I thought you lot might like a new piece I made recently. It’s a small 1,000 word piece called ‘An Important Lesson‘, and involves Imperial Guard taking on Tyranids (or is that the other way round?), although on a very minor and personal level. Hope you like it! Comments, as always, welcome.

More soon, I promise. I’ve actually penned the first 1,200-odd words to a short story I’m working on that I will publish on here for free too, involving S- actually I won’t say. You’ll have to wait and see. It’s Warhammer 40,000 though, as you all might have guessed.

So, my first submission of the year is done and dusted. I sent it off last night and got a receipt e-mail back, so now I have a 3-5 week wait until I find out (it’s nice to have a publisher who tells you either way). This leaves me with a nice amount of time to start work on my three ideas for the Black Library open submission window which has just started.

The submission design has changed considerably this year for Black Library. Gone are the synopsis and paragraph summary. All that remains is the 500-1,000 word sample. This makes things much easier in terms of creating a good sample to send in. Getting those one thousand words becomes simpler because now it is all about writing and not the technical ability to lay out a synopsis. That can be taught, but the writing can’t. With over 2,000 submissions (quite a chunk of which were novels, one of which was mine!), you can see why BL are doing it this time.

So my three ideas are laid out ready. I’ve just got to get some time to write them. It shouldn’t be too long to lay out the basics, but then because of all the time spare without writing those summaries or synopses, it means prospective authors can really buff and shine their sample pieces before sending them, so best of luck to everyone who is applying during the window! See you on the flip side (maybe!).

In my spare time (What’s that? I know, I know…), I’ve also managed to enter the Bolthole’s Read-in-a-Rush competition. I’ll post up the finished story here once the current competition finishes for you all to enjoy. This time around, the trigger-word is: Hunter. I can hear the mental cogs turning already! I’m so proud of you all (but not too proud. Get back to work, lackeys!).

Just a quick update to let you all know that I have just published a review of the novel ‘Space Marine’ by Ian Watson over at The Founding Fields. You can find the review here. Should you need to, you can also access it from the Published Journalism section on this site too.

So the first draft of Project: Evil Shadow is complete! This is the first in a series of three submissions, all for different publishers. I must admit, I’m rather fond of this one, and I’ve managed to finish it open-ended, should I decide to carry it on at a later date. It weighs in at just over 5,000 words, which I’m hoping I’ll be able to cut down into the exact 5,000 limit being asked. I’ve got a couple of beta-readers ready for it, so I’ll be getting their feedback shortly.

Now that’s done, I’m currently prepping myself for an evening or two of reading a novella-in-progress by my good friend Alec. I’ve been really excited to read this, as I’m an avid fan of Alec’s Coburn work (that’s DEARLY a novel I would love to see finished and published. Think Ciaphas Cain, then add in more dark humour. Brilliant!), and I figured as soon as the document arrived in my inbox that I would get my short story out of the way so my head isn’t cluttered and unable to give 100% to this.

Once that’s done, I’ll be getting stuck into the second of three submissions I’m working on. This is really different to my usual stuff, but I figured I need to find out what I’m good at and what I’m not good at, so why not? I’ll be posting more on that as I get going on it.

Aside from the beta-reading, I’m currently working on a review for The Founding Fields, where I have just joined as a reviewer. I’ve come on board with a very specific idea in mind. I’ll reveal that more as time goes on, but suffice to say, it’s no small task! My first review will be going back to what I see as the “Primarch” of 40k novels. More soon!

So, I got my first taste of Diablo III last night! After having the beta installed for over a week and doing nothing more than downloading the client (which is a brilliant idea. I’ll explain how/why in a minute), I figured it was about time I made my first character and found out what everyone has been raving about.

With eager hands I clicked the icon on my desktop and… downloaded an update! It seems they had changed things again since I last downloaded, so the updater appears, and I wait. And wait. And wait. It sits at 0% with nothing to show anything is happening. I close it and reopen it again. Same issue. At this point I’m scratching my head. In a moment of inspiration, I run the icon as an Administrator. Success, it starts updating! Perhaps something to put in for final release there, Blizzard?

So, the downloader is updating, and the client begins to download the patch. At this point I am honestly blown away by what I see next.

The downloader shows three marks along the progress bar. Setup; Available and Playable. “Setup” is mandatory. These files NEED to be downloaded in order to play the game. “Available” however, is another mandatory part, but with a twist. Once this section is downloaded, you can start playing the game whilst it downloads other non-mandatory assets in the background, prioritising the files based on what you are doing in the game. Come to an area where you might fight a fire-breathing giant? The game will trigger a downloaded for the artwork and coding for that section just before you arrive there, streaming it directly into the game without stopping to patch and continuing as if nothing had ever happened!

It’s a nice touch, and something we’ve only had in MMOs up until now. Revolutionary? Perhaps not. But evolutionary? Definitely.

So anyway, once the game has downloaded (I opted to download the whole thing before starting), I jump in, eager to begin. I select a character (A monk, if you’re interested. The bastard hits like a whirlwind and just looks plain cool!), hit Play and… wait. This again? It seems so. After a while it times out. I try again, same issue. Turns out the servers are down.

I give up, quit the game and load Battlefield 3. Ah well, at least I’m up to date for the next time I want to wait for another patch! I’ll try again during the week.

In the meantime, my writing is progressing well. I’m hopefully looking at a completed short story before this week finishes, although that might be touch-and-go by Friday due to a weekend at a car show. We’ll see. I’ve also got my good friend Alec’s novella to beta-read and get back to him. That’s a priority to me, as Alec has always been a voice at my side helping me guide my writing, so I owe him big time. Plus I’m excited to see his first full novella in flow!

It seems my own writing rotates around an average 1,000 words a day. I’m not too worried about going back and editing as I write. I find I’ve got into the habit of laying down the ideas, then going back on my first internal edit at the end and refining it from there. My own editing coupled with beta-readers goes through about ten or so edits before I even send it in for submission, so this is an early phase as it is, however I’ve got three submissions to achieve before the Black Library window opens, so busy, busy, busy!

You know, it’s a strange feeling, not writing 40k. I am a self-confessed Warhammer 40,000 addict. When I was younger I was heavily into building armies, although strangely – and to this day – I have never played a single game. I refused to play a game until I completed my army, but my interest in my army waxed and waned so often that I never ended up having an army to play a game with. As it stands, I am now thirty years of age, and have never once in my sixteen years in the hobby, played a single game. I shock myself with that statement.

Anyway, swerving dangerously back on-topic; The majority of my science-fiction reading has been heavily 40k-oriented. I own every Warhammer 40,000 book ever written, and have preorders for Black Library publications kept constantly up to date about a year in advance.

My first trial at writing came a few years ago, when Black Library still ran their own forum. I commenced work on a novel idea, got through three chapters, before my realisation hit and I got into a “What in the hell was I thinking?” attitude. I promptly stopped. I still have that first work, as I believe the idea was good enough for a novel, but nowhere near ready for me to try writing it.

The Bolthole was born in the reshuffle of things, and I joined again, eager to try my hand at writing once more. I started short story writing, this time picking up on feedback from other members on the forum and getting better with every attempt. I was hooked.

At some point, I was asked by a friend if I would ever consider writing outside of the 40k universe. I believe at the time, my response was in the following order:

• Confusion at the idea of anything being non-40k related coming from me.
• Laughter at the idea of me even attempting to build my own world.
• A casual hand-wave telling the other person to get lost and stop asking silly questions.

And yet, here I am today, staring at an open document with the working title “The Beast Within” (I’m not sure on it. It will probably change), and it has absolutely nothing to do with Warhammer 40,000. How times change…

Sure, it’s still grim-dark and showing humans in strife, but that isn’t necessarily exclusive to Warhammer 40,000, although it is a big part of it (at least in terms of literature). Still, it shocked me just how far things have come in my writing to consider even moving outside of the Warhammer worlds and building my own. When I first thought of this idea for the story, the concept of designing my own world, environment or what have you instantly filled me with dread. Simple things I took for granted, like the currency of the Imperium, or measurements of time, were suddenly in my own grasp and control. It was daunting.

Yet when I sat down to start things off, it came naturally. I didn’t even blink, and before I knew it, I had a world designed in the image I wanted for the story. It barely took me minutes to lay out the basic pieces, and without realising it, I had started laying out the fundamentals of the idea itself. Now this leads me to a couple of conclusions, but I’m not sure which (if any!) are correct:

1. I have an untapped skill in world-building, or;
2. I was lucky.

Now, I suspect it’s the latter, but I’d like to think perhaps reading about so many other worlds designed by my hero-authors in Warhammer 40,000 has given me the inspiration to create my own. I guess the real test will be if I ever get a full writing gig and am given the chance to try my hand. Time will tell I guess; It’s definitely something that is interesting me more and more, and I find myself going back to material I read years ago, when the style of Black Library writing was more prosaic in terms of describing the terrain and where something was taking place, rather than allowing the user to assume certain things. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the current “rush, rush, rush” of current situations I read about. Part of me misses it.

So I’ve started work on my first short story submission after being reinvigorated during my trip to Black Library Live! 2012 recently. This piece is non-Black Library related, but gives me enough to get my teeth into before the submissions window reopens shortly for Black Library itself. I’m looking at a 5,000 word short story for an independant publisher who is looking for stories based on “Darkness”.

I’ve got a concept, so I’ll be spinning it up this weekend in the hopes of having a first draft by the end of next week. We’ll see how it goes. Then after that it’s head down for a couple of submissions for the open submission window of Black Library.

In the meantime, much of my (little) spare time is being taken up with Battlefield 3. I stepped away from it a while ago, but have come back and found my stride now, confidently placing highly on scoreboards and even gaining a level of admiration from some of my regular teammates. It seems I’m definitely suited to aircraft and foot-soldier work!