Warhammer 40,000

Some of you may have noticed the coming storm, its vanguard having reached the Hat Rack just last Tuesday. In addition to the Dan Abnett omnibus I reviewed then (Ravenor), a review of his first Gaunt's Ghost omnibus is not far behind. That's not the end of it for Warhammer 40,000 on this blog, either. I should be conquering the final novel in Sandy Mitchell's first Ciaphas Cain omnibus later tonight, and I have only one book left in Graham McNeil's Ultramarines omnibus.

So, why all this Warhammer? It is, admittedly, not a setting I've read much of before, though I enjoyed a few of the books years ago and still occasionally play the Dawn of War computer game. A few weeks ago, I read Horus Rising, the first of the Warhammer 40,000 series the Horus Heresy. The book failed to impress me, and, for a few days, I figured I'd stay away from the setting after that. Then, without much having changed, I had the exact opposite impulse: I decided that I wanted to write a short story in the setting.

Black Library, the publisher behind all the bolded Warhammer 40,000 series titles that are making this post an endless mess of emphasis, accepts prose samples cut out of short stories for only a few months of the year. The last of those months was June, which, I probably don't need to tell you, ended yesterday.  But fear not, my prose sample (an eight hundred word chunk of my newest short story "Within and Beneath its Walls") winged its way in just before the window slammed shut. Odds are, this is the last you'll hear of that tale. While I have gotten a fair few stories published by now, only two sold to the first publisher I sent them. This story, for obvious reasons (read: massive lawsuit), will not have a second shot.

That's not, though, to say that I regret writing it. It was fun to do and let me get out of a bit of the Military SF itch I've been having. Besides, the research for it led to the aforementioned Warhammer 40,000 novels, most of which were quite enjoyable. Reviews of them will be coming along, though, fear not, I'll spread them out with other content to prevent this becoming a Black Library fanblog.