David Guymer's Blog - Posts Tagged "david-guymer"

As I'm a devoted acolyte of both recycling and the minimisation of labour (as well as the Great Horned Rat), follow the link to the Black Library Bolthole for an interview with me, written by somebody else.

http://www.thebolthole.org/blog/

Enjoy

The year closes, it seems the TV schedules are filled with programs such as '100 greatest [insert noun] of 2013' and everyone starts assembling their 'best of' lists.

We authors are people too and the window for nominating books to the longlist for the David Gemmell Legend Award is now open until 31st January 2014

http://gemmellaward.com/page/press-1

There are three catergories, the Legend Award, the Ravenheart Award, and the Morningstar Award for the best fantasy debut novel.

In case it escaped anyone's notice, my fantasy novel 'Headtaker' was my debut full-length work and if you think it's deserving of a place on that longlist then please go to the link above, follow the instructions on 'How To Nominate' and go for it!

The skaven will thank you when they ascend.



The longlist is then published on Friday 14th February 2014 when voting begins. So I'll keep my fingers crossed and see...

“Are you sitting comfortably slave-meat? No? Good. This will teach stupid man-things to not have tails, Queek thinks.

‘With your small and inferior brains you are probably wondering why the mighty Queek has claimed this blog for the Under-Empire. Those of you most clever might wonder also what this has to do with you. Yes-yes, Queek sees questions on you like flies, flies that tell lies, buzz buzz buzz to blind rats’ ears. Well do not doubt-fear little man-things, Queek will not be killing you today. Not unless you are… disobedient.

“See this skull here? This idiot-meat was disobedient. He thought he could keep his blog from Queek. Hah! Who has no head now? Not Queek. No-no, Queek has many and they whisper to him, yes-yes they do. They tell him that the legendary Queek has come to the attention of those that bestow prizes on worthy heads. And who is more worthy than Queek Headtaker, he who dances in ash and feasts on his unworthy foes? It is surely only the treachery of Queek’s rivals that he has not attracted such covetous notice before now. Queek laughs at their petty scheming. He has no rivals! He can smell the musk of their rightful terror even from this rat-infested warren.

“Unfair to his inferior adversaries, perhaps, but Queek must crush them and take their heads all the same - and this is where you come in lucky man-things. In order to claim the prize rightfully his for his most magnificent of deeds he needs man-things like you to… “vote”… for him by hurry-scurrying to this place (http://gemmellaward.ning.com/page/mor...) and joining Queek’s numberless legions. Not for Queek’s slave-meat getting blown up by warpfire throwers or gassed by wicked tinker-rats. You do not believe? How back-stabbing and untrusting you furless man-things must be. No wonder you tremble. Read this scratch-scrawl of Queek’s slaughter of dwarf-things and green-things and other-things too unimportant for Queek to remember their feeble names.



“Read-read!

“See? Queek’s slave-meat almost always get-cut-stabbed. A much more exciting way to make Queek’s greatness just little bit greater, yes-yes? Does that not make guts slither with hunger-lust? Go now slave-meat. Vote Queek Headtaker - he will remember the smell of you, and should you again cross his burrow once he is crowned the most murderous warlord in all of Skavendom he will maybe not eat you.

“Unless he is hungry.

“He cannot be scourge of the dwarf-things hungry.”

That's right big axe lovers, Kinslayer is due out in September and my author copies are in. Four of these hefty hardbacks is just too much for any one shelf, even a dwarf-made one of sound Karaz-a-Karak stone, so I'm hoping to get shot of at least one before the release date. Boring scheduling reasons mean that I can't send them out before September, but you'll still be getting yourself a signed (and free!) copy of Kinslayer a good day or so before those elf-loving fools who didn't put in the effort to win a competition.

So what do you have to do?

The sharpe-eyed will have noted from the cover that Kinslayer is 'Book I of the Doom of Gotrek Gurnisson.' What that ominous title means for our heroic duo is something that you'll have to wait to find out, but the endlessly debated question of Gotrek's doom will make up our competition.

I want to know which heavyweight from the sprawling Warhammer world or the pages of Black Library you would most love to see have a crack at Gotrek. How would it go? Could they win, and if so how?

Tweet me @WarlordGuymer or add your suggestion to the thread I'm about to set up on my facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Dav... the most brilliant, funny or bang to rights awesome will win themselves a book. If there's enough interest then I may even give away two books, so spread the word! Also, while this skaven would never condone cheating in other people, I'm not about to start cross-referening entrants on twitter with entrants on facebook, so hey, it can't hurt to vote twice.

Who do you want to see fight Gotrek and what would be the outcome? - Go!!

It’s always reassuring to find out that even in this, the age of the ebook, people will still go to great lengths for a free piece of former tree. The insane genius behind the respectable front of Black Librarium went so far as to write a short story, clearly learning from my loose-lipped minions that I love Chaos Dwarfs, and even resorting to a bit of ratty flattery, appealing to my self-aggrandizing nature by describing Kinslayer as the most anticipated book of the year. Good man. I was offered a kidney (what just one?), but as I will put into writing on my website at the next opportunity – not until I have independent medical verification of a blood-type match. I was also greatly tickled by the suggestion that Gotrek should perish while checking Felix’s poorly made shelf.

Nearly, man. So, so nearly.

But the winner, or should I say winners, are…

Drum roll…

Kay Mansfield for Gotrek v Malekith. This has badass tattooed all over its straining biceps. Kay wasn’t the only person to call on the Witch King to bring on the pain, but I liked the plot bonus of Gotrek teaming up with Teclis again to fight him. Characterful in every way. Free book for you, Kay!

The runner up, landing themselves an identical but, you know, always less shiny prize is Chris Quinn for Gotrek v Zavant Konniger. I have no idea what grudge the great detective could have against poor Gotrek, but as soon as I read it I had visions of a very different kind of Gotrek & Felix where its Felix’s wits rather than Gotrek’s axe that comes to the fore. And I liked it, so a free, but perhaps slightly grubbier and artificially scuffed book for you, Chris! Maybe I’ll smudge ink on the signature or something.

Thanks to everyone that didn’t win for amusing me over the last couple of weeks with your suggestions. I hope you’ll all still go out and get the most anticipated book of the year (good man) when it comes out in September.

“Attention, servants of the immortal God-Emperor! Charge your mnemo-quills and dust off your data-slates, because Black Library is recruiting once more…”

If those two sentences are enough to electrify your nerves and make your skin tingle then you’re in the right place, because after a lengthy absence the Black Library submissions window is back!
At my count it’s been three years since the last window, and if you’re wondering why I should be counting at all then it’s worth remembering that I too am a submissions window baby. It was 2011 (remember that?) when The Tilean’s Talisman squeaked in under Black Library’s door and became my first published story, so you can understand that I’m thrilled to see Black Library opening up to submissions again.

This time, however, there are rules?

“First of all, we are only looking for short stories featuring the Deathwatch, set in the current Warhammer 40,000 era.”

Got that? Good. Paying attention to submissions guidelines and successfully not submitting a Death Guard or Deathwing story is hurdle number one. It doesn’t matter how excellent your Death Korps of Krieg tale is, it’s not what they want so it won’t get picked up. And will probably elicit a sad sigh from the reading editor too. You’re all nice people, and so obviously wouldn’t want that.

“Secondly, we only need a single paragraph which summarises your idea for a full short story, followed by a sample of your best writing from that story. The sample should be no more than 500 words (and we will be checking!) but should be of sufficiently high quality to engage/excite our editors who will be reading each and every submission.”

Note that ‘best writing’ bit.
I spent a long time perfecting the opening 500 words of the Tilean’s Talisman before deciding to submit what I felt was the best and most exciting bit from the middle. That’s fine. This is a showcase for your writing prowess and doesn’t need to do anything more than that. Will they be rejecting samples of 501 words? I don’t know, but why chance it for the sake of a few extra words? How you actually go about producing 500 words of irresistible 41st millennium action goes some distance beyond my power to explain. If I knew how I did it then I’d spend a lot less of my time in the periodic bouts of self-doubt I currently enjoy.

And then I think I’d write a ‘how to’ book and make lots of money.

Here’s a few tips that spring to mind, largely garnered from advice and writing courses I’ve been on and that have stuck in my mind for one reason or another

• Avoid overuse of adjectives.
• Steer clear of the most well-worn clichés.
• Given a choice of several words with the same meaning, use the one that produces the tone and feeling you want.
• If in a characters head, stay in the character’s head. Describe the world as they see it, as they hear, smell, and feel it. Don’t wander.
• Getting an honest third party to look at your work and edit it is always helpful. The best of us are capable of overlooking the most outrageous contortions of our own prose

Next up is the summary. That’s not too scary either, although there is a practiced art to condensing a 5000 word story into a 200 word (or less) paragraph. Be complete but be succinct. Shorter is always better. I tried to find the summary I wrote for Tilean’s Talisman, but it seems to have been gnawed on by the rats and I can’t find it. As a consolation prize, here instead is the summary to my second story, The Karag Durak Grudge:

The Book of Grudges of Karak Kadrin tells of the fall of the outpost of Karag Durak and of the maiming of the Dwarf Thane, Grimnar Half-handed, as he valiantly battled the rat-kin warlord, Queek. Such was the Thane’s courage that day that the skaven were driven back, allowing many doughty warriors to escape with their lives.

With the Dwarf’s abandonment of the mountain keep, Queek’s mission that day was a great success and much warpstone and glory were showered upon him. But long has the rage within him burned over his defeat in single combat to the Dwarf, Grimnar, and long has he plotted his revenge. After many years, he receives the news he has been waiting for: Grimnar has left the Slayer Keep to reclaim the lost treasures of Karak Varn. Seizing on this golden opportunity, Queek hurriedly assembles a force and races to the seeping ruin of Karak Varn, eager to face his old foe once more to prove once and for all that the dreaded Queek Headtaker suffers no equal.

Now you’ll immediately notice that that’s two paragraphs, instantly failing me on my own advice of reading submissions guidelines and adhering to it. I get away with this kind of anarchism, but be safe and keep your to the regulation one.

“Finally, you should make your submission by email only, to blacklibrarysubmissions@gwplc.com – please attach your submission as a Microsoft Word document (not Works, not OpenOffice, not RTF or any other weird and wacky file formats) and also copy your single paragraph summary into the covering email. Failure to follow those basic requests will result in your submission being rejected.”


That’s my bolding – I figured it was important, and rather neatly emphasises what I’ve been saying all along. It ultimately boils down to: ‘do as your told.’ Also, do read your covering e-mail before sending, and not while so tired after yet another round of editing that you don’t notice that you’re writing about the skaken story your sending them. I remember that typo because it haunted me for weeks. The moral, I suppose, is that good writing (if I do say so…) will always win out, but don’t give an editor an excuse to disfavour you from the start, or even reject your story outright before they so much as read it.

Oh, and think positive and turn off your spam filter. Yahoo was good enough to shunt my acceptance e-mail into my spam folder, and it was only rare good luck that meant I saw it at all. My spam filter remains off, and it’s fine.

And finally: don’t delay!

When I first discovered the submission window three years ago, my first inclination was to give it a miss and wait until next year. There was only two weeks left to it, and I hadn’t started, and I’m pretty lazy really by nature. I figured I’d wait until the next year. But of course as we know there was no window next year, and who knows when the next one will open after this?
I’ve been ridiculously fortunate to have written what I have for Black Library these past few years, and it goes without saying that I wouldn’t have done any of it had I given into my first instinct and sat on my hands. So don’t think, don’t procrastinate; plan your story right now and then write it. Submissions close on 26th January and I hope that a lot of you are going to submit. Partly because I want you all to get the chance to do so, and partly for the very selfish reason that I want to write a Deathwatch story and for that to happen Black Library need enough high quality stories from you guys to justify an anthology.

That’s right; you’re doing this for me.

So go prepare your submissions, and read the rest of the guidance on Black Library’s website:
http://www.blacklibrary.com/Getting-S... And good luck!

Death to the Xenos.

(I first wrote this article for Fifty Shades of Geek - to hear my chitterings early, go to http://www.fiftyshadesofgeek.org/feat...)

You might be aware that I have an occasional blog over at Fifty Shades of Geek. If anyone's interested, they've got the cameleoline cloaks on, the night scopes fitted, and are actively scouting for new talent:

"FiftyShadesOfGeek is currently looking for some new blood. They need reviewers, commenters, and editors. Whatever it is that you're into, we'd like to hear from you. Whether it's reviewing the latest movies or TV shows, painting guides, battle reports, tabletop game reviews, video game reviews, event write-ups, or semi-regular blogs.

In short, if it's geeky and you want to write about it, they'd like to read it. All the details can be found at www.fiftyshadesofgeek.org/subs

And if you're looking to help out on the editing side there are three positions: content editing, audio editing, and community editing. Full details can be found on the home page at www.fiftyshadesofgeek.org

If there are any questions head over to the website, Facebook page, Facebook group or Twitter and just ask away."

It feels as though I've been worked pretty much as hard as I ever have last year, which to think back on it felt pretty good until I realised that I all I had to show for it was Gotrek & Felix: Slayer (which i wrote in 2014 anyway), and the short stories Beneath the Black Thumb, Godless, and Plan B in the Mantic anthology, Drainpipes for Strike Posts



Such is the delayed reward of professional writing, so hopefully 2016 will be a bumper year for releases. One speculative short story still sitting with Grimdark Magazine aside, it's all with Black Library so largely under wraps, but, just for a sense of what's coming...

January will see the release of an Age of Sigmar anthology featuring another short story of mine. I've received my author copies on this one and I'm just hovering over the 'share photo' button on my fun.

In June (I think) my entry into the Beasts Arises series, Echoes of the Long War will hit shelves both real and digital. And I can neither confirm nor deny that I am or am not working on another book in the series as we speak (I have two hands, after all)

I've also written four (count them!) Age of Sigmar audio stories, and according to the great Oracle, Amazon, it looks like I have an anthology of Gotrek & Felix stories coming out. News to me, but I'll take it!

Beasts Arises aside, there are some exciting projects lined up for 2016, but my goal for next year is to try and attend more conventions. If I'm not spotted at York Unleashed and EdgeLit Derby at the very least then you all have permission to slap me. And I still live in hope that someone might nominate Gotrek & Felix: Slayer for the Legend Award and I might get a paid trip to Nineworlds. It'd be a step up from the Magician's Circle in 2014 with Headtaker, awesome fun as that was, and I'll be keeping everything crossed from now until nominations close.

Happy New Year everyone, hears to plenty more bolters and warhammers in 2016

It's that time of year again, when Black Library tots up all the books I've sold over the last six months and pins them up on the proverbial noticeboard. The numbers are generally smaller ones than those my Thanquol-scale optimism continues to predict, but it's always interesting to see what's selling and how much.

There are generally a few surprises. I really would've thought that Gotrek & Felix: Curse of the Everliving would do better. I still can't believe that so many people continue to buy The Karag Durak Grudge four years on. And so, in no way inspired by Gav Thorpe's blog, which was itself in NO way borrowed from James Swallow's, here's my top 5 novels/novellas and short stories from the last six months.

Novels:

1. Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer
2. Echoes of the Long War
3. The Beast Arises Ten: [REDACTED BY THE INQUISITION]
4. City of the Damned
5. Gotrek & Felix: Slayer

Short Stories:
1. Beneath the Black Thumb
2. Infinite Circuit
3. Gotrek & Felix: Rememberers
4. Godless
5. Marienburg's Stand

The big surprise for me this year was Beneath the Black Thumb which moved (for me) incredibly well. I'm hoping this reflects more general love for the Call of Archaon series. Also somewhat surprising was my two entries into the Beast Arises series already making the list despite not being released yet. The second of the two doesn't even have a cover yet! Hell, I'm still writing the second draft. The power of pre-orders, I guess, so thanks to everyone who bought their Beasts Arises subscription.

Writing can sometimes feel a lot like real work. In fact, I learned pretty quickly after my first novel got published and I started getting deadlines, reviews and occasionally even money, that it’s almost exactly like real work.

There are days when can I sit at my computer before breakfast and be an eight-armed squid monster of wordy productivity, and there are others on which, for no discernible reason at all, I can sit and fiddle over the same 100 words for an hour. The only common factor between those two scenarios is that I do still need to be writing. Note here that taking two hours off to play Civilization doesn’t help (and there’s no such thing as just two hours on Civilization). Writing tie-in fiction means writing to deadline, and therein lies the pressure.

I’ve tried working at different times of the day.

I’ve tried dividing my day into hourly blocks of alternating work and rest.

I’ve tried writing first drafts long hand

I’ve tried pretty much everything to avoid staring out a Word document until one of us breaks. The working on paper seems to work for some reason, I think it frees my mind from the constraints of thinking its actually producing saleable work, but its hardly the most efficient use of my time. The hour on hour off method I picked up from an interview with Jeffrey Archer and is also remarkably effective, but I still sometimes end up with those periods where it feels like I’m going to burst a vein in my eye before another word appears on the page.

Some days, I suppose, the muse just isn’t with me, but I’ve also come to realise that there are certain types of scene where it is just generally easier.

------
Gav Thorpe:

I often find dialogue the most enjoyable part of writing. When you can get in to the heads of characters, their words flow through you. It's one of the reasons that I still think of Angels of Darkness as one of my favourite works - half of it is basically an extended conversation. Dialogue is also a great way to convey character, whether by tone, content or style. One particular segment that comes to mind comes from The Crown of the Usurper, book three of the Empire of the Blood collection. Gelthius, a former debtor inducted into the legions of Akshor and rising through the ranks from the patonrage of Ullsaard is challenged by his king when he claims he wouldn't want to be made First Captain (commander) of an Askhan legion:

“I just made you Second captain, and you tell me you wouldn’t want to be First Captain?”

“No, with all respect, King. Seems like a lot of work, and I ain’t the brightest. I thank you for the credit you’ve given me and the favour you’ve shown me, but I wouldn’t want a legion. I mean, in my experience, it’s them sort of thoughts that starts getting you into trouble, isn’t it?” Ullsaard’s eyebrows raised a fraction further and Gelthius realised what he had said.

“Begging your pardon, but I meant that some folks are suited to being on top and some aren’t, and I’m one of them what isn’t. Suited to being on top, I mean. And those that ain’t suited but try to get to the top anyway are setting themselves up for the biggest fall. If I fall, I’d rather it weren’t from such a height, if it’s all the same.”

------

Anyone who can write Black library’s definitive series for both the High Elf and Dwarfs clearly knows what they’re talking about…

But lets turn it back a few years now. It’s 2012 and I’m attending my first literary even as an author – Black Library Live. I’m as nervous as you might expect, but lucky enough to have fellow debutante Peter Fehervari right there with me for our baptismal trials. The trepidation. The excitement. The imposter syndrome. (Are we allowed to just go up to Dan Abnett and say hello? It’s Dan Abnett.) We were as twinned minds.

And even back then – he having just finished his debut, Fire Caste, and I still burrowing feverishly away on my own debut, Headtaker – our talk on the way to Warhammer World turned to the subject of the scenes we most enjoy writing. Peter professed a dislike for descriptions. I’m actually quite the opposite. I love going out all on describing something wondrous or fantastical, which is probably why Peter is so good as I’ve a noted tendency to overdo it on occasion.

A scene that’s essentially a single unbroken action sequence is always easy. The demands of pace and flow force me to focus on the essentials. There’s a scene in Headtaker when Sharpwit and the assassin, Fang Dao, are breaking into a network of secret tunnels, abseiling down a lift shaft, and sabotaging a battery of dwarf cannon, which was about 6000 words written in one sitting and with hardly any re-writing at all.

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Matthew Sylvester:

Combat. There's nothing I like more - aside from coffee - than reading or writing about combat. I'm not talking about mental-based combat such as psionics or magic, I'm talking about the physical, the visceral, weapons and empty-hand combat.

I've always enjoyed writing about such things, often to the consternation of my primary school teachers. I even managed to have fairies and elves battling the bears when I wrote about a school trip to Paignton.
The reason that I love writing such scenes is that not only do I have experience of small-unit tactics due to my university days in the OTC, but I also have 24 years of martial arts experience, with a couple of years as a Special Constable and Doorman under my (numerous) black belts.

Combat is all about people overcoming their fears in order to achieve an objective. The objective itself doesn't matter, it could be a crate of kittens, but the mental and physical effort to overwhelm the enemy, whilst keeping yourself and your people safe is massive. Many people think that combat is all about pouring on more and more firepower. It's not. It's about out-thinking the enemy, flushing them out from cover, flanking them, forcing them to give ground, or bottling them up and then dropping some very, very big bombs on to them.

People often like to write about tanks and how cool they are. Which is true, they are. But for me combat is all about the infantryman, because without infantry, you can't hold the ground you've taken. Without the infantry you can never be sure that the enemy have been totally rooted out. It's gun versus gun, hand-to-hand, teeth to flesh combat that clears the objective and wins the battle.

The following is an extract from Blaise Maximillian: Bitter Defeat, a collection of alternate history dystopian dieselpunk stories set during and after the Great War.

"Trench warfare was one of the dirtiest forms of warfare. Firstly, you have men living in what are basically either open holes or buried holes in the ground, with the latter often being laughingly referred to as bunkers when in fact they truly resembled nothing more than holes in the ground. Add flooding caused by the irresponsible shelling of waterways, irrigation channels and even reservoirs to that mix and the poor sods forced to live and fight in them are constantly having to put up with mud. Energy sapping mud that gets everywhere, every crease or fold in the skin, every orifice.

If you add shit and piss from overflowing or shelled latrines, and men who have gut rot so bad that they shit where they're standing, as well as rats and the countless remains of unburied troops and horses – or some of their bodily parts at least – then you have the true meaning of dirty. The soup that was a result was a foul-smelling morass that sucked boots from feet and the air from the wounded as they slowly sank into its noxious depths.

That, believe it or not, was not the worst part of trench warfare. The worst part was that once the enemy has struggled across no-man's land, forcing their way through the cratered landscape as they slithered and slid, taking prat falls into shell holes, crawling through the wire, the distance in which you engage them is limited to no more than twenty yards, and often as close as twenty inches. Sometimes it is much, much closer. Men who would normally have balked at showing any public display of affection to their loved ones found themselves in a far closer embrace with their enemies.

It’s personal. The enemy has a face you could put onto any of the lads in your unit. The enemy has scabies, halitosis, body odour, fleas and lice, just like you. The enemy is as hell-bent on killing you, as you are him, and will use any weapon he can including his teeth. He will scream, shout, cry and beg you to stop stabbing him, even grab hold of your blade in an attempt to stop you from ramming it into his stomach one last time, all the time his eyes looking into your as if he can't believe that the time for him to die has finally come. That he can't believe you won't spare his life, tell him all's well and send him packing on his way. Why this is no-one - not even the man being killed - knows as, if he were on the other blunter, and far less pointy end of the knife, he would be ramming it home as hard and as often as he could. Mercy is for the recruits, most of whom die with surprised faces as the man who they were beating doesn't thank them profusely, but uses the breathing space to kill them. Mercy is for when the fight is done and the wounded are being collected. Even then it could be hard to find.

Trench warfare is positively medieval. Serrated bayonets, daggers, knives, bayonet swords, home-made spears, maces, billy clubs and knuckledusters are all used to rip, tear, slash, cut, smash, break and destroy the enemy. Even sharpened spades make excellent tools. At a pinch, the edge of the helmet repeatedly slammed into the throat or across the bridge of the nose will do just as well. If you do not have a weapon to hand then teeth, fingers, fists, elbows, knees, feet and heads will suit just fine as you smash the life out of them. Even the mud was a weapon whether it was flung into the opponent's face, or used to drown them.”

------

As you’d expect from a professional hard-ass (See here:
http://matthewsylvester.com/weapons-f...), Matt likes a good fight.

Generally speaking, the first scenes that jump into my head when I’m planning a new book are the big, bloody set piece battle scenes. I look forward to them. I’ll often use the treat of one coming up to coax a few additional words out of myself. But even they can sometimes be a bit of a labour.

There’s a lot going on in a big battle scene. Combat between individuals? Easy. It’s essentially action and reaction, attack and counter, using the environment to mix it up and keep it fresh, but with an epic battle you’ve got mayhem all over the place, characters everywhere, and before you know it I’m drawing maps to catch myself up with who’s doing what, to whom, and where.

Even then it takes a lot of re-writes to get it all to work together. Some, like the battle of Karak Azul in Headtaker, just seemed to click. Others, like the big midpoint Battle of Trzy Siostry in Kinslayer, had to be redone 4-5 times before I was completely happy with it.

------
David Annandale:

Whereas I would hesitate to call any stage of writing easy, there are undeniably times where I find the flow of the words does come more naturally. In the best cases, I find myself disappearing into the world on the page, and my awareness of what's going on around me shrinks to near zero. This condition is not infrequently accompanied by a maniacal cackling, so it probably comes as no great surprise that it is the climactic moments of horror and grandiose mayhem that I particularly enjoy writing. Once all the elements have been put in place, all the actors have their appointed roles, and unfortunate events and cursed fate have brought us to a point where everything is hitting the fan for the characters, the sadist in me cries "YES! NOW THE GOOD BIT!" So the more apocalyptic the mayhem, the more things tend to spark creatively for me. One reason for this may be that the total breakdown of rationality that is often a feature of these scenes is (for me, not for the characters) liberating -- suddenly, anything goes, and the result is almost like transcribing brainstorms. The climax of The The Damnation of Pythos is the sort of thing I have in mind, where daemons are everywhere, and destruction is rampant.

------

I think part of the difficulty of doing battle scenes stems from the fact that a battle has to be more than just one line of super warriors bashing up another line of super warriors.

Characters always have to come first, before plot and definitely before simple action, and I love any opportunity to sit down and get to know them a little better. It actually came as some surprise to me to find that it was those quiet spells between fights, when a handful of characters can simply sit down together and let us get to know them, that turned out to be my absolute favourite scenes.

There’s one that I always think back to in Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer. Felix and Damir are just sitting by the fire, drinking gorilka, and picking out shapes in the snow. It moved me to write it. I almost felt the loneliness and the cold.

"‘You fight in Praag before, yhah?’

Damir was sitting beside him, also facing outwards from the fire. Shadows ebbed and rolled over his patched hemp cloak like the wax and wane of Chaos. The ungol nomad offered up the liquor he was drinking. It smelled of turps and Felix waved it away.

‘Gorilka good for soul.’ Damir thumped his chest lightly and then waved it vaguely before him as though scattering seeds. ‘Made from same grain as feed horses. Only best.’ He grinned and offered it again. ‘Yhah?’

With a sigh, Felix took the offering, swallowing just enough to be polite and immediately coughed it back into his hand.

Chuckling, Damir clapped him on the back. ‘Yhah.’

Felix too found himself smiling. ‘Yes, I fought in the last battle of Praag. I was there when Arek Daemonclaw died.’

‘Doskonale, Empire man!’

The man looked pleased, so Felix assumed that this was good. Kislevarin was one of the most complicated human languages that Felix had ever come across with a ludicrous and – to Felix’s view – arbitrary gender system. And the fact that Ulrika and her father had spoken Reikspiel perfectly well had also removed any incentive of his own to learn it. ‘Where did you fight?’

Damir grinned. ‘Before I born, Felix Jaeger. But father and grandfather? They ride in pulk of Tzarina with Boyar Straghov.’

‘You make me feel old.’

Raising his gorilka high, Damir saluted. ‘To growing old.’

‘To growing old,’ Felix agreed and joined the ungol in a shot of the searing Troll Country spirit."

It’s those sorts of scenes where the characters open up and pull me into their world. And if they do that to me then they’ll probably do that to you too.
And the next time that the proverbial is hitting the fan, we’ll all feel their peril that little bit more keenly.

Thanks to Gav Thorpe, Matt Sylvester, and David Annandale for contributing their thoughts, and a special mention too to the legend that is John Gwynne who found himself at the last minute just too damned busy being successful.

(Note – this blog post too was re-written three times!)