The Emperor Expects – Author’s Notes

One of the nice things about working for a publisher like Black Library is that I get to do a variety of things. Not only is there a lot of scope for different stories within the fictional universes, there are many different formats in which to explore them. Sometimes it’s a standalone novella like Catechism of Hate. Other times I get to develop characters and storylines over several volumes, as I did with The Sundering. Then there are the audios, the short stories, the books that are longer-than-novellas-but-shorter-than-the-other-novels and many other lengths and types beside. (I’m still holding out hope for more comics or graphic novels at some point…)

The Beast Arises is something a bit different again. A series of short novels (50,000 words each) released in quick succession, telling a single story over twelve instalments. I’m lucky enough to have two books in the series, the first being The Emperor Expects.

One of the key architects of the series was Dan Abnett, veteran of the comics industry where serialization and shared storylines are the norm. This was not going to be quite the same as the Horus Heresy, which is half storyline and half setting where authors are rowing in the same direction, so to speak, but not necessarily all at the same speed or even in the same boat! The idea for The Beast Arises from the outset was of a tightly controlled narrative delivered sequentially over the course of a year.

In order to maximise the sense of urgency and pace the group of authors that was brought together concocted a storyline that would deliver intrigue, war and drama in equal measure, ending each instalment with a cliffhanger or revelation that simply demanded the reader wanted the next volume right away. This was going to be ‘blink and you miss it’ publishing, making the most of an active community speculating, cogitating and ruminating on unfolding events as they happened.

Although we laid down the spine of the story in those early meetings, there was still plenty of opportunities for individual authors to bring in characters and sub-plots to enliven the telling. The huge scope of the series – a war for the whole of the Segmentum Solar – means that all aspects of the Imperium and its armed forces are fair game for writers to explore.

And that meant I could shine a light on the Imperial Navy, which has been fantastic. I’ve had a thing for the Age of Sail since I was a teenager, and as my author’s dedication in The Emperor Expects attests, the Hornblower and Ramage books were frequent, influential reading for me. It was also great to return to some of the images and concepts that were developed when I was working on Battlefleet Gothic – the story gave me a chance to step aboard the bridge of one of the Emperor’s great warships in a way I hadn’t before. If people like it, it would be nice to do something longer, maybe even a series that is set on a battleship…

The intrigues between the High Lords are also a change of pace from much of the writing I’ve done – no less dramatic than bolters blazing but fraught and tense on a different level.

And the setting of the series – just 1,500 years after the end of the Horus Heresy – has given all of us a chance to look at some of the foundations and accepted norms of the Imperium in a different way. The legacy of the civil war and Second Founding, the splitting of the Imperial Army into the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, is still relatively fresh in the minds of many commanders and leaders. Other institutions such as the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition are very different, far more nascent than in the 41st millennium.

I hope you are enjoying The Beast Arises, and if you like The Emperor Expects you’ll be pleased to know that I return to the series with Book 8 later in the year.

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