Next seasons books announced


Head over to the Coming Soon section of our website, and you‘ll see that a host of new books have been added. Because a lot of these new products are a long way into the future, we can’t reveal too much detail right now, but the what there is should be enough to whet your appetite for the year ahead, and there are some tantalising titles in there:

Graham McNeill takes a trip to the red planet in the 41st Millennium in Priests of Mars

Darius Hinks explores the wild forest of Athel Loren in Orion: The Vaults of Winter

And what could Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s first hardback The Emperors Gift be about?

You’re going to have to wait a while for the answers, but there’s plenty Black Library action to keep you busy in the meantime, starting tomorrow with some new ebooks, and closely followed on Monday by a new print on demand graphic novel.

reds8n wrote:BL have updated the list of what's incoming.. now including titles up until September 2012 !

Graham McNeill takes a trip to the red planet in the 41st Millennium in Priests of Mars

sees The 2nd Ultramarine Omnibus, the 3rd Ulrika -ka-ka-ka -ka ! book ( can't wait !), The Emperor's Gift in hardback by Mr. Dembski-Bowden and he also also Butcher's Nails, which appears to me to be a HH audio book perhaps ? Bit of luck this might be the World Eater he threatened hoped to do ?

See's Mr. Swallow's "Fear to tread" which should be his BA vs Daemons HH novel. Really looking forwards to this one.

Mr. Thorpe's "Path of the Outcast" which is the Ranger book of his great Eldar series --

-- it's also his birthday today, which he's spending flying to the USA for GD, have a good one Mr. Thorpe !

An Interview with DARIUS HINKS


It should come as no surprise that I am a big fan of Black Library fiction, which has been improving consistently over the past decade. The publisher has been putting out increasingly-good-quality fantasy and science fiction novels from a string of new and established authors.

Darius Hinks is a relatively new addition to their stable, but one who has made a clear mark on fans of Warhammer fiction with his distinct and engaging writing style, not to mention his interesting characters. His debut novel, Warrior Priest recently won the Gemmell Morningstar Award for best fantasy newcomer, and Razumov’s Tomb and Sigvald are now available. To get a little more about his novels, upcoming projects and writing, I contacted him for an interview.

It’s been a pretty good year for you, so I’ll mention each of your novels individually, if I may.

First up, congratulations on winning the Gemmell Morningstar Award for best newcomer! The novel that won it for you was Warrior Priest. Could you tell us a little bit about the novel, what people can expect from it, and whether or not you might re-visit any of the characters in the future?

Thank you! It has been a really exciting year.

My main focus with Warrior Priest was to write something really dynamic, fast-moving and action-packed. This is a book based on a war game, after all, and I didn’t want to lose sight of that. More than anything, I wanted it to be a rollicking good adventure story. The priests of the Warhammer world aren’t there to promote harmony and peace, they’re the last hope of a kingdom on its knees, overwhelmed by legions of unholy, unnatural foes. I thought it would be interesting to show what happens when one of those priests finds out that his whole life is founded on a lie – even Jakob Wolff’s reasons for becoming a priest stem from a terrible misunderstanding. I wondered how he would cope with this discovery and what effect it would have on those who rely on his unwavering faith.

The other side of the novel revolves around a young acolyte called Ratboy. He starts the novel wanting nothing more than to become a warrior priest and emulate the career of his master, Wolff, but as they face horror after horror, Ratboy begins to see just how much he would have to sacrifice to be a beacon of faith in such dark times. In terms of revisiting the characters, it’s hard to say. The book was well received, and there’s lots more I could do with the characters, but I have a really big project lined up (see below!) that’s going to take up a lot of my time over the next couple of years.

Sigvald, your latest novel, is your contribution to the Warhammer Heroes series. What can readers expect from this novel? And what’s the main attraction of writing for this series, in particular about the “darker” side?

There were lots of things about Sigvald that appealed to me, but what I found really exciting was how gloriously epic and technicolor his life would be. The small amount of information that already existed suggested a deranged, self-obsessed, rapacious demigod, blessed with immortality and legions of adoring followers but very little grasp on reality. That’s just my kind of protagonist! He’s the doomed, beautiful, terrifying Caligula of the Warhammer world – a man so lusty and enamoured with his own myth that his empire is collapsing around his ears and he doesn’t even care. I loved the idea of setting a character like that off on an insane quest and then just sitting back to see where he took me.

Your new Warhammer novella, Razumov’s Tomb, was released recently. It’s a different kind of Warhammer story, what with all the crazy magic going on. Was it fun to write this style of fantasy? It seems like you had a lot of fun with it. Also, what’s with all the cuttlefish?

There is a peculiarly English form of lunacy to the Warhammer setting. A cursory glance might reveal shades of Tolkien and Moorcock, but if you scratch a little deeper you’ll find that thirty years of deranged creativity has resulted in something very odd and quite unique. It’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting filtered through the prism of dark, European folktales and then pumped full of weird, steampunk gyrocopters, mechanical pigeons, ships carved from the carcasses of enormous fish, drifting demonic cities, and colossal steam-powered tanks. When I was asked to write the Razumov’s Tomb novella my brief was to focus on all this madness that, as you say, I found very enjoyable.

In terms of the cuttlefish, I live in Nottingham, a city that is regularly plagued by vast migrations of wild, land-going cuttlefish, so I thought it would be nice to include some local fauna in the story.

Where do you draw your inspiration from, generally, and who or what would you say are your biggest influences?

I have a stock answer for this, so apologies to anyone who’s heard it before. Rather than other authors, I get most of my inspiration from listening to music. Lyricists like Stuart Lupton, Joanna Newsom, Bob Dylan and Hamilton Leithhauser always make me want to lock myself in a room and write something with a tiny fraction of their brilliance.

How do you enjoy being a writer and working within the publishing industry? Do you have any specific working, writing, researching practices?

I don’t accept that writing is work. Things I would put in the category of work are: discussing boilers, going to a supermarket, any interaction with cars beyond driving, using power tools, carrying heavy things and anything else that means you have to leave your armchair or put proper shoes on.

By a cruel twist of fate, I can only write successfully very early in the morning, so with every book I finish, the bags under my eyes get slightly larger. At the current rate of facial sag, I will end my literary career looking like one of those rubber finger masks you get at the zoo. Or a pizza designed to look like a bearded face that has been left on its side in a bag of shopping.

What’s it like writing within the established Warhammer setting? What are the challenges, difficulties and advantages of writing in a shared-universe/fantasy setting?

See my earlier comment! It’s great fun. Having such a fully realised world to play in enables an author to focus all their attention on developing interesting characters and plot devices.

When did you realise you wanted to be an author, and what was your first foray into writing? Do you still look back on it fondly?

When I was a teenager, rather than send my girlfriend, Kathryn, love letters, I used to send her envelopes full of gruesome horror stories. They usually revolved around people injuring their eyes in a variety of entertaining ways and generally had no beginning, end, plot or middle bit. After several years and thousands of words of directionless pupil-related fiction my girlfriend was starting to feel quite nauseous, so I had the idea of writing something that other people might want to read.

In those days (back when everything was sepia and people still spoke without turning every sentence into a question) Games Workshop had a short fiction magazine called Inferno! After four or five rejections, I managed to get a story accepted and eventually one of the Black Library’s editors asked me if I’d be able to write a novel for them. I lied cheerfully through my teeth and said I’d definitely be able to write 100,000 words of readable prose, and that I absolutely knew what I was doing when it came to writing novels. I then spent an evening hiding under my bed, wondering if I should employ a ghost writer or just change my name and move to Mexico. However, by this point my girlfriend had become my wife and, terrified that I might start sending her eyeball stories again, she padlocked me to a laptop and told me I couldn’t have the key until I’d written a proper book.

I’m an incurable romantic, though, and in memory of our courting years, I always include at least one major eye injury in everything I write.

What’s your opinion of the genre today, and where do you see your work fitting into it?

I’m not sure I should admit to this, but I don’t read a lot of current fiction. I spent my school years listening to ’80s metal, sulking, imagining I was a hobbit and not paying any attention to my teachers, so since then I’ve been making a desperate attempt to educate myself by working through all the classics.

In terms of where I fit into the SF/Fantasy genre, I think that’s more a question of where Warhammer fiction fits (as that’s all I’ve had published so far). The Black Library novels have decades of world-building behind them and some of the best writers in the industry (Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, Chris Wraight, etc.), so I think they are equal, and in many cases, superior to a lot of the other genre fiction that’s out there.

What projects do you have in the pipeline?

I’m just finishing off a Warhammer 40,000 novella called Sanctus that revolves around a Space Marine Chapter called the Relictors, and will be released as part of a collection called Architect of Fate. After that I’m going to start planning a really huge epic fantasy story. I’ve spoken to the BL editors about tackling something on a larger scale, spread over several books. The protagonist would be a character from the Warhammer setting called Orion. He’s a mysterious, inhuman avatar of a god and the ruler of a realm inhabited by a bizarre collection of sylvan horrors, sprites, dryads, daemons and an elven race known as the Asrai. It’s a long-cherished dream of mine to embark on a really involved, sustained piece of writing that gives me time to really develop a large cast of characters and follow them through a rambling, labyrinthine plot (sorry editors, I meant to say: a really logical, sensible plot).

Who are you reading at the moment (fiction and/or non-fiction)?

I’m rereading my favourite novel – The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. I read it on an almost yearly basis and would recommend it to anyone, but for those who don’t have time to wade through it, here’s my detailed synopsis:

An unpleasant old man moves to a lonely coastal spot to escape his weird friends.

He is tormented by a fantastical sea creature.

His weird friends discover his hideaway.

Some people die.

What’s something readers might be surprised to learn about you?

One of my Brummie ancestors, James Hinks, bred and named the English Bull Terrier (Bill Sykes’ dog Bullseye in Oliver Twist). It was originally called the Hinks Breed. I think this is why my cats are so wary of me. James sounds like quite a character. I found this great description online:

“James Hinks was no goody-goody; several times in his life he came into conflict with the law. We know that around 1855 he served a few months in prison for selling rabbits stolen from the vicar’s garden. Another conviction followed when a policeman asked him to remove a crate of chickens from a walkway and Hinks punched the man.”



Also, I have unnaturally large feet and they once tripped up Bruce Dickinson (lead singer of Iron Maiden) while he was wearing a wizard suit. Bruce then apologised to me for disturbing my canoe-like shoes.

What are you most looking forward to in the next year?

Turning 40. My life so far has been one long dress rehearsal for retirement. Mooching around tea rooms and book shops and having long afternoon naps seems to come quite naturally to me, so I am excited about edging slightly closer to getting a free bus pass and investing in some really high quality slippers.

* * *

reds8n wrote:BL have updated the list of what's incoming.. now including titles up until September 2012!

BrookM wrote:That's glossia, so I'd say that yes it is about Eisenhorn and Ravenor, seeing as those are their glossia code names.

narked wrote:The Keeler Image is in the preview catalogue, so dunno if that's a replacement or something different

What’s the best thing about Fridays?
Why it’s new eBooks of course!

This week we have four new eBooks for you:

Sons of Dorn: an Imperial Fists novel by Chris Roberson, following a newly recruited squad of scouts as they battle against the Roaring Blades Traitor Guard on the Chaos-blighted planet of Vernalis.

Grimblades: by Nick Kyme, a brave regiment in the army of the Empire fight a desperate war against an orc invasion while attempting to foil an assassination attempt on a royal prince.

Redemption Corps: Rob Sanders tells the tale of Major Mortensen and his elite squad of Storm Troopers as they fight off traitorous guardsmen, an ork invasion and the less-than-benevolent attentions of the Imperial Ecclesiarchy church.

Cadian Blood: by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. It’s zombies vs lasguns as Imperial Guardsmen battle an army of living dead animated by the foul power of Chaos across a ruined Imperial shrine world, sounds pretty awesome, eh? We thought so too, so we asked Aaron how he went about writing it.


Cadian Blood was your first Black Library novel, how did you approach the unique setting of the forty-first millennium?

No one really sees the 40K universe the same way, largely because the primary source of lore (the rulebooks and codex books) is designed to be so loose and open to interpretation. It's a setting made for fans to fill in a lot of the gaps themselves, so novelists need to be careful (or, at least, respectful) when trying to flesh out their storylines. I approached my first 40K novel the way I've approached all of them since: take a dose of blind faith, add a little naive hope. It comes down to hoping that your presentation of the 40K milieu appeals to others, and trusting that your perceptions are interesting enough to hook readers.

I still go by the old ‘Codex: Imperialis’ (from 2nd Edition) as my bible. It's a treasure trove for 40K's tone, scraps of lore, and the universe's general theme. My office is wallpapered with photocopies from the archives, too. They're from a spread of editions - new to old, from fresh way back to stuff released when I was about 6 years old. I have an insane amount of reading material to fall back on, and a little research never hurt anyone.


Cadian Blood is about the ‘average Joe’ Imperial foot trooper, but your newer books look to be developing a certain power armoured theme. What is it that attracts you to writing about Space Marines?

It's not intentional in the sense of actively avoiding the Imperial Guard, or having a massive man-crush on Space Marines. I think the average Adeptus Astartes rocks on toast, but I always have a significant human element in every narrative. It's the clash of perception, ideology and lifestyle between humans and Space Marines that makes them interesting, rather than just how many aliens they can kill. I've always been less interested in the way bolters sound, and more interested in the way Space Marines interact with humans, with the other Adeptus institutions in the Imperium of Man, and with each other. It's their mindset and drives that fascinate me. Besides, when they go to battle, it's for a reason. How much of a motivator is hate? How pure does it feel? What are the repercussions of it?

It's the same thing in any story - a fight just for the sake of a fight is bad writing, plain and simple. A fight that furthers the narrative, showcases characterisation, or because the characters have no choice but to commit... now those are interesting. Fights are fun, they're awesome, but they're also a spice to be added, rather than something to be considered as the full flavour.

That said, I really enjoy exploring the relationships between loyalist Marines and their fallen counterparts - or even just their attitudes to Chaos itself. I find it just as interesting to detail the mindset of fiercely loyal Space Marine as I do to delve into the reasons for a Chaos Marine committing the ultimate betrayal. I've written more about the Traitor Legions, but it's not a matter of preference. I'm an equal-opportunities kind of fan


Have you got any plans to revisit the humble guardsmen in future books?

Hell yes. The Emperor's Gift, my Grey Knights novel, has a few significant Imperial Guard presences, and I've got plans to seed the Guard in a few future novels beyond that. Obviously, I can't talk about them right now – it's way too early. In a novel like Helsreach, where the Black Templars are defending a whole city, it was no hardship at all to spend a lot of time focusing on the Guard characters. They offered a brutal comparison to the Space Marines, after all. Ideally, I'd like to maintain that kind of crossover and division between to two factions, as I've got nothing but love for the Guard.



Thanks, Aaron. You can download your copy of Cadian Blood today.


That should keep you busy until Monday, when we will have a new Print on Demand web exclusive for you – a reprint of an award winning graphic novel.

Have a great weekend.

Dan Abnett Interview, plus prizes!
Sabbat Worlds Cluster: One Ghost and Two Sheep Meet

Today we get to sit down and talk with author Dan Abnett, a highly esteemed Warhammer 40,000 fiction author. Among his works are the incredibly awesome Gaunt's Ghosts series, novels about the Horus Heresy, and the screenplay for the Ultramarines movie. He also has written numerous comics for Marvel and DC and comes with a list of credentials longer than your arm and twice as impressive. Unless you have like a robot arm or something, oh sorry, I forget myself at times. Anyway, Richard and I are fething thrilled to be interviewing Dan today who is a living legend in the field. It's good to have you here today, Dan.
Dan: Thank you for having me.
BAK: Now the first question that I like to ask is how did you become an author, however I want to add to that how did you get involved in writing for Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000?
Dan: I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid. I used to love drawing too, so when I discovered what comics were, I used to write and draw my own comics. Eventually, I couldn’t draw them fast enough for the stories I wanted to write. Jump forward about ten years, after taking a degree in English at University, my interest in comics led to me taking an editorial job at Marvel Comics in London, which is where I first started writing freelance - comic scripts for Thundercats, Ghostbusters, GI Joe etc. Eventually, I went freelance full time. After about a decade of doing that, I was contacted by Black Library, who were looking for comic writers to handle their proposed new Warhammer comic line (they’d seen some recent Conan stuff I’d written for Marvel). What they found was a guy who had also been a HUGE RPG player in his youth, who knew all about GW, and who ‘got’ the Warhammer Universes. They got me writing comics, short stories and, eventually, novels and.... forty novels later....
Richard: Have you ever played the table top game Warhammer 40k? If so, what influence, if any, does the experience have on the stories you write?
Dan: yeah, I have. I don’t get as much time to play as I’d like, but I’ve played pretty much every variation to get the ‘feel’ of it, and it greatly informs what I write. I get to see the different things players like to get out of a game, and try to put those things into stories.
BAK: A lot of Imperial Guard units draw some sort of inspiration from historical armies. Catachans look like soldiers in Vietnam, the Death Korps of Krieg could easily step into a World War I trench, so on and so forth. Was there any such inspiration for the Tanith?
Dan: To an extent, but more particularly historical settings inform the missions and adventures I send them on. I do a lot of ‘real world’ research: I think SF and Fantasy both work well if you research the closest real world analog to whatever you’re writing (I.e. you research something as though you’re writing a historical novel), then blend in the fantastical elements. So.. Straight Silver was WWI trench action, Guns of Tanith was Arnhem, Necropolis was Stalingrad, Only in Death was Rourke’s Drift, etc.
Richard: Do you find it challenging to write for a universe with such a specific look, feel and depth of history? Do you spend a lot of time reconciling what you want to write with existing canon?
Dan: Writing in a shared universe is always a challenge, and you have to respect the ‘core’ as much as possible. I hope I do that. And creative visions are very singular, so - yes - reconciliation does go on to make things work. I love the universe of Warhammer 40K, though, so that helps.
BAK: Among the fandom we like to joke that commissars are a trigger-happy bunch executing fleeing troopers right and left. However the commissars of the Tanith First-and-Only, Gaunt and later Hark, act in a far more reasonable manner. Did anything in specific motivate how you characterized these commissars?
Dan: I don’t think you could empathise much with a real trigger-happy bastard. Not over a long series of novels where character development and interaction drives the stories. You’ve got to care about the characters, and if the main heroes are as bleak and relentless as the Universe, that could get trying. I often feel that their effort to cling onto humanity in the face of such overwhelming horror is part of the power of the stories in 40K.
BAK: I think one of the main appeals of the Imperial Guard is that they're ordinary men and women with human emotions. To see even a commissar like Gaunt struggle and eventually triumph makes for a really great story.
Dan: Yes, there’s a very direct, visceral identification with Imperial Guard, more than any other army.
Richard: Are there any particular moth-to-a-flame topics in the Warhammer 40k universe that you'd love to explore, but have not yet made it into your body of work?
Dan: Some of the alien races I’d love to do more with: Orks, Necron, Eldar, Tyranids. Big fleet action too, though there’s a decent chunk of that in my next Gaunt, Salvation’s Reach.
BAK: In the handful of other Guard books I've read, if the Navy shows up at all they're just a means to get protagonists from point A to point B in the plot. In your books we see the Navy fight and die and sometimes come in conflict with Guard command. Have you ever thought about writing a book about the Imperial Navy?
Dan: I have many times. It’s tempting. It would be BIG.
BAK: In the introduction to The Saint omnibus you mention that Trooper Cuu was a last minute addition to Honour Guard. I'm going to be honest I hated Cuu so much, if nothing else than because he was messing with my favorite Tanith, Mad Larkin. How did you come up with such a character?
Dan: He came out of nowhere. He just appeared as a fully formed character and inserted himself into the book like he was alive. It was scary. Cuu may be despicable, but it’s antagonist characters like that that really fuel the success of a book by keeping the drama churning along.
BAK: Among your credits is writing the sceenplay for the Ultramarines movie. Did you have to get into a different mindset writing for Marines than you normally do for Guard?
Dan: Yeah, they’re tough. They have far less overt personality, due to their very nature. There is less to distinguish them. They are, in effect, less human. That makes them really hard to write - they don't even talk in contractions. I think I really began to get the hang of them in Brothers of the Snake and the Heresy books.
BAK: Yeah, I read once that Space Marines only vaguely remember feeling cold or afraid or tired, so their mindset is very hard for normal humans or even humans in the 41st millennium to understand.
Dan: You have to humanize them a little to make them work in a narrative, but you also have to remember that they’re super-men.
BAK: You've created a wonderful cast of characters with the Tanith First-and-Only, but obviously they're at war and people die. Is it hard for you to say goodbye to your characters when their time comes?
Dan; Of course. I need to care about the characters so that the reader does, otherwise the books are pointless. It also comes as a surprise sometimes - some deaths are unexpected!
BAK: Unexpected? I mean you're the author so I would figure if anyone saw a death coming it would be you. Do characters just have a time where they die?
Dan: Sometimes. Sometimes it’s planned. Sometimes they just die and it shocks me. Once in a while, I plan to kill a particular character and someone else takes the bullet for them.

BAK: Now here at I Smell Sheep we are famous for our Rapid Round questions. Basically we'll give you an either-or and you just pick the first one that comes to mind.

BAK: To please our slavedriver, Katie, Coke or Pepsi?
Dan: Neither Due to my recent ‘adventures in epilepsy’, I can’t drink caffeine. Can I get a ginger ale?
BAK: Well, Katie won't be happy, but I'll accept it.

Richard: Jimmi Hendrix or Billy Joel?
Dan: Hendrix. Unless it’s karaoke night, in which case Billy rules.
BAK: Commander Adama or Captain Picard?
Dan: Picard.
BAK: T-rex or Velociraptor?
Dan: T-Rex.
BAK: Turtles or elephants?
Dan: Uh, elephants?
BAK: It's all right, both are cool.
Richard: Converse or Doc Martens?
Dan: Converse.
BAK: Elves or dwarves?
Dan: Elves.
Richard: Shotgun or Chainsaw?
Dan: Shotgun *rrr-chakk!*
BAK: Plasma or meltagun?
Dan: Plasma.
BAK: Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us, Dan. Do you have any final things to say before we leave?
Dan: Thanks for having me along! See you all in the funny pages!

And a big thank-you to Dan for being so cooperative and patient with us. Now as you probably noticed there is in fact a prize giveaway. Dan has been gracious enough to donate a signed copy of his latest book, Embedded, as a prize for this interview. Now it may not be 40k material, but it's a science fiction story about soldiers in the near future so if you're a fan of Gaunt and his Ghosts, you'll probably like this book too. Now to be eligible for this prize you must do the following.

Leave a comment on this interview with the following two pieces of information:

1. A valid e-mail address.
2. Your favorite character from any of Abnett's books. (And preferably a little as to why.)

The polls will close on Thursday, 4th of August, 2011 at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard time. Double your chances to win by following our blog. Winner will be randomly selected and announced the next day, or Saturday at the latest if work gets in the way. Again a big thank you to Dan and I encourage everyone to pick up one of his books. Except for maybe Katie. They've got no smut in them so she'd just get bored. Everyone else should read them, though.

Ephrael Stern – Sister of Battle – Daemonifuge! Tainted soul or living weapon against the dark forces of Chaos?Under investigation by the Inquisition, Ephrael Stern and the Inquisitor Silas Hand must place their trust in each other as they embark on a dangerous quest to discover the origins of her power.