Unforgiven (Inferno! 22 / Anthology - Deathwing / Anthology – Let the Galaxy Burn)

This was the first short story I had published by the Black Library and it’s a fairly simple story of bloody combat with a Chapter that was one of the first armies for Warhammer 40,000 I ever collected; the Dark Angels. I really loved the gothic nature of the Space Marines, and especially the Sons of the Lion. Looking back at it now, I can see that it’s not a particularly complex story, just lots of people hitting each other with a monstrous ‘end of level bad guy’ in the shape of the Angel of Blades (a creation I was pretty pleased with, even if I do say so myself). It played with the idea that sometimes things weren’t always what they seemed and made me realise that even in a story that primarily revolves around fighting, you still need plenty of dialogue. It’s a story I’ve never gone back to, but you never know, maybe I could return to Brother Sergeant Kaelen and tell his further adventures as a new member of the Deathwing.

Buisness as Usual (Inferno! 24 / Anthology – Words of Blood / Anthology – Let the Galaxy Burn)

This story was one I wrote a while before I went to Games Workshop, but which I dusted off when I realised that I still really liked it. It’s the story of a hive ganger called Snowdog who gets more than he bargained for when a drug deal goes wrong and has to take refuge in the dark depths of the underhive where something monstrous is lurking. I still like this story a lot as Snowdog is one of my favourite characters, a foul mouthed, amoral character who gets to do and say the things you always want to, but never can. It’s a cliché that it’s fun to write bad guys, but I guess clichés are clichés for a reason. Snowdog was immense fun to write and when I came to plan out the plot for Warriors of Ultramar, I jumped at the chance to use him again (thankfully there wasn’t anything that made a continuity nightmare in the short story that precluded his use in the novel…almost like I’d planned it. Almost.).