Today's blog (ha...like they're every day...) comes from Jonathan Green. Enjoy.

YOU ARE THE HERO

By Jonathan Green

Everyone remembers their first.

Mine was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. It was 1982 and I was ten years old at the time. Here was a book in which I – the reader – was the hero. I got to choose the course of the adventure, deciding which paths to take, which traps to risk, and which monsters to fight. I had never seen or read anything like it before – and so began a life-long love affair with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain inspired me like no other book ever has. It’s why I’m doing what I doing now, and I know others have also been inspired to follow a career in genre writing because of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks – New York Times bestselling author Graham McNeill for one.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece about the history of Fighting Fantasy for SFX magazine. But the more I researched the story behind the creation of the world’s premier gamebook series, the more story I realised there was still to tell. To do the subject justice I needed to write a book –and so the idea that was to become YOU ARE THE HERO was born.

YOU ARE THE HERO will tell the story of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, from the early days of Games Workshop right up to the present day and beyond. I have already interviewed the creators of the Fighting Fantasy series – Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone – who are both keen to have their story told. In fact, Steve Jackson once said to me, "You are the perfect person to write this book."

Not only will YOU ARE THE HERO tell the amazing story of how Fighting Fantasy gamebooks changed the world, it will also cover everything from spin-off novels and puzzle books, to foreign editions, board games and video games. It will even delve into such areas as the gamebooks that never were, the myths and legends surrounding the series, and how Ian Livingstone’s newest gamebook – Blood of the Zombies – almost never happened.

But I can’t do this without your support. Check out the YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter page today and the unique rewards available to those people who back the project and pledge your support today.

Thank you.

You can find the YOU ARE THE HERO Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1412864360/you-are-the-hero

You will find the YOU ARE THE HERO Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/ComicHeroes#!/pages/You-Are-The-Hero-A-History-of-Fighting-Fantasy-Gamebooks/449514028443744?fref=ts

Alternatively, visit www.JonathanGreenAuthor.com.

Yesterday, as you might know from our various Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter feeds, was one of our regular Horus Heresy days. Me, Dan, Aaron, Gav and Jim gathered with Nick and Laurie to discuss future projects, thrash out timelines, throw ideas around and generally plan out what we want to do with the story and characters to come. It's a great day for all of us, as the stuff that comes out of that witch's brew of creativity is so damn inspiring that you just have to get it down on paper as soon as possible. The new Heresy books we have in the pipeline (and, no, I'm afraid I can't tell you what they're about yet...) are so cool I just want them right now. Largely because I want to read them and in two cases, write them.

But that's not what made my day.

When we broke for lunch, we headed to Bugman's for burgers and chips, sitting on one of the long tables in the centre of the bar. We sat and we nattered about movies, comics, and things in the meeting we hadn't quite finished. Dan told a good story about meeting Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy in a lift in San Diego, and spread some good old Hollywood gossip. Lunch arrived (except for Aaron's) and we tucked in.

Seated at a table behind us was a family of three; mum, dad and son. At one point I saw the son talking to Gav and figured that he'd recognised Herr Thorpe (which he had). It turned out this lad was named Charlie, and he was a huge Ultramarines fan, so he and I had a chat for a while, talking about the books, his completed 2^nd and 4^th Company armies and so on. It's always an ego-boost when a reader comes up and tells you that they like your books, that's a no-brainer. We got a picture taken and Charlie went off with a big smile on his face. All good.

But that's now what made my day either.

Ten minutes later, Charlie's mum came back into Bugman's with a freshly-purchased copy of the Ultramarines Omnibus II and asked me to sign it. I did and then she told me that Charlie had a brother called Max, who they had sadly lost to cancer, and that their trips to Nottingham had largely involved coming to Warhammer World and the Queen's Medical Centre. Now Charlie doesn't find reading easy, but he loved the Ultramarines books and since picking them up, he's become a voracious reader.

And that's what made my day.

I write because I love to write, tell stories and spin yarns that entertain and make people think. I hope my books linger in the mind after they've been finished, but if they don't, that's not a problem so long as the reader was entertained for a while. If my book does that, then colour me happy. If not, I'll try harder next time. But it's a great feeling to know that you've made an impression on someone while they've been going through what must have been a terrible time. Being able to inspire someone to read books is made of win, and it's something that puts a whole new perspective on telling stories about toy soldiers...

To feel that what we do can have a positive influence of people makes all the effort worthwhile.

What it tells me is that books matter, stories matter. They make people laugh, cry, gnash their teeth, shake their fists in anger or fall in love with the characters. Stories provoke emotions in people and everyone who uses their creativity as a medium of expressing their inner self wants to feel that their work has had that effect. It's humbling, its a boost to the self-esteem and its a reminder that a good book of any kind can mean something really special to the reader.

Meeting Charlie and his mum made my day, so thanks for that.

Alright...

After a lengthy (lengthy...) look through your entries for the Warhammer drinks menu, there's a few there that should be made into drinks and a few that definitely shouldn't.

I laughed, I groaned and I quietly notified a few psychiatric authorities, but at the end of a considered panel of judging, I opted for these entries to win. If one of them is you, drop me a line through the contact page on this website with your address, and I'll get a book posted out to you as soon as I can. Well done, all of the winners.

Brad Cohen warhound 20/20 (a cheap, foul tasting fruity brew created by heretical mechanicus xenobiologists, true Imperial drinkers wouldn't touch it with someone else's, but its become extremely popular amongst the type of idle juves that gather on hab-park benches to commit petty crime and hurl incomprehensible insults at passers by whilst wearing the strange and heretical hoody/trackie combination popular amongst down hive scum)

Graham: I love this blend of real world and the fictional...

Daniel MacGregor Aquila sunrise (awful I know)

Graham: This wins for being the first to make this terrible pun.

Greg Smith Ferrus Beerus - lager without a head

Graham: For making me laugh the loudest.

Nathan Dowdell Blessed Degreasing Agent #14 - WARNING may be harmful if ingested by those with less than 40% augmetic replacement. Do not operate heavy machinery for one chronosegment after ingestion. Overconsumption may produce logic errors and impious meme-processes - please imbibe responsibly.

Graham: It's going to appear in Lords of Mars!

Alec McQuay Squat Stout/II Legion Special/XI Legion and Lime - *REMOVED FROM SALE* *MANUFACTURER'S RECALL. ANYONE CAUGHT DRINKING, TALKING ABOUT REFERRING TO OR KNOWING ABOUT THESE THREE DRINKS THAT NEVER, EVER HAPPENED WILL BE KILLED, BY IMPERIAL EDICT. INCLUDING THE PERson updating our FaceBook status about it. Oh... FU-

Graham: The relevant authorities have been notified. Stay by your front door, citizen.

So there you have it. Thanks to everyone for joining in, and stay tuned for more book giveaways in the near future (I believe my copies of Bones of the Yopasi are inbound from the States...).

Cheers, and well done again to the winners.

Graham

The forward elements of the capering host were drawing near, and coils of hallucinogenic fogs writhed between the legs of the riotous assembly. It moved with a life of its own, eager to explore its creators' bodies and taste their sweat, their breath and their dirt. The screams that reached to the skies were delirious and joyous, agonised and ecstatic, a braying wall of sound that echoed from the sides of the valley like the raving of a million madman.

Scarifier priests spun and leapt throughout the dancing horde, their hooked chains and envenomed blades whipping and stabbing with gleeful abandon to cause pain and excruciation. Where their poisoned tips pierced an artery, the grateful victim would be seized by mad choreomaniacal fits. Roaring observers aped their lethal convulsions and the dancing mania spread ever wider, becoming more and more elaborate until the original victim's madly-pumping heart emptied their body and a new dance began elsewhere.

Mass psychogenic hysteria gripped the thousands of men and women, who screamed and laughed and cried like mourners or celebrants. They fought, they fornicated; moving to the rapid, pulsing beat of a driving imperative that none among the Iron Warriors could know. They carried towering banners, streaming gonfalons and serrated pennants ablaze with imagery that was at once obscene and alluring, repugnant and inviting.

Forrix recognised none of the heraldry, feeling a gut-deep revulsion at the graceful sweeps of the symbols worked into the textured banners. A meld of curves and voluptuous arcs penetrated by hard lines with barbed arrowheads atop their length. Nor were all the members of the host equal; kings and queens and princes were feted in all their finery; silks and steel, velvet and leather. Their crowns were bone, their orbs the skulls of willing sacrifices, and the sceptres the woven finger bones of the handless handmaidens attending them.

And just as there were the gaudy courts of royal madness, so too were there regicides by the dozen as pretenders tore them down and took their bloodied crowns for themselves.

As degenerate as the dancing host's behaviour was, it was nothing compared to the physical malformations wrought on the flesh of its number. Some disfigurements appeared to be congenital, others the work of swords or maces in ritualised combat, but the vast majority appeared to have been engineered by scalpels, bone saws and genetic modification.

Men with anatomies reversed by horrific surgery capered on their hands, with legs sutured to their shoulders and faces in their bellies. Vat-grown cherub-grubs led packs of wild, spine-backed creatures, like the bastard by-blows of loathsome centipedes and giant scorpions. Women cavorted naked with scented oils slathering their bared breasts. Many of these women were gifted with breasts beyond the number decreed by nature, and these violet-hued individuals were attended by howling slaves and weeping devotees.

Amid the heaving, spasming march of the decadent host, some were content to dance, some to debase, others to violate, yet more to scream their throats bloody as they drove their bodies to lunatic extremes of excess. They howled with the hybrid monsters and the most desperate for sensation set themselves ablaze and laughed as the flames consumed them.

Forrix took his helmet from the mag-lock on his thigh as the rapturous mass of degenerates drew near and the acrid tang of perfumes began to discomfit him.

'I saw some strange things on Isstvan, but this is...' began Forrix, snapping his helm into the gorget seals as vocabulary failed him. No mere words could give name or reason to this behaviour, no codes of honour could reconcile this madness with the militaristic perfection and arrogant swagger the Emperor's Children had once possessed.

'What has happened to you, my brother?' wondered Perturabo, his face betraying no hint of the terrible anger that must surely be raging within his heart.

'Where are the legion warriors?' asked Falk.

Forrix scanned the heaving mass of frenetic humanity as they spilled over the outermost earthworks; cavorting through razorwire-edged killing grounds, across spiked ditches and past iron-faced gun emplacements. What would take months of bloody siege to break through was overcome in moments by the vanguard of the Emperor's Children.

At some unheard signal, the host fell utterly silent, halting in its maddened march a stone's throw from the Iron Warriors. Clouds of kicked up dust mingled with the twitching curtain of narcotic smoke issuing from hidden censers. After so cacophonous a din, the silence felt impossibly loud, and Forrix scanned the sweating, breathless host for some sign of what was coming next.

That sign came as the lunatics abased themselves on the sand, prostrating themselves as supplicant savages before burning flora. Soltarn Vull Bronn dropped to one knee, placing his palm on the earth.

'Get up, damn you,' snapped Forrix. 'Iron Warriors bend the knee to no-one.'

Vull Bronn ignored him and cocked his head to one side, as though listening to a voice only he could hear.

'He's here,' said Bronn. 'The Phoenician. He's coming.'

Forrix looked up as the flesh host before him parted, pushing themselves back with their bellies scraping the sand to make a wide corridor between them. Through the swirls of pink and mauve clouds, Forrix could see the outline of something huge and swaying approaching. Vague silhouettes of power-armoured warriors marched alongside it, their forms granting some hope that the III Legion had not abandoned all pretence of being a fighting force.

Fifty warriors in the shimmering purple of the Emperor's Children emerged from the smoke, and their appearance drew a gasp of shock from the assembled Iron Warriors. Slashes of vivid pigment were spattered over their armour, the myriad contrasting hues and clashing colours offending the eye with their garish disregard for the legion's heraldry. Jagged spikes jutted from pauldrons and their helmets were byzantine winged affairs, with amplification hoods and intensifiers worked into the visors.

They carried a banner of stiff pink that Forrix could tell was fashioned from human skin, its texture and stench all too familiar to him. A runic form was emblazoned at its heart, the recurring motif he had seen worked in various forms upon the armour and flesh of the maddened horde, but distilled into its purest form. Borne by legion warriors, the symbol offended Forrix less than it had before, and he found himself drawn towards its beguiling curves and graceful loops.

Anger touched him, and he threw off whatever glamours were worked into its form.

Glamours?

Where had that come from? A word of ancient usage that was meaningless in this age of reason and technological certitude. Whatever toxin burned in the censers was a powerful psychotropic indeed if it could drag such an archaic term from the mind of an Iron Warrior.

Like the mortals before them, these warriors parted to form an honour guard, and behind them came a screaming, wailing mass of legionaries whose weapons were unlike anything Forrix had ever seen in a battle barge's armoury. Like oversized axes they were fitted with all manner of amplification devices, tonal distorters and artefacts whose function Forrix could not even begin to guess.

Thrumming bass notes of raw kinetic force throbbed in their long necks, and Forrix wondered if such weapons might be employed in the reduction of a fortress wall. These warriors went without helms, and their faces were a horror of distended jaws with eternally screaming mouths and gaping wounds in the skull where their ears had been surgically adapted to collect and render sound into its purest elements.

And then the primarch of the Emperor's Children stood revealed, his entrance as dramatic and sudden and shocking as he had no doubt intended.

Atop a vast palanquin of living beings fused, sewn and warped together, the Phoenician emerged from the sentient clouds of fumes. A squad of warriors in Cataphractii armour bore this flesh palanquin on the vast shoulder guards of their armour, the spikes and sharpened edges of their pauldrons drawing blood and screams of pleasure in equal measure.

Fulgrim's frost-white hair spilled from beneath a helm of dazzling silver, and his entire body was wrapped in a cloak of shocking purple and golden feathers. Motion rippled beneath the cloak, like a metamorphic larva on the verge of hatching into the most beautiful creature imaginable. Fulgrim waited until his Phoenix Guard halted before throwing open his cloak to reveal his sculpturally perfect body. His elegantly curved pectorals, rolling deltoids and ridged abdominals were bare of armour and gleamed with fragrant oils. His limbs writhed and fresh tattoos of coiling serpents; tattoos that even now began to fade as his superhuman biology undid the damage to his epidermis.

Perturabo stepped towards the living platform as Fulgrim descended on a ramp of shields held out by his warriors. Forrix saw a warrior in perfect balance, who understood his body and its articulation to the highest degree. His every step was carefully placed, giving the lie to his flamboyant appearance.

'Brother Fulgrim,' said Perturabo, 'Welcome.'

Warriors emerged from the hellstorm of explosions and scything fragments, searching for handholds beside him. They followed his example, knowing that where Kroeger led, the blood of the enemy was sure to flow. Fire and noise burst around him as he climbed higher and grenade dumpers ejected their payloads in tumbling cascades, but the enemy was running low on explosive ordnance and there were too few to do any real harm. Shrapnel whickered through the ranks of the Iron Warriors, but encased within layers of ceramite warplate, only a handful were blooded.

Vannuk climbed next to him, his burnished armour pitted with small arms impacts, and his helmet scored with heat burns. He had his bolter in one hand and loosed a short burst of fire. A scream, and a body torn up by mass-reactives fell from the wall.

'First blood to me,' grunted Vannuk.

Kroeger's bolter was still mag-locked to his thigh, and would likely stay there until he'd reached the rampart above.

'Who cares about first blood?' said Kroeger. 'So long as there's blood.'

Vannuk paused to take aim at another target, but Kroeger felt the wall beneath him tremble with substrate activity and punched his fist into a crack in the wall. He spread the fingers of his gauntlet to support his weight and swung out to grip a handhold over to his left as the wall ripped open in a leering slice, like the maw of a bottom-feeding ambush predator. Vannuk barely had time to scream before he was swallowed. Oozing tendrils of liquid rock webbed the gap in an instant, drawing the seams of the wall closed again.

'Idiot,' was all Kroeger had to say on Vannuk's demise, and pushed himself onwards.

He climbed with random leaps and surging effort, evading spikes of glistening rock and hails of gunfire with a mix of skill and luck. A turret slid down the wall in flames where he had been climbing only a moment before. The mangled wreckage trailed its cybernetic crewman on ropes of cabling before slamming into the rock below. Its armoured panels tore open like wet paper as it exploded. Flames belched, and corkscrewing contrails ripped in all directions as its shell hopper cooked off.

A shell burst hit the wall next to him, and Kroeger flinched as the impact caused his visor to darken momentarily. He looked up to see a long line of frightened faces looking down at him and grinned. They feared him and they were right to.

'Death is coming for you!' he yelled at them. 'This iron without will soon be iron within!'

Sporadic blasts of fire beat on his armour, a mixture of lasfire and solid rounds. The shots spanked from his pauldrons, but didn't penetrate. Kroeger reached down and freed his bolter from his thigh. He swung the weapon to bear and squeezed off a three round burst of shells.

One man's head simply vanished, the impact trauma enough to tear his skull from his spine. Another soldier exploded from the chest up as Kroeger's round detected enough mass to trigger the warhead's detonation. The third man fell back screaming, his face torn up by bone shrapnel from the dead men beside him. It was wasteful to expend mass-reactives on mortals, but the sheer mess it made of their fragile bodies was too satisfying to ignore. Clamping his bolter back to his thigh, Kroeger hauled himself up, hand over hand, grinning beneath his iron visor as he saw the chewed up battlements within reach. The wall's integral defences were dead here, and now there was nothing to stop him.

He took hold of a coiled length of protruding rebar and hauled himself up, rolling over the broken-toothed remains of the wall. Shell fragments were embedded in the stone, and even as he dropped to the rampart, he had his bolter unclamped again and was searching for targets.

Only two Iron Warriors came over the wall with him; Vortrax and Ushtor from the patterns on their helms and shoulder guards. Kroeger saw an Imperial Fists warrior turn towards them, a captain by the look of him. His face registered surprise, and he shouted a warning to another two Fists squatting in the midst of a company strength of frightened mortals.

'No helmet?' hissed Kroeger, aiming and firing in one fluid motion. 'Stupid.'

The captain went down, but Kroeger was irritated to see that his shot had merely grazed him. The other Imperial Fists rose to his defence, moving apart and firing at their attackers. The mortal soldiers loosed panicked shots at random.

Vortrax fell back against the ruined wall, his breastplate hammered by concentrated bolter fire. Spasming detonations and a crack of mashed bones told Kroeger the mass-reactives had pulped him inside his armour.

Ushtor traded shots with the Fists, but these warriors were too cool under fire to be caught out by such undisciplined salvoes. Kroeger took his time and pulled his gun hard into his shoulder. He sighed on the leftmost of the Imperial Fists and put two carefully placed shots though his helm. The warrior dropped instantly, the back of his head a hollowed out shell of dripping brain matter and scorched bone.

Where the mortal soldiers had turned their attention to the fighting on the ramparts, two Iron Warriors gained the wall. Bolter fire hammered the mortal soldiers, ripping arms from shoulders, torsos from legs like bodies caught in the flailing blades of a threshing machine. Their screams were pitiful, and Kroeger took little satisfaction in their meaningless deaths.

The Fists were the true prize here.

The fallen captain rose with a bared sword that blazed with a razor-edged golden light as he leapt towards the two Iron Warriors. First one, then the second died, carved up with powerful strokes aimed at the weakest points of their armour. The captain kicked them from the wall and turned to face Kroeger.

'Come at me and die, traitors!' he yelled, his face a mask of blood from where Kroeger's shot had torn a finger-deep furrow in his skull. Kroeger shook his head and and shot him twice in the chest. Beside him, Ushtor collapsed, his armour blown outwards by the force of shell detonations. Kroeger ignored the dying warrior's grunts of pain and loped towards the Imperial Fist who'd killed him.

Another warrior without a helm. Did Dorn's weakling sons want their heads blown off?

The Fist backed away, ejecting his bolter's magazine and slamming home a fresh clip.

'Nowhere to run, little man,' said Kroeger.

'I'm not running,' answered the Imperial Fist. 'I'm waiting.'

Despite himself, Kroeger's curiosity was aroused. 'Waiting for what?'

'For them,' said the Fist.

Hammering impacts spun Kroger around, and he felt the pain of lacerating tears and holes punched in his side. He dropped to one knee, seeing at least two dozen Imperial Fists charging towards him. They fired from the hip, but suffered no loss in accuracy. Two more shells struck him before he could scramble to cover; one in the shoulder, one in the centre of his chest. Warning icons flashed to life on his visor, and he coughed a wad of blood through the vox-grille of his barbican helmet.

Kroeger fought to get off a last volley, but his arm hung uselessly at his side and his bolter lay in pieces before him. He hadn't even realised he'd lost the weapon. He looked over the edge of the wall, seeing only a handful Iron Warriors clambering towards the rampart. Hundreds of mortal soldiers opposed them with explosives and massed fire. There would be no help from that quarter for now.

How demeaning to be kept out of a fortress by such dross.

Kroeger stared down at the dark blood pooling in front of him, its bright gleam and iron tang curiously pleasant even as it leaked from his numerous wounds.

A cold shadow fell across the bloodied ramparts, and a roaring blast of jet-hot air blasted downwards from screaming retros. Kroeger's spilled blood boiled in the heat and mortals screamed as their uniforms erupted in flames. The Imperial Fist with whom he'd traded words fell as the ammunition in his bolter exploded and transformed his wrists into charred stumps of flesh and nubs of fused bone.

Something fell from the sky, vast and iron, monstrous and cold.

It landed in the heart of the citadel with the booming clang of a funeral bell; the Olympian master of battle, a demigod in burnished warplate, a hammer-wielding avatar of thunder.

Perturabo, the Lord of Iron.

A few weeks ago, I went to Alt.Fiction in Leicester, and a week or so ago, I went to Salute in picturesque London village. Both were quite different, as one's a literary festival (which isn't as high-falutin as it sounds) the other's a wargaming convention. Alt.Ficion has been one of my favourite conventions since I started going three years ago. It's a gathering place for everyone who loves genre fiction of every stripe, SF, Horror or Fantasy, no matter whether it's in books, comics, artwork, tv, films or video games. There's something for everyone.

For the past few years, the event's been held at the Quad in Derby, which was a great venue, full of nooks and crannies, odd turns and secluded cubbyholes where writers, fans, artists and the like mingled to chat and just generally hang out. This year's venue was the Phoenix Centre in Leicester, which was a smart venue with a good bar (always important) but I felt it lacked something of the character of the Quad. Still, that didn't affect the quality of the event. The first year I was there, I didn't have a lot to do, but the previous year, I was all over the place on podcasts, panels, workshops and barside conversations. This year I was on two panels and had the Sunday to be a fan, going to panels to actually hear the other panelists – something I didn't get the chance to do last year (apart from going to eat the noisiest pie in Dan Abnett and Alistair Reynold's final panel of the day). On the whole, I prefer being busy at these things, as I think if you have writers, artists, editors, agents and their ilk at such events, you need to work them like dogs!

This year's lineup of guests was particularly strong, and I was lucky enough to get this year's Guest of Honour, Ken MacLeod (a fellow Skye man, no less) to sign my copy of Intrusion, though I did make a bit of a hash of it all, as I'd followed him into what turned out to be a small room with a very intense looking workshop going on. I got the signature, but didn't feel I could get into a long chat with all the very earnest folk who'd come to take part in the workshop looking on...

Black Library was well represented, with this year's other Guest of Honour being none other than Mr James Swallow, he of Blood Angels, Horus Heresy and Sisters of Battle fame. Hanging onto his coattails was myself and the lovely Sarah Cawkwell, whose record of blushing in my company continued unabated (though I forget what I said that made her blush). I'd managed to get roped into two panels this year, and the first was Dragon's Pen.

Dragon's Pen

This involved me, Conrad Williams and Paul Kane pitching our novels to an esteemed panel of Dragons, and doing it badly to highlight the common mistakes folk make. I'd dug out an old novel synopsis from years back that had never gotten any further and decided I'd reacquaint myself with it before pitching it like an idiot. I figured, I'd pitch like I normally do, and that would probably have enough blunders in it that I'd be okay. But as I re-read the synopsis on the train, I found that I actually really liked the story. So when I came to pitching, I made some glaring errors like saying my mum was a big fan (and therefore the rest of the world ought to be), that I'd previously published it as fanfic and the internet liked it, that I wasn't willing to change anything, that it was formatted to my tastes, not what the agent/publisher's website wanted. Oh, and I held back the ending just in case they stole my idea. I disagreed with the panel's assessments of the story (whatever they were) and generally made an ass of myself, which was entirely the aim of the panel and got the idea across of how NOT to pitch to agents and publishers. Conrad's pitch for a 70s themed pack of sleuth, medallion-men vampires called Dracularseholes, will live with me for many years to come, and Paul's pitch of a story set around a convention where the world outside turns into zombies seemed entirely prescient... A great panel, with lots of laughs, and lots of good pointers from us on how not to do it, and from the panel on the things you really ought to do. Everything I did above, do the opposite and you'll be fine.

Steve Jobs Killed SF

This panel was a great one. I was on it with Charles Christian, Jim Swallow, Tony Ballantyne and Kim Lakin Smith. The notion being that SF was in decline because all the gadgets and technology that are the staples of this fiction is already within (or will soon be) our grasp. This was a spirited debate, with lots of good points raised by the panel and the audience. What made me laugh about this one, was that I was on a panel last year called 'Has SF Conquered Mainstream?' so I'm not sure what happened in the intervening year to cause the genre to be dying! In any case, the broad consensus seemed to be that, no, the genre wasn't dying at all, but had diversified into many sub-categories that SF as a single genre almost wasn't an appropriate 'label' anymore. Every genre that makes up that broad church is thriving, so despite Steve Jobs giving us all we wanted, even before we knew we wanted it, there's always new horizons to look to, as technology and imagination are always on the grow.

So, with my panels done, I went to actually listen to some other panelists speak. Genre tv was discussed at length, as was adapting your work into other media, and though I missed the 'Diversity in the Genre' panel (which Sarah was press-ganged into at the last minute) I'm told it was a cracker. And as we sank we well deserved pint at the end of the day, Graham Joyce landed at our table like a freight train to persuade us to come to FantasyCon in Brighton, which would be great, but given it's the week after UK Games Day and the week before I whisk the family off to Canada for the BL Book Expo in Chestermere Public Library, I don't think I'll be able to swing it.

Salute

The following weekend was Salute, which was held in the Excel Centre in London. I travelled down to the event with Christian Dunn, and we had a great old natter about genre tv and writing Choose Your Own Adventure books – where I revealed that I'd written two of them in my schooldays in my English jotters. I still have Fortress of the Desert Lord, which is a lovely reminder of the fact I always wanted to write and why I'm not a multi-millionaire architect...

Salute was a very different beast from Alt.Fiction, as I was there purely to chat and sign books. I wasn't sure what to expect about Salute, as the last time I'd been to this event, it was to run demo games of Inquisitor. Not a short span of time. But it was a great event, and barring an hour when I managed to grab some lunch (£5.90 for a small coke and a sandwich!) and see a great many ex-GW staffers working at the event, I signed for the entire time I was there and got to spend some quality one on one time with the readers. It's why I like events like this, I get the chance to spend time talking with the people who actually buy the books. At Games Day, it's a rush, a non-stop pell mell of folk, and as much as I try to spend a good bit of time with everyone who comes to see me, I don't like the idea of folk spending their entire day in a queue, when there's better thing to go and see and do! It's one of things I keep getting told at events...speed it up, but I reckon the person last in the queue deserves at least as much time to chat as the person at the front. Anyway, I talked to loads of folk, signed loads of books, and had a great time there before threading my way through London to get back on the train to Nottingham.

So if I spoke to you at either event, thank you so much for coming along, and I hope you enjoyed it all as much as I did. If I didn't, then I'll hopefully see you at one of the upcoming signings. I'm in the Dublin branch of Games Workshop with Dan Abnett and Aaron Dembski Bowden on the 26^th of May. I think we're going to be there from 12 noon, but I'll post something closer to the time just to be sure.

Right, got to get back to Angel Exterminatus. I hope to hand the halfway finished manuscript in to the editors today.

Right, tomorrow morning I'm off to Alt.Fiction, one of the best events of the year, as it's chock full of lots of people I'd happily sit down with to share a beer, natter and talk about stories, SF, Fantasy and Horror. This year, the event's being held this weekend in Leicester, in the Phoenix Digital Arts Centre. It's a great melting pot of authors, artists, editors and the like and is one of the friendliest, most involving cons around. There's some great stuff on throughout the day, more than enough to whet the appetite of fans of any genre fiction or games (as interactive media has a strong presence this year) so if you're anywhere near Phoenix Square in Leicester this weekend (14th/15th April) be sure to come by and have a chat.

I'll be there from around 11:00 in the morning, but as well as just hanging out, going to panels and talking to folk (and trying to get my new copy of Ken MacLeod's Intrusion signed, I'll also be on a couple of panels. On Staurday at 12 noon in Screen 1, I'll be taking part in the Dragon's Pen event, where we show you how NOT to pitch. I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing for this, but knowing me, I'll probably just pitch the way I normally would and that'll show you all the horrible pitfalls to avoid. Fellow Pitchers will be Conrad Williams and MD Lachlan, and the Mighty Dragons facing us will be...John Jarrold, Steve Tribe and (ulp) Ramsey Campbell. Scary stuff... I'm betting that after this, I'll have a lot more sympathy for the folk facing Duncan Bannatyne and his cohorts.

Then, also in Screen 1, I'll be taking part in the SF Panel discussion with Tony Ballantyne, James Swallow, Charles Christian and Anne C. Perry. This promises to be a lively discussion as well, and we'll be looking at, amongst other things, where SF has to go now that Steve Jobs and Apple have made the Star Trek communicators and 40K's dataslates a reality...

You can find the full programme, together with all the great guests coming along on the Alt.Fiction website.

So come along, it'll be a great weekend of writing, talking, signing and connecting.

See you there.

Beginnings are important. Here's a verbatim snippet of text from Tubb03's Blog that encapsulates it perfectly, it's a Grade 07/08 Blog that shows that even pretty young kids know it:

“The beginning is the time the catch and keep your readers. A beginning of a story is very important, if you don’t get you readers eye at the beginning they are not going to read the rest of your story, even if the middle of the story or the end of the story is really good they will never know.”

Out of the mouths of babes and innocents, eh?

So, with Priests of Mars off with the Editors, I'm in the early stages of my next Heresy novel, Angel Exterminatus, in the pleasing position of having all the novel synopsises (do you know how many times I typed that word...?) ahead of me till the end of the year done. Since my last venture into Heresyland, I've been to Arkham, the 41^st Millennium, the Age of Legends and the Old World, but now it's time to get back to the treason of the Warmaster, and boy, am I looking forward to this one. Last time, I dabbled in the fascinating, murky waters around the main thrust of the Heresy with The Outcast Dead, but now I'm getting back to playing with the Big Toys; Space Marine Legions and the Primarchs. Angel Exterminatus is going to be a big book for a number of reasons, and in a number of ways, most of which I can't really elaborate on for fear of spoiling the surprise or venturing into waters I haven't yet charted, since this book is still in its Beginning Phase.

And that's kind of the theme of this blog entry, new beginnings.

I sometimes struggle with the beginnings of books. I know the plots, the characters and the overarching themes/plots I want to cover, but getting the right fit up front is so important to me that I often spend the first few weeks on the opening two or three chapters, which is a lot longer than I want to spend there. But I'm a firm believer that if the foundations you set up at the beginning of a book aren't right, then the rest of the novel just won't stand up straight, you'll constantly be pulled askew by the bad start you've made and won't be able to get back without building it all up again from scratch (see, all those years at university studying architecture and building surveying weren't wasted!). I've scrapped beginning after beginning, rewritten, rearranged and re-just-about-everything-else with quite a few of my novels, because that nagging voice in my head keeps telling me that something's not quite right. That voice is almost never wrong. The other voices...? Well, time will tell...

With Angel Exterminatus, I'm in that stage of a novel where I'm finding the fit of it all, the right voice for the characters, the clothes they're wearing and and the scenery they ought to be chewing in their dialogue. I'm feeling my way around. I know this place, but it's been a while since I visited, so I'm limbering up for a long haul. It's a slow process, like going on a date with a whole lot of people at once, some you know vaguely, some are new to you and some are strangers who've just walked in after hearing that there's a free buffet. And you have to impress them all. Like going on speed dating and hoping to get everyone's number at the end of it all. It takes a lot for everything to align at once, but when it does, as it has now...then it's a great feeling to know, just know with utter certainty, that it's working, that it's bloody right. That this is how it ought to be done.

The first couple of chapters of Angel Exterminatus are set post-Isstvan V and deal with the Iron Warriors prior to the arrival of the Emperor's Children for a meeting between Perturabo and Fulgrim. It's taken a while to get right, inventing new things to make sure that the Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children feel like no other Legions, that they have their own character and don't inadvertently end up as pantomime villains – a common pitfall of portraying the Chaos Space Marines. I want to ensure that the scenes, dialogue and vibe the reader gets will lead them to the Iron Warriors or Emperor's Children even if I took out all the specific names and unit types. It means striking a balance between what people already know, what they want to see and what I want to achieve with the book. Certainly these legions are very close to my heart, and I know that a lot of people like them too (the steady sales of Storm of Iron and Fulgrim tell me as much...). And since it's a joint novel between them, I don't want one to overshadow the other. At least until the end...

I'm at that point now, with a through line that works in what was established for the Legions back in the Index Astartes days and what's come since. Over the years other people have written the Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children, of course, but in my head, they're still mine. Which is a patently ridiculous notion, given that they exist in a shared universe, tie-in fiction realm, but still...they're mine. Which is how you have to feel if you're going to write anything with conviction and love and passion. If you don't write thinking that this is the only way these guys can be portrayed, then you're not invested enough. So I want to make sure they meet everyone's expectations of the masters of siege warfare and decadent excess (not least of all, again, mine...). To make them my own, I wanted to invent new traditions, new colour schemes, new units, new names and new....everything, all of which needed to be introduced in a way that didn't feel like an Index Astartes article or an excerpt from a Codex. All that white heat of creation takes time and effort and imagination that combines in a witches brew of sitting around looking like I'm not doing very much at all, doodling with words and sounds on a notepad and scouring my books/net for interesting resonances with the subject matter. All of which is a long way of saying that the beginnings of a novel are just about the most important part of a novel, so get it right...

But. There's always a but. There's always the danger that in that obsessive quest for perfection you end up spending the lion's share of the time you have to write the novel on the beginning. It's a trap I've not often fallen into, thankfully, but it would be apt in this case since the Emperor's Children are just about to turn up...

Stef Kopinski's really outdone himself here with his cover for the Legend of Sigmar omnibus, don't you think?

Top job, Mr. Kopinski. Next pint's on me.