Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Blog, page 13

Where have I heard that before…?

I just got sent this.

Hmm. What could this book possibly be about?

Raising Alexander – Theists, Theists Everywhere

This is my baby son, Alexander.

[image error]

As you can see, he’s busily engaged in trying to tear his donkey’s head open.

Here he is in a Spider-Man top, meeting Loken, the family cat:

A meeting of minds.

Here he is, unbearably happy at 6 in the fucking morning, which is when we he wakes for the early feed:

Here he is in an unacceptably light-hearted version of his father’s normal attire:

Beanies shouldn’t have eyes on them. That’s the beginning and end of it.

Here he is in a sleeping bag that looks kinda like a dress:

Alexander is, fortunately, surrounded by grandparents, uncles, aunts, great-aunts, great-uncles, various cousins that come in at oblique bloodline-based angles, and (until very recently) a great-grandmother. And this is just on Katie’s side of the family. My side lives back in England, Poland, Canada, and wherever else the Dembski and Bowden clans exodussed themselves over time for kicks.

So on a day to day basis, there’s a lot of familial backup. The flip side of that coin means that everyone has an opinion. Katie and I are discovering that threshold discovered by every parent ever since the dawn of time, where your bumbling, stumbling efforts as a first-time parent are at least marginally watched by the very generation that raised you two or three decades before. For some people, that won’t go smoothly, but we’re pretty lucky on that score. Katie’s vast family network (Irish, remember, so we’re talking billions of the fuckers…) are supportive but not stifling. They’re eager, helpful, involved – but not, to use the parlance of the times, all up in our shit.

They are, however, all theists. Christian to the core. At least, all of them older than 30 are, which is to be expected in the Western World. You’d especially expect it in countries like Ireland and America were Christianity isn’t just “Something your grandma does on Sundays”, which is what it’s mostly become in England.

This isn’t an attack on religion, or religious beliefs, or the members of mine and Katie’s family that think Jesus is rad, and God is awesome. I give theists the same regard I give atheists, which is to say I devote exactly 0.0001% of my attention span to them and their views, and have no interest in taking either side in the spurious war over who fucks whom, what bits they do it with, and when they’re allowed to do it. I don’t care. I have my own thoughts on religious mythology, and that’s mostly based on how cool I find it. Whether I’m actually faithful or not is irrelevant, because this isn’t about me. This is about Alex.

No matter what I believe, or what his family believes, I’m pretty much of the mind that a baby / toddler / little kid is no more a member of Faith X than they are a stuntman, an astronaut, or a progressive grindcore post-industrial lead guitarist. Doug Stanhope makes the obvious point that if you “beat that shit into them while their heads are still soft”, then they’ll grow up believing it as the truth. Obviously, anyone can rethink things later in life, but the point is a good one.

I get that a lot of theists consider their religious views to be The Right One. That it benefits their lives, and is objectively the truth, so therefore why wait until someone’s 16 or 18 to start teaching it to them? The thing is – and here’s the kicker – that’s absolutely anathema to me. Not because people believe. I’m fine with people believing. But I get easily disgusted at the thought of anyone believing with such fervour that they tell a child their way is The One True Way. It reeks of some ardent, invincible arrogance that has always terrified me, and I’ll never understand why it doesn’t terrify everyone.

Of course, you get a bajillion theists who’ll say their path of faith is just one way of connecting with the same higher power every religious person connects with. Like I said, this isn’t some vast assault on anyone who believes in a god, or gods, or magic. I’m not anti-religion. I’m not even anti-organised-religion. I could be the most religious person in the world, and it’s no one’s business as far as I’m concerned. For those of you reading this now and assuming that, from my tone, I’m an abject atheist or a closet Christian, you’re wrong. My thoughts don’t mean shit, and that’s the whole point. The most you’ll see me weigh in on is the absolute necessity of the separation between church and state, which actually ties in quite neatly to my whole fears for raising my son. When you see the American far-right (who scarcely resemble the Republicans of a mere few decades ago) mentioning the Bible in politics, or dragging their beliefs into the policies for running a nation, you’ve got a sickness seeping into the system. Freedom of religion has to mean other people can believe other things, and not fall under the aegis of your faith’s laws. Society has laws based on humanistic morality. Religious laws had their chance, but we’re past that now. To suggest anything else is more than arrogant, it’s a disgusting breach of civil rights.

Katie and I half-joked about making The List, so Alexander’s tribal elders would know our views on just how we wanted him raised. That implies a rigidity and definitiveness that doesn’t actually exist; it’d really just be a Post-It saying:

“Don’t feed him solids when he’s too young.”
“Don’t tell him your god is the real one.”
“Don’t tell him he’ll go to Hell if he doesn’t believe what you believe.” 

I was briefly tempted to just use this:

The God of Fertility *and* Music? His parties must fucking rule.

It makes a logical point (about your god just being one of thousands, all ridiculous to someone, etc.) but it’s not really a reflection of what I think. It is, however, sort of funny.

We agreed that we’ll explain a bit about the nature of belief, and tell him about all of the world’s major religions – as well as any of the smaller ones I can Google or Wikipedia when the time comes. I know quite a chunk about most of the Big Faiths’ histories and mythologies, as it happens, as I researched them loads for various RPG projects and novels. I’m a fan of all religious backstories, and I’m always on the hunt for more info.

Where Alex is concerned, it mostly comes down to showing him that people across the world believe different things, and yes, a lot of it comes down to having it hammered into their heads while their heads are still soft. The people around him are uniformly Christian because of their location, their upbringing, and their close-knit culture. That doesn’t mean it’s true, it’s just the way the coins have come up in this particular place. Buddhists tend to believe X, and their faith came from Y. Muslims tend to believe A, and their faith started at Point B. Christians branch out along E, F and G, and the local branch is largely H.

And so on.

But it goes both ways. I’m not licking my lips and rocking back and forth with predatory delight, clutching my copy of God is a Cunt, by Richard Dawkins. I’m not salivating my way through heathen un-prayers, until the blessed, blessed night I can finally read anti-Christian memes to him as bedtime stories. That’s not how this works. If it was, do you honestly think I’d have spent so long discussing all this, and fifty times as long thinking about it?

 

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Atheist parents raise atheist kids who eventually become theists, and theist parents raise theist kids who eventually become atheists. I guess it’s irrelevant, when push comes to shove.

I think the key is to present people’s views respectfully, but equally, and in enough detail to give them context. Admittedly, the atheist view will come with a certain degree of logical counterargument and evidence against the theist view. Critical thinking and reason supports one side, let’s not deceive ourselves otherwise. But while the theist view lacks evidence, it thrives on community and people’s natural desire to belong, to be involved, and to flock together. People believe for reasons, and those reasons themselves are interesting. I also know from personal experience that as practically the only guy in this tiny village that doesn’t go to church, it feels a little weird and isolated. No one wants to feel that way, especially when you’re a kid. You want to fit in. You work hard to make sure you do. You tow the party line. I’m only fine with it because I’m an antisocial nightmare of a human being, that often hopes his own closest friends will be in last-minute (non-fatal) car accidents, preventing them from coming over. I like being alone, which – incidentally – is not a great trait in a dad, and something I’m working on.

I think the Elder’s Guide to Alexander will look a little like this:

We don’t care if he’s a theist or an atheist. We have no emotional investment in his final decision, either way. If he’s religious, we’ll gladly support him. If he’s not, we’ll support him there, too.


Respect the fact that it’s a final decision, not something he needs to worry about while growing up, unless he chooses to.


In terms of education, we’ll explain both theism and atheism to him, as best we can. Trust us to teach every religion (and the absence of religion) equally. If you’re worried we’ll make Christianity look bad, you’re doing us a disservice. If you’re worried we have an agenda to make our son atheist, you’re doing us a disservice.


We’ll never be angry if you take him to church. It’s a big part of the community here (and they have a cool band). If he wants to go to church, feel free to take him. If he doesn’t want to go, we know you’d never force him.


Don’t tell him your god is the right god, or that a theist view is objectively true. On the same note, don’t ever tell him he’s going to Hell if he does/doesn’t do X, or he’ll get to Heaven if he does / doesn’t do Y.

So those are my scattered, half-clutched thoughts on the whole thorny, stormy deal.

I’m a dad now. I have analysis paralysis. I worry.

I just want to do a good job. I’d settle for him being marginally less useless and fucked-up than me, and I’m aiming towards that goal however I can.

May Lono have mercy on us all.

Don’t let me fuck this up.

Art Attack! Bow Chicka Bow Wow

As you may have heard from the most reputable news sources, it was my birthday yesterday. Out of the blue, someone sent me this beautiful son of a… ahem, the sunless world:

I think we can all guess who that is.

As presents from nowhere come, that’s a hell of a lovely thing to wake up to. I get sent quite a lot of art – often with “Please don’t post this as it’s not finished” warnings, as well as First Claw conversion images, but I think this might be my fave. The selfish reason of it being a birthday present may indeed be making me biased, but my answer to that is Bite Me, followed by Please Eat My Balls.

On a similar note, I was recently watching a bunch of Traitor Legion tribute videos on YouTube, and although it should’ve been obvious, I was still surprised to see my influence painted all over the Night Lords ones. It made me miss First Claw, not only because if I’d kept them in the game they’d have been a license to print money (teehee!), but because I loved those guys, heart and soul, and I think I’ll always miss them.  Sometimes I muse over adding them as a Chosen Squad to my Chaos Marine army, but even by my standards, that’s a whole spire of self-indulgent bullshit.

But I digress. Let’s discuss art, as I’m in the mood to do so.

A lot of WoW players get their characters artworked up at some point. I’m usually too embarrassed, as despite most of my WoW, uh, “career” spent playing undead, I’ve played a lot of trolls (their faux Rastafarian-ness makes me cringe with some pale shade of residual white guilt) and blood elves (who are the victims of endless “gay” / “girl” / “losers play elves to feel cool” jokes because they’re less muscled, hunched and hideous than the other Horde races). But getting your character inked – or at least, inked well – is usually a cause for “Oh, hell yes!” moments in an RP guild.

Also, often a cause for “These aren’t tears of jealousy, there’s just some hatred in my eye” moments.

Katie recently commissioned some artwork of her paladin, along with another guildie’s paladin, as the two characters are very close – with a sisterhood kinda deal going on. As a late Christmas present, I actually begged Neil Roberts (of Eldar Path and Horus Heresy Series cover fame) to do both of Katie’s main characters, as well as Ron Spencer (of Werewolf: the Apocalypse and WoW: TGC fame). Those are all in mid-scribble, so either me or Katie will show them when they roll in. Patience, grasshopper. Professional artists are busy people; they also suffer from the ire of Deadline Gods.

But I thought some of you might this interesting in the meantime. I’m sort of in love with it – not only does it look lush, it also captures them both to perfection.

Here’s the final piece of the two girls, with the usual “click to make it bigger” addendum:

 

Hmm.

Hmmmm.

Hmmmmmm…

 

EXTRA, EXTRA. READ ALL ABOUT IT.

 

 

So.

I’m 32 today! Join me on the journey towards the mighty 33, whereupon we shall:

Laugh Uproariously! As I try to lose 3 stone, and rediscover my cheekbones!


Giggle with Glee! As I try to finish Betrayer, write The Talon of Horus, and then start another Heresy novel!


Chuckle with Delight! As I try to get 1,000 points of Word Bearers and Traitor Guard painted!


Chortle with Wonder! As I try to pitch a series of monthly Crimson Fist stories to Hammer & Bolter!


Be Puked Upon! As I try to raise a baby into a toddler!


Make Our Mummies Proud! As I try to finish my first non-40K novel, which goes through new incarnations every time I get in a bad mood!


Grate on Everyone’s Nerves! As I use more exclamation marks in this one blog post than I have in over half a million words of text over the course of 6 novels!

 

 

A Vital Question of Supervillain Fashion

Where…

…the fuck…

…can I buy this coat?

 

I don’t travel well.

I don’t travel well.

I travel even less well when it’s just me tracking my scuffed trainers through various airports in a sans Katie situation, which is what we’re dealing with here and now.

It’s 3:52am, and my too-fucking-hot hotel room is filled with the sounds of my tippy-typing fingers, and the tidal whispers of  a dual carriageway in the grey, bleak heart of London. The double-glazed windows render me mostly immune to the never-ending traffic, but before the last few years I lived in cities anyway, and nighttime traffic is as relaxing to me as the ocean is to deep people. I’m at Heathrow. I was born very near here. Close enough to walk in half an hour, or drive in a few minutes. I find that slightly uncomfortable, though I’m not sure why. A life left behind.

Part of the reason I don’t travel well is because I don’t like travelling. I lack that sweet and sexy gene all Cool People have, where they sit on long haul flights and talk to strangers about “The time in Rio when I was backpacking and this hot girl with a machete taught me how to drink alcoholised yak piss and fuck at the same time.” I hate too-hot hotel rooms that give me puffy eyes and never cool down no matter how low you set the AC. I don’t, in general, like travelling at all – unless it’s in my car, with my friends, and my music, and my sweets. The latter must be raspberry bonbons, without fail.

And part of the reason I lack that Go Get ‘Em attitude is because I travelled a lot as a kid. I don’t use it as the whole reason – I’m perfectly willing to admit that by most people’s standards, I’m probably just antisocial and boring. But when you stood in the shadow of the Sphinx at age 8, licking your cracked lips, and watched jackal-shapes flicker between the ruins of Luxor at night, it can breed a sense of the blasé about, well, this, that and the other. My reaction to travel is often “I did that already,” or “I’ve already done something just like that.”

But let’s not be arrogant about the whole thing. A lot of it is that I’m just an uncomfortable, hostile sort of person. I don’t take any solace or special snowflake-ness in my social anxieties, and rather than share them with the world, I tend to lock them away where no one can use them to colour their brief views of me. I like it that way. But in real terms, travelling involves a lot of things I can’t control, which is the #1 way to make me pop my neck frills and spit blinding venom, before scampering away into the undergrowth.

Also, I’m always late with novel deadlines, which translates to always being under pressure at work, which in turn melts into the reality that I’m always sort of at work because my bed is literally 20 feet from my office. I don’t have downtime. I have vague discomfort that what I’m doing at X point in time probably isn’t helping this year’s massively late novel. All of this means I’m almost always secretly, slowly panicking behind my eyes, which in turn means I react badly to being away from my desk – suffering a delicious cocktail of guilt, terror, and irritation.

So, no. I’m not a graceful traveller. I’d have been a fucking appalling astronaut, which is painful to admit as I’d been harbouring hopes that would eventually be my destiny until embarrassingly recently.

You might think this sounds ungrateful and shitty to say, especially given that I’m in the privileged position of getting sent to other countries for free, purely to sit around and have people who like my work come up to me and tell me that I’m great. You might think – and you’d be right to think this – that I have the best job in the world.

Mostly, I say Yes to conventions and signings because of Katie. She’s owed at least some tangible recompense for putting up with a shut-in who works 12 hours a day and acts like a tortured artiste prick the rest of the time. I like getting the chance to take her places, and turn her loose with my credit card in New York, for example. I like spending time in weird places with her. I like the fact she can see people queuing to see me, because it refreshes both of us: it shows there’s a real impact, an endgame, beyond the cold dryness of sales figures on printouts. When you live in the middle of nowhere and your job involves sealing yourself inside a room alone for countless hours a day, you can very easily become distanced from the fact there’s anything past the process of staring at a screen and sending in a novel once or twice a year over email, before going for a long walk, listening to Razed in Black, then sitting back down to do it all over again. It’s worse for her, because I’m extremely public and accessible on several forums, and Twitter, and Facebook, and emails. I ‘see’ a lot of my feedback without leaving the house. She doesn’t. There’s an element of vacuum about the whole thing, sometimes.

But I’m still not a great traveller, and you can see why it’s worse when she’s not here.

This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy conventions and book signings. I really don’t, as it happens, but it’s probably not for the reasons most people might think. It’s not a matter of ingratitude, or inconvenience, or not giving a fuck about the people that read what I write. Nuh-uh. I should note, and may regret it, that I give away all my author copies every time, to people who write to me with romantic/heartbreaking requests. Your husband takes great care of you, loves my work, and you want to get him a signed copy or two? With a shivery lip, I send whatever I have. Your boyfriend’s going to Afghanistan in a few months and you’re doing Christmas early for him because he won’t be here? Oh, God. Here, take these. You were the first person to email me and discuss baby stuff out of the blue? (Hi, Amy). Here, take all this, and I’ll add your beautiful baby girl to the dedication.

(I should mention, I have no copies of anything left right now. You’ve been warned.)

I love the fact anyone takes the time to read my work, let alone post a message or whatever to comment on it. For all my squillion thrilling flaws, ingratitude is really not one of them.

It almost always comes down to the fragile headjunk simmering inside my skull, which keeps up an internal monologue of deadline guilt, panic at saying something stupid that’ll get me in trouble with my overlords (there’s always something), and general discomfort around people in situations where I’m miles from my comfort zone. A lot of people with public gigs say the same thing: that when their fans (or equivalent demographic) come up to them and say nice things, they can’t help feeling a bit like frauds. I remember very exact moment when I saw someone was literally, actually nervous about coming up to speak to me. I’ve never felt so weird in my life. I just wanted say grab him by the shoulders and say “You don’t understand. I shouldn’t be here. I’m just a guy that has a level 85 Rogue and reads fantasy books all the time.”

Mind you, I look at Alexander – who’s now almost 6 months old – and think similar things. “You don’t understand. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not a Dad, I’m just me. I trip over clothes that I can’t be bothered to put away, and think stupid shit like how people probably saw in black and white before I was born.”

I’ve been writing this for about an hour, with many deletions, and I should probably start making tracks to the airport terminal. if you’re at Chicago Games Day, I may just see you on Saturday. If you are, please be nice. I miss Katie and Alex like crazy, I’ll be jetlagged to Hell and back, and I’m so late with this deadline that I’m considering having my editors assassinated, so I can vanish into the jungle.

For anyone who follows my Facebook messages: No, I didn’t put one of Katie’s thongs on my head and pretend to be Bane on the plane. I was, however, immensely tempted.

“What’s ‘Prince of Crows’ About?”

I keep getting asked this one.

Along with “When will we see some Night Lords stuff in the Heresy?” and “Will we get to see any pre-Heresy Curze?”

Most of all: “When will we get to see more of Sevatar?”

The answer to all of these things is “Go away and leave me alo–” Uh, I mean, “Shadows of Treachery is out in October.”

Soooooooooooo…

My contribution to this (which was supposed to be in The Primarchs) is Prince of Crows, which is a novella about (gasp!) Konrad Curze, Sevatar, and the Night Lords Legion after another run-in with the Dark Angels. It’s set just after ‘Savage Weapons’ and The Lion, and opens up with the VIII Legion devastated after the Dark Angels kicked their asses left and right across the Thramas Sector. The Legion lost the final battle, Curze is crippled after the Lion cut his throat, and the remaining Night Lord commanders are meeting up to decide just their options are. It also has a significant chunk of what I’d have sliced into a Night Lords novel, which is about Curze’s past and growth on Nostramo, and how he went from beggar child on the streets to their happy, happy king.

Oh, and it explains just why Sev is called the Prince of Crows. It’s really not why you think.

I kinda-wanna also add that this is a novella, not a short story. It’s about 3-6 times as long as a short story (depending on the story) and closer to 30-50% of a novel (depending on the novel). In short, it’s quite long, and took me fucking ages to do. It needed to tell a lot of backstory about Curze, show the Legion in its current state after getting mauled by the Dark Angels, and set up a future Night Lords novel which I’d obviously quite like to do in the relatively near future. But I write slowly, so hold your freaking horses on that score. I’m still doing Betrayer, then (probably?) the first Abaddon/Black Legion novel, still tentatively titled The Talon of Horus.

If any of this sounds remotely interesting, then… behold.

Black Library’s been publishing daily extracts in its newsletter all week, which I’m guessing will include today and tomorrow, too. I’m heading off to London today, and Chicago tomorrow (ooooh, such a jetsetting lad…) so I can’t link or post anything else past the first three extracts, which I was told about last night by some well-meaning soul on Facebook. But for convenience, I thought I’d spin these up here. For the rest, you’ll need to subscribe. Off you go.

Go on, now.

Go, go.

(By the way, if you’re at Games Day US on Saturday, me and Jim Swallow will see you there.)

So, without further wordjunk from Yours Truly:

Most Common Words in My Last Two Novels

For kicks, I ran my last two novels Void Stalker and The Emperor’s Gift through Wordle, which makes a word cloud out of the most frequently used words in any given block of text, taking out the really basic ones like “and” and “I” and “the”.

I have a feeling if I did this for Betrayer right now, it would look a little like this:

No points for working out that one.

No points at all.

Wait, what?

I was going onto eBay to look for a few more Enforcers, for our Necromunda campaign.

Suddenly, this:

Items I might like? Oh, cool. Let’s see…

Baby stuff. Baby stuff. Baby stuff…“Adult Baby White Cotton Onesie”.

Really, internet? This is who you think I am? This is how it’s going to be?

Also, £25? Twenty-five fucking pounds? Stop ripping off the poor bastards who are into that stuff. They probably have enough problems already.

“Boring Conversation Anyway…”

I’ll spare you the tedium and get to the point. Here’s why I’ve not been blogging much:

I’m finishing ‘Extinction’, which is a short story in the GD UK anthology, serving as a prologue to The Talon of Horus – the first novel in the Black Legion/Abaddon/Rise of the Warmaster series. It’s all unconfirmed, but that’s the aim right now.


I’m coming close to being about halfway through Betrayer. This book is starting to feel like it’ll be long; about as long as The First Heretic. Maybe a little longer.


I’m slowly getting ’round to doing that video Q&A I promised a while back. It’s taking a while because it’s pretty time-consuming, and I’ve not got a wealth of free time right now.


The Lordi crew have been working on The Lord Inquisitor, which now has so many views on YouTube that fucking it up has become a real fear. Last time I looked, it was up to almost half a million views, which isn’t exactly small fry.


Alexander’s now 4.5 months old, meaning he never shuts up with his wordless babbles and is putting everything he can reach into his mouth. So there’s that going on.


I’m playing way too much Civ V.


But not so much WoW.


The Suns drafted Kendall Marshall (that’s good) but lost Steve Nash (that’s bad). They signed Goran Dragic (that’s good) and Michael Beasely (that might be good or bad). They’re also moving in on Eric Gordon (that’s good) but New Orleans will almost definitely keep his contract (that’s bad). The frogurt is also cursed. That’s bad.


I’m devoting a few hours a week to Star Wars: The Old Republic, playing with Katie and our friends Steve and Emma. We’re all D&Ders and roleplayers in WoW, so it’s all very in-character and stuff. I’ll probably do some Let’s Play updates here and there on my blog, if anything strikes me as funny or cool enough to show. I tend to prefer to play healers (which makes a lie of my Rogue in WoW…) and I’d briefly dabbled with a Trooper when I played the first month of TOR right after it was released. Republic Commando remains my fave Star Wars game ever (admittedly tied with Knights of the Old Republic), and I wanted to give a Trooper another shot, but I ended up trying something new.

Here’s the gang at Level 11, just starting out in our basic equipment after we just met up for the first time. In true MMO guild-style, we posed for a screenie. Click to zoom, and all that jazz.

I really like how the girls are playing gunslinging badasses… and the guys are sexually-repressed space monks.