It’s official- the short but very welcome rest our wallets and pocketbooks have enjoyed the last few weeks in the wake of the Black Library Celebration has come to an end. The Black Library resumes regular broadcast service this coming Saturday as previews open for the newest literary release.
Preordering this Week
Phil Kelly’s recently-teased Farsight: Blade of Truth has arrived. No special or limited edition here, but instead the regular array of hardcover, digital, and audio. It’s been five years since Kelly’s last novel with Commander Farsight, so look for this one to move the narrative in a different direction. Living now in exile on the distant world of Vior’los, any hope for a quiet retirement are shattered when the Tyranid arrive.
With Noah Van Nguyen’s Elemental Council dropping just last quarter it’s not a bad time to be a T’au reader!
Writing Combat
For those interested in the writer’s craft, a great place to gain insights into your favorite authors and stories are in their personal blogs and newsletters. Not every author has then, nor does every author make frequent use of them, but for those that do it can be a real goldmine.
Sticking with Van Nguyen a little longer, he had a terrific mailbag-style piece this week including a discussion on how his experience as a soldier on combat deployment has helped inform his writing.
“I reckon there are three levels of combat experience I try to bring to my writing: the sensory experience, the tactical experience, and the emotional experience.
The sensory experience is incredible. Bullets make the sounds they do in movies, whizzing overhead, pewing off the ground. Psychologically, firearm discharges sound wildly different depending on whether they’re on your side or not.
For example, nothing feels better than an M-249 SAW buzzing at an enemy position. But once I heard the metallic rip-roar of a PK medium machine gun (a Soviet weapon used by the Taliban) open up about fifty meters away as my squad was responding as QRF (“quick reaction force”) element to medevac a friend. I very nearly pissed myself…”
Read the whole thing, it’s terrific. He references specific scenes in Elemental Council and Godeater’s Son that are translated directly from combat experiences he’s had.
The 2024 British Science Fiction Awards Finalists Announced
The British Science Fiction Awards have been around since 1970, and traditionally the winners are declared on Easter at Eastercon, the annual British science fiction convention.
There are a few familiar names in the running this year! Day of Ascension Author Adrian Tchaikovsky is a finalist for Shorter Fiction (for Saturation Point) and Novel (for Alien Clay), while Fight Like a Girl 2, a contender for Best Collection, features stories from Black Library notables Danie Ware (The Rose in Darkness, The Triumph of Saint Katherine) and Juliet McKenna (Fear Itself).
Best of luck to all!
Writers Who Made You
“BookSky,” the literary corner of BlueSky, spent some time last week acknowledging the writers who served as our influences with the “Five Writers Who Made You” challenge. A few Black Library authors shared who’d had the biggest influence on their writing careers.
Jonathan Beer is the author of the recent Dominion Genesis, as well as The King of the Spoil for the Black Library.
Maria Haskins wrote The Jagged Edge, an Astra Militarum short story included in 2020’s Only War: Stories from the 41st Millennium anthology.
Author of novels like Daemonbreaker and Morvenn Vahl: Spear of Faith, Jude Reid’s most recent story for the Black Library, The Reskard Purgation, was included in the new Blood of the Imperium anthology.
Quick Hits
- In case you missed it, this week’s Goonhammer book review was Siege of Vraks, by Steve Lyons. Check it out if you haven’t already!
- Last week we looked at some upcoming paperback releases for the Black Library that we were able to find prerelease dates for on Amazon. One sharp-eyed reader on Reddit noticed that I’d missed The Twice Dead King Omnibus, which is showing a release date of September 23, 2024. Thanks, u/Equivalent_Fun_4825!
- A number of others found something interesting on Amazon- a hardcover release, listing Era of Ruin, the next Horus Heresy anthology, as landing on June 17. As always, take these with a grain of salt.
- Speaking of author’s blogs, Josh Reynolds (Deathstorm, the Spear of Shadows) shared an excellent essay recounting the (fictional) life and influence of Inspector John Raymond Legrasse, the investigator in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and “patron saint of the dogged, and often doomed, investigator of eldritch mysteries.”
- The next episode of WarhammerTV’s Scribes & Scriveners will be an interview with Robert Rath, author of Assassinorum: Kingmaker and fan-favorite The Infinite and the Divine.
- And finally, some more amazing hobby work from Black Library authors, as adept with the brush as they are with the pen! This is from Andy Clark (Gloomspite, Bad Loon Rising), who shared some recent work on BlueSky. Enjoy!
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