Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Blog, page 3

BLACK LEGION

BLACK LEGION is out at long last, with all the words I made for your precious eyeballs. Here’s the Limited Edition:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/Home/black-legion.html

And here’s the non-Ltd. Ed. for hardback, eBook, and mp3 folks. KAPOW:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-pro…/black-legion-ebook.html

Please enjoy all of these words. Some of them are about space war. Some of them are not. I hope you like them.

(I’m going back to my birthday party now. Bye!)

 

 

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Alan Bligh

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My friend Alan died tonight.

Better posts than mine will come. They’ll be more detailed, more insightful, and with the benefit of time to take a finer form. I had to get this down, get it from skull to fingertips to screen, in the brief but merciful expanse of numbness between emotional poles. Right after I heard the news I went to speak with the others that had known about his illness for a while, only to find I had an hour of missed messages from them trying to contact me, to tell me he’d died.

I’d known for a while that he was sick, and then a few of us learned recently, privately, that he was much, much sicker than we’d all thought. The words “weeks to months left” were given out, and I clung to those words the way my five-year-old son Shakes clings to all of my “In five minutes, buddy…” delaying tactics. I held them to the same sacred standard of absolution, when really they’re expressions of timeless vagueness.

Ultimately, it leaned heavily on the side of Days and Weeks, not so much in the Months corner.

Alan was one of my closest friends. He was much smarter than me, without ever making me feel shitty about it. He drank more tea than any other human being I’ve ever met. He often read my work before it hit print, suggesting X, saying he liked Y. He smuggled me out WIPs of his own. I first read the text for two Space Marine Legions in Microsoft Word, f’rex, with Alan’s typos still baked into the text. He sent the kids book vouchers at Christmas. Our various channels of communication were filled with 40K lore talk more than anything else, which is practically a given if you’re a good friend of mine, though there was a significant amount of him telling me to stop putting it off every year and write some non-40K stuff, and there was a roughly equal amount of lamenting and laughing about life’s ups, downs, zigs, and zags. Nothing unexpected. Nothing unusual.

When I was at my most furious and least reasonable with the tick-tocking madness of Games Workshop behind the scenes (during the Dark Times a few years ago), it was almost always Alan that would calm me down. That was Alan in a nutshell. Insert vexation; receive wisdom.

He’d say things like “This too shall pass”. He said that one often enough that those who knew him would quote it in doing impressions of him. Alan always said it with the knowing smile of a man that knew. And he was always right. They always did.

As Alan was dying in England, I was here in N. Ireland, inking an Ophidian Archway. Given how often he teased me for not painting enough, I suspect that would’ve amused him immensely. As glad as I am at the cold comfort of coincidence, I would much rather have been at his side.

My flight to see him was tomorrow morning. We’d heard from the ward nurse that he wasn’t up to visitors this weekend, so earlier this afternoon I’d changed my flight to next weekend instead. All useless, all pointless. He died tonight.

I had so, so much left to say to him. There was no doubt a bajillion things he still had left to say to me over the course of X years, but even without that much time left, I was ready with a host of what I wanted to say to him. He was weak and drained, and frankly I was braced for him to just lie there in his bed and look despairingly at me, hoping I’d shut up, while I talked and talked and cried and talked.

Everything I wanted to say is meaningless now. I can tell him none of it. It will evaporate over time, occasionally forming chunks of conversations that I have with his other close friends, occasionally surfacing as regret wreckage in the oceans of 2am melancholy that seem intrinsic to the human condition.

Earlier this week, Shakes caught me crying. He looked awkward, worried I was upset because he’d done something wrong. When I told him the reason, he said “Your friend might not die if they find a way to make him better.”  

I hugged him hard, too hard, and sent him back outside into the sunshine. In my office, the pressure of emotion inside my skull was beyond crying. I had to shout into my cupped hands just to discharge it, just to get it out of my head.

I’ve done that more than once this week. My head space was a compass. North was an inability to think about it at all; it was too much, too impossible, too much, too much, so for those hours I was perfectly fine since it wasn’t happening. South was a practical and cold look at the truth: He was going to die, so what needed to be done, what times were flights, what needed to be said before there wasn’t a chance to say any more? What would the 40K fandom say? What would Horus Heresy meetings be like (and the email sessions afterwards) without Alan? East was mostly trying and failing to look at it critically, to imagine what other people in the know were thinking and feeling. I’ve wasted a lot of hours this week being unable to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. West was a place of pathetic but earnest, tear-streaked hope – it was Googling “Terminal cancer survival percentages” and screaming into my hands so the poison wasn’t behind my eyes any more.

Now my friend is dead. My life is poorer for it, but immeasurably richer for what he brought to it. From the confidence and wisdom he gave me, to the fucking way he’d say “The perfidious Elllldaaaaaarrrr” which has stuck in my head for years now, unable to be shaken.

I once brought my fear to him that I wasn’t a worthy successor to Andy Chambers and co.; that the Codex Imperialis of 2nd Edition 40K was never going to be surpassed, but that I wanted to at least equal it. I thought his Badab War books for Forge World were on the same level as the old greats. I meant that, wholeheartedly. He could see that I meant it.

He looked me dead in the eyes and said “You worry about the strangest things.” He then gave me a look, the look he always gave me when I was charging up some ill-advised path but there was time yet for a Blighian scowl to make me rethink things. I sipped my gross tea and realised why he – an avid tea-drinker, hadn’t got any here himself. He’d known it was gross.

I miss him dearly already, with the insane selfishness of being caged by my own feelings.

I’m in pieces. I am in pieces. I miss my friend.

INTERVIEW – The Imperial Truth

Me and my good pal John French were invited to do a double-interview on The Imperial Truth, which dealt with (among other things) what it’s like to write 40K, the brief controversies around PRAETORIAN OF DORN and THE MASTER OF MANKIND, and – of course! – Gav Thorpe.

Enjoy! Or don’t! I’m not your boss. You’re a free spirit, the architect of your own destiny. All that good stuff.

We start at about 20 mins in: CLICKY-CLICK. Please note this giant WARNING: Contains many spoilers for PoD and TMoM.

Amazingly, I didn’t swear once. Not even one time. Achievement fucking unlocked, right there.

The HELSREACH Animation

Richard Boylan’s HELSREACH animation started going live in instalments about a month ago, with his artwork set to (laid over?) a heavily edited version of the audiobook. About 5% of every chapter, by my vague estimate.

Watching these a while back prompted me to get in touch with Richard to say how much I loved them, and there’s nothing I can say here that isn’t going to be obvious from watching them yourself. Suffice to say, they’re absolutely incredible. The look of them. The mood. The freaking feel. 

I avoided linking them for a while – in fact, I completely refused to respond to their existence – since I wanted to talk to both Richard and my publisher first, to get the lie of the land. And while I usually can’t abide listening to my own audiobooks or re-reading my own work, these were different enough to not trigger my “I need to get away from this desk” reflex. And, way more importantly and less self-indulgently, they’re also just bloody brilliant.

A personal fave moment, and one that really drives home how Richard’s animation and direction elevates the material way above the source material, is the arrival at Helsreach in Part III. The head tilts, the body language; the sense of weight and emotion from guys in freaking helmets with their faces masked. That moment when Grimaldus is silent in the gunship, with Bastilan answering on his behalf, conveyed everything I wanted to express about his despondent fury and the directionless, guilty discomfort at his exile – and in this it was all done without the main character speaking a word. Just great direction and editing.

Annoyingly humbling… But mostly just awesome.

Part IV is coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway, enough talk. Enjoy!

The BLACK LEGION Cover Reveal (and Selfie Contest #2!)

Here it is, at long last (so please stop asking me to finish the Goddamn book, you heathens): the cover reveal for BLACK LEGION, out this August.

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I think this cover conveys the most substantive, emotional quality yet, capturing the haunting and soulful aura of the artist’s intent, really brought to the fore through advanced techniques like how bits of the fire are still white – which at first can look like it was taking ages to use the filling tool in MS Paint, but is actually because of cool art reasons that normal, stupid people can’t understand.

There’ll be two alternate covers available in the unlikely event my publisher chooses not to use mine, one for the Ltd. Edition, one for the normal edition, seen here:

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Some of you may remember the Selfie Contest from a few years ago(with its resultant heroic winners) – and yes, there will indeed be another one for the Ltd. Edition of BLACK LEGION, with prizes just as fucking fabulous as last time.

Just as before, I’ll announce the prizes on Twitter, but if you recall last time they were pretty special and not at all a waste of yours, mine, and everyone else’s time.

I'm going to run a contest soon. The first prize will be an MS Paint picture of you and me being friends.

— Aaron Dembski-Bowden (@adembskibowden) July 1, 2014

The second prize in the upcoming contest will be an MS Paint picture of you and me trying to be friends, but ultimately unable to bond.

— Aaron Dembski-Bowden (@adembskibowden) July 2, 2014

Third prize in the upcoming contest will be an MS Paint picture of you and me failing to be friends because I don't have time for your shit.

— Aaron Dembski-Bowden (@adembskibowden) July 2, 2014

The Master of Mankind – Preorders and Extract…

I believe you can now read The Master of Mankind’s prologue (and preorder that bad boy in eBook or Hardback) right here!

 

40K Campaign (Part I: Kill Team) Trailer

Just a brief and super-simple teaser for my group’s upcoming 40K Campaign. Part One is called The Scavengers of Novus Tenax, and we’re starting off at 200pt. kill-teams, using the standard rules.

I realise my amateur and chimpish video editing won’t set the world on fire, but these things can be cool for setting a mood or theme for a campaign weekend. Hoping it inspires the players to get some painting done, too…

(Also, yes, I know I’m awful at updating my blog lately. I’ve been lazy and doing everything through Twitter and Facebook. My bad.)

When Aaron Met David

Here’s the current page for The Road to Jove. Most days I’ll let the comic exist in blithe ignorance, and then occasionally it’ll hit me that it’s actually underway, it’s actually working, and things are – so far – going well. That we’re X pages in and neither of us have melted down or died (or melted down and then died), and that we didn’t plan it and abandon it; it’s actually, like, going somewhere.

That’s still surreal.

At this point David and I have been working together for about two years, with almost two novels’ length (just under a quarter of a million words in terms of word count) of planning and discussion about the comic’s direction, art, characters, and arc.

Earlier this month, we met face to face for the first time, at my birthday party.

Where, as you can see, it rained at the barbecue but I still forced the thinnest and most anaemic of excuses to wear my sun hat, because I was still in denial about being home from the holiday to Crete with Katie’s parents.

Please note, I’m sparing you boring family holiday photos. Aren’t you lucky.

Well, maybe just one. Here’s a selfie I took with Shakes at Knossos. I’m posting this largely because, again, I like that hat a lot.

Shakes didn’t like the ruined city at Knossos because, and I quote, “it’s ruined.”

Anyway, meeting David achieved also involved a sharpie and my RPG notepad in order to plan out the comic’s arc in more detail than before:

…and the second of which, just as crucially, involved me almost falling asleep on him at 2am in the tin… barn… thing… leftover from when this was Katie’s family farm instead of “that place we store firewood or whatever”.

Please pay special heed to my OH CANADA throw blanket, a gift from my cousin Lisa.

Fucking hell, my head was shiny.

Peace Treaties

This happened at 5am. Guess what I told him to do with his peace treaty.

THE ARCHMAGE ZORBULON – Part 4

THE ADVENTURE SO FAR:

Part 1! 

Part 2!!

Part 3!!!

AND NOW, THE THRILLING FOURTH INSTALMENT…

You feel Barnabus, your faithful familiar, scratching his draconic ruff or his back spines or whatever, atop your hat. The vista of absolute and unparalleled devastation before you remains unchanged. Perhaps you feel a tremulous, tumescent rush of pleasure at the raw evidence of your might. Perhaps you feel a tingle of regret at, y’know, annihilating an entire settlement because someone raised their voice at you. I don’t know. I’m just the fucking narrator.

“It was like this when I got here, Barnabus,” you lie to your faithful baby dragon familiar. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” you add, lyingly.

Then, in a stunning twist of events, you actually tell the truth: “Also, yes. Here are some breadcrumbs.”

You pull a handful of breadcrumbs from one of your belt pouches, offering them up to the little lizard guy.

“Awesome,” he says, and begins chowing down.  “Thanks, chief. These are tasty. Shame about whatever to this place, huh? Do you think anyone lived here? I bet loads of people did, like, with families and kids and kittens and stuff like that. Maybe we should try to avenge all of them. You know, I bet those evil scargoyles did this! They’re proper knobs, those guys, so– Whoa! What the heck is that!?”

You turn, following your familiar’s reptilian gaze.

‘That’ turns out to be some sort of being. A large, powerful-looking creature cast in opposing shades of black and white, haloed by the rising sun, perhaps in some indication of divinity. Or maybe the ash from the recent destruction is clearing, and it’s just an animal in front of a sunrise. At this point, who even knows.

 

It regards you in either moronic dumbness or dignified silence.

“Look at that majestic fucker,” Barnabus enthuses. “Should we go see what his or her deal is?”

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