Look what Mrs Postie brought today!
Next Installment of The Sundering
Work continues on The Crown of the Blood after some ill health and other distractions. Hitting my stride now and really enjoying it (wrote the first sex scene on friday, that was a fresh experience). Just in the process of signing the deal for a new Space Marine novel for Black Library, and organising a Shadow King/ Raven’s Flight signing tour for December and January. Also don’t forget that I’ll be at GamesFest on 24th Oct along with a cornucopia of other authors.
Addendum: Just found out the artist for the Crown of the Blood cover – Paul Young. I can see how Paul’s flair for the historical mixed with fantasy will lend itself really well to this.
All the best.
Please, please by one of the few authors to not repeat tons of basic stuff about Space Marines in their novels
Okay, I am probably exaggerating this, but a few too many Black Library books contain the important introduction, paraphrasing: Space Marines are bio-engineered killers, they are big, blah, blah. Later on the author reiterates these points.
Still, I have really enjoyed the Horus Hersey books.
Funnily enough I am about to take a break from 40k and read Malekith. I bought in when it came out and then postponed it…
I’m amazed you got anything from Mr Postie!
I’ll look forward to reading it.
‘grats on your first sex scene. next time try a kinky slaanesh one involving a hedgehog.
jokes aside, I know they are hard to right, esp with the kind of restrictions BL (probably) has.
Hey mate, Shadow King looks great! I’m also very much looking forward to reading some non-licensed stuff from you – bring on Crown of the Blood!
Ant
Oh, and I just had a look at Paul Young’s artwork – good looking stuff.
Oooh, Paul Young’s work is…enchanting. I’ve seen a decent number of those books, too. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with for your book.
ColCorbane – I believe that he said “Mrs Postie”…
Pete B – I think that The Crown of Blood will be an Angry Robot title, not one for BL, so restrictions are quite a bit looser, in the long run.
Black Library guidelines are along the lines of a PG-rating or mainstream TV, which is that build-up and aftermath are okay but the act itself ‘fades to black’. There are couple of such scenes in Shadow King. Angry Robot is more like 18 certificate (in the UK) or HBO. The trick is finding a balance somewhere between writing porn and giving an anatomy lesson! For The Crown of the Blood, the sexual behaviour of some characters is important in defining their relationships and forms part of a sub-plot, so I’ve tried to avoid being gratuitous without shying away from it.
New Space Marine Book………lovely…..looking forward to it.
All I get is bills.
Looking good – nice artwork from Mr. Young there.
(The hamster sets off that photograph so very, very well…)
Congrats Herr Thorpe for completing another novel.
Looks pretty meaty too
, is it currently the largest pagecount BL have ever published??
Regards,
Sam
Hi Sam,
Shadow King is 150,000 words, which puts it around the same size as Nagash the Sorcerer (a bit over 500 pages). It ws great having more space to explore other characters and sub-plots – The Crown of the Blood novels will be a similar length, as will be Caledor. I’m sticking to 100k for the Eldar Path trilogy and the Space Marine Battles novel though.
You know, I bet you’re heard this a million times, but…
I loved Angels of Darkness.
It’s just really old (kinda), but I still just love it.
Will you be writing any more 40k fiction? Thanks.
TheSGC
I’ll be writing plenty of 40K fiction in the future. As well As the Raven’s Fight audiobook out in Jan 2010, next summer sees the release of Path of the Warrior, the first in my new eldar trilogy. (Don’t tell anybody, but here’s a little sneaky clue about the Space Marines Battles novel – it’s called Purging of Kadillus
)
Looking good, can’t wait to read it, just wish Mrs. Postie would bring me something cooler than junk-mail! That is just about all I get over here in the States…
PY’s art looks intriguing, and I’ll be interested to see what he can conjure up for you. Are you sending him several ideas, or do you just send one part of the book, or is Angry Robot taking care of it? Whichever, I hope he captures what you are looking for…
Thanks for the updates!
Angry Robot have an author questionnaire to fill in, part of which concerns the novel being written. There’s space to include any information you feel might be useful to the cover artist. I provided a couple of extracts from the opening pages describing the main character and setting, and links to a couple of photos as reference. I didn’t go into suggesting what the actual cover might show though – I figured that’s best left to the artist.