ve got a lot of work to do in order to make sure my next Heresy book really takes flight. To that end I’ve been reading a comparative study of dreaming in the world’s religions to get some solid background research done, so I’ll let that percolate in your minds to figure out what it might be about. I’ll be telling you more about this later…

 

Till next time.

Join with me in congratulating my fellow warrior of the Black Library, Sir Jim of Swallow, as his excellent novel, Nemesis is now a New York Times Bestseller.

Better yet, head over to his website and thank him personally.

Congratulations, Jim, it's a fantastic book and deserves the recognition.

Graham

German Games Day vote

On October 16th I’ll be attending German Games Day, as I’ll be on stage doing some readings from my books, before launching into a Q&A session. Instead of me choosing which book I’ll be reading from, we’re giving you the chance to cast your vote. Do you want something classic from the back catalogue or would you like the chance to hear something fresh and new? Or even something no longer available…?

 

The choice is yours, so click here to cast your vote.

 

SFX Interview(s)

Not to bang on about it, but after Empire won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award, SFX Magazine gave me a call to chat about the event and all manner of other things. If you pick up issue 199, which is on the shelves now (I know, I saw a copy in ASDA yesterday), then you can have a read for yourselves. And if that doesn’t sate your appetite, then the rest of the interview can be found by clicking here.

 

Empire Abroad

A mate of mine I met in Australia, James Taylor, travels a lot, what with being in the Australian army. He took his copy of Empire with him to Timor, and, as you can see from the photos below, it went to some pretty exotic places along the way. I don’t know if any of the locals read the book, but I’d like to think that somehow, sometime in the years to come, someone out there might pick it up and have a read. If anyone else has photos of my books in far off lands, then send them into me and I'll see if we can get an Amelie style gallery of my books abroad...

The locals casting their vote for the Gemmells.




JT gets in the right mindset for the next mission.




This MASSIVE Jesus statue is in Dili, and was a gift from the Indonesians during their occupation.



See. I said it was massive...



"Spread the good word, Empire rocks!"

Right, see you again soon, folks.

Graham

It’s become traditional for a lot of us writers to start our latest blog entry by apologising for our lack of blog entries. I’ve decided not to do that anymore, because it’s just tiresome. I used to always feel guilty for not blogging enough, but I’ve given up on that to, because – as useful as blogging is to tell folk about signings I’m going to, events I’ll be attending or what I’m working on – it’s not the business of my job. Whenever I blog, I always feel guilty of somehow neglecting my ‘real’ work, the writing of stories. And, you know what, it is neglecting it. Now, there are those who’ll tell you that blogging is real work, but I’m afraid that after many years of this, I don’t agree. The job of a writer is to write, and I don’t think blogging counts. It feels strange writing that, as a self-confessed former slacker, where the idea of work was about as welcome as root canal work. Nowadays, I get antsy if I’m not working, feeling some low-grade Scottish, Calvinist work ethic eating away at me and telling me that I’m being lazy if I’m not spending every waking moment at work.

 

Over the years I’ve sat and listened to panels that harp on about the necessity of blogging, and I agree with a lot that gets said. To a certain extent. With social networking on the rise in all manner of formats, it’s said that a writer needs to engage with his audience to a greater degree than he ever did before. Again, that’s true to an extent, but there comes a point when it becomes all about the interaction online and not about the writing. I’d rather folk read my books and talked about the things I do, because they’d read them (and hopefully liked them) or met me in person. I’ve grown tired of feeling that I ought to be blogging all the time, like I’m letting myself down if I don’t. Well, no more. I will blog as much or as little as I see fit, and if that means I need to go for a while with no posts so I can get on with my real work, then so be it.

 

There are writers who manage to blog frequently, and more power to them. Mark Newton is a great example of this. His blogs are a perfectly balanced mix of self-promotion, interesting nuggets from the wider world, discussions on writing, digressions into music/art/politics and the state of the SF/Fantasy world. I drop in on Mark’s blog most days, as I can usually expect a new and interesting post. As Mark himself will tell you, that’s the key to get folk coming back to your blog. I tried the ‘little and often’ approach, but found myself posting nonsense or stuff that felt as though it was put up for the sake of having something to put up. How Mark keeps his blog up to date, holds down a full time job, writes novels and maintains a life is a constant wonder to me. So clearly it can be done, but I think I’d prefer to spend my time in front of a keyboard telling stories.

 

Of course, the fact that I’m typing this entry seems to be oxymoronic, but then again, I just finished writing another novel yesterday and have some time on my hands before the next project. I can’t tell you what this finished novel is, as it hasn’t been announced yet by the good folk who’re publishing it. But I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out and, I’ve just noticed, it’s my twentieth novel, which is no small landmark by my reckoning. Once the cat’s out of the bag, I’ll be sure to big it up (in-between real work, of course…).

With that project out of the way, I need to get my thinking pants on to write up my synopsis for Sons of Ellyrion, the long-awaited concluding part of my High Elf tale begun in Defenders of Ulthuan. Then it’s thinking up cool things to include in the next audio drama, plotting out my next Horus Heresy novel and coming up with a pitch for my entry for the forthcoming Horus Heresy Anthology. All of which brings me neatly to this…

 

Horus Heresy Giveaway

 

The lovely Amanda Rutter over at Floor to Ceiling Books, is running a competition to win all the Horus Heresy Books released to date. Everything up to and including Nemesis, together with The Dark King/Lightning Tower and Raven’s Flight audio dramas. That’s not a bad prize at all, so get over there and find out how you can win those thirteen novels and two cds. What are you waiting for? Go. Now!

 

Right. To work!

 

I attended the Altfiction convention in Derby last month, where I took part in a Podcast on tie-in fiction with Gav Thorpe, James Goss and Simon Guerrier. It was a fun hour to sit and natter with everyone, so if you want to have a listen to what he have to say, click here.

And in other news, there's going to be a mass invasion of London on the 9th of September by a number of Black Library authors. In a treat of signing goodness you can come long to Forbidden Planet at 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, to get your brand new copy of The Sabbat Worlds anthology signed by Dan Abnett, Christian Dunn, Nick Kyme, Sandy Mitchell, Nik Vincent and James Swallow. Oh, and me too. You can find details of that event here.

Right, back to work on Project X.

Well...

It was the David Gemmell Legend Awards on Friday, and, to cut a long story short, Empire won. It’s difficult to know exactly what to say here, since I don’t really remember much about the things I said on the stage after I was handed the mighty Snaga with my name engraved in it. Nick Kyme’s done a great blog post on the event, and since I don’t think I can improve on his write up, I’ll simply get on with a belated acceptance/thank you speech. Bear with me…

 

(And if you’re wondering about the title of this post, that rhyming phrase was about all I could say for about an hour after the win…)

 

David Gemmell was (and remains) a huge influence on me and my writing, and to have won an award that bears his name is one of the greatest thrills of my career. His work, with its powerful themes of heroism, nobility and the gritty ‘reality’ of fantastic fiction, was like nothing I’d read before, and I strive to carry on the traditions he established in his books. His powerful depictions of courage, honour and the unbending code of Druss, have inspired me through the years, and, as the dedication in Heldenhammer says, “To DG, you taught me all I know”. Says it all really…

 

So now I want to thank a few folk, without whose help, love and friendship I wouldn’t be writing this.

 

Firstly, thank you to everyone who bought, read and voted for Empire. It means more to me than you can know to have won this award, and without you, the fans, behind it, we couldn’t possibly have won. This just goes to prove how loyal, how devoted and how amazing the Black Library’s fans really are. Without your support, we’d have been left in the dust, but we came out on top and I now have a couple of axes to hang on my wall. But this win is as much for BL, the fans and tie-in fiction as a whole. Between us, we’ve been saying all along that there’s much to admire in the world of tie-in writing, a quality that belies the stigma that’s often attached to such works. We’ve debated the merits/difficulties/benefits in writing shared universe fiction elsewhere, so I won’t go into that right now, but I think this proves that we’re here and we’re here to stay.

 

Thanks are also due to Nick Kyme and Lindsey Priestley, for collaborating with me at the very beginning of the Sigmar books, working through the themes, tone and setting of the trilogy. Without that meeting, I don’t think the books would have turned out anything like as meaty as I feel they are. Their help at that stage and throughout the writing of the three (and counting) books has been invaluable. Everyone at BL deserves a mention, as they gave me the support and help I needed to make the leap from a full time job to become a freelancing buccaneer on the high seas of tie-in writing. Thank you all; you’re my great friends as well as my publisher.

 

My beautiful girlfriend Anita deserves special mention for going above and beyond the call of duty for putting up with my long hours, frequent incomprehensible monologues on Unberogens, magic hammers and Orcs. As my First Reader, she gave me a unique perspective on the books, pointing out flaws that only someone who knew nothing about the history of the Warhammer World would spot. You’re my inspiration and my soul-mate. And Evan, my gorgeous little boy, deserves thanks for providing the inspiration for a great deal of the thoughts and themes behind Empire and God King. Even though he’d rather eat the book that read it just now.

 

And last, but not least, I need to thank my mum and dad for providing me with various typewriters and computers over the years that allowed me to indulge my passion for writing. I also need to mention the fact that it’s all my mum’s fault that I became a writer. She took me to the Milgavie Bookshop when I was eleven and bought me a copy of Warlock of Firetop Mountain. That’s where it all started.

 

To all of you, love and thanks from the bottom of my heart. You don’t know what it means to have you with me along the way.

 

Cheers,

Graham

 

Right, here’s some pictures of axes!

My two new axes. The smaller of the two was one of five awarded to all the shortlisted authors, and upon receiving it I thought, 'Well, at least I get to take one axe away..."



A close up of the replica Snaga, complete with inscription. Pride of place on the wall, methinks...

Irish Times

You may or may not know I was in Ireland last week. If you did then it’s only thanks to the sterling efforts of the GW/Waterstones staff over there and the good folk at BL, as I completely forgot to mention it here. Shame on me. Double shame, as it was a great little tour, and so well attended that I was shocked a couple of times at how many folk were there.

 

The first event was at Waterstones in Dawson Street, which was, unusually for me, an evening do. This involved me doing a reading from The Chapter’s Due – which seemed to go down well – followed by a Q&A session. As usual, this took a little bit of chivvying along, as there’s always that awkward silence for a moment when you ask the assembled fans, ‘Okay, who has a question?’ But once things got going, they were in full, Irish flow, and we had a great back and forth going before I went on to sign lots of books. So many in fact, that we were late to the pub, where I hung out with the manager of the store and some folk from the event. We had a great night, even though my throat was still killing me with residual tonsillitis, and finished it off with some chicken kebab formed from poultry made of razors.

 

Next day I headed to GW Liffey St, and signed more books and chatted to some of the folk who’d come along to Waterstones the previous evening. I did take my camera over to Ireland, but it lay, forgotten in my bag, so here’s a pic of me with Robb Dunphy at the GW store there, courtesy of Robb and his camera phone. Enjoy the Look of Destiny…

At GW Liffey Street, as photographed through a butter-smeared lens...

Then, after a journey northwards to Belfast, we stopped off in another Waterstones before heading to GW Belfast. And that’s where I got a real shock. The queue was around the gaming tables, out the door, past the shop window and out the shopping centre itself. For the next two and a bit hours, I signed, chatted and hung out with the Belfast fans, and it was a blast. I’ve never had such a warm welcome as I received there, so thanks to everyone for turning up and bringing you books. We had great chats and after one fan said something I misheard, it flipped a switch in my head that gave me an idea of such mind-melting awesomeness that I’ve already tagged it for the finale for the next arc of Ultramarines novels.

So thanks to Graham, Trevor, Robb and everyone who came along to the events for making it a great trip. See you again soon.

Alt.Fiction

To make up for forgetting to mention that I was off to Ireland, here’s some word that I’m off to AltFiction at the Derby Quad this weekend. If you’re a fan of SF, horror or fantasy, you want to get yourself along to this, as it promises to be a great day out judging by the calibre of the other authors. You can find the full programme of events here, but if you’re anywhere near the Mac Suite come along to the podcast recording I’ll be doing with Gav Thorpe, Simon Guerrier and James Goss, where we’ll be talking all things to do with Tie-in Fiction. I’ll be floating about for a good part of the day, chatting and seeing what nifty bits and pieces I can spend money on. Hopefully see you there.

 

The Chapter’s Due hits

I wanted to share this review for The Chapter’s Due, as it gave me a warm feeling inside when I read it. Yeah…this gal (as I now see...) gets it.

 

New Projects

As the astute among you will remember, I handed in God King a few weeks back. I’m now a quarter of the way through another novel, though I can’t really say what this one is, who it’s for and when it’s out. Which is all very mysterious, I know, but I wanted you to know I wasn’t slacking and just swanning about doing nothing. Don’t worry, as soon as I can reveal the true, cosmic horror of this latest blasphemous tome, I’ll let you know.

 

Julius Antigonus

A little while ago I was sent a couple of pictures of a sculpt done by John Papoulakos, who’d done this bust of a 4th Company Space Marine. When I looked at it I thought the guy looked a bit beaten up, perhaps a prime candidate for a Dreadnought sarcophagus. Then I read the e-mail more thoroughly and realised that was exactly what he was. Here’s a few pics of Julius Antigonus, and you never know…he might pop up in a future Ultramarines story.

Pretty impressive, huh? If you want to see more of John’s work, head over to Papoulakos Art to check out more of his amazing stuff.

 

TV Watching

Watched the finale of 24 the other day and can rest easy now, satisfied with the sense of closure it gave me and guiltily enjoying Jack’s kill-crazy rampage across New York. Just got the last Fringe to watch tonight – which looks like it could be the best thing. Ever. And Lie to Me starts tomorrow, so life is good.

 

Reading

Just finished China Miéville’s novel, Kraken, which was a fantastic read, with page-turning goodness that kept me from early nights on several occasions. It’s dark urban fantasy weird fiction that reads like Clive Barker with a bigger thesaurus. There’s action and madness aplenty, and to me that was one of the book’s shortcomings. It sounds churlish to criticize a book for having too much imaginative things happening, but they overwhelmed the plot and characters. Every corner of London had something magical happening in it, so much so that it seemed outrageous that no-one could see it. Like I said, that’s a ‘My wallet is too small for all my £50 notes and my diamond shoes are too tight’ criticism, so if you fancy a romp around London with some crazy characters and some wild imagination let loose, this is definitely the book for you. And Wati…he has to be the best character I’ve read in a long time.

New signings

I should have some more news soon about some signings I’ll be doing over the next couple of months, so keep coming back for more news on that.

Lost is...over..sniff...
Okay, so the sixth season of Lost aired on Monday, and, having watched the penultimate episode only the night before I was primed and ready for it. I'll go into specifics in a second, but let me first up say that I loved the way the show ended. It did everything I needed it to, providing me with emotional highs, closure to the main story arcs and a sense that there was still more I could read into the story, still more I could gather round the water cooler (If I had one) to talk about what it all meant.

After six years and so many sprawling plot lines, it was inevitable that some questions would remain unanswered, but you know what? That's absolutely fine. That's Lost. If everything had been tied in a neat bow, fed to me on a silver spoon, I'd have been disappointed. There's still aspects of the show I don't know and probably never will, and I'm okay with that. What was the golden light, who was Jacob and MiB's mother, what was the deal with Walt? To name a few. But the show's strength was always its characters and the writers and actors imbued them all with real depth and warmth that made me really care about them. I've lived and breathed alongside them on that island, and to see their fates played out before me gave me many moments of triumph along the way. Seeing Claire and Charlie reunited at the concert during Aaron's birth had me blubbing like a little girl, as did Sun and Jin's reveal - even though it included scenes of their death. And Jack's, 'I'll see you in another life, brother,' line in the cave turned me into a wreck.

Watching Jack and Locke brawling on the cliff in the rain was just amazing, with its shades of 300, and the symmetry of so many images throughout the episode spoke of such carefully crafted plotting that I sat in real admiration of J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof and all the other writers. Watching characters I'd grown to love over the six year run of the show meet their fates, grisly or otherwise, was a real treat, and I don't think I've invested in a show as much as I did Lost.

And the ending. Finding out that the Flash Sideways were a kind of celestial waiting room, where all the characters had to find themselves to 'let go' and move on was a stroke of genius, as it made sense of the strange connections established in what I had assumed was a cracked, parallel time line established by the detonation of the hydrogen bomb at the end of Season 5 (which, as it now turns out, clearly didn't go off...). I guess a lot of folk read this as confirming the suspicions many had early on that everyone died in the crash and that the island was some form of Purgatory, but Christian spells it out for Jack, that everyone had to find each other, and that what happened on the island really happened. In a lovely piece of symmetry from the opening episode, we saw Jack lying in the bamboo field, and where we begin with his eye opening, we end with it closing. Perfect. Oh, and the dog lives too. Jerry Bruckheimer would be proud.

So, emotional journeys, wonderful character moments and a sense of closure. I couldn't ask for anything more, though I have to say that I felt kind of sorry for the Man in Black. Yeah, he did some terrible things along the way, but didn't he just want to leave the island after glimpsing the possibility that there was life beyond its shores? Perhaps as Old Smokey he really shouldn't have left...great evil, blah, blah, blah, but perhaps if his mother had just let him go in the first place, all this could have been avoided. Yeah, and if they'd given Gwaihir the Ring there'd have been no trek across Middle Earth. And wouldn't that have been boring? That's what I thought of Lost's finale, what did you think? Genius, dross, not enough answers, satisfying in every way...? Let me know.

Farewell Lost, I'm going back to the Season 1 box set to start again, armed with the knowledge of what's really going on...

Paul Gray
And in other news, I read that Paul Gray, the bassist for Slipknot was found dead on May 24th, which made me pretty sad, as I'm a big fan of the band. Having just watched BBC2's documentary "I'm in a Rock & Roll Band", I've developed a newfound respect for the bass player, the so-called, 'other one'. Often without the fiery charisma of the lead singer, furious noodling of the lead guitarist or pounding aggression of the drummer, they were sort of the quiet ones at the back. There are of course, some obvious exceptions, like Gene Simmons, Geddy Lee, Paul Simonon, Peter 'Hooky' Hook, Steve Harris and, of course, Mark Gibbons. And if you don't know who any of these guys are, Google them now.

So you ignore the bassist at your peril, for a powerful bassline anchors the greatest rock songs. Just look at Ace of Spades. I know Slipknot weren't to everyone's tastes, but when they exploded onto the scene with their self-titled album in 1999, it was like a hand grenade in the midst of bloated stadium bands that shook the world of rock and metal to its core. I equate their impact to that of Nirvana, who did something similar, playing a stripped back rock that was powerful in its simplicity and lo-fi approach to rock. Anyway, this Maggot wishes Paul's soul well wherever it is now. Maybe he's meeting up with Jon Bonham, Keith Moon and Kurt Cobain before moving on...

Cancellations
Don't you hate it when you're just getting into a show and the network pulls the plug? Why is it that dross like Two and a Half Men (A show by Chuck Lorre, whose other work, The Big Bang Theory, I love) and the innumerable cop procedurals get into their tenth seasons and beyond, while shows that demand a bit of investment and eye-on-the-ball smarts get canceled before they have a chance to grow? Shows like Flash Forward, Firefly, Invasion etc... I understand that the American TV landscape is a harsh place, where cut-throat execs roam with their snipping shears of doom, but it seems to me that by canceling shows that don't hit stratospheric numbers of viewers they're actually shooting themselves in the foot.

Now it seems to me that you get a lot of people watching a new show, then there's obviously going to be some drop off from the fly-by-nighters who aren't interested in continuing, but there's a loyal core of fans who get the show and stick with it, loyally tuning in every week to see what happens next. Aren't they the ones you're sticking it to by canceling the show, the ones who stuck with you and put their faith in its potential? It's a rare tv show that gets to choose its time to end. The Wire did it beautifully, BSG did it well, as did Buffy, and as I mentioned above, Lost managed it too. To an extent Angel did it too, though a lot of what went into the ending was a tad rushed and the open-ended charge into the monsters felt a little...unconvincing as a finale. Listening to Joss Whedon's commentary for that final episode, I can see his point that it's representing the fact that the battle against evil never ends, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth, like that explanation was bent to fit how they ended the episode.

Take Flash Forward for example. It started well, and though, admittedly, sagged a tad in the middle - not helped by a mid-season break in a terribly chosen spot - it was picking up pace toward the end and was establishing a nice balance between dangling bemusing threads and answering some of the earlier questions. And then it gets canceled. Arse. We've yet to watch the final episode, though I read that it's been edited and put together in such a way as to provide some element of closure to its multiple plot lines since the show's producers knew they weren't going to get any more episodes. We'll see. And 24, another of my favourite shows, is ending soon too (can I take the trauma of so many cancellations!?). We'll see how they end that in a convincing way, though knowing Jack, it's going to be ridiculously over the top, violent and with plenty of utterances of the word Dammit! Which is just how I want my Jack Bauer.

Right, back to work now, and I promise I'll have something vaguely writing related to talk about next time.