Gollancz to Publish Dan Abnett’s THE WIELD in 2016

December 3, 2014December 3, 2014 Civilian Reader News, Random, Upcoming Dan Abnett, Fantasy, Gollancz, Most Anticipated 2016, Wield

This is pretty great news: Gollancz announced today that they have acquired rights to publish a trilogy of “self-contained action-packed heroic fantasies” by Dan Abnett.

Abnett has been a prolific writer for Black Library (primarily where I know him from), 2000AD (where I first read his work),* and multiple comics publishers. His first original fiction was published by Angry Robot Books — Triumff, which was a rather fun swashbuckler. Long-time readers of CR will know that I’m a big fan of his contributions to Black Library’s Horus Heresy series as well as the long-running Gaunt’s Ghosts series (the latest of which, Warmaster, should be out pretty soon). Abnett’s run on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is also the story the recent mega-popular movie was based on.

There’s no official synopsis available, just yet, but here’s the press release’s description of the series:

The highly original THE WIELD trilogy takes place in a human-populated society with a vivid dark ages culture. Following an ancient and elite band of warriors, THE WIELD books are dynamic heroic fantasy adventures packed with vivid action and bloody battles. The flawed but engaging characters and the enthralling premise with a clever twist, will appeal to readers of Dan Abnett’s bestselling Black Library books, and fans of David Gemmell and dynamic heroic fantasy.

I am quite looking forward to this. The three novels will be published between November 2016-18. So, it’s still quite a long wait… But it never hurts to have something to look forward to.

In the meantime, I’d recommend you check out First & Only, Horus Rising and Xenos (published by Black Library), Embedded (Angry Robot) and The New Deadwardians (Vertigo Comics) — just a small selection of his work, but probably my favourites and good starting points.

* I can’t remember if it was Sinister Dexter or Durham Red that I read first, but I liked them enough to make a note of the author’s name. Both were very good.

Well I’ll Be Damned — My 16yr Old Self…

November 21, 2014 Civilian Reader Random, Uncategorized 1999, Games Workshop, Gorkamorka, Gubbinz, Nostalgia, Orks, Rules, Sci-Fi

I stumbled across a pair of articles today that have brought a rush of memories back to me: my first two “published”… well, “articles” — the quotation marks are entirely appropriate, as you will see below. The articles are on tUGS.

When I was a teenager, I was quite fond of Games Workshop’s games — especially those that didn’t require much financial investment (Necromunda, Blood Bowl, and GorkaMorka). Partly this interest in the “smaller” games was lucky, because I also didn’t have anyone to play the games with, thanks to constantly changing country and attending a school whose denizens were oh-so-obsessed with “cool”. (Yup, I was that kind of geek.) Nor, for that matter, could I afford the ever-increasing prices.

Anyway, in my enthusiastic teen years, I submitted two articles of “rules” for GorkaMorka, the Mad Max-style tabletop game of ork warfare. Both of them were accepted and published in Gubbinz, a compilation of extra rules and whatnot. Up until today, I had completely forgotten about them.

So, with a certain amount of nostalgia and slight embarrassment, here are my two, insignificant contributions to Games Workshop’s back-back-list of games: Rokkit Paks and Rebel Grot Pogo Stikks. (The posts contain download links for PDFs of what I cobbled together.)