Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Blog, page 14

Cyrene & Argel Tal Artwork

Someone sent me this a couple of hours ago, prompting me to head on a very short Google search, for Noldofinve on Deviant Art.

I’m in love with this. It’s Cyrene and Argel Tal. It’s like… actually them. And it’s perfect.

It’s also now my desktop background while I write Betrayer, which is pretty apt considering where I’m at in the story, and what Erebus and Argel Tal are discussing. Ho, ho, ho…

It’s really, really, really strange to see your writing having an effect on people. In the handful of years since I started – I’m still pretty new to all this, remember – I guess I was prepared for some of the awesome comments online,  and the reviews, and the chatter at signings and conventions. That doesn’t devalue any of them, it’s just that all that stuff was easier to imagine because it’s considered a perk of the trade. (Incidentally, I’m often cripplingly uncomfortable and anxious at signings, and do my best to disguise it, so I don’t consider it a perk. I consider it terrifying.)

Same with minis of my characters – I’ve seen so many killer conversions of Talos and co. but you almost expect it, given the passion of readers and hobbyists, when there’s a nebulous realm of overlap between the two.

But actual artwork of my characters? Someone cared enough about my head-mess to capture them outside of converted plastic? Sort of mindblowing. And this perfectly captures the soul of those two characters, at least as I imagined it. On a similar note, I’ve seen tattoos people got based on my work, like, in a language I freaking invented. That’s terrifying, too.

But in a good way.

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Raymond Swanland & The Black Legion Series

As you may or may not be aware (and may or may not even care) back in the mists of time I was musing over a series I tentatively called ‘Rise of the Warmaster’, essentially a long-running Black Legion series about Abaddon and the Sons of Horus becoming the Black Legion. The first three novel ideas had the names The Talon of Horus, Black Legion, and Chaos Ascendant, which I was genuinely sort of proud of, even if they’re the literature vaporware equivalent of Half-Life III, and may never actually happen.

My one demand throughout the whole vague pitching “I’ll do this eventually” / “Please do these books, Aaron” with my editors (who have wanted me to speed up and do these books for ages) was that I’d only do them if Raymond Swanland did the cover.

This is a genuine conversation that just happened on Skype with Katie, while I was working:

Aaron: Oh my fuck.

Aaron: Remember the guy I wanted to do my Abaddon artwork? The “I won’t do the series without his covers” guy?

Katie: Yeah.

File Sending…

File Sent.

 

Aaron: I’ve decided I hate him.

Aaron: A shame. Would’ve been a good cover.

Aaron: Oh, well.

Katie: So.

Katie: We need a divorce.

Katie: He’s single, right? He loves kids, right?

Aaron: Just die, already.

“So who’s Kargos?”

Most people got the reference to who Kargos is, in the Betrayer prologue yesterday.

Obviously, like most 40K reference characters, he’s basically… no one. Most characters are guys or girls from images and/or quotes from 5-25 years ago, and just to have a little slice of continuity, their names get used as cute nods to old material. But there’s never any real detail. (I think that’s also a key detail between the varying levels of “tie-in fiction” that get tossed about. Using an old name for continuity is a different beast from using characters with several seasons of TV behind them.)

But anyway, Kargos started out as one of my favourite pieces of artwork from way back in 2nd Edition, and a great quote that shows a little of Chaos’ depth and appeal. The artwork is a little dated now – especially in regards to physique – but it still rocks. It’s also pretty charming that he lives on a planet made entirely of fire and skulls. His 3G reception is probably shit, and no, I don’t think that’s an unfair assumption.

“Though the gates that stand between the mortal world and the immortal Realm of Chaos are now closed to me, still I would rather die having glimpsed eternity than never to have stirred the cold furrow of mortal life.
I embrace death without regret as I embraced life without fear.”
– Kargos Bloodspitter, Champion of Khorne

A lot of people are asking who Skane is, too. And who the Legio Audax are. And why is an ursus claw on a Titan? And what’s a Destroyer? And and and…

Well, you’ll have to wait for all that. Jeez.

Betrayer Prologue

PROLOGUE

The Dead and the Dying

SKANE WAS THE ONE to find the body. Skane, armoured in Destroyers’ black, his armour stained by the sin of the weapons he wielded. He stood knee-deep in the dead, next to the wrecked hull of a Land Raider battle tank.

“Kargos,” he voxed. His voice was tinny, laden with static. One of the of the enemy had caught him in the throat during the battle, and it had jarred his augmetic vocal chords. They needed tuning once he returned to the Conqueror.

“Kargos,” he said again, across the quiet vox channel.

“What?” His brother’s reply was also flawed by static, but from more traditional vox-corruption rather than a bionic oesophagus.

“Track my locator rune,” said Skane. “Get over here.”

“Look around you, sergeant. You think you’re the only one that needs my help at the moment?”

Skane didn’t bother looking around. He knew where he was and what he’d see – he was at the heart of it all, and the dead numbered in the thousands. Most wore armour the green of shallow oceans, cracked and shattered by the treachery of their former kindred. These were Horus’s former Sons, betrayed by their brethren and slain for their disloyalty. Among their number, armour of bloodstained white stood out like pearls among seaweed. Too many World Eaters had fallen here, though victory was undeniable. The city was dead in every direction, reduced to ash and rubble.

A shadow fell across Skane, blocking out the weak sun as a Legio Audax Warhound passed with its rattle-clank stride shaking the tortured ground. He lifted a hand to the passing war machine, receiving no acknowledgement beyond dull sunlight glinting on the Titan’s ursus claw spears. It stalked onward, splayed feet grinding ceramite and bone and twisted iron into the earth, its wolfish cockpit lowered as it hunted for life signs and scanner-scents among the dead and the dying.

Skane turned back to the ruined tank, kneeling by its front end where the minesweeper plow was decorated in scratches and a wealth of gore. A body impaled on the ‘dozer blade’s spikes twitched in uneasy repose, its fingers still scraping in futility across the metal. Skane wasn’t sure how the pinned warrior still lived, and doubted the trembling, bleeding figure would survive being pulled from the plow. Nevertheless, he spoke again.

“Kargos,” he said for the third time. It took the Apothecary several seconds to answer.

“I told you I’m busy. Fix your own damn throat, or shut up and wait until we’re back aboard the ship.”

Skane disengaged the seals at the dying warrior’s neck, lifting the helm free with a hiss of released air pressure. The revealed face was pale, bloodstained from the lips down, the eyes open and blind, while the mouth worked in silent, wordless rage, an emotion lost between fury and pain.

“I’ve found Kharn,” Skane voxed.

This time, there was no delay in Kargos’s reply. “I’m on my way.”

Betrayer Opening Quote

New Lord Inquisitor Teaser Trailer

I was reliably informed that some of you might be interested in seeing the new teaser trailer for The Lord Inquisitor.

Behold.

Priests of Mars, Covers, and Necromunda Campaign Pix

As a general rule, I don’t tend to whore work out for all to see. Not my colleagues’, not my friends’, and rarely even my own beyond showing some cover art after long waits, throwing up a prologue (when it’s ready…) or linking to a few novel reviews. I’m not, shall we say, up to my nuts in the lifestyle of a literary pimp.

But I finally got hold of Graham’s Priests of Mars, which makes up 50% of the Black Library novels I’m most looking forward to in 2012 (the other half of that demographic being Dan’s forthcoming Pariah). These’ll be the two books I awkwardly smile about when I ask the other guys to sign them, and these’ll be the two books where both Graham and Dan shake their heads slightly as they scrawl their signatures, wondering if I’ll ever man the fuck up.

(Spoiler: I won’t.)

I read the first half of this in a Word.doc a while back, and it’s my fave thing Graham’s ever written. If you buy it on my recommendation and totally hate it, feel free to unleash your online e-wrath upon me, via the method of blog commentary. But seriously, I was in love with its raw Rogue Trader-era-ness, so I’ll break my covenant of silence to recommend it to any sci-fi fan.

I’m actually grinning here, but for some reason I look more like a leering child molester. Creepy. Also, the angle of my head makes my hat a weird shape.

In other news, Priests of Mars has the best cover of any 40K book ever, and it’s making me rethink my demands that “Seriously, I’ll only do the Abaddon / Black Legion / Rise of the Warmaster series if I can have Raymond Swanland do the cover.” Because Slawomir Maniak is clearly The Sex. Check out both artists work with some Googling. Tell me what you think.

By the by, I’ll be in Dublin this Saturday, with Dan and Graham, signing in the GW there (the staff there, by the way, were awesome enough to make my Realms of Battle board for me).

With the (long) weekend done and the Necromunda campaign underway, I’m a little behind in my work. Alexander teething early isn’t helping when it comes to sleep, either. Nevertheless, for those of you who demanded pics of the Necromunda jazz going on, here’s a slice of what went down over the three days of bloodshed and carnage in the Underhive:

 

Incidentally, my Cawdors sucked, but didn’t die.

Katie’s Eschers are already the gang to beat, out of the 10 of us playing. She’s deadly.

 

 

Questions and Answers

Annnnd back from the Horus Heresy meeting. Which means: back at work on Betrayer, Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Edition, and The Lord Inquisitor.

With all the filming I’ve been doing of Alexander lately, I think I should probably make good on my claim to finally “Do a video Q&A, like Dan always does.”

If it fails due to time or club-fisted editing (and remember, this’ll just be me in my office, so don’t expect miracles), I’ll just answer stuff in a long post like I’ve done in the past. But if it works, it should be worthwhile.

So, ask questions.

Go wild.

We’ll see if this works.

Hairesy

Hairesy.

GEDDIT?

Yes, yes. Priceless.

No, this isn’t permanent. It’s purely because we’ve had no razors in the house for weeks (I’m poor; shut your mouth), and wanted to entertain myself before finally shaving off 6 weeks of fluff now my last set of royalties has cleared.

Yes, I’m aware I look a little bit like Tim Bisley and/or Jim Gaffigan.

Yes, I’m aware Tim Bisley was a loser and Jim Gaffigan is scruffy and overweight.

Yes, I’m aware I have a chicken pox scar on my forehead and my smile has been one-sided since childhood, thus making me look like I had a stroke. It was really just meningitis at age 8.

Now that I’ve insulted myself and headed you cunts off at the pass, you can refrain from being mean. I call this technique “Pre-sulting”, which is a scheme I can teach to your office, oil rig, or other place of business for the bargain price of $999.99 (before expenses).

By the way, I totally have a Horus Heresy meeting tomorrow. I promise to tell you all about it.

My Dream 40K Series

I want to write a really tedious novel series about a new Space Marine Chapter being founded, with all the difficult red tape that’d come with it. They’d be called something rad, like the Angels Numinous, or the Blood Eagles, or the Painful Dolphins (or whatever).

The first few novels would be about finding a worthy world to recruit from, and the initiates taken to begin training; deals sworn with Navigator Houses on Holy Terra to get the pilots they need; the veterans of other Chapters helping out to train and lead the recruits; the secret oaths Techmarines have to swear in order to get trained on Mars before returning to their Chapter; and the difficulties of training regulated Marine battle-psykers for a proper Librarium. Then it would go into their first crusade, and the harrowing attrition rate as they’re thrown into the maw of a subsector lost to open rebellion.

The main antagonist would be a pen-pushing office clerk high-up in the Adeptus Terra, who thwarts the new Chapter’s rise because he doesn’t like their colour scheme. He ultimately wins, when the Marine Lord of the Blood Eagles (or Painful Dolphins, remember) gets a memo on his data-slate ordering the immediate disbanding of his Chapter, despite the fact he’s in the middle of a war.

The second trilogy would cover the remaining members of the Chapter reacclimatising to Imperial life in various manufactories and offices, essentially working in 40K-style call centres. One of them might have a gambling problem, or something. Either way, it’d be super-deep.

Roll credits.

I eagerly await my Nebula Award, thanks.