I seem to be all over the BL Facebook page at the moment, which is both exciting and oddly terrifying. The period just before new books comes out is a mix of, well, excitement and terror. You want them to do well, to hit the right notes, but by this point there’s nothing more you can do to help them – they’re on their own, out in the wild.
Anyway, enough of my insecurities. The interesting thing, regarding this poll, is that my audio drama The Sigillite seems to be making some waves. This caught me on the hop a bit: I’ve been so consumed with the Space Wolves books and caught up in the razzmatazz of the Blood of Asaheim launch that I’d almost forgotten about it. That’s the thing about writing schedules – they fool you.
So, to make amends, here are some thoughts on what was going through my head when I wrote it. Obviously Malcador is the main interest here, but he’s a tricky character to handle. He’s one of those elements of the Heresy that really needs to retain some mystery, so I was keen not to give an exhaustive account of him that blew all the secrets and speculations. In addition, though he’s a psyker of incredible power, he’s not really a warrior (the primarchs were created for that), so I didn’t want to have him feature in lots of combat action.
The story of the Sigillite revolves around other things. We get glimpses, rather than extended reveals, into the world he inhabits. We learn a little more about what he’s doing on Terra while Dorn is rebuilding the Palace walls (he hasn’t been just kicking his heels waiting for Horus to turn-up). Some bad things have been happening under the Palace foundations which are only going to get worse, and Malcador has a major role to play in resisting them.
One other objective I had was to shed just a little light on what the Loyalist command is thinking at this stage in the Heresy. Quite understandably, we’ve had a lot of material in the novels expanding on the Traitor motivations, to the extent that the ‘bad guys’ come across pretty well. We’ve had slightly less coverage of what Terra was thinking, which has the unfortunate effect of making their intentions rather hard to fathom. Don’t expect masses of information in The Sigillite, but there are some pointers there, and I’d expect more to made of this kind of thing as the series progresses.
As ever, I hope people like it. Malcador is one of the really intriguing elements of the Heresy drama, and I’m sure there will be plenty more outings for him as the action gets ever closer to the Throneworld.
Chris Wraight 