Age Appropriate?

There was a reason I decided against art as a career.

I was recently contacted by a parent whose son had asked for Path of the Eldar for Christmas, asking whether it was age appropriate. It is something that has crossed my mind several times since having Sammy – at what age do I let him read the stories I’ve written? Some of my short stories have a definite horror focus, there are x-rated scenes that would make my mother blush in Empire of the Blood , and as the saying goes for Black Library – there is only war.

I consulted the hivemind on Facebook, to find out what age people started reading Games Workshop / Black Library fiction, and from around 150 responses, it looks like most people begin reading at age 13/14, although some were as young as eight – but it obviously depends on when you’re introduced to it. Without asking everyone for a full psychological assessment, it’s difficult to draw a conclusion about ‘it never did me any harm’, but assuming everyone is still reading Black Library fiction now, it obviously encouraged many to continue reading into adulthood.

It’s only as an adult that I have appreciated the environment my parents gave me growing up. The house was full of books, crossing many genres, and both my brother and I grew up devouring everything we could get our hands on. My brother still gets through a novel a week – I read at least 20, although these days it’s the adventures of Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol. I know that some children can rebel against their parents jobs and interests, but I’m hoping that reading and gaming are so universal that Sammy will embrace them as I did.

I can’t remember at what age I started reading science fiction and fantasy, but it obviously had an effect – Anazar’s Crystal was my first completed story, which not only earned three House Points, but my mum said it was great too. I started reading Games Workshop fiction around the age of 16, with either David Pringle’s Wolf Riders, or maybe David Ferring’s Konrad, and it was just seven years later that I was commissioned to write my first story for Games Workshop, Birth of a Legend, for Inferno Magazine #2.

My first editors comment.

I probably only had ten years of reading ‘grown-up’ fiction before first being published, and if my parents had limited what I had access to, my career would have been entirely different. And so would my life. Reading gives you access to worlds and lives that you can never experience yourself, putting yourself in someone elses shoes gives you empathy for others, and enables you to recognise that everyone has their own story that brought them to where they are today.

With that said, I still don’t know what I’ll do when Sammy asks to read one of Daddy’s books – I guess it will come down to the exposure he has already had to the themes in the books, but having thought about it a lot over the last couple of weeks, I’d like to think that nothing will be off limits.

I still love the story idea behind Anazar’s Crystal – I’d love to have time to re-write it now!

So what do you think is an appropriate age for Black Library fiction – should books ever be off-limits? Let me know what you think in the comments.

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