Superhuman

It's been quite a week, a real mix of ups and downs. Fortunately, most were ups.

First, though, a downer: my beloved Xbox360 (easily the most dangerous threat to a writing career ever conceived) got the dreaded Red Rings of Death and is currently off getting repaired. I had already started to cut down on the gaming when this happened, but the real kicker is that the Xbox360 was the only machine in my apartment that allowed me to watch my fairly significant UK DVD collection. I was halfway through season two of Babylon 5 when the blasted thing packed up! Argh!

Yes, the Red Rings of Death are as bad as they sound, but actually they couldn't have struck at a better moment. I had fallen a little behind on the rewrite of my new Deathwatch short story (to be published in next summer's Heroes of the Space Marines anthology), and having my primary distraction suddenly die turned out to be a good thing after all. The short story is now finished and in the scaly claws of editor Nick Kyme. I hope you'll all enjoy it when the anthology comes out next year.


My 'author's copies' of the Imperial Guard Omnibus: Volume One arrived here in Tokyo this week. Damn, that's a big book. Plenty of reading in there. I'm proud to share the page-count with Mitchel Scanlon and Steve Lyons, both of whose stories I very much enjoyed. The omnibus should be in bookstores any day now, so look out for that one. Even if you've already read Rebel Winter, I'd urge to you borrow the omnibus from a library or a friend so you can read my related short story, The Citadel. That one came together rather well, I thought.

I also received a printer's sample copy of Gunheads, which isn't actually out until March next year. Wow! It really came out looking fantastic. Hats off to the folks at BL and their printers, they sure can put a book together. Gunheads is almost twice as big as Rebel Winter, and was easily the hardest thing I've ever written, but it was worth every minute of effort. I hope you'll enjoy it once it hits the stores.

Other news? Well, let's see. I'm now focusing on my next novel for Black Library, but can't say too much about it at this stage. It will be a Space Marines story focusing on the disastrous events that befell a certain Chapter sometime during the last five decades of the 41st millennium. It's definitely time these guys had a book of their own. No more clues.

People inspiring my utter awe and admiration right now:

• Brenden Foster, a little boy who recently passed away due to leukemia, but who somehow managed to do more good in his last weeks than 99% of humanity achieves in its lifetime.
• The crew of the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin, who are about to cast off for the South Atlantic Sanctuary to try to stop the illegal Japanese whaling fleet from perpetrating their annual crimes. Fight hard, you lot. Good luck.
  

Fish-baby Reborn!

At last, it's done.

Starfish is here as a free downloadable PDF file, re-edited and improved for your reading pleasure. I hope you'll all enjoy it.

Like Stray Dog Swordsman on Redemption Road (see earlier post), it's a special story for me. It made quite an impact on Jason Sizemore, too. He's the editor of Apex Science-Fiction and Horror Digest, the magazine to which Starfish was originally sold. Jason was so taken with it that he decided Starfish should be the magazine's cover story, and commissoned a wonderfully disturbing piece of full colour art painted by the incredible Alex McVey (who also produced a dark and creepy interior piece for the story). Check out his website sometime.


The genesis of the story was fairly simple. It was written as a knee-jerk reaction to the very worst things that surrounded me when I first arrived in Tokyo. Take my word for it, Tokyo isn't kind to animal lovers and vegetarians. Not by a long shot.

Despite being a very bleak tale, Starfish was extremely well received, and, about a year after initial publication, I was very flattered to hear that it had been selected (by vote) for reprinting in the Best of Apex Digest 2006.

Since these hard-copy versions are either no longer available or extremely hard to acquire, I'm pleased to be able to offer the story to fans in this updated digital edition.

I'd also like to say a big 'thank you' to editor Gill Ainsworth, whose advice helped me refine the story for print that first time around. She was a joy to work with.

Starfish... soon.

Apologies for not posting recently, folks. I've been a bit snowed under. All very exciting stuff, and I'm looking forward to telling you about it later, but it's pushed the free PDF release of my SF-horror story, Starfish, back a little.

Bear with me, though, and I promise I'll make Starfish available as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I hope you're all looking forward to the Imperial Guard Omnibus: Volume 1. I know many of you have already read each of the three individual novels contained within, but I'm hoping it won't put you off buying this new edition. There's an introduction by Dan Abnett, and each of the novels is accompanied by an all-new short story by the original author.

My own offering, The Citadel, stands out among all my works as one of my own clear favourites, and I sincerely hope you'll all take the opportunity to read it. It ties in very closely to Rebel Winter and is set both before and after the events of the novel.

Check it out when it hits stores this December.