Babel Clash

So I guess we’re at the packing your suitcase and waiting for a cab to the airport stage of our visit here at Babel Clash, and I’d like to echo what Graham said last night: we’ve had a splendid time, it’s been great meeting you all and chatting to you and, hey! We broke a record too!

I was just checking over the comments from the last post to see if there were any questions left unanswered. I was drawn to Paul’s comment -the point he made was a good one, but I especially enjoyed his admission that “this is by a long way the nerdiest thing I’ve ever posted so forgive me”. I could almost hear the resigned sigh that accompanied it, and I so recognised the feeling: the moment you know you’ve been drawn into, and committed to, the internal logic of a conversation that you know has long since crossed the Nerd Event Horizon. My empathy for Paul’s remark aside, it’s actually a significant characteristic of my work and the over all subject of this fortnight’s digressive discussion. It’s the level of willing immersion you have to embrace if you want to play in someone else’s universe. It’s taking the sort of questions typified by that old cliche, “Who’s stronger? The Thing or the Hulk?” and considering them soberly and thoughtfully, despite all the eye-rolling and the mocking and the digs like, “Why are you taking this so seriously? It’s not real, you freak! It’s only a comic/game/movie/bunch of toy soldiers!” (delete where applicable). Digs like, “It’s not even a proper book.” And “You are so sad, dude.”

And I guess we all know why, don’t we? We’ve all got at least one thing that we take that little bit too seriously. The thing that can actually draw us across the Nerd Event Horizon to engage in serious debates about non-existent things… like hit points or gene seeds or power rings or flux capacitors or jelly babies.

You can make a good case for it being much easier to work in someone else’s universe because a) someone else has already set the rules for you and b) there are lots of other people to ask, but both of those points are based on the false assumption that the rules work and all of those other people agree with one another. You can make a similarly good case for the idea that your own universe is the easiest playground, but it can be lonely there, and cold, and you can get cabin fever, and there’s no one around to stand with you when the wolves start growling outside the door.

I suppose what I want to leave you with more than anything is the idea that tie-in work, when it’s taken seriously, is not a soft option, a quick hack job to earn money. I wouldn’t want to draw a line between my original universes and the ones I’ve been allowed to play in: I have found both rewarding, and if it sounds like I’m bigging-up the latter here on Babel Clash, it’s probably over-compensation. People say some crappy things about tie-in work. It’s only just getting a scrap of the respect it deserves for the industry and craft it involves, and… well, to be honest, if us tie-in writers don’t stand up and explain what goes into it and why it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand as a great big pile, then who the hell else is going to?

That final stray question from Marine, seconded by Elizabeth - yes, I menaced poor Ben with an axe and told him to keep Loken’s ‘death’ vague. And if I told you guys how he was going to make it off Istvaan, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?

On behalf of me and Graham, thanks again everyone, and thanks to Morgan and Babel Clash for having us. We’ll both be checking in over the rest of today to catch any final comments. But this doesn’t have to be the end, oh no! If you look to the right or below, you’ll see links to our home pages, where you’ll find our blogs. You can come and have chats like this with us there, where we will be prepared to speak about all aspects of anything. I kid you not. My particular area of expertise is digression. So, party at our place! Let’s go!

One last thing. I was struck by how many of you have said that the enthusiasm of our posts over the last fortnight have inspired you to write your own stories or even novels. That’s pretty amazing. Off you go, find some universes… your own or otherwise.

So, Saturday morning here in the UK, really early, still dark, crisp and cold. Don’t know what woke me. Maybe it was the giant-size Hollywood-style full moon lighting the edges of the cloud banks as it sets; more likely the telepathic tremors letting me know how popular our stint here at Babel Clash has been. Well, how gratifying is that?

It’s the last few days of our stay here, and I thought we’d be pretty relaxed about it and use the time to answer any (within reason!) questions you might have left, however idle they may be.

Let me start today by picking up on a few comments that appeared in the last couple of days alongside Graham’s fantastic posts (I agree with you, Philip!) about working on the Heresy.

Cor - you mention Loken. As far as I’m concerned, Loken’s not dead.

Richard - in 30K, there’s a sense of possibility, about an aspirational future for Mankind, however directed and controlled. In 40K, it’s everything Mankind can do just to hold on to what he’s got.

Cees - I think one of the things that all the Heresy authors have tried to look at is not WHAT happens but HOW and WHY. As you say, we know Caesar’s fate - the interest lies in finding out the surprises and secret twists that led to it. I was going to mention the movie Titanic then, as an example of something being remarkably successful even though we know what’s going to happen in the end, but if I do, the next thing you know it’ll be all Irish Jigs and life drawings, and I’ll be forced to send for the cheese police.

Jay - your idea actually made me stop and think for a moment. There is something very interesting about instruments ultimately resenting the inferior things that created them. However, Graham’s rebuttal was spot on - as was Big’s, in a completely different spirit. “Yeah, I know we said we were okay with the no-kids thing, but we’re really not…” made me laugh: it’s a mainstream, prime-time drama subplot meets shooty-death-kill in space. It’s Calista Flockhart in carapace armor. It’s Kristin Davis on a Golden Throne (with scatter cushions).

Frank - you know, of course, once you’ve fallen to Chaos, there’s nothing to say that Slaanesh can’t adjust your desires, tastes and… well, anatomy.

Graham’s blog yesterday talked specifically about the “Prospero Books” and how they came to be written (in the case of mine, STILL being written). Joking aside, the picture is surprisingly accurate. We’d enjoyed writing the first two books in the HH series so much, passing notions and characters back and forth, that we approached these with a more deliberate intent. Both of us assumed I’d be Magnus and he’d be Russ. I’ve never liked the Space Wolves much. Don’t get me wrong - they’re great in the game, just brilliant, but in terms of crafting fiction around them, they always seem to be too… well, vikings in space, really. Too on the nose. Too much what they appear to be in an SF context where that shouldn’t be realistic.

Anyway, that’s eventually why I thought I ought to write their side: it would be too easy to take the sorcerer-astartes and write inside my comfort zone. I realised I needed to face my demons and tackle the challenge. And I wanted to give Graham a proper creative choice, monkey knife fight in the car park or no monkey knife fight in the car park.

It was the right choice to make. I am a brother of wolves now, and I own an axe.

And I’m not kidding.

Philip mentioned yesterday the fact that it’s a shame my half of the pairing won’t be seen until next year. Graham’s half, A Thousand Sons, is indeed already out. My half, Prospero Burns, will be available for pre-order in the latter part of this year. It‘s had to be postponed in the schedule, and I can’t say how sorry I am about that. No matter how well you plan things, you can’t predict everything. Last autumn, while I was working on the book, I started to suffer seizures. Several months of CAT scans and MRIs finally revealed that I had developed epilepsy. Now I’m learning to live with the condition, which has involved making all sorts of changes in my lifestyle, not all of them unwelcome. Right now, I’m really getting back into the swing of things and building momentum in my work again. I’m not making light of epilepsy, but that eventual diagnosis came as a huge relief: the seizures could have been evidence of something a great deal more… how can I put it? A great deal more drastic. But, as you can imagine, Prospero Burns did get a little disrupted at the end of last year.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I’m really sorry that Prospero Burns is late, and I’m also sorry about anything else that’s run over a little, and the convention appearances I’ve had to cancel, and I’m sorry to Graham that our working relationship on the Prospero books, though great fun and very productive, wasn’t QUITE what we were imagining.

I’ll try to make it worth waiting for.

Oh, and fyi - in terms of writing tips: monkey knife fights in car parks can be a very useful creative tool if used correctly.

Hey Dan & Graham,

Congratulations on setting a new record for us here at Babel Clash.  We’ve had more visitors during your stint on Babel Clash than we have ever had before.  Take a bow, gentlemen.

I think that says a lot about your skills, how much your fans appreciate your work and the enduring popularity of stories such as the Horus Heresy.  Also, your posts have been great.  That helps, too.

And thank you to all of our guests, who’ve made the past two weeks a record.  Please keep reading and know that your comments are always welcome.

All right, with a couple of days left for these guys, I’ll step out of the way and let them close up their run here on Babel Clash with their usual style.  Guys, please feel welcome to talk about any other projects that you have in the works, or if you have more to share about Horus Heresy, then I suspect that you will find a receptive audience.

Yesterday I talked about the feel of how we approached writing stories set during the Horus Heresy, what made them different and how we made sure you knew you were reading one when you picked it up. Today I’m going to take a look at how they informed the writing of A Thousand Sons, my latest Heresy novel. All sounds very academic, doesn’t it, but trust me, it’s just me looking at why A Thousand Sons was such a fun novel to write and why you’ll enjoy it so much.

The Razing of Prospero is one of the big boy events of the Heresy, a milestone in the road that you can’t ignore because it’s a gigantic, 2001-style slab of monolithic goodness. The rich seam of storytelling potential made it a juicy prospect, and after numerous monkey knife fights in the car part to sort out who got to tell it, Dan and myself stood triumphant. Afterwards, we both looked at each other warily, like two gunfighters waiting for the other to make his move. Slowly, and with infinite patience, Dan’s pen finger twitched and he said in a gravely baritone, “I don’t like Space Wolves.” I looked him up and down to see if this was an elaborate bluff, a sly way of putting me off balance, but no, he seemed serious.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll write the Space Wolves side of things.”

“Well, okay then,” replied Dan. “I’ll do the Thousand Sons. It’s settled.”

“Yup, sure is.”

“Good.”

‘Uh-huh”

Except something strange happened next. We talked over the story of Prospero, examined the motives of the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves, asked lots of awkward questions about the set-up and rationale behind some of the decisions the key players in this drama were making. Some of it didn’t make sense, or seemed, at the very least, wilfully dense. But the more we examined the story, turning it this way and that, the more we found hidden layers, secret possibilities and truths in the heart of each Legion we hadn’t suspected. Over the course of the afternoon, I could feel a sick feeling in my gut, knowing now that I wanted to tell the story of the Thousand Sons. I glanced over at Dan, thankfully seeing a similar uneasy cast to his features. Towards the end of the day we looked at each other.

Both of us spoke at the same time.

“Wanna switch?”

Okay, that’s not quite how it happened, but it’s not far off. The more we learned, the more we realised exactly how much we wanted to explore the legions we ended up writing about. And let me tell you, having read the first third or so of Prospero Burns, I’m immensely glad Dan’s doing the Space Wolf side of the equation. These are Wolves like you’ve never seen them, unlike any depiction you’ve ever seen. Yet they are utterly, absolutely recognisable as Space Wolves. Contradiction? Absolutely. And yet they’re spot on.

I set to work on A Thousand Sons a while ago, making sure I put plenty of time in up front to really get into the nuts and bolts of who the Thousand Sons were. What made them tick, how were they organised and what character would they have? I wanted to make them more than just a legion of Librarians. I wanted to give them a character unique amongst the Astartes, a character that was different in every way from the legions we’d seen before. I’d have failed if they ended up as a legion that fought and behaved like any other, with their only difference being that they wore red and shouted, “For Magnus!” instead of “For Horus!”

They needed to walk differently, talk differently, act differently and fight differently. After all, if you have access to all these funky psychic powers, you’re not going to just walk straight into the enemy’s gunfire, are you? You’re going to be cleverer than that. To that end, I put serious couch time into working out who these guys were, working out a back story for the legion and each of its captains that gave them flavour beyond anything that would appear in the book itself. More than just sorting the characters out for the synopsis, this meant coming up with battles they’d fought in, secrets they’d mastered, places they’d been and powers they’d employed. It took a while to get to a place I was happy with (as my editors can testify…), but it made the writing so much richer. I thought about the essence of their character, and looked beyond simply the Egyptian angle. Did I draw inspiration from that aspect? Of course, but I went beyond that. I drew in elements from Aztec, Khmer and all manner of esoteric cultures. After all, the idea of a legion like the Thousand Sons supping from only one cup of knowledge seemed absurd. There’s no such thing as too much knowledge to them.

All this paid off when I started writing the book, though it means I had lots of new concepts to get across very early in the book. I was showing each chapter to Dan as I went along, and, early on, he made the very excellent point that perhaps I shouldn’t try and explain all these new concepts, that perhaps – being a Thousand Sons novel, and therefore beholden to mysteries – it might be a good idea to throw those concepts out there and leave them unexplained and mysterious, to leave the reader in the same place as anyone encountering the Thousand Sons would be. A little bit wary, a little bit unsettled, and left with the feeling that they know fantastical secrets they’re not telling you. It was a simple change, but one that really informed the vibe of the book.

It also meant that for quite some time there wasn’t a shot fired in anger. A lot of the Heresy books start with a bang, well, several bangs, but it was many chapters in before someone even draws a pistol. At first I was a little worried about this. Was the book too slow, was it dragging its feet towards some action? The more I thought about this, the more I realised that it was exactly right that A Thousand Sons held back on its blazing bolters, as it fitted the character of the legion perfectly. These weren’t guys who went charging in with guns aflame and chainswords raised to hack the enemy down. These are warriors, yeah, but they’re also scholars who want to know things first. If they can lean from you before they have to kill you, then you best believe that’s what they’ll do. It also means it complements the character of the Space Wolves, killers who are the perfect weapon of destruction and a legion bred for devastation.

This isn’t a book about a legion that falls to Chaos, its one that takes a roundabout route there. Did the Thousand Sons jump or were they pushed? That’s one of the central questions of the Thousand Sons, and one I felt there was great dramatic potential to be mined in its exploration. I didn’t want to tell a story of madness and obsession leading to the dark place, I’d already done that with Fulgrim, this was going to be a story where I took characters who’ve been vilified over the years and bring them back to a place of understanding. To that end, I picked Ahriman as my main character, and over the course of the book, I came to really like him. I saw the hunger for knowledge in him that drove Magnus, but also the humility the primarch lacked. I invested more in Ahriman’s character so that when the fate of the legion is finally sealed, you’re left with the sinking feeling that it could all so easily have been avoided.

As I said yesterday, the mortal characters are important to what makes the Heresy tick, and A Thousand Sons is no exception. Again, Remembrancers play a big part in the story, though not in the same way as we’ve seen them before. These guys are, in their own way, questing for knowledge, but it’s knowledge the Thousand Sons would rather not be widely disseminated since it’s about them. Given their history with the Imperium and their near self-destruction, that’s understandable. Yet they can’t help but warm to their youthful questioning and this forges a bond that’s about as close to friendship as it’s possible for Astartes and mortals to form.

A Thousand Sons is a long book, the longest in the Heresy series so far, and there’s a lot going on. Some bits of it you know (or think you do) but lots of other bits are new. We see some new characters, some old ones and some scenes from ‘history’ in a new light. As is our mantra for the Heresy books, I’ve brought something new and surprising to the table, and taken what you’ve heard, what you think you know and given it an ever so slight tweak so that the convenient shapes you’ve been given just aren’t quite right.

And of course, it ends in a stonking great battle.

Dan and I have talked at a bit about how we get together with the other authors and editors to plan out the kinds of stories and characters we want to tell, the wheres the whys and the whos, but today I’m going to take a meandering look at the first meeting we had. Why? Well because that’s the one where we laid out the rough shape of the playground and some of its basic rules in which those stories would operate. The High Lord of Terra (previously encountered as Alan) spoke to a crowded room of writers and editors about what the crucial differences were between the Heresy era (30K) and the Age of the Imperium (40K). As you might imagine, this turned into a very long day, with a million and one ideas born in that melting pot. But crucially, the best thing we took from that meeting wasn’t specific storylines, but the mood and feel of the place. Where 40K is a shabby palace with shuttered rooms and dusty white sheets covering the furniture, inhabited by faded ghosts and ancient old men, 30K was going to be the first days of that palace, where armies of servants threw open the windows to let the light in, and the owners were stepping into their new home with boundless enthusiasm to admire the crisp new décor.

This is key to what made the stories different, made them special. It’s what separates them from 40K books by more than just the names and the characters, it’s what let’s you know you’re not reading a 40K book, you’re reading a Horus Heresy book. We wanted readers to know they were reading a 30K novel as soon as they opened the book and read its first few pages. To that end we looked at what 40K was, how it came to be the way it is and what probably existed before. The early days of the Great Crusade were a time of hope, optimism and enlightenment, were humanity had stared into the abyss of extinction and was about to leap in when the Emperor pulled it back at the last moment. That’s not to say it was the happy family of the Federation of Planets, not even close. Unity had a painful birth, but one that showed the vast majority of people all they could achieve if they just embraced it. Not only that, but there was actual hope that the things humanity aspired to achieve could actually be reached. The light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t a speeding train, it was the promise of an empire of mankind based on learning, growth and progression.

(That’s an idea I went back to explore in Mechanicum, the notion that the Priesthood of Mars were on the brink of changing from a monolithic organisation built on tradition and repetition to one of exploration, discovery and scientific advancement. This borrowed from the conceit that science has freed us from so much pain and death, but also has the potential to destroy us all – either in the fires of awesomely destructive weaponry, or the more Lovecraftian realisation of our own utter insignificance amid terrifying vistas of infinity. That change could have made all the difference to the future course of the Imperium, but, alas, it wasn’t to be.)

Of course no empires are ever built without bloodshed, and that’s where the Astartes come in. The Astartes are warriors so far removed from humanity that they are, for all intents and purposes, no longer human. Astartes were always going to be at the core of the Horus Heresy story, as the rebellion began as an inter-legion civil war and spread from there. But it was always going to be more than that. It was going to be about people and what it meant for them. In 40K, the people of the Imperium are little more than footnotes, tally marks on a bureaucrat’s ledger, resources to be expended and tithes to be claimed. Whole worlds can vanish, in the fires of invasion or in clerical typo in the dusty halls of the Administratum. It’s a cruel place, a dark place, a place you would never, ever, want to visit. Human life is cheap, and it’s the one currency the Imperium has in almost limitless abundance. And it’s not shy about spending it. We often throw civilians into the mix of 40K novels and then horribly slaughter thousands of them, but they’re little more than straw men to be cut down in droves to show the awfulness of the galaxy. In short, they often don’t matter.

That’s not the case In 30K. People do matter. When people die in 30K it matters because they’re the ones building the Imperium, the ones spreading out into the stars to reclaim what was lost in the hell of Old Night (a lovely term coined by Mr Abnett, I believe). And talking of people brings me to the remembrancers, another great invention that feels wholly natural in the broad tapestry of the Heresy books. No, these guys and girls aren’t genetically-engineered post humans with biceps like boulders and guns that are basically rocket launchers, they’re just fleshy bags of meat and blood that break easily. And that’s what makes them compelling characters to add to the mix of a Heresy novel. In 30K we see interaction between humans and Astartes through their eyes. It’s still a big deal for mortals to be around Astartes, to meet and talk to them, but it happens. They can even become friends. Just look at Loken and Karkasy, Ahriman and Lemuel (what do you mean you haven’t read A Thousand Sons yet? Okay, okay…I’ll talk about that tomorrow…). The point is, that the horrible divisions wracking 40K haven’t yet split the Imperium into its factionalised state. Mortals still matter to Astartes, and the two exist, side by side, in a – more or less – united front in 30K. All that is lost when the Astartes make war on one another. The bond of trust between humanity and the Astartes is severed, and no-one will ever look at them in the same way again. Gav Thorpe’s excellent audio drama, Raven’s Flight, explores this idea more fully, so if you haven’t already checked it out, do so with all possible speed.

To my mind, it’s the humanity that makes 30K such a sea change from 40K. People care about things that you and I can identify with. Happiness is a possibility in 30K, where in 40K you’re every waking moment is concerned with worshipping the Emperor, working in whatever hellish manufactory you’re stuck in or worrying about being killed by a daemon, xenos beast, piratical raider or even your own rulers. It’s a world where everyone lives in fear, and conventional wisdom tells us that fearful populaces are easier to control. I imagine it’s like living under the constant surveillance of the Stasi or KGB, compared to living in a utopian society where the human spirit is to be celebrated, not crushed. Not a fun place to be.

The Heresy is, as has been said many times, a tragedy, an epic fall from grace brought about by the fatal flaw of its protagonist. But it’s about so much more than just Horus’s downfall, it’s about the terrible waste of a wonderful idea that never came to fruition. Who knows what might have been achieved if Horus hadn’t been seduced by Chaos, or if the Astartes hadn’t turned on one another like rabid dogs. The ultimate success of the Emperor’s grand dream was within touching distance when it was snatched away. You could see it, you could smell it, but just as you were reaching for it, a clawed hand snatched it away and smashed it into pieces that can never be put back together, no matter how hard you try. You might have all the broken shards, but without the glue to hold it in place, you’re always having to stand there holding it so it doesn’t fall apart again. And that’s not progress, that’s stagnation. The watchword for 40K.

30K is progress, 40K is stagnation. That’s about all I need to say.

I think Angry Robot’s statement is pretty accurate in terms of intent, Morgan: they are ambitiously and enthusiastically pursuing some great material that would be hard to pigeon-hole in traditional ways. I think a cocky mission statement like AR’s simply serves to remind everyone how excitingly broad the possibilities contained within the category “SF and F” really are. And I think that genre writers have always been prepared to take those giant risks, but it’s a lonely life at the keyboard, and sometimes you want your ground to be safe rather than new. It’s energising to find an imprint like Angry Robot that happily wears its awareness of those risks on its sleeve, and is eager to see them being taken. It’s about attitude.

Big’s comments yesterday about Triumff were very nice to hear. Tsar Boris asked about ongoing series versus finite stories: some things (like Gaunt) have always been open-ended, in that I’ve always felt that I’d recognise when it was time to stop when I got there. Others (like Eisenhorn) were going to be finite trilogies from the get go. I think I try to govern how these things grow using a mix of flexibility and quality control. I don’t, for example, know how many Triumff books I’d like to write, but the number is not set. Right now, I’ve written one and I have a great idea for the sequel. Maybe there’ll be a billionty-one. Maybe there’ll be two. There certainly isn’t a neon rule in my head flashing “Triumff = a maximum of four books.”

The Gaunt’s Ghosts series is planned out in three or four book arcs (each arc has a sub-title). All the while I’ve got fresh and exciting ways of continuing the series, I’ll keep going. The moment, and I mean the very moment, I feel I’m just churning out Gaunt stories for the sake of having a new Gaunt book, I’ll stop. It occurs to me that it may be surprising for some people to hear that tie-in series, which are supposed to be driven more by consciously commercial concerns, have creative discernment involved in their production.

Embedded, my next book for Angry Robot, is a return to the hard combat SF that I’m best known for. Freed from the constraints of someone else’s universe, the combat is going to be harder than usual, and I’ve been having wild fun creating a setting that will be unpredictable yet credible. The premise is this: on the frontline of a future war, a journalist is covering the action ‘chipped’ into the head of a serving trooper. When the soldier is killed, the journo - unable to eject his consciousness - has to take control of the body and get home again, reporting live feed all the way.

See? You want to read it already, don’t you?

Dan, I’m glad that you brought up Triumff and Angry Robot.  I’m excited to see their books arrive here in the U. S.

It sounds like Angry Robot (love the name) is aggressively paving a path into unexplored territory.  They’re going after younger readers, new genres and new styles.  They’re setting themselves up as trendsetters in the category.

Here’s a quote from their mission statement:   “Traditional SF and fantasy has been ploughing an entertaining furrow for many decades, but to our way of thinking much of it is missing a trick. To the new generations of readers reared on Dr Who and Battlestar Galactica, graphic novels and Gears of War 2, old school can mean staid, stuck in a rut.”

Read the whole statement here.

What is your take on that statement?  Is it accurate?

When tradition and convention pressure authors to create worlds that are at least somewhat familiar or trendy, do you feel like you’re taking a giant risk by breaking new ground?

The universe of my novel Triumff existed in my head for about two decades before I got it into a printed form. It didn’t take that much longer to reach publication than my 40K books because the universe took so much more time to design, but the contrast is useful from the perspective of the jobbing writer. A key advantage of working in someone else’s universe is that it already exists. You climb aboard, you make a creative space for yourself, you benefit from (and, if you’re doing your job right, contribute to) the ongoing momentum. Coming out of nowhere twenty years ago, I’d probably have had great difficulty selling Triumff to anyone, and if I’d managed it, it would have probably have gone out so low key it would have vanished again. Twenty years later, with a track record and past credits, I was a better prospect. Triumff isn’t being sent out over the top on its own.

Oh, and this is a crucial thing: twenty years later, Triumff is a much better book.

Triumff has benefited from the time I’ve spent in other people’s universes, both in the evolution of my actual writing chops and the development of my ‘brand’ as an author writing different things with cross-appeal to overlapping audiences.

And that’s the last time I intend to talk like a marketing manager in this blog. These are the sort of things you probably want to consider less publicly, or maybe chat about with an agent (if you have one).

Let’s talk about Triumff some more, and make sausages again. I’d always loved Elizabethan England as a setting, and I wanted to work out a way to set a (light-hearted? maybe?) novel there. But I also wanted to find a way to be a little, how can I put it, post-modern with it. I wanted to be able to make arch comments. I wanted to be a little knowing. This also might be explained by the simple fact that I was too lazy to do such thorough research there wouldn’t be any anachronisms, but I don’t like to admit that.

The easiest way to do ‘post-modern Elizabethan’ was to create an Elizabethan Age in modern times. Once I was on the path of alternate history, I needed a trigger event: the Thing That Happened that changed history from the one we’re familiar with having lived through it. The trigger turned out to be magic. In the universe of Sir Rupert Triumff, the Renaissance rediscovered magic, not art. The great empire of Elizabeth the First capitalised on this ‘technology’, became the pre-eminent world power (Liz One married Phil of Spain for new World consolidation purposes) and the rest was (alternate) history.

I could, I know, talk about humour in Triumff, because that’s a key theme, but while I’m prepared to make figurative sausages and refer to myself as a ‘brand’ without irony, I cannot bring myself to do so. There really is nothing more painful than someone explaining the mechanism of his jokes. For a start, it involves him selecting the things he believes to be examples of genuine funny. Oh god, it makes me clench just thinking about it.

I will say this: I was chuckling when I wrote Triumff, in the same way that I chuckle when I write my long running Euro hitmen comic strip Sinister Dexter in 2000AD, and people have been kind enough to tell me both have made them laugh a great deal. If the humour (that I’m not talking about) in either one works, I believe it’s because it operates in relation to its world setting, and the world setting works. Twenty-First Century Elizabethan London (in Triumff) and the massive European supercity of Downlode (in Sinister Dexter) are both very real places, in my head, that I work hard to realise for the reader.

Triumff’s success (and it’s yet to go on sale in the US, so American readers have all that excitement to come) has meant that my third book for Angry Robot will be a sequel, named The Double Falsehood. In the meantime, my second book for Angry Robot will be called Embedded, and will play to my strengths as a writer of Combat SF or, to give it its technical literary term, ‘Shooty-death-kill In Space. More on that next post.

Today, I was going to talk a little bit about the other side of the equation: working in your own universe instead of someone else’s. In the spirit of Graham’s excellent advice yesterday, I’m doing that whilst listening to someone singing in French.

I’ve really enjoyed reading what Graham has been writing about this weekend, and I can tell you have too. I agree with everything he said, including the notion that ten different authors will tell you ten different ways. Actually, especially including the notion that ten different authors will tell you ten different ways.

My novel writing process is much more ramshackle: Graham’s work sounds like an organized operation of military precision compared to mine. Blitzspear’s comment about it being a mistake to write notes on the bag of shopping receipts and cigarette papers is news to me. My only professional sophistication of that method is to make sure I collect and sticky-tape (not necessarily in any chronological order) those scraps and notes into the pages of a note book so they’re all in one place.

I’m not suggesting that I’m deliberately lazy or scrappy. Each novel for me is a kind of organic whole that I have to work until it’s the right shape. Like potter’s clay. What concerns me is not so much where it’s going to end, but the over all mass and feel of it.

So each novel has its own notebook or legal pad into which, like a crazed beachcomber, I gather all the ideas, names, words and stuff that feel like they belong to the novel, then I shape the book out of it, constantly dipping back into the notebook for inspiration or atmosphere. Q: Dan, are you, in fact, creating a ‘mood board’ for each novel? A: Get the words ‘mood board’ the hell out of my blog.

Once things feel right, then I shape them into the skeleton I need (the ACTUAL, you know, PLOT that will have been agreed in advance with Black Library etc). My desk is covered with vast, over-stuffed idea scrapbooks, each one a work in progress. I don’t use receipts and cigarette papers so much, but I will admit that I use a lot of American envelopes. I get a lot of mail from the States - from Marvel and DC - and US stationary is just not like UK stuff. I’m always making notes on some because I’ve left some on my desk, unable to throw it away. They get stuck in my notebook.

There are two things they say you should never let people see you make: one is sausages. The other is supposed to be laws, but I think it should be novels. I’m pretty sure I must sound like a Collyer Brothers style compulsive hoarder after the sidebar about envelopes above. This is just the way it works for me. Graham’s shown you the neat and structured plans and diagrams he makes; I’m showing you the mess I make down my apron. Don’t judge me. Once I was a human being, just like you.

Actually, in thinking about the process, I turned up a notion that applies directly to The Thing We Were Supposed To Be Talking About. Remember that? Whether I’m writing in someone else’s universe or one of my own creation, I still gather ideas together and bundle them up in a notebook. Sometimes ideas harvested for one go into the other. The point is, if I’m writing, say, a Black Library book… well, let’s take as an example Titanicus, the novel I published about the huge walking war engines in the 40K universe. I like Titanicus a lot, because it’s a novel about giant war engines (what’s not to like?), but also because it’s about an hive city, about the layers of life in a hive city. I found myself looking for and collecting stuff that I knew would fit that setting: walking down the ideas beach, I’d know pretty quickly what was worth picking up for Titanicus and what wouldn’t fit. In other words, when it’s somebody else’s universe, you look for stuff that will match, that will compliment. You look for the stuff that will decorate it in the places where, perhaps, it needs a little perking up, or in the places where no one’s done more than give it an undercoat of primer.

Last year, I published a novel called Triumff. It’s out from Angry Robot, an imprint of HarperCollins (go check them out at angryrobotbooks.com). It was a big deal for me, because Triumff was my first ‘original‘ novel. I invented it all, universe and all. It was a very satisfying thing to do after thirty six other novels set in other peoples’ back yards. More satisfying? No, differently satisfying.

Just getting on Graham’s theme of ‘how one writes a novel‘ today has made me realise the process for Triumff was virtually identical to the process for any of the others, except for one simple contextual detail: I went idea beachcombing, I hunted and I gathered (note to self: I really should have started out with the image of the ‘idea hunter-gatherer’ instead of the ‘idea beachcomber’… it’s so much more cool writer dude), and I collected everything into a bizarre, ever-growing, disorganized grimoire. The difference is that with 40k projects, I go foraging for ideas fit for purpose. With Triumff, and other universes of my own, I hunt for anything bright and shiny I like the look of, and THEN figure out how they fit together. Not all of them will, but the way that the most promising and interesting do will help determine the shape of the universe they get used it.

Triumff is a fantasy adventure of derring-do and buckled swashes. It’s set in an Elizabethan England. You’ll note the ‘an’ there. This is alternate history. England has ruled the world since Elizabeth Glorianna’s time thanks to the rediscovery of magic. An unbroken line of Elizabeth’s (in the book, we’re on Elizabeth XXX) has dominated the globe as the absolute monarch of a magically-armed super power. Our hero, Rupert Triumff, is a rather wayward, dissolute seafarer, once favorite of old Triple-Ex , who stumbles into the middle of a horrible conspiracy that threatens the security of the realm. There are some rather good sword fights and, though essentially a serious adventure, the book does wander past some jokes here and there. Puns, particularly. I love a good pun. Especially when they’re fresh and fizzling. Current puns (ba-dum! I thank you!).

The universe of Triumff had been in my head for almost twenty years before I got to write it. That’s time for a lot of hunter-gathering. The danger is, you could get too vague and everything-including-the-kitchen-sink. In somebody else’s universe, somebody else has set the rules, and you’ve got to play by them.

In your own universe, the rules are all down to you. And if, like me, you decide those universal rules have to include a magic system, then you’d better make sure they bloody well work.

Next post, I‘ll take a look at Triumff’s universe a little more, and try and figure out if the greater creative liberty of working in your own universe is a bonus or a hindrance. I’ll also be answering questions such as, “Dan, what are you going to write for Angry Robot after Triumff? and “Is it an SF Combat novel called Embedded?” and “Isn’t it handy that you can use a discussion of the contrasting differences between your own and other peoples‘ universes to promote books like Triumff and Embedded?” and “Ow! Dan what’d you just kick me for?”

One of the questions I get asked most frequently at conventions and signings, aside from, ‘When are you going to get to Legion X?’ or ‘How many books are there going to be in the Horus Heresy?’ (Answers: Eventually, and only the gods of the warp know) is ‘How do you go about writing a book?’

That’s a question that, I suspect, if you asked ten authors, you’d get ten different answers. It’s a process that hasn’t got a right way or a wrong way. The short answer is however it works for you is the right way, but that’s not terribly helpful is it? I remember facing that question when I sat down to write my first novel, Nightbringer. I’d written a bunch of short stories before this, none longer than seven thousand words, and this was my first proper stab at something considerably longer. So with the white page like a giant, empty void and cursor mocking me with every blink, I took a deep breath and figured that I’d just get the first scene done and see where I went with it. Then I did the second scene, and then the third, and by the time I got to around five thousand words, it seemed like a good time to end the chapter. This went on for around ten weeks, with me adding bits and bobs to the book in a more or less rambling, making-it-up-as-I-went fashion. This resulted in a monster book that was far too long to fit within its allotted page-count. Not good. The end result was that I spent a long time cutting back and trimming to make the book work in it’s shorter form. It’s a better book for it, tighter and leaner in plot, and it taught me a valuable lesson.

Plan, plan, and plan some more.

I never go into a novel now without a pretty detailed plan of what happens at any given time. I mean, I always have a synopsis, but these days that’s more of a pitch that tells the good folks at Black Library the kind of book they’re getting, what it will be about in only the most general sense and the kind of vibe they can expect at the finish line. That’s great, and gives them an understanding of what they’re commissioning, but it’s not a lot of help when it comes to the writing of the book. So I make sure I set off with a detailed plan of where the book will twist and turn, and when it’ll make some unexpected u-turns along the way. For me, that’s essential, as I need to know what’s coming so I can write the book with a good idea of what’s happening next. After all, you wouldn’t set out into an unknown wilderness without a decent map, would you?

Having said that, a detailed plan should have enough flex in its bones to allow for the addition of good ideas that come up along the way. Some of the moments I’m most proud of in my books are ones that I had no idea would appear in the book until they turned up. So how do you go about planning a plan?

I like to do a lot of my planning in the swimming pool. At first this was hard on my notepad and laptop, but when I left them at home, things improved. Going back and forth in the water with not a lot to occupy the attention aside from the three grannies going up and down in a grey-haired line, is a great way of getting ideas into a useable order and working through the logic of a scene or progression of events. I usually start with the concept of the novel, such as…it’s a tau invasion of an Imperial world, and the Ultramarines are called in to save the day/it’s the story of the Mechanicum’s civil war on Mars. This then suggests a number of scenes, characters and themes that I’ll scribble down in my notepad. I’ll allow a few days to pass, perhaps working up those ideas, perhaps working on others, just allowing the volatile mix to ferment in my brain before getting pen and pad out again. I have a couple of methods for transforming these ideas into a workable plan. Sometimes I use the post-it notes method of writing the keywords and feelings about a scene on a note and sticking it to my desk at random. Soon I have a desk covered in post-its, which I’ll then rearrange into a more logical order, bearing in mind the pacing and structure of a book, where I want appropriate builds of tension, action and character development. When they look like they’re in the right order, I’ll work this up into a bullet-pointed storyline, fleshing it out as I go along and making sure it all makes sense and that the novel builds in a coherent way.

Sometimes, however, I like to use my A1 pad and scrawl my ideas at random across the page, making sure that there’s no order to it at all. Then, with the space crammed full of ideas and scenes, I’ll start linking them up, figuring out which one needs to happen before another and so on, until the whole page is like a Jackson Pollock painting of looping, intersecting lines or a madman’s scrawl in a Lovecraftian journal. Anyway, it makes sense to me, so that’s all that matters. Like the post-it note method, I’ll then transfer this to a working ‘writing synopsis’ that allows me to see the shape of the novel and how it’s paced. So that’s the planning, now I’ve got to write it.

I work from home, so I have plenty of opportunities for displacement activities and distractions (not least my five-month old son), so I need to try and discipline myself to thinking that I’m actually in an office, with people around me who’ll report me to the boss if I’m not doing any work. So I make sure I start work as close to nine as I can, take an hour’s break at one, then work till around five thirty. Of course it doesn’t always work out that way, but it’s close. Knowing where I am in a book, I spend the evening planning out what I’m going to be writing the next day, so that it can bubble away overnight and be ready to pour out when I start work. Normally that works, and if I get three thousand words a day done then I count that as a good day. Though if freelancing full-time for three and a half years has taught me anything, it’s that day-to-day word counts aren’t important, it’s how you get on during the longer stretch that’s important. I try and reach around fifteen thousand a week, but if I don’t get it one week, I don’t beat myself up about it, as I know I’ll do more than that some other week. Writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint, so I don’t worry too much if going to the shops, having the car serviced or a marathon session of Modern Warfare 2 gets in the way now and again…

One other thing you shouldn’t neglect is that it’s important to be comfortable in your workspace, a place away from distractions with all you need close at hand. That’s why I sometimes like to get out of the house and work in the library or a little tea shop in town. I like to listen to music as I write, but I try and avoid anything with lyrics or songs I really like, as I end up singing along to them or typing the words. So my normal background music is soundtracks from movies: the current favourite being Sleepy Hollow, The Dark Knight, Dracula, Crimson Tide and Gladiator – with a smattering of Conan, and the Quake soundtrack. Or Rammstein, since I don’t speak German, and their music has an appropriately industrial, aggression to it that helps capture the vibe of the dark, gothic worlds I’m writing about.

When you’ve written your first draft, that’s when the real work begins, polishing what you’ve done via feedback from trusted readers and the judicious attention of a copy editor. All this culminates in a second draft that should hopefully be a leaner, sharper and smoother read. I write pretty clean manuscripts, but there’s not one of us out there who doesn’t benefit from other eyes on our work and giving it that last buff before it goes to the printers.

So that’s how I go about writing a book. It’s not perfect, and I’m sure there are other authors who do it very differently. But this way works for me, and it’s done alright by me so far. So, if it ain’t broke, I say don’t fix it.

Hopefully that’s given you a little insight into the creation of a novel, and if you’re planning to write one of your own, then do it. I hear lots of people saying they’ve a great idea for a novel, but very few of them have actually got any words down on paper. It’s easy to talk a good novel, not so easy to do anything with it until you’ve produced something. Fire up the laptop or get the pen out and start writing, it’s the only way you’ll ever do it.

Right, I think that’s enough for today, so I’ll hand back to Dan, who’ll be resuming normal service tomorrow with a juicy post to banish any Monday morning blues.

See you in the comments page.