Zombies Vs Lasguns


We do like to keep you excited, so with the complete Daemonifuge now available, it’s time for a sneak peek at the next release in our Print on Demand line, Hive of the Dead.

This is the first of a new range of Warhammer 40,000 gamebooks, interactive novels where you take the role of the main character and decide where they go, what they do and whether they live or die. You fight the many enemies you meet in your adventure with a simple dice-based rules system where you roll to hit, wound and save, just like in Warhammer 40,000. In Hive of the Dead, you are an Imperial Guardsman who wakes in a cell, surrounded by the walking dead. Your mission: to escape, preferably without itchiness and a craving for brains… We thought we’d give you a brief extract from this exciting new book, taken from a journey through the zombie-haunted depths of Hive Septus:

16




As you move through the centre section of the hallway, the faulty lume strip cuts out, and as you stand there in the sudden darkness, you can make out the sound of growling coming from somewhere. Suddenly, the light flicks back into life and the round window in the wall next to you explodes out in a shower of glass, ejecting something dark and furry into the hallway. As you back away, the dark shape lifts itself up off the floor and growls at you through its bared, sharp fangs, blood and saliva dripping from its jaws. An emaciated zombie dog stands before you, taut and ready to pounce.


To run down the corridor towards the next bend, turn to 185
To stand and fight, turn to 226

To find out if you can escape the attentions of this corrupted cadaverous canine, you’ll have to return on the 5th of September to buy your copy.
If you can’t wait that long for lasgun vs zombie action, downloading Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s new eBook Cadian Blood should satiate your thirst for post-apocalyptic action horror.

Just Dave wrote:It sounds all right to me. I have faith in Black Library to pull it off too...

The Black Library Q&A Session from Games Workshop's US Games Day. Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Chicago Illinois. July 30th, 2011

Shot by: David "Commissar" Ploss for www.TheFoundingFields.com and Black Library.

SHOW NOTES:

0:00-0:10:00 - Pregame debauchery (not really debauchery...)

1:22:00 - New and Noteworthy titles. Spotlight on BL features.

4:20:00 - Author Introductions

4:35:00 - Question 1: Availability of BL Books on Kindle and other various devices.

5:20:00 - Question 2: Upcoming Print on Demand titles?

7:10:00 - Question 3: GD first-timer inquires which Books/series each author has written, then asks them to pick their favorite book!

12:20:00 - Question 4: Possible secrets revealed soon in the Horus Heresy sereis?

13:20:00 - Question 5: If you could have miniatures made of any of your characters, which would you choose?

14:30:00 - Question 6: Are there any plans for future Black Library inspired miniatures?

15:25:00 - Question 7: As BL authors, do you get to pick what you write about?

20:10:00 - Question 8: Anything you can say about continuations of the Dark Angels storyline? (Horus Heresy)

21:38:00 - Question 9: Whom do you reference based on precedence regarding writing about various factions?

24:35:00 - Question 10: Where does Deliverance Lost fit into the timeline of the Horus Heresy series?

27:11:00 - Question 11: Is there interaction between BL authors and the codex writers/game developers?

32:15:00 - Question 12: Has anyone had a plot idea get flat-out rejected?

37:21:00 - Question 13: Is there any bit from the back-catalogue you would like to revisit or expand upon?

39:25:00 - Question 14: Are there attempts to line up the releases of books with releases on the hobby side?

42: 34:00 - Question 15: Deadlines? Good or Bad?

44:50:00 - Question 16: Any hints of Clint breaking into 40k more soundly?

45:44:00 - Question 17: Any chance of a novelization of the Space Marines video game from THQ?

47:35:00 - Question 18: What sort of sources do you use as reference material/inspiration for your books?

51:00:00 thru. End Credits

WHAT’S 20 FEET HIGH, HAS TWO HEADS AND SHOOTS LIGHTNING FROM ITS HANDS?
Kairos Fatewaever, of course, and who better to depict the Master of sorcery than Jon Sullivan, who has captured the warped and twisted natureof the daemons of Chaos in his new artworkfor the cover of Architect of Fate.


The unfortunate Space Marines caught up in the mutating wake of the greater daemon lie sprawled across the battlefield, helpless against the power of Tzeentch.


Architect of Fate is an anthology of Space Marine short stories by some of Black Library’s finest authors, compiled by New YorkTimes bestselling editor Christian Dunn. It will be available in May next year; you can set your reminder now.

In the meantime, you have the rest of the Space Marine Battles novels to enjoy.

As you’ve probably deduced from my previous posts, I am currently writing a trilogy about Lord High Commander Solar Macharius and the great crusade he led at the start of the 41st Millenium. It’s something of a daunting task portraying the conqueror of a thousand worlds so how do I propose going about doing it?
Well, not by telling the story from his point of view, that’s for sure. Macharius is a military genius and I am not, despite what I may occasionally claim across the gaming table and when leading another doomed defence of Iceblood Tower in Alterac Valley. As a rule, it’s pretty easy to write about characters who are tougher than you, better looking than you, stronger than you, more confident than you and more attractive to women. All you are doing is putting a lot of male wish fulfilment fantasy down on paper. It’s actually pretty hard to write about characters who are smarter than you, at least from the internalised points of view that I prefer. Being a man who believes in taking the easy route in everything, I ruled out showing the story from Macharius’s point of view pretty early on. This meant finding a Doctor Watson character to relate the tale.
Oh yeah, I decided to do the story in first person because, well, I could. I liked the idea of taking a close look at the 41st Millenium from the point of view of an ordinary man, and I am a big fan of Glenn Cook’s Black Company series which struck me as being an excellent model for what I would be attempting here. It has an ordinary soldier’s view of world-shatteringly epic events told with humour and cynicism.
(If you’ve ever fancied reading a military fantasy about hard-boiled mercenaries in a world ruled by what is essentially a collection of Dark Lords, I recommend you rush out and buy Cook’s books immediately. If I recall correctly, the first three books of the series are available in a collected omnibus. But I digress…)
My initial idea, to be honest, was to tell the tale of the Crusade through the eyes of an ordinary Imperial Guard soldier, and skip having Macharius in it at all. Eventually the sheer stupidity of setting a story in a milieu dominated by the epoch’s greatest general and hero and not using him as a character became evident even to me.
So I had to sit down and think about Macharius and how was I going to fit him in. I mean what is a conqueror of worlds like? Ruthless, charismatic, used to getting his own way? That all goes without saying. In general, our more recent historical examples have not been admirable or likeable men, and I find at least one of those to be a necessary quality in my central characters in longer works. I have to live with these guys in my head for a year and a half while I am writing the books so it’s a good idea to, at least, not be actively nauseated whenever I come to describe them. (I make an exception for Grey Seer Thanquol because I find him funny and he’d probably send Boneripper around to tear my head off if I said anything different. And did I say funny? I meant brain-blastingly awesome and possessed of god-like charisma.)
I tore through the Imperial Guard Codex to see what it said about Macharius (and to make sure nothing had changed since the last edition I had read…hey, it happens, I’ve been caught out that way before).
What does it say? A visionary. A brilliant and callous strategist. A brutal conqueror and ruthless soldier. So far, so good. What’s this? He split the Iron Wall of Kallistan with a word?
That strikes me as being a somewhat unbalanced power for a character who potentially might take to the tabletop in a 40K battle. I mean splitting the walls of a Hive with a word would probably cost a lot of points. I decided the more over the top bits of description in the Codex were hyperbole. There would be no splitting walls with words in these books unless the words spoken were “Detonate that thermonuclear destruction charge, sergeant”.
Surely this sort of thing must be part of the legend that sprung up after Macharius’s death, tales that clustered round his name in the way that they clustered around Alexander’s. So in some shrine on a backwater world in Segmentum Pacificus there is a cult of Macharius. Its members really believe Macharius split the walls of Kallistan with a word, and they write complaints on Warhammer 40K forums when somebody suggests anything different. Sorry, I meant they burn all unbelievers. Or maybe both. My remarks here will probably have people with pitchforks and torches crowding around me at Gamesday so I will find out.
There is obviously a core of truth to the stories, some seed that could grow into this mighty myth as pointed out in my reference to demolition charges above. It’s an idea I may be able to work into the story so it gets filed away for future reference. For purposes of my story, Macharius is a man. He may be stronger, tougher, more attractive to women and smarter than me, but he is a man. How could I make him anything else? He is a great hero of the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Guard are the very epitome of ordinary human courage facing the cosmic horrors of the 41st Millennium. Macharius needs to exemplify that, not undercut it. This is the real reason for ditching the wall-splitting.
Well, we know something about Macharius now. We know what he did. We know what some of the people around him wrote about him in their histories. But what was he like? In these books, he is going to be an actual living, breathing character who walks on and says things and does something more than shoot people. The Biblical language of the Codex does not tell us too much about him. I mean we need to be able to believe in him, be surprised by him, taken off-guard by some sudden, unexpected thing, the way we are with real people.
Fortunately, as was immediately obvious to a classically educated man like myself, Macharius is based on Alexander the Great, one of the more appealing great conquerors in history. That was a good starting point. So it was time to renew my acquaintance with Alexander. Out came the military histories and Robin Lane Fox’s excellent biography. (Yes, it’s part of my job to read books that I would read for my own amusement anyway. Cool, isn’t it?)
Let’s see– he inherited his kingdom from his father Philip– not strictly necessary for my purposes. Macharius is an Imperial General, he will come by his army in a somewhat different way. On the other hand, a strict and powerful father who had died young leaving a legacy of achievement for the son to compete with and eventually surpass. We’ve seen similar things in our own time with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner. There might be something there to work with. Hell, the Imperium has the most powerful father figure of all-time in the Emperor, I can certainly do something with that. So the fleshly father died young and Macharius transferred his filial loyalty to the Imperium. It would certainly explain his powerful feelings about the Imperium and re-uniting it. Anyway, this is all getting a bit Freudian so we will draw a discrete veil over it and move on…
What was Alexander like? Good-looking, fit, extraordinarily tough, a general who led from the front and cared for his soldiers. This can all be lifted straight but its not really all that surprising. The habit of a general leading from the front seems hyper-unrealistic to anyone familiar with modern warfare but it was still happening as late as the Victorian era. I can live with it and it gives me another insight into Macharius’s personality. He likes to fight. I don’t mean he likes moving troops around on a map either. I mean he physically likes to fight, he enjoys it in the same way Tyrion does in Blood of Aenarion. He takes real pleasure in it. That tells you something about the man.
Alexander also had a habit of talking to ordinary soldiers and asking them how they felt, how things were going, what the state of the army was like etc. That’s a quirk that I can definitely use. It’s a point of contact between him and the narrator as well.
Alexander had a very dark side. He killed a friend and officer in his army by throwing a spear through him after a drunken argument. He regretted it afterwards but he still did it. He apparently burned down a palace in a fit of drunken rage at least according to some stories. That can go in as well. He has a temper and he likes to drink and can drink too much at times. There is a weakness that has an almost Slaaneshi ring to it. Doubtless there will be rumours…Alexander’s mobile court was full of constant intrigue. The bureaucratic and military hierarchy of the Imperium is just the same. The rumours can be spread by Macharius’s enemies to discredit him but there is a core of truth to them as well. It’s the same as the tale of wall but used for darker purposes. And there were many assassination attempts on Alexander– all good dramatic stuff for a history of the crusade.
So we have a picture of the man starting to emerge: powerful, ruthless, driven by forces he does not quite understand, a bit of a drunkard with a murderous temper. He comes to power in an age of Chaos with the Imperium in turmoil and sets about to restore it for the glory of the Emperor and grab some for himself. He is a product of his times in some ways, being born into a fractured Imperium with a dream to renew it. So far, so good, but I am going to need more.
At this point in my quest for role-models to use when describing a Great Conqueror I came across a very unusual one by a strange coincidence, but this post has already reached 1800 words and I have work to do so I’ll describe that another day…

So in some shrine on a backwater world in Segmentum Pacificus there is a cult of Macharius. Its members really believe Macharius split the walls of Kallistan with a word, and they write complaints on Warhammer 40K forums when somebody suggests anything different. Sorry, I meant they burn all unbelievers. Or maybe both. My remarks here will probably have people with pitchforks and torches crowding around me at Gamesday so I will find out.

Vermintide


With the release of Nagash Immortal marking the conclusion of the Rise of Nagash trilogy, this momentous chronicle of one of the darkest times in Warhammer history draws to a close. But the Warhammer World is seldom at peace and as of May next year, the Old World is plunged into one of the most chaotic and bloody ages in its history, as the very forces that opposed the necromancer Nagash seek to destroy the land of men.
As with the first three trilogies in our Time of Legends range, Jon Sullivan has produced another breathtaking cover, encapsulating the Empire in a desperate struggle against plague and invasion.

The rats themselves look particularly malevolent(it’s the glowing eyes, never trust an animal with glowing eyes) . Take a look at these cuddly critters.

The novel , Dead Winter will be written by CL Werner, whose experience writing the Thanquol and Boneripper series makes him Black Library’s leading expert on the verminious multitudes of the under empire. Not one to miss if you’re a fan of the skaven or the Time of Legends novels, set your reminder today.

Influences & Inspirations: SARAH CAWKWELL
Continuing our series of guest posts about influences and inspirations (read the open invitation), I present you with our second author!

Sarah Cawkwell has written several short stories set in Games Workshop’s grim-dark 41st millennium. Her first full-length novel for the Black Library, The Gildar Rift, is due out in December 2011 (and is much anticipated here at Civilian-Reader – it features Huron Blackheart, one of the most colourful Chaos characters in Warhammer 40,000 lore).

You can catch up with the slightly obscure adventures of what it’s like to be a genre fiction writer at Sarah’s great blog, “Pyroriffic” (which is also her Twitter handle). So, without further ado, let me pass things over to Sarah…

Which author, series, or novel was the most influential to you as a writer, publisher, or agent (or whoever)?

Ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (which given I only come up to its shoulder now wasn’t so long ago), I've wanted to write stories. I've wanted to write stories because one of my earliest memories was of making somebody laugh with something I had written. Quite a clear memory. I was in the first year of school, so can't have been older than five, and we had to write a story that the teacher – Mrs Chapman, I remember her well – would then read out. Mine was about one of the Mister Men who had stayed determinedly by an acorn waiting for it to grow into a tree and about how his attention wandered to look at all the other things around.

My teacher laughed at the story and that was what I was going for. Even then, I got a buzz out of seeing someone enjoy something I had created. Creative writing was always my favourite part of school and that's something I want to come back to at the end.

But to answer the question... what has been most influential to me as a writer... well, there are so many that it’s hard in some ways to whittle it down to one. The Dragonlance series, for example, was one of the first series of books that hooked me in and made me actually care about the characters within. I moved onto many other fantasy series and found inspiration in them all. Robin Hobb established herself firmly as one of my favourite authors for much the same reason – her characters are to die for.

If I look to the left and right, at my hugely over-populated bookcases, the story tells itself. It’s rich with a variety of well-known and less well-known authors. Robin Hobb, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Terry Goodkind, Bernard Cornwell, Chris Wooding, James Barclay, Piers Anthony, Jane Yolen. And yes, J.K. Rowling. Don’t judge me. [No judgment from here; I enjoy them, too. - Stef]

On top of the over-populated shelves there are all the Black Library books that have yet to receive their very own bookcase, and look at the inspiration there: Jim Swallow, Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Mike Lee... Look! They’re not alone up there! They’re joined by Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series and Mike Carey’s Felix Castor books. Right in the middle of the pile is a Star Wars tie-in novel called The Courtship of Princess Leia. Oh, and my copy of Sims 3. I wondered where that had gone...

There’s another three sets of shelves upstairs bulging with books. Everywhere in this house, there are books. If there’s a flat surface, there’s a book of some sort. There is a point to this. Honestly. Bear with me. And my point is this.

If you sit down with a book and you take something away from it, then it has inspired you. For me, I cannot honestly say that I have been inspired to write by any single author. I have been inspired to write by every book that I have read. Inspired by good books, because “I want to be like that” and also by bad books, because “I want to do it better than that”.

Every book, be it Enid Blyton’s Magical Faraway Tree series or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has impacted on me in some way. It’s not quite reached the stage where I’m sitting wondering what would happen if the children from Blyton’s books went up the ladder and found the World of 40K (other than thinking that would make a staggeringly cool story... the Saucepan Man in power armour, or Dame Washalot in Sororitas gear... heh...).

Oops, I digressed.

If the measure of a truly inspirational book or series of books is one that you return to over and over again, then I would narrow it down to Robin Hobb’s Liveship trilogy. It’s a story that pulls me in and keeps me guessing every time, even though I know the outcomes. Beautifully written, expertly delivered... everything I want to read. And if the measure of a truly inspirational book is one that you remember with more fondness than anything else, it would be Noel Langley’s The Land of Green Ginger which our teacher read to us every day before home time.

Take inspiration from everything you read that’s around you. Because books, no matter their creed, colour or other word beginning with ‘c’, are inspirational. And that’s all you need.

And the creative writing? If I had to name a single big inspiration, it would be my secondary school English teacher, Mr. Nye. Because he encouraged my quirky, slightly off-the-wall stories and, just like my mother, always told me that I could write a book.

Spoiler:

.. that scene with Flint in book 3 ... hits me lie a gut punch even now

BrookM wrote:A short synopsis of the upcoming HH Raven Guard novel: "Corax and the few remaining Raven Guard escaped the massacre at Isstvan V but must now tend their wounds and replenish their numbers ... the primarch returns to Terra to seek the Emperor’s counsel and is guided to the ancient genetech used to create the first Space Marines ... unaware that the shadowy agents of the Alpha Legion move among the Raven Guard..."

This is Gav's comment from Facebook on this all: Mwahahaha!

Flachzange wrote:First time I've ever had an issue with BL, but I figured Id let people know anyways.

BL announced, on their blog, that they would bring 30 copies of promethean sun to GD Germany. I bought a megaticket so that I could be first in line and have a realistic chance of picking one of these up. I get to the BL stand and there is exactly 0 copies. I was told they were sold at other conventions, despite the announcement on the blog. I mailed BL about that, because I was rather disappointed. The reply said, that it was a misunderstanding with the team attending the GD. Okay, I guess I can understand that. But that must mean that the copies are still around? Seems they are, so I asked about that again. The answer: Copies left will be sold at GD UK exclusively.

reds8n wrote:

The RG HH novel seems most promising indeed.. no surprise really one supposes.

Name that Heretic


“Cower mortal, I have come to relive you from your tragic lives in pathetic service to a false god.”

Is how this guy almost certainly introduces himself.



This is the new artwork for the cover of Treacheries of the Space Marines by the inestimable Hardy Fowler.

This will be a new Space Marine anthology, Edited by Christian Dunn, and will join Heroes of the Space Marines, Legends of the Space Marines and Victories of the Space Marines as a compilation of short stories by a selection of Black Library authors.

But who is the traitorous terminator in the picture above? Well, we thought it would be fun to let you, the people decide. Head over to our Facebook page now and vote for your favourite name for a list of five possible options. To help you out, he’s a follower of Tzeentch and part of the Oracles of Change warband.

But wait, there’s more! We will also be re opening the submissions window in September for short stories, based on this character, to be published in Treacheries of the Space Marines, alongside established Black Library authors.Submit your short stories following the submission guidelines here, so grab those quills and get writing.

Since its Friday, you might be wondering “what am I going to read this weekend?” how about four classic Warhammer novels, now available in eBook format, including three titles by Graham McNeill: Guardians of the Forest, The Ambassador and Ursun's Teeth, as well as the chris Wraigt novel Dark Storm Gathering.

Speaking of Graham McNeill, next week at blacklibrary.com is Graham McNeill week. We’ve got exclusive extracts, a guest blog and new cover art revealed. Be sure to check back next week;

happy reading.