Morning folks, just a quick note to say thanks to everyone who came along to Black Library Live! at the weekend. Looking at the pictures, I’m jealous of everyone who got to go to all the different panels and play in the themed games going on in Warhammer World. Stupidly, I didn’t bring my camera with me, so I don’t have funky pictures to show you how I spent my day, but if you were there you’ll know how you spent yours. There’s pictures over at Dan’s and Neil Roberts blogs, so if you weren’t able to get there, you’ll have a taster to entice you to next year’s event.

Thanks to everyone who came along to my Seer Council. You asked great questions and it came as something of a surprise to me to find I’m a rambler. Not in the walking though the wilderness in matching Barbour jackets and a dog in a tartan coat way, more a rambling, tangent-taking, point wandering from, looping journey around the point kind of way. So many times I got caught up in what I was saying I completely forgot the answer I was supposed to be giving. I guess quite a few of the questions I was asked could have been answered with a straight yes or no, but where’s the fun in hearing someone say that?

Afterwards it was straight into the Prospero discussion with Dan Abnett in the Rotunda, which I was expecting to be a moderately well attended discussion, but turned out to be a monstrously well attended discussion. Actually, the whole Rotunda was full and it was standing room only, which was fantastic. Again, we were asked some great questions, and I certainly took some top ideas away from the back and forth we had going on. Dan’s a great guy to have beside you on a panel, witty, energetic and someone with the innate ability to make ideas grow brighter when placed near him. Everyone’s questions made us think and forced us to properly articulate ideas we’d not given as much thought to before. For that reason alone it would have been worth doing! Lots of the questions centred on subjects we’d spoken about the day before at our latest Horus Heresy meeting, but which had to be given necessarily cryptic answers…

[On the subject of our latest Horus Heresy day, once again, it was a searing cauldron of white-hot ideas that I, of course, can’t tell you about yet. Suffice to say I came out of it with at least half a dozen great ideas burning a hole in my brain. We dived in to the themes of what’s going on with each other’s work and, to use the phrase of the day, the cross-pollination of ideas was phenomenal. From this meeting I now know what my next Heresy book is about, who’s in it and some of the revelations and twists that will happen. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. Kudos to everyone involved, as it was fun, inspiring and incredibly useful. I came away itching to get pen to paper almost instantly, though that was kind of hampered by immediately going out for dinner with the other authors present for Saturday’s extravaganza and then heading to a character-filled bar in the centre of Nottingham with Jim Swallow, Nick Kyme, Aaron Dembski-Bowden and his fiancée Katie.]

Then, with nary a breath, Dan and I headed to join Neil Roberts for our signing session, which went on solidly for several hours. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and thankfully my signing hand was well and truly limbered up for the day by spending all of Monday (and I do mean all of Monday) signing the inserts to go in the very limited, special edition hardback of Iron Warrior. What made a slightly surreal, but not unwelcome, change to a signing session was that it was all taking place to the laid back groove of the Walrus of Love himself, Barry White. Not Gladiator or Lord of the Rings, Barry White. It’s a change I heartily approve of.

Currently Reading: Just finished Double Eagle again, and thoroughly enjoyed it. More so this time around, as I think I missed lots of the cleverness first time. Also just finished reading the final manuscript of The Chapter’s Due, which was a long read, and an exhausting one – which, given the scale of what’s happening in the story, is no bad thing! I’m currently reading Jon McGregor’s If nobody speaks of remarkable things. Jon’s a founder member of the Nottingham Writers Society, and a very nice chap. I’ve met him a few times at the NWS, and he was kind enough to let me nip round to get him to sign his second novel for my mum for her Christmas. I’ve only read the first few chapters of If nobody…, but already the lyricism of his words is just blowing me away. It’s written as a novel, but reads as poetry and has so many wonderful turns of phrase that it’s taking all my willpower not to try and wholeheartedly lift them for my own work.

Currently Watching: Enjoying Being Human just now, a show that’s in its second season and had done that rare thing of expanding its mythos, while staying true to what made it great in the first place. 24 is entertaining me with its bonkers, over the top, storylines, and Annie Wersching is doing a great job of portraying how broken Renee Walker really is. Jack’s being Jack, which is exactly what I want. Also watching Caprica, which I want to be great, though I’m not loving it so far. I like how we’re seeing how a lot of what we saw in Battlestar Galactica evolved, but I think there’s a real danger of them trying to be ‘dark and adult’ so much that they forget that BSG could also be very funny too. There’s room for some great storylines in Caprica, and I just hope they don’t make it too depressing, that there’s also some entertainment going to be worked into the meatier drama.

Right, I’m off to work now. I have God King to write. To give you a taster, here’s Nick Kyme’s reaction to the synopsis: KICKS ASS!

Just a quick reminder that I’m in London this weekend (20th Feb) at GW Plaza in Oxford St, so do come along if you’re in the area. The weekend after on the 27th of Feb, I’ll be all over the place in a whistle-stop tour of Liverpool and Leeds. I’ll be at GW Liverpool (13b Central Shopping Centre, Ranelagh Street) at 10:30am until I have to rush to the train station to travel to GW Leeds (38A Lands Lane, Leeds, LS1 6LB) where I’ll be signing from 3:30pm.

See you along the way…

Ps – Just to reiterate to anyone who’s asking, I’ll be working on the concluding part of Defenders of Ulthuan later this year (around August/September), so expect some great High/Dark Elf action sometime around the middle 2011.