Now, before I go on, a quick warning: SPOILERS AHEAD! Turn back now if ye don’t want the movie secrets revealing.

Right, with all that out of the way, I can go on.

I do sometimes post movie reviews on the blog. If I get time (which I seem to have precious little of these days, and still decreasing) or I’m sufficiently moved, I might write 500 words or so saying what I liked and didn’t like. I won’t provide a star rating (I’ve done that on Twitter occasionally, more just to show my opinion of a film in a nutshell), but my thoughts are for anyone’s consumption.

Iron Man 3 gives me something of a conundrum that I can’t quite figure out. I’ve been mulling this over, off and on, the last few days and my slowly diminishing interest in discussing it were rekindled by a piece I read on IGN citing the apparent split between the reaction of the Iron Man hardcore fan base and the general public (or anyone other than the hardcore) to the movie.

I with the hardcore fans, or some part of me is, but I don’t consider myself one of the them. I really couldn’t care less if the Mandarin wasn’t some Chinese dude with magic rings and all that blah,blah, blah. And I liked what Ben Kingsley did with the role and how Guy Pearce was revealed as the actual Mandarin. No issue with any of that.

I also keep hearing about how Avengers 2 is going to struggle to match the action packed finale of Iron Man 3. Really? I just don’t see it.

I liked Iron Man 3. I really did. But I only liked it. I wanted to love it. And from what I’m reading in the press and on various blog sites, a lot of people did… I mean they really loved it. Some reviewers are even hailing it as the best Marvel movie to date (even better than Captain America, said one individual – this, I really don’t get), certainly the best Iron Man to date.

I can appreciate could story, complex characters and plot twists. I like to be surprised and made to pay attention when something happens I wasn’t expecting. Iron Man 3 has all of these things, right? Yes, it certainly does. So what’s the f*#king problem, I ask myself?

Expectation. That’s the thing. Much like young Pip in the Dickens classic, I did have so very great expectations for this movie. I watched the trailers thinking, ‘Wow, Stark is really going to be put through the ringer here. This will be tough. This is going to be dark.’

Only it wasn’t dark, not remotely. Tony Stark’s anxiety issues, his mental trauma at the events of his near death in space during the battle for New York in the Avengers, were all good character developing stuff and more power to that, but the one thing that really didn’t gel for me with this movie was there wasn’t enough frigging Iron Man. Most of the movie’s running time, Tony spends out of his armour or jumping comically from one suit to the next, whilst poor old War Machine/Iron Patriot flies from one plot twist to another, largely spectating.

I wanted to see Iron Man take on the Mandarin or some of his extremis cronies (as to show off the Mandarin at this point would’ve spoiled one of the twists), get his but kicked in an all mighty battle and then hit rock bottom. Trouble is, Stark never really gets a decent shot at him. He never gets to take him on and full strength and still have his ass handed to him. We never see Stark find a way to triumph over his anxiety and, thus of one heart and mind, beat the spit out of the Mandarin (after revealing the fact that Killian was really the Mandarin all along). He just sort of stops being anxious, busts into Killian’s evil lair/mansion and discovers that Ben Kingsley is the Mandarin aka actor.

It was all a bit weak and lacking in drama for me.

It was disappointing, but still enjoyable, but not as great as it should have been. At least for me, and this is just my opinion so before you think about jumping in and telling me how deluded I am, or how much of a douche I’m being for not loving this movie as much as you do, then please remember that.

And on the subject of the action packed finale that Joss Whedon doesn’t know how he’s going to top with Avengers 2, I say this: You’ve already done it, mate. The first Avengers easily tops it for action and excitement. Let’s just say I don’t get the same joy-joy feeling watching the various faceless Iron Men fight against faceless extremis soldiers as I do watching the Avengers battle the crap out of a, okay then, faceless alien race. It’s just not as cool.

It would’ve been nice to introduce some of these iron armours earlier on in the movie, put names to face almost. Sure, there was some really cool shit in there, but a lot of it was blink and you miss it, or blink and it some now gets overheated by an extremis soldier and shut down (something else that sort of got dropped in at the last minute and was never really addressed).

There’s a lot of story in this movie, and a lot of character development (well for Tony Stark anyway) but not nearly enough action. Barring the Malibu attack chopper scene (which was bloody awesome, by the way, and the film’s stand out action sequence for me), there’s only really the finale which has any actual combat in it. And even during that Tony is out of the suit most of the time or unable to fly due to system failure or some Maguffin. True, the Air Force One escape was ace, but who was Tony rescuing? Just a bunch of faceless White House staffers. Not much tension there, really. Looked impressive though.

So, yes, I have very mixed feelings about Iron Man 3. I cannot hail it as the best Marvel movie ever, that’s just silly. It doesn’t do enough of what a comic book movie should do, supply lots of over the top action and jaw-dropping battles. Remember that incredible sequence in the Avengers where the Heli-carrier is going down and the team have to fight off Hawkeye’s goons and stop the massive ship/flyer/whatever from crashing? Yeah? Awesome wasn’t it. And that was only halfway throw the movie. You’re telling me the finale to Iron Man 3 tops that? It tops the battle in New York that follows it? I can’t see it.

I hope I watch Iron Man 3 and, expectations lowered, I enjoy it much more the second time around. We shall see. For now, for me, it’s a good Marvel movie but certainly not the best.

Rant over.

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Ahem.

Apologies.

As Stef is at the Cake and Bake show today, work will finally draw to a close for me on Vulkan Lives. It has been a long, tough road as all full length novel projects are (seriously, I find them completely knackering), but the end is in sight. Of the first draft at least. Then I’ll be sending it off to the jaws of the editors to see what they make of the taste.

In other news, I am on the look out for some BETA readers for my next novel (Salamanders #4 or #5 – I can never remember). It’s something I seldom have time to indulge in but that I know a lot of other authors make use of, that first litmus test with the target audience. Any who, the search is on.

Got a lot of Horus Heresy material coming up over the next few months, more than I’ve ever done, which is really just a confluence of the ideas I’ve been developing over the last ear or two coming to fruition. You might have already seen Gates of Terra. That’s on the BL website now and here’s the link if you haven’t:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/horus-heresy/gates-of-terra-ebook.html

I’ve also got an MP3 audio featuring everybody’s favourite Ultramarine, Aeonid Thiel. It’s called Censure and it’s also going to be released as a CD (before all your digital-phobics get all rowdy and up in arms).

Two novellas are on the cards, both Salamander-based (so it’s all coming at once you XVIII Legion fans): Promethean Sun (the stripped down novella version) and Scorched Earth (the brand new, limited edition novella – and please don’t rail against the fact that it’s limited. It’ll be available on the BL site for a week in a few months, so if you want one you can get one).

I return to 40k after that with a new Salamanders novel to keep me out of trouble and a few side projects. There’s going to be an omnibus of the first three Tome of Fire novels too, plus short stories and some extra material I am currently putting together, including a new short story. A return to Damnos is also on the cards and features very heavily in my upcoming writing schedule. Can’t give you any more details on that though, I’m afraid. I’ve probably said too much already but then who knows what gets spoken about at BL Live etc.

Well that’s everything on the cards for me at the moment. Hope you’re enjoying the output and are looking forward to what’s up next.

Toodle-oo.

I’ve got a few topics ‘in the bank’, as it were. A bit on dwarfs (the Warhammer, not the circus or primordial kind) and a piece on writing in the labyrinth (the intellectual, creative kind not the one with Bowie in as the Goblin King doing his dance, magic dance). They keep glaring at me, these two, from my drafts folder. Well, glare all you like pal, I’m not going down that road yet.

I also considered writing something about the fantastic artwork that’s been released recently on a trio of Horus Heresy projects I’ve been working on (two down, one big ass mutha to go), and genuinely wanted to do that but my Mac wouldn’t play ball with the pictures (that is to say it was being rubbish, or, more likely, Sky Broadband was, and they were taking a freaking dog’s age to download. Bah!).

So, here we are with a back-up topic. It’s all about entertainment and, not wishing to be self centred but, hey, this is my blog and so a certain amount of self centring – that even a word? – is to be expected, specifically my entertainment.

Lately, I’ve been a little big crocked with a dodgy back (it’s bronchitis related, some to do with me almost coughing my ribs apart – read about it on Twitter). I’ve been staying in more than going out (oh yeah, writing a novel to a tight deadline will do that to you too) and so the small screen has become my world as far as entertainment goes.

A while back, I wrote a piece on the blog about damn good television and proceeded to divvy up the shows I watched into discrete categories based on what I thought about their production values, story, acting and so on. I suppose this is the spiritual sequel to that post.

My frustration is this: to the casual observer, it might seem like we’re in a golden age of television. Production values and the greater access and availability (financially speaking) on special effects, plus the fact that lots of Hollywood actors that don’t frequent the silver screen so often are getting in on the act, means TV land has never been rosier. Or has it?

Take Sky Atlantic’s offerings, for instance (oh, and Sky and Fox are totally leading the way as far as great TV is concerned at the moment). Apart from Games of Thrones and Madmen, I can’t think of another show that I really, really look forward to watching on this uber, stellar channel of kings. Arguably, it’s TVs top dog as far as shows are concerned and has shedloads of money it can throw around to get the very best.

Both those aforementioned shows (which are great, in my opinion, combining great story telling, characters and production values together) are back in April, so thank crimminy (still trying to bring it back) for that. But what else? Okay, I’ll confess that Boardwalk Empire is worth putting on a never miss too. Let’s check out the more recent line up of new shows… Vegas. I had high hopes for this and still do enjoy watching it. Dennis Quaid and Michael Chicliss (sp?) are great leads and that guy from the god-awful Terra Nova is pretty good too, but something is missing. I like ‘period’ stuff, and Vegas in the ’60s should be awesome (I loved X-Men: First Class) but it doesn’t seize me like Madmen or GoT does. What else? Well, there’s The Following. Now that show had some promise, aside from Kevin Bacon who isn’t great in it, but has become more and more ridiculous as it’s gone on and now I’m starting to lose patience with it. And if someone doesn’t punch that annoying nanny-turned-nut bag in the face soon I may just switch off in protest.

Sky’s got a pretty big slate at the moment, lots of new stuff or shows that are still in their first season. Unlike Atlantic, this is mainly bubblegum but here’s where they’re winning the war. Arrow, for instance, has grown from a fairly episodic slightly dodgily shot hero show to something with a deeper, more interesting storyline that really draws on some cool, fan-pleasing aspects of the DCU. More of that please.

Admittedly on Sky Living, another show that has surprised and impressed me is Elementary. Holmes’ purists aside, this is a great detective drama and delivered convincingly and entertainingly by Lucy Lui and Johnny Lee Miller.

Switching my gaze to other channels, 5 has the rather silly but still rather good, Person of Interest. Not a big fan of Calviezal (sp?) in this role, he doesn’t quite convince me of his badass credentials with fairly crap fighting skills and a raspy voice, but still it’s very entertaining and the rest of the cast and story telling make up for JC’s shortcomings. Again though, it’s bubblegum.

I look forward to the return of Supernatural, of course I do, but that shows is getting on in years and running short of ideas. I’ll like it but I won’t love and follow it with the same vim and vigour as I did at the show’s creative apex of seasons four and five.

Then there’s True Blood. Let’s face it, this show has always been ridiculous, it’s unashamed about that but I’ve been watching the season 5 (?) rerun on Sky One and it’s just shit. Seriously, I am not sure I can take much more of Sookie Stackhouse’s nonsense. It’s a bit like Ally McBeal in that you really aren’t pulling for the main character at all but are actually much more invested in the secondary ones.

Ripper Street was a nice diversion on the BBC. Really enjoyed that, and our British Broadcasting Corporation should be investing more in shows like this with shorter runs and syndicating the bejesus out of them. That said, even Ripper Street was a little ropey in places but was carried along by strong performances from it’s three male leads. Looking forward to seeing more of that, though.

Currently, my other half loves Nashville and Smash (when it returns), both musical shows like Glee but for adults (less singing in Nashville, admittedly) and both these shows are in the early days on their life so hopefully they’ll continue to develop.

So, why is it I am feeling so jaded? Well, a lot of older shows in their fifth, sixth or successive seasons are showing their age in terms of the plots and characters. I used to love Dexter and that seems to be falling off a cliff as well. Most of these hardy perennials of the TV world jumped the shark long ago (The Following did it in its first season, during episode 3 or 4) and are kind of paddling for dear life. Running out of air and life, methinks (no more mixed metaphors, I promise).

Bubblegum is alive and well, chewy as ever, but the really compelling stuff, the I cannot wait to see it because my world depends on it stuff is tough to find. And it’s tough to see what’s going to replace those shows that once occupied these vaunted positions when they were new and still interesting.

There is one exception, I think, and that’s The Walking Dead. Man alive (or dead, I suppose), who would’ve thought a zombie-based show could be so compelling. I hear that Zombieland is getting a pilot/season too, which should be fun. But TWD is such a good show, even in its third season and getting better.

I could name a slew of other great shows that are still running but a little on fumes, if I’m honest. I always loved (and still do, like an old teddy bear with one eye missing and its stuffing coming out) Sons of Anarchy but I’m not desperate to see it each week like I was. The Killing is another example of a show that had a great opening season (if a little teasing at the end) that really didn’t pick up much (if at all) in its second outing.

So, to the future then. Revolution? Hmm, not sure – a bit like Last Resort, I have a feeling this will end up being ephemeral pap. That Shield show I keep hearing about? Dunno, super hero type stuff does tend to struggle a bit and how on earth can it match up to Avengers? Da Vinci’s Demons? Looks like it might be cool, I suspect it’ll just be a Spartacus clone (oh, and I should really mention Spartacus as an enjoyable romp. Loved Vengeance and I’m enjoying War of the Damned but glad this is the last season).

It could be the fact I’m feeling grumpy because my back aches and I haven’t drunk enough coffee this morning, or it could be that TV land needs some fresh ideas and less conservative, lowest common denominator money men to help make it happen. Oh, and no more f**king vampire shows, please. Every time I see an advert for Twilight and the final chapter in that heinous movie franchise and think about the lagoon of crap it has deposited on the world because of its very presence, I shed a little tear of pain and anger. It’s very confusing.

For the uninformed or uninitiated, the persistent editor is that little voice in a writer's head that keeps telling him or her to just go back over that last sentence, just take another look at that paragraph, it's just not quite perfect yet.

That's the thing about perfection, it's not possible. It's an unreachable ideal that we can strive to get as close to as possible but not actually achieve, not in this at least (perfect scores in ten-pin bowling/snooker etc don't count for the purposes of this discussion).

It's dangerous that little voice, it's the one that gets in the way of making progress (i.e. getting words down). You listen too much and before you know it you're brushing up against your deadline and you've got 500 words of that 100k novel in the bank. Bad times.

Editing, especially self editing, is a vital part of the writing process though. To ignore it and leave it to your editor is just unprofessional and, let's face it, just plain lazy.

Balance is essential, just the right amount of self editing to get down some solid and robust prose that stands up to the editorial pen without fear of a full scale new draft, but not so much that you paralyse essential progress on your novel.

As a commissioning editor myself, I can't do a damn thing with 500 words of excellent prose. It's worthless to me. A full novel, sensibly self edited but in need of some editorial massage, that I can work with.

So, like I said, my mind's been on rewrites today. I've been working on the latest novel (Vulkan Lives) and whilst I had a great today yesterday, clocking in about 3k of decent material I was happy with, today it wasn't so great. I made some progress, about 1k, but got to the end of a section (the last piece I worked on) and realised I had to throw it out. I junked 500 words, just threw it out. It was liberating, annoying too. To put it in context, I pretty much spent the whole day reworking existing scenes and reordering material. Something wasn't working on a fundamental level and rather than plough on in blissful ignorance, I needed to do something about it.

I should have seen it coming. Some days you get the words in (and any writer who doesn't rate their progress by word count isn't doing it right in my opinion; either that or they don't hit too many deadlines or being in projects to spec – as a writer of tie-in fiction that's kind of important) and some days you spend working on structure.

It's a living, breathing, constantly shifting thing a story. Sometimes it needs attention in order to wrestle it back under control or you end up with one of those, bloated, god awful, meandering pieces of crap erroneously labelled as fiction.

Rewrites and self editing are important parts of the process, so is producing your word count. Balancing both is the key to happiness in my opinion, as is the acceptance of the fact that you can't get away from doing either and have to make them work for you.

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Okay then without further ado, here goes:

Q. When does the first book in the Circle of Fire trilogy get released? Does it have a title yet?

It’s still to be confirmed, especially as I’ve been slated to write two novels and a novella beforehand, but I plan to start writing Circle of Fire end of 2013/beginning of 2014 so that could be a late 2014 or early-mid 2015 release. Also yet to be confirmed, but my working title for book one is ‘Rebirth’.

Q. Vulkan Lives. Other than the obvious, what can we expect from this?

Without giving the story away, it’s a two pronged narrative in which a double storyline interweaves with the other. It features several primarchs, most prominently Vulkan and Konrad Kurze, and as such the story examines the relationship between these two characters, chipping away at the psyche of both. There’s the return of some classic characters from the series (not all mine, it has to be said) and very little of the story itself is set on Isstvan V, although the resonance of what happened there does inform e narrative to a large degree. ‘Vulkan Lives’, ‘Scorched Earth’ and ‘Promethean Sun’ all connect. And my final little reveal is that this novel leads in to Dan’s ‘Unremebered Empire’, which directly follows it on the schedule and sets up a major story thread in that book.

Q. Have you given any thought to some sort of a sequel to Fall of Damnos? Any chance of returning to Sicarius and Co?

That’s a definite. Although ‘Fall of Damnos’ was the story I wanted to tell and fulfilled its remit as describing a Space Marine Battle, it always niggled me a bit that there was no time or room to describe the desperate evacuation of the planet and the sacrifices the Second Company had to make when they did so. A return to Damnos is on the cards for the near future.

Q. After The Great Betrayal, what’s your next fantasy project?

That’s an easy one. For my next Warhammer novel, I’ll be returning to the War of Vengeance and following hot on the heels of ‘Master of Dragons’ by Chris Wraight with the third book in the series, currently titled ‘Elfdoom’.

Q. How do you come up with the names for your characters in the Tome of Fire trilogy? As which languages are the source?

I guessed asked this one quite a lot. The simple answer is: I just make them up. Basically, when I was about to write ‘Salamander’ I wanted to find a base I could build the culture around. As the Salamanders and the Nocturneans they live alongside are a tribal culture, I opted for an African naming convention and simply applied my search engine to the task. Knowing the lead characters in advance (I also researched African actors so I could put names to faces and still have their head shots on my old PC to remind me), I went down a massive alphabetical list and selected names that evoked the sense of the character then I 40k’d them up a bit by adding -ON or -EN or -US etc as a suffix to the name. I also plundered Ancient Greek and Roman names, anything from the Classical World, reasoning that the Salamanders Legion originated on Terra and as such they would still have Terran names in some instances. This is where I got characters such as Elysius and Iagon from (although the latter is simply a corruption of the character Iago from ‘Othello’ and was a deliberate homage). Use hard consonants is another technique that gave me some good, strong sounding names like the hard G in Tsu’gan or the hard K in Ba’ken. These characters wouldn’t have had the same resonance, I think, if I’d have opted for lighter consonants or combinations of consonants like TH or S. To my mind, it makes these characters more grounded and earthy, which is precisely what I was going for.

Q. How do you balance between being an editor and a writer? As in when you’re writing does the editor part of you come into the writing process with a greater authority than other writers who are not editors?

It’s that old answer of perfecting the art of wearing two hats. Although, I’d argue that most writers (if not all) have an editor in them, so it’s all part of the same beast. I think the challenge comes when you’re writing that you don’t self edit too soon or too often. I know a lot of writers who get hung up on every little detail, every word and sentence as they are writing and can’t move on to the next one until it’s perfect. This is a good way to drive yourself around the bend and miss deadlines because you’re over obsessing and allowing your internal editor to drive the writer. Best practice for me is to get the words down, the ideas out of my head and committed to the screen and then, when I start the next writing session, read my previous work and do a little editing. I know that I might revisit this passage or chapter several times throughout the writing of the book but that in tackling the edits this way I am still making progress and finessing as I go.

Q. How do you log an idea for yourself? I’m not a writer but often find my mind wondering and get an idea for a cool story, I think about how I should get that down somehow and then quite often I forget and then the idea passes and is lost… I assume this would happen even more for a writer!

Several ways. I have multiple note books of varying degrees of size that I jot ideas, synopses, even entire chapter breakdowns in as sometimes ‘going old skool’ is more conducive to creativity. I also use notes and notepad a lot on my iPad, which has the added advantage that I can email them, and cut and paste my notes directly into Pages or Word to form the basis on a synopsis or pitch etc. My advice: keep a pen and notepad on you at all times!

Q. Are you able to switch off the editor inside and enjoy reading? Are you reading anything for yourself at the moment?

Definitely. I actually don’t find the transition that hard as what I tend to read for pleasure is quite different from what I edit/read for my job (athough that is also a pleasure, just in a different way). Subconsciously, I am always analysing I think. I’m not sure any writer can read without doing this, logging the really nice turns of phrase or trying to figure out what a writer did to create a certain mood or emotional reaction, the way they structured their most memorable and striking characters etc. But, yes, I still enjoy reading. Very much. I’m reading John Connolly’s latest thriller at the moment, ‘Wrath of Angels’, which is excellent (if you scroll down to the bottom of the blog in the Culture Shocks section, I regularly update what I’m reading, gaming, writing, listening to etc). I’ve also got Scott Synder’s ‘Vodoo Heart’ and Danie Ware’s ‘Ecko Rising’ on my read next list/pile.

Q. Do you have a favourite Non-Superhero related comicbook series that you have read?

I don’t actually. All the comic book stuff I read is super hero-based. I am loving Scott Synder’s run on Batman and have been picking up that, the Death of the Family tie-ins and Geoff Johns run on Aquaman, as well as Justice League. I’ve got a few Marvel Now titles, including X-Men and Avengers but have yet to read them, they’re just on my iPad. I ‘enjoyed’ Preacher a few years back, which I suppose is non-super hero (though there are forces and beings in that which have powers not unlike super heroes) and I’ve read a bit of ‘The Boys’, which subverts (and perverts in some instances) the super hero genre. Any recommendations?

Q. Any news of a Salamander Omnibus and perhaps with maps and extra stuff?

An omnibus is on the cards. I’m keen for it not to include everything I’ve done thus far, but it will have the three novels and the stories that tie in directly to the Tome of Fire, so there’ll be some hold-overs from ‘Tome of Fire’, the anthology (but not all) and I want to write a long short story that pre-figures ‘Fires of War’ too. Current working title in my head for that is ‘Dragonborn’. I’d also like to include a Nocturne map and a glossary of names and terms, perhaps even a timeline that shows where the events sit in the 40k chronology.

Q. Vulkan lives : As the author can you choose, or decide what will be on the cover? (I hope of an official draw of Vulkan , even if I think he’s the more diffcult to be done.)

For the ‘Vulkan Lives’ cover I was very lucky in that Black Library has an incredible artist in the form of Neil Roberts who does all the cover work. Like with ‘Scorched Earth’, Neil and I discussed what should be on the cover, what scene it would depict and how it would interact with ‘Scorched Earth’ too, which is really a companion piece to the novel. There will be an illustration of Vulkan (the first ever, I believe). In fact, it’s already done and can say that it’s amazing.

Q. Can you talk about working with other author and using their stuff in your story? In the same way what’s your feelings when they use your material? Have you ever told to a collegue that he has a wrong viewpoint on your stuff?

As the Horus Heresy and, to a lesser extent, the 40k setting is a shared universe there are a lot of occasions when authors will be using the same characters, running with ideas set up by someone else in order to keep the story going. Until recently, I’ve not used characters created by other authors before, but I have written stories about Chapters (Ultramarines, spring to mind). In the case of characters, there’s an inherent pressure that you don’t want to undermine what another author has written and stay true to how they have potrayed a certain character, but you also don’t want to feel so inhibited that you can’t develop them and add to them. Research and the right amount of respect is important here, as well as regular communication and full disclosure to the other writer. Ultimately, it’s the call of the publisher who does what, with whom and when, but good working relationships and professionalism is predicated on courtesy I think. It’s certainly a fun challenge, but I think, ultimately, I prefer to use my own characters and work with the strands and story threads that I’ve developed personally. Fortunately, I work with an extremely talented and professional group of writers, so I’ve never needed to query why another author has developed one of my ideas in a way that I didn’t agree with.

Q. Finally what about working with your translator in foreign language? Especially the French translator.

I actually don’t get to interact with my translators much, which is a shame, as most of this is handled by Black Library’s French editor. I was fortunate enough to meet my translators recently at French GD and we were able to chat a little bit about their work, but contact is usually confined to the odd emailed question about a particular term or ocassionally my intent in a certain sentence or passage of text.

Q. Have you thought of doing a story ( or short ) on bray’arth ashmantle? He is a 1 of a kind dreadnaught, who got lost for 9 days…I think that’s more than enough time for stuff to go down and some really sick action to occur.

He’d be a great character to write about. I did pen a synopsis for a story involving Bray’arth but decided to shelve it for later, so I might revisit it at some point in the future.

Q. Are you wanting the new Rocksteady Batman game to be a prequel (like they’ve rumored) or are you itching for something bigger and better ?

Ha, ha – if it’s as good as the previous two games, I honestly don’t mind. Although, something like ‘Arkham Underworld’ would be cool that incorporates the entire Gotham City.

Q. Nick, i want to ask a question. Do you plan to write and publish new story about Primarch Vulkan? Prometean Sun was excellent, and can’t wait for new Vulkan stories 

I sure do. Check out the first answer regards ‘Vulkan Lives’… (I’ve also already written another novella called ‘Scorched Earth’ too – Vulkan’s not it, but he’s an important presense in the story).

Q. Recently, I reread The Burning. And I wondered if N’Bel is ‘Vulkan’s N’Bel’ or just a guy named that way. And, is the Metalshaper in that story Vulkan? I could never decide.

Ah, ‘The Burning’. Well, this is of course a story about Dak’ir’s vision quest, his trial to see if he can control his newfound psychic powers, so a lot of what he sees and experiences is impression and the product of his subconscious mind. I can say that N’bel is Vulkan’s N’bel, his father but that the identity of the metal-shaper shall remain a mystery. What do you think? I take it you figured out the drygnirr was Pyriel?

Q. In your HH writing, will we ever see Vulkan wielding/planning/making/thinking about his relics? Or the Tome of Fire?

Possibly and yes.

Q.  Can you tell us about Vulkan Lives a wee bit more please?

See above…

Q. Any idea when the first Circle of Fire novel will be out?

Same with this one…

Q. What is Ignea? Where is it? In what way are the Igneans different from the ‘normal’ Nocturneans? It seems Dak’ir is lighter skinned than the inhabitants of the Sanctuary Cities, is that because the Igneans are ethnically different?

Ignea is an underground realm of caves that runs throughout much of Nocturne. Given the planet’s volatile nature, areas of this vast cave system are periodically uninhabitable, hence the nomadic nature of Igneans. Dak’ir’s skin is lighter because he is not exposed to the sun like the Nocturneans that live above ground in the Sanctuary Cities, and, yes, Igneans are ethnically different, just as Nocturneans from the various Sanctuary Cities are too.

Q. I’ve been wondering about that for really long: what’s with the apostrophes in some of the Nocturnean names? Do they signify a sound like a glottal stop, or… (I’m probably over-thinking that.)

Also, more importantly, is Dak’ir Sailor Nocturne? 

It’s partly affectation and because a lot of African root names have apostrophe’s in them so it helped convey the sense of tribal culture I was aiming for. The apostrophe’s are also intended to show where the emphasis of certain letters are in the Salamander’s names (but aren’t intended as a glottal stop). For instance, ‘Dak’ir’ is pronounced, ‘Dak-eer’ with a hard letter K and ‘Ba’ken’, ‘Ba-ken’ with a short A and a hard K. ‘Tsu’gan’ is ‘Soo-gan’ with a silent T, long U and a hard G. The apostrophes are really there to reinforce and aid with pronunciation.

As for the sailor thing… huh?

Okay, that’s everything. I hope that answers some of your questions and provides a little insight into my thoughts and ideas regards my work and the subjects thereof.

If this proves popular, I may make a regular feature of it. I will try and answer each question as fully as I can.

Oh, and if you do frequent Twitter and follow me (thank you, by the way) and want to ask something that requires more than 140 characters, then here’s the place to do that too.

Right then. Have at it!

Copious amounts of mucous – check. Disgusting chesty cough – check. Cotton wool stuffed in ears, head and sinuses – check. General fatigue – check. Feeling like I’ve just gone ten rounds with Hulk in place of Loki – big check.

Ugh! It sucks.

The doctor was actually really surprised I even made it into the surgery. I was running a temperature and inflamed in my throat, even my ears! God bless the powers of Lemsip to mask all symptoms, I suppose.

In the days prior to my illness revelation (sounds like the title to a crap Bourne film), I had been online checking out the right foods to eat, the best diet and lifestyle. Of course, none of the so-called experts could agree, oh, except for the fact that there is no cure nor preventative measure for the common cold. Ah we’ll, seems there was nothing common about what I was suffering with.

So, I am sat at home, feeling shitty, bored out of my mind and trying not to answer too many work emails (bloody hell but I’ve got a lot on at work right now and not being there is actually only increasingly my anxiety levels and general restiveness – calm, calm).

I did many to finish off a couple of much shorter, and thus easier to manage, writing projects that had begun prior to and in the early stages of the bronchitis so at least I feel a little bit productive. Got a new Salamanders short story done, which is now two new pieces I have finished for 2013. One’s a micro short (and I reckon that’s what I’m going to call these types of pieces from now one), clocking in at just over 1k (I always liked the idea of writing an entire anthology of micro shorts, 100 stories in all – is that mental?) and the other is just over the 5k mark, so a normal short story then.

Like I say, fans should see these in 2013. I’d like to do more and I’ve got an idea for a long short story and a couple of sideways tie-ins featuring the Marines Malevolent (I’ve had this one in my head for a while – it was originally slated for Treacheries of the Space Marines but my schedule simply wouldn’t allow for it) and the Raven Guard character from Vulkan’s Shield.

On the subject of short stories, I just want to reiterate for anyone who wasn’t listening the first few times that Tome of Fire is a collection of all the Salamander short stories to date. There is only one story that is unique to the collection (but it’s a long one) that hasn’t been seen anywhere else, in any other form or medium, and that’s The Firebrand. You will find a bunch of other stories that are hard to get hold of (because they were in limited edition chapbooks, only available as audios or downloads and have never been in print etc, etc).

If you’re expecting an entire book of all-new stories then that’s not what you’ll get. It’s everything combined so far into one volume with a brand new short and some hard to find stuff. I don’t know about you but as a collector I like this kind of thing, where I can conveniently have my entire collection all together in one series of four books. If that’s not you and you’d prefer to trawl through Heroes of the Space Marines or if you have diligently tracked down all the shorts thus far in all their forms (and, sincerely, thank you for that) then you’re likely to be disappointed but please don’t beat me down for the book’s existence, especially if you’re a fan, just because it wasn’t what you were expecting.

Alternatively, if you loved the fact all these stories (plus new and hard to find stuff) are now available in one handy, shiny new package then please tell the world so (I.e. go review the book on Amazon). I thank you.

The demand was there for the book, my publisher and I decided it would be great to release the stories as a collection. Had we not, there’d be no Salamander book at all as I was busy writing The Great Betrayal at the time. But do fear not, as I will be returning to the Salamanders either later this year to early-ish next (not counting 30k Salamanders, which I am in the midst of writing now).

Also, on the subject of The Great Betrayal, it has come to my attention (through re-reading and some snarky, but perfectly justified, blog posts) that there are a handful of continuity… slip ups, shall we say. Nothing major, and mainly elf related, but it’s annoying (for me too, believe it or not – I have my pride too and want to get this stuff right). I’m going to see about tweaking the text to iron out these background snafoos so that e-book versions and reprints of the novel can be amended. Sincere apologies, I do really mean that – this stuff matters to me… A LOT. A quick note, however, that some of it was deliberate and will be addressed in the third novel in the series (and it’s six books, not three as some people are still stating), Elfdoom.

Okies, I’m going to get back to coughing and spluttering. Feel free to sound off about any and all of that on here, and I’ll do my best to get back to you with comments.

So, I was reading through the Twitter feed today (a little dull, with a couple of interesting nuggets) and came across a snippet by David Earle quoting his word count (798 – not too bad, if we’re only talking about the one session) and that how this was the product of a night time writing session, and how the other 202 (taking him up to that magical 1,000 words – not sure why that is such a milestone but the man speaks the truth, it is) was lost to fatigue.

This got me thinking about writing periods i.e. when is it that writers, myself included, are at their most productive.

As my good lady Stef would tell you, I am definitely a morning person. Even when I’m ill (the unfortunate present state of affairs, but slowly improving between coughing up thick wads of green phlegm), I am still up early in the morning and at my mac or iPad, either scribbling down a blog (such as I am now) or drafting a synopsis, editing, making notes or even getting down to the actual scary shit of doing some proper, honest-to-goodness words on the page writing.

It might be a symptom of environment. In the mornings, I tend to write in my kitchen, sat at the breakfast bar. The light is good, there’s a decent amount of space (I find my thoughts get cluttered if I’m in a cluttered environment), plus, beyond the drone of the fridge freezer that is sooo on its way out, it’s pretty quiet. Shakespeare is usually scurrying around, digging or snuffling, or even sat next to the bar stool where I’m sitting but that’s okay. He’s not a big conversationalist and is happy for me to tap away whilst he snoozes, eats hay or licks his furry feet (curious, yet wonderfully simple creatures are rabbits), so the burden on me to divide my attention between trying to write and him is minimal, practically non-existent. Stef is no doubt snoozing upstairs, out of the way, so my time is my own and my conscience clear so I can spend a couple of hours in quiet industrial contemplation working at my projects or exploring my thoughts through the blog.

It’s nice.

Morning is a good time for me, usually around the 8am mark, and going on up to, say, 11am. I get a lot done. Sure, like all writers, I need my procrastination time and in this regard I usually spend 20 minutes or so browsing Twitter, checking out IGN or Geek Tyrant or i09 for interesting web stories to share or even provoke creative thought, but this is when I get stuff done.

Obviously, in the week, when I have to work my day job, the morning writing isn’t possible (unless I got up a lot earlier, and until I am properly fit and healthy again I won’t be doing that). Here’s when I have to fall back on the second best writing period, the early evening. This tends to fall between 5.30 and 7.30, just after I’ve got in and lasts until just before dinner (or tea, if you’re from the north).

I am less of a fan of early evening writing, my head is still usually muddled with work concerns and I’m genuinely tired (especially mentally fatigued) from the day (if I’ve been running then even more so). I’m not usually as productive and I have to go back a lot doing rewrites or fixing continuity errors. It’s much more intensive labour for less actual gain in terms of word count, but then again needs must.

Late evening writing is something I actively try to avoid. Only when I am really up against a tight deadline and every minute of every hour counts, do I step into that benighted, literary arena. There’s less peace to this writing period for me, even though a lot of the same conditions apply as the morning (the quietude, isolation etc). Fatigue plays a big part, it’s also really bloody hard to sleep when you’re mentally exhausted but still have ideas buzzing around your subconscious like insistent little flies.

For me, selecting and exploiting the very best time to write is important, as is establishing a routine in which to do so. When you’ve got other, significant draws on your time, ensuring when you do get to write that it’s when you’re at your most creative and productive is kind of essential.

My hat is definitely off to David, good work on the late evening session (I don’t know the actual time, so can only infer it was late), I know they’re tough. Words on the page are there own reward, I suppose, coming with them that slight ease in tension that you’re incrementally closer to your goal and the trepidation that the words preceding them might not be as up to scratch as you’d like them to be.

The reward and the anxiety, such is the road that a writer travels, usually alone (more or less), sitting in his kitchen (if you’re me) with a fluffy bunny at his feet.

I’m currently sat in the kitchen with a still warm cup of coffee, Stef’s in the lounge booking our tickets for a second helping (3D this time) of The Hobbit and Shakespeare is trying to dig up laminate flooring next to me (now he’s just jumped into his tray for the morning ‘deposit’).

I’ll be honest, with illness, Xmas and whatnot I’ve been a little lax on the writing front. I needed the break, though. Got about 500 words down yesterday on Vulkan Lives, but I really need to up the ante if I’m going to hit deadline. Plus, I’ve got a radio short to do and I am currently nursing a new Salamanders short story over its 5k finish line. Oh yeah, and I have a bunch of synopses I need to get on with. Phew!

Anyways, during my fortnight’s convalescence, I’ve filled my time with an inordinate amount of gaming. I see inordinate as I don’t actually game that much. I own several consoles and even have a bunch of games downloaded to my iPad, but I’m not an online gamer (I really don’t have time for all that – even the likes of Mass Effect and Dragon Age put me off with the sheer amount of hours needed to ‘level up’ or learn some new skill or whatever), and don’t play that often.

Illness, of the not serious kind, is a good opportunity for me to rectify that. I’ve had a bunch of games in need of completion for my PS3 knocking around for a while. I started off with Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, finishing the game before I’d even realised it. Easily as good as Uncharted 2, I was so gutted to have no more story to go at that I almost purchased a Vita to play Golden Abyss but abstained when I read some poor reviews regards download times and Sony’s proprietary memory card policy. Still, an awesome game and I even went on iTunes to buy a few tracks from the OST (love Drake’s theme).

One game down, I moved onto the next. It was like I was fourteen again, playing on my Sega Mega Drive and trying to finish every game I owned. Tee hee. Man alive, I remember those days playing Spider-man and getting as far as the King Pin, trying to kick his fat ass while Mary Jane was being slowly lowered into some death trap or other. Or Streets of Rage II, taking down the besuited big boss man with the machine gun (I always played Axel because his special moves were awesome). Or Golden Axe, beating the Dickens out of Death Adder at the end. Come to think of it, what happened to all those sideways scrolling beat ‘em ups, any beat ‘em ups come to think of it – that’s definitely a game genre that no longer exists.

Ahem, apologies, I digress…

Next up, I broke out Modern Warfare 3. Bear in mind I’d not long finished Black Ops II, so I wondered whether I’d be a little CoD’d out by this point. Not so. I’ve played it to the final level and am chasing down Makarov in his hotel. Bring the rain!

Perusing my stack of unfinished games, I still have Max Payne 3 and God of War 3 to go at, not to mention Lego: The Lord of the Rings. I even purchased Far Cry 3 yesterday after much deliberation (in the end it came down to this or Dishonoured, but I went for the former because I figured Dishonoured, whilst good, might end up a bit like Mass Effect in that you can’t bloody well finish it or get any sense of closure if you do – what can I say, I’m a completer-finisher).

There is something invigorating and wonderful about a prolonged session of gaming. I’ve enjoyed it, and it has taken me back to a period in my childhood when there was a very definite console war raging between Sega and Nintendo (tell me back then that Sonic and Mario would star together in their own title and I would have slapped you and told you to stop being silly).

I know it can’t last, however, as I’ll be back at work in a couple of days, and the writing will have to kick in again if I’m going to finish everything I’ve been contracted to do to deadline. I suspect Far Cry 3 will be sitting on my shelf gathering dust for a little while, perhaps I’ll have the new Tomb Raider to join it or some other title I don’t even know about yet. It’ll be stacked up with the rest, a last vestige of my childhood calling out to me, waiting for me for when I’m I’ll again or when the work schedule isn’t quite so time consuming. I reckon the latter is unlikely to ever be the case, but maybe next Xmas I’ll return to them, back to gaming.

As a huge movie fan, also, perhaps most gratifying for me personally was the culmination of Chris Nolan’s trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises. I’ve yet to watch all three films back-to-back but having three films I would consider doing that with, and three great films at that, is a rare treat, especially when considering just how bad those Schumacher efforts were (I think a part of me died when I watched Batman and Robin, what a terrible offense to the screen, let alone Batman, that was).

In animation, we’ve also been treated to Batman: Year One, Under the Red Hood and most recently, The Dark Knight Returns part one. Very much looking forward to part two early next year.

Regards the gaming arena, Arkham City was a triumph, even better than the already excellent Arkham Asylum. My cup has certainly been running over.

As a comic book fan, I’ve definitely been in the camp of one of those consumers who only buys the trades in graphic novel format. Over the years, I’ve built up a solid collection of what are regarded as the greats including the aforementioned The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum, Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween, Haunted Knight, Dark Victory, The Killing Joke, Hush and many more besides.

With the current era of Batman comics now fully underway after DC’s bold New 52 strategy that saw the restart button pushed on all their major books as well as a simultaneous/same day as print digital release, I have even more reasons to be cheerful, courtesy of a new Dynamic Duo in the grim world of Gotham.

I first read Scott Snyder’s work in The Black Mirror. Released during the Grant Morrison era on the Batman (who, to be honest, I can take or leave – I didn’t/couldn’t read the last volume of his Batman & Robin run due to the frankly awful Frazer Irving artwork), Snyder teamed up with Francesco Francavilla and as soon as I picked it up and turned the first page I was hooked. Dark, gritty; the story had depth, resonance and though it introduced new characters it felt like it had been part of the ugly tapestry of Gotham since… well, forever.

Like many new readers, I was swept up by DC’s New 52 and instantly added Batman, Detective Comics and The Dark Knight to my must purchase list. Whilst I enjoyed the other titles (The Dark Knight less so, to be honest), it was Snyder’s work on The Court of Owls saga that really stood out. Yet again, here was a new writer that was delivering the kind of Batman stories I really wanted to read. And again there was a weight of history behind it, a sense of the city itself as a character to be moulded to Batman’s indomitable will, of enemies older and more sinister than even the Joker. In the mysterious Court of Owls Snyder has created a foe to not only to test Batman physically and mentally, but morally too.

Greg Capullo stepped up as the other half of the team, his artwork visceral and utterly perfect for conveying the darkness of Gotham and its denizens.

The two have stayed together for the second arc of Batman stories, Death of the Family, where we see the welcome and terrifying return of the Joker. Courtesy of the Detective Comics storyline, the Clown Prince of Crime has a hideously stitched on face and is systematically targeting every one of the various ‘Bat Family’ members in some twisted idea that Batman is made all the weaker for their presence as they hang to his scalloped coat tails.

Much like The Court of Owls, this story arc is incredibly dark in tone. It also succeeds in digging into Batman’s complex psyche as the Joker tries to exploit it to the Dark Knight’s destruction.

We’re yet to discover the denouement of this story arc, poised at another awesome cliffhanger as Batman returns to Arkham Asylum in a stunning single panel that echoes the seminal title of the same name by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean. One thing is certain, however, both The Court of Owls and Death of the Family have become essential additions to the Batman canon.DC have already produced some fantastic animated renditions of classic Batman story lines and these two should be on that list for consideration too.

It has been a great year for the Dark Knight, one of the best, and with writers and artists like Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo working on the material I believe we can look forward to some great years to come.