More cover goodness

He’s not happy. He’s really not happy.

On the other hand, I really am. I don’t think anyone’s captured the Iron Hands better in artwork. You wouldn’t mess, would you?

BL have put the blurb for the book up on the website, so there’s no harm repeating it here:

After decades spent in the service of the Chaos god Slaanesh, the ruling classes of the Contqual sub-sector have finally brought true damnation upon their people – innumerable hordes of foul and lascivious daemons swarm from a tear in the fabric of reality to embrace their mortal pawns and drive them on to ever more depraved acts of worship. It falls to the merciless Space Marines of the Iron Hands Chapter to cleanse these worlds of the warp’s unholy taint, and it is upon the surface of Shardenus that the fate of a billion lost souls will be decided.

Out July 2011

So that’s the deal: bionic super-soldiers duking it out with crazed daemonic hordes on the hell-world of Shardenus. It won’t be pretty, but it will (hopefully) be a lot of fun. For those interested, I’m still not quite at the finish line with this one, but am trying to get it done before the Christmas break. It’s a hard slog, as always, as things near completion, but images like the above certainly help restore energy levels.

As many of you will know, the Space Marine Battles cover series are created by Jon Sullivan, whose website is here. Take a look for more luscious images of the far future, including the fantastic images he created for Battle of the Fang – who could forget the sight of Bjorn in action?

Here’s Luthor…

Somehow he looks even more intimidating in the flesh (so to speak).

Afficionados of the Warhammer Heroes range will notice that the cover designs have changed from the early days. Gone are the double covers, and the name of the book now runs vertically along the spine-edge. While I liked the old designs, there’s no denying the new format makes the title more striking (and the book easier to hold). I’m very impressed, once again, with Cheoljoo Lee’s cover design, which captures Huss perfectly.

Luthor Huss is due out in February 2012, but look out for pre-orders earlier from the BL site.

It’s oh so quiet…

It's quiet. Too quiet

Well, yes. There’s not been a lot of content around here for some time. While that might give the impression that nothing much is happening, pretty much the opposite is actually the case. The lack of posts here is a symptom of being very busy with my current projects, some of which are complete, some running behind schedule, and some barely out of the blocks. This is all very exciting for me, of course, but it does leave very little time for anything else.

So, what’s been happening? Well, I’m now over half-way through Wrath of Iron, my Iron Hands book. This is part of the Space Marine Battles series, so expect lots of things being blown-up, thrown around and generally getting broken. In between all that planet-sized carnage I’ve tried to delve a little deeper into the Iron Hands psyche too, and I’ll post at greater length about that once the novel’s written. Space Marines are tricky things to write about, and the Iron Hands are about as tricky as they come. I hope long-time fans will like my take on them, although you’ll have to wait until July next year to find out what’s in the book. A couple of little factoids in the meantime: the protagonists are from Clan Raukaan, and the story features two characters who first emerged in my short story ‘Flesh’ (which can be found here).

Life on Medusa was rubbish

Otherwise, it’s been nice to see my novella Dragonmage get some positive press. Graham’s Fantasy Book Review covered it a while back, and you can read the review here. More surprisingly perhaps, the august British Fantasy Society seems to be reviewing Black Library books at the moment, and they’ve posted a write-up for Sword of Justice on their website. Always good to see mainstream Fantasy sites taking a look at some licensed fiction.

Anyway, right now I’m trying to get Wrath of Iron in the bag before the Christmas break, which would be very nice, sanity-wise. After that, who knows? I have a suspicion I’ll be writing some High Elves in 2012, as well as some Space Marines, both from a Chapter I’ve written about before and possibly from one I haven’t. All very vague, but I’ll post more here once stuff is confirmed.

In the meantime, I should mention that I’ll be at the marvellous SFX Weekender on the 2-4 February along with some other BL authors, so come along to that if you fancy getting your hands on Luthor Huss before anyone else.