A conversation with Dan and Aaron, part two

So, what you’re saying is, I AM Her Majesty The Queen? You know, young man, I used to be the bad-boy of Black Library too, until I got this trick knee and these dodgy synapses...

And just for the record, I do write pitches, though it IS possible that they may have become more perfunctory over the last few years. I used to say 'the book will go from A to D via B and C' and now I say 'It starts at A, it ends at D, and I’ll work out how it visits C as I go along. Oh, and there may be a B involved'. Flippancy aside, it was my fairly detailed pitch for Titanicus that helped catch and prevent the major fluff crime I had been about to commit.

You’ve got nothing to worry about, anyway. I’ve read your first two books, and they were so good I found it difficult to pee afterwards. I can’t wait to read The First Heretic. I didn’t just blurb you up nice and good on the jacket of Soul Hunter because they asked me to, you know (well, they did ask me to, but they didn’t have twist my arm or pay me). I just had someone on my blog tell me I was okay, but I ought to be as good as you. People are already scratch-building armies of your characters, you mark my words. They’re already scratch-building characters you haven’t finished dreaming up yet.

It may be because you’ve only just come in through the saloon doors, and everyone’s already bagsied a seat, but I think we’re a long, long way from running out of space in the sandpit (which, uhm, clearly now has saloon doors and chairs). Just in terms of Space Marine Chapters, there’s so much available to develop, and that’s before you even get to the idea that we can always overlap. The hobby, the game-playing experience, should have told us that. It is possible for more than one person to have a, say, Space Wolves army. Sandy Mitchell has a very nice line going in Imperial-Guard-with-a-commissar stories that by your argument should have been nixed by the Powers That Be. Absolutely two writers (or more) can produce Ultramarines or Blood Angel or Titan Legion or whatever stories. The trick is, find a different and complementary angle to the approach taken by the other dude or dudes. Try not to contradict (even if you don’t like the way they built their moat). And if you do contradict a teensy little bit, it’s probably a very good reflection of the way the hobby itself works. Everybody should be allowed to have their own personal take on something. I know that remark won’t please the rule nazis and the fluff inquisitors, but that’s the other thing you have to bear in mind: in the grim darkness of the far future, someone’s always going to complain about something. You will not please every single 40K player and fan. You will learn to accept to cheerfully co-exist with the ones who tell you that what you’ve done is completely and inexcusably wrong.

Hmmm. The Abaddon idea sounds more than just elegant. See, four sentences, and I’m hooked. That’s my kind of synopsis. Mr Newton? Fetch this young man a commissioning form.

So... the great unfulfilled stuff lurking in my hindbrain? Like you said, I’ve got a lot on my plate and my recent Adventures In Epilepsy have delayed some of that, but... well, I’ve always liked the Imperial Fists. I mention them first because Chris Roberson has already got a Fists book out, which I’m sure is groovy. I’m using this fact as a very loose example of the sort of overlap I was talking about. I’ve also always liked the White Scars. I’d like to write something featuring orks that expands upon the feral, bestial way I presented them in Iron Snakes. I’d like to write a book from a non-human POV (which is one of the great mythical taboos of BL). I’d like to write the Warhammer equivalent of Titanicus (ie a thick, oversized, whole-city-in-peril book). I’d like to write a big and painfully tense novel about civilians and PDF and Imperial Guard, and maybe even Space Marines too, caught up on a world during a sudden, escalating Tyranid attack - planetwide scale, from the first warning signs to the final wipe-out, and I don’t want it to be part of a regular series like Gaunt or the Eisenhorn/Ravenor books: all new characters, so the reader doesn’t have a CLUE who’s going to make it out alive.

I bet you never read my first two novels at all. I bet 26p and my signed copy of Sandman Vol. VII that you’re sat there, right now, wondering who I am, and why I won’t leave you alone.

S’cool. I wonder that sometimes, too.

The Imperial Fists... Orkish revolutions... planetary extinction by the tyranids... You don’t do anything by halves, it has to be said. Part of that is what makes your writing so appealing to readers, I think. Part of it is clearly because you’re drunk on power and the fear-sweat of your Kentish house slaves.

Actually, while I’m in a generous spirit (enjoy it while it lasts) I won’t go on about The Talon of Horus and The Black Legion. Let’s just say they’re already in pretty fine form note-wise, and ready to be hurled into the right faces as soon as there’s a fresh void in the schedule. If there’s ever the need for a third in that series, it’ll be called It’s Pronounced LAZ-Gun, Not LAYZ-Gun.

But I guess we should be serious, before Marketing demands we cut even more of this thing. My recycle bin heaves under the savage rending done to our wit, Dan. I can’t tell if that’s because we’re just not as funny as we think we are, or because we get paid by the word and are making a mockery of the system. You’re the big fish in this pond, dude. You tell me.

We’ve got two huge things coming up, both threatening to eclipse the important things in my life (deadlines, Left 4 Dead 2, feeding the cat), and their impact craters are going to crunchy-crush things up on the tectonic level. The first is the next Horus Heresy meeting, whenever that is, because those are always mental. The second is the Sabbat Worlds Anthology, which is already getting some love on the advertising material, and the pulpy grey junk behind my eyes burst when I saw my name as one of the ones on the mock-up cover for that bad boy.

Seriously, it was a mess. I was in a hotel in Amsterdam at the time. Room service was furious.

So let’s take these things in turn, while I still have your attention. I know, I know, you need to leave this alone and go make another squillion pounds. Humour me. I won’t keep you long.

The Horus Heresy is in a really weird spot right now. The lore has always been extremely vague, especially regarding the 4 years of open conflict, where the Imperium tears itself apart in civil war – half declaring for the Emperor, half for the Warmaster. At meetings, we Douglas Adams that up by calling it ‘The long, dark teatime of the soul’, or the Age of Darkness, when we’re feeling more mature. I think you might’ve coined that phrase yourself. Whatever.

The established lore reveals practically none of what went on. Instead, it jumps straight from Prospero/Calth/Isstvan to the Siege of Terra, essentially blanking out several years of (excuse the pun) the galaxy burning. So we get to make the new lore for this, and that’s killer. It’s a hell of an honour to be in my seat for this ride.

What would you change, with what’s come out so far? What do you want to do for the series in the years to come? I know we all have our plots and plans, but I think you need to leave the Space Wolves alone and get back to the Alpha Legion, man. Yeah, that’s right, I’m telling you what to do. We’re contemporaries now. I get to be opinionated.

Don’t laugh, but what I’d love to do most of all would be a Romeo and Juliet-style story between two Navigator Houses, both alike in dignity, on fair Terra, where we lay our scene. 'From ancient grudge break new mutiny', with one house having most of its Navigators on board the Traitor Legions’ vessels, the other giving its gifted heirs to the loyalists – and when the Heresy breaks out, while both appear loyal to the Emperor, the former maintains secret ties to the Warmaster, deepening the rivalry between the households.

Remember when I pitched that? Oh, man, never seen an idea gunned down so fast. They were probably right, though. If it made it past the editors, marketing, acquisitions and the IP guardians, I’d sell like 3 copies and have to live in a cardboard box on your doorstep. But that’s The One, if you get me. We’ve waged war over the White Scars before, but I’m not as bloodthirsty as the fans. You have them. I have an idea for the Night Lords doing... something naughty.

I’ll let you eat and digest that spiel before we hit up the Sabbat Worlds. Go, go.

I think I did call it The Great Darkness, but we’ll have to change that, because TGD is the name of a VERY famous Legion of Superheroes story, and I have a history with those dudes. I suggest we call it the Long Darkness. Or the Grim Darkness.

So I should go back to the Alpha Legion, eh? I will consider that considered, though I suspect it’s just a ruse from you to get me off the White Scars track. I have enough gladiatorial duels with Graham on who gets to write what without having to stage another monkey knife fight in the car park with you (cue music from the Star Trek episode 'Amok Time').

Seriously, I have no idea why your (fantastic) idea about Navigators wouldn’t work, particularly if it heavily featured the loyalist and traitor Legions they were each bound to.

You’re right, the next bit of the Heresy is going to be cool. Literally and creatively stepping into the dark, away from the Well Known Bits into the long, cold afternoon of The Crucial Bits That Must Be There But We Don’t Know About. Yeah, I think that meeting’s going to be very exciting. It’s going to be interesting to brainstorm with your brains in that mix - it’s going to be different, I should think. Not bad different, not in any way bad different, but it’s got to be different, right?

You can’t write it all, man. You’re not Stephen King. Look to the shadows, Abnett. The second you let your defences down, I’m pouncing on the Legion you leave unguarded. That’s how I roll. That’s my ethical code on display, right there.

This is awesome. I got to threaten one of my idols. It’s been a good day.

I like that we had a real chance to ambassadors for 40K, and instead we went with unsellable genre love stories and tales of knife-based combat between enslaved primates. 

But I’m not done with you yet, because I can’t leave this hanging without bringing up the Sabbat Worlds Crusade anthology. Now, when I saw the mock-up cover for this – and saw my name was one of the few that made it onto the front – I was grinning like... well, like one of those guys on the bus. We discussed them. They’re not cool people.

So here we have a collection of stories, all by other writers, set in the crusade you’ve been revealing novel-by-novel for... over a decade? Are you scared we’ll screw this up? Are you all, like, freaking out that we might kick over the wrong sandcastles? Or are you all patronising and flattered, sat astride your royal throne like some kind of Jabba figure, ready to mock our best efforts? Because if it’s the latter, and you try to feed me to a rancor, let me just warn you that I’d probably not consider myself a fan of yours anymore.

I gave you the ghost (no pun intended...) of my idea, but here’s a little more detail. This is what I’m hitting between those covers.

Balhaut is burning, mired in a worldwide war that will soon decide the fate of the entire Sabbat Worlds Crusade. It’s twenty years before the current events of the Gaunt’s Ghosts saga, and the Great Victory is only hours away. The High Palace of the Oligarchy endures furious siege, with Imperial forces hurling everything they have at the walls. This will be the day that the Imperium emerges victorious over the First Archon, who is destined to die at the hands of Warmaster Slaydo. In turn, the bitterest defeat will come when Slaydo is butchered by the Archon’s forces in retaliation.

One of Slaydo’s personal guard witnesses it all. He’s at Slaydo’s side when the walls fall and the Imperium breaches the High Palace at last. He sees the last moments of the Archon and Warmaster, when they cross blades for the first and final time. And he’s part of the hellish retreat once Slaydo has fallen, with both Chaos and Throne forces in confused rout, both armies deprived of their leaders.

And the story is told from his eyes. One officer of Slaydo’s elite guards, captured by the Chaos cultists in the aftermath, and interrogated to reveal all he remembers of that day’s bloodshed. He knows they’ll kill him after they’re done with him, but he answers everything truthfully, defiantly, no matter what.

Hey, it’s just an idea.

What’s really funny is this. Your comment about the mental guys on public transport. Yeah, well since the epilepsy problems I started having last year, I haven’t been allowed to drive. I have to take the bus everywhere. I even got given a disabled person’s bus-pass. You making a joke of it. That’s what’s really funny, isn’t it?

ISN’T it?

*crickets chirping*

Kidding. Oh, and the Legion I leave unguarded? Let’s say it’s the Alpha Legion. You realise the delicious thing about the Alpha Legion is we could both write about it. We could BOTH write the next book after Legion. Alpha and Omegon. Both true, both false.

That’s the sort of thing that makes writing stuff for BL and working in this Universe so cool. That, and your Slaydo at Balhaut idea. I’m neither scared nor patronising about the Sabbat Worlds book, I’m excited. If you guys think the corner of the 40K Universe I’ve spent the last few years fixing up is cool enough to want to play in it, that’s all win.

Okay, my bus is coming. I think it’s time to go.

See, now I feel bad. Though that could just be because The First Heretic is so late. I emailed you another draft by the way. Read it and validate my existence. Be a dear.

Wait, you can’t drive right now? Can I borrow your Mercedes? I’ll treat it real swell on these insane countryside dirt roads, Dan. You have my word.

Man, I hope no one puts this on the Black Library website.