Nick Kyme

Howdy folks,

Since it appears I’m under quite close scrutiny, I figured I should blog something today.

Lately (and this evening after work, in fact), I’ve been working on Promethean Sun which has just breached the 18,500 words mark. Woot! I’m planning on a full weekend again at the keyboard starting tomorrow where I hope to break in the mid-20,000 by the end of the day on Sunday.

I think I’ve said before that I usually write in ’sessions’. Basically, because I’m not a full-time writer and tend to be working on the same project when I do write, I have to have short bursts with plenty of breaks so I don’t kind of go stale or mental. That way, by building up a 1,000 words here, another 1,000 there I find that by the end of my writing day I’ll have a healthy chunk done and still be sane (ish…).

Usually, I’ll do a morning session from about 9am (after coffee and a bagle) until 12am, break for an hour or two for lunch (it depends on how the words are flowing) and then pick up at 2pm until 4pm, then, if I still feel I’ve got some more in me I’ll have a final 6pm until 8pm session and then crash for the evening. Vegging out in front of a movie is preferable and nothing too brain taxing either.

Specifically, Promethean Sun is going very well and I’m loving the challenge of writing in the Heresy era and all the cool things I can do with a character like Vulkan. I won’t say any more than that (as I’ve already been slapped for talking about it at all), but hopefully I’ll be done and dusted very soon.

I feel like I’ve got some good momentum going at the moment with 1,000 – 1,5000 words in the weekdays and (hopefully) a solid 6,000 – 8,000 words at the weekend. I don’t usually like to work all weekend and prefer Sunday off but deadlines are tight and needs must.

Okies, that’s the writing update for tonight. That’ll keep some folks happy, methinks. I’ll try and blog something tomorrow, depending on how the writing pans out.

Night, night.

Greetings gang.

Yes, you’re eyes do not deceive you, I am blogging more. Splendid.

I’m starting a little late today. I was at a murder mystery party last night (hats off to Andy & Jade, our excellent hosts), had a blast and a lot of wine. Not too fuzzy (wine doesn’t have much of an effect on me for some reason – I suspect it might be a super power…) but we got in late and I was knacked. Sleepy time ensued this morning until about 10ish and after checking/answering emails this is about as early as I managed to get to the PC to do some writing.

Anywho, figured on a bit of procrastination before getting stuck in. It’ll probably oil my brain bits too, so that when Vulkan’s kicking ass and takin’ names I’ll be right there with him.

I was trawling through the Bolthole today, too, and I came across a couple of questions that I’ll answer right here.

First up: Promethean Sun

Just what the hell is that all about? (Okay, so I paraphrased a bit…)

This is a novella in much the same format as Iron Warrior and Daenythos that were released by BL last year. The difference with this one is that there won’t be lots of pictures and what have you (other than a fookin’ kick-ass cover by Neil Roberts – aka ‘The Louth Legend’ – here’s a link to his site – this is the first cover he’s done for me and I am soooo looking forward to seeing the results), just lots of story, baby.

It’s intended as a bit of a prequel to a future Vulkan novel (which, fingers firmly crossed, I’ll get to write) and so is set during the years of the Great Crusade. Now, don’t piss and moan because it’s not moving the story along or blah, blah – that’s to come. Be patient, this one builds to that later stuff and does some of the ground work, ‘kay?

The main protagonist is Vulkan, it’s his story really, but you’ll also meet a couple of familiar faces you may have read in Salamander and ‘Forgotten Sons’ from Age of Darkness. Ooh, exciting. You’ll just have to wait and see who they are (but they both kind of introduce the story).

I don’t want to say too much more than that as it’ll spoil it but this is hot Vulkan action with the Salamanders and a bit of a first chance to see them during the Horus Heresy. As mentioned yesterday, I’m about a third of the way through. Look out for this on the BL Direct page as that’s the only place you’ll be able to get it. The powers that be inform me it’s going to available around May this year. Watch out for it going up on pre-order in a few weeks…

And question 2…

Salamanders.

Why? (Again, bit of paraphrasing there…)

It’s something I get asked a lot. I assume it’s along the lines of ‘why did you choose this Chapter to explore and immortalise in print’ rather than ‘why bother doing those lame Salamanders’. Oh, and subscribers to the latter can do one right now. I’ll have no rabble rousers on this blog – no siree.

This is one of my favourite Salamander pics and part of the inspiration for the character of Dak'ir

Well, the answer is pretty simple: it just sort of happened. The story goes I was writing a couple of things for 40K – my first forays, actually – Assault on Black Reach: The Novel and a short story for Heroes of the Space Marines. I know I wanted to do something different for the anthology and pick a Chapter that no one had written about yet. Salamanders were free, so I went for them. I went off and did my research. I knew a bit about the Chapter, but it wasn’t until I started to track down all the bits of lore that were dotted around stories, Codex box outs and so on that I began to build a picture. Pretty soon I was hooked.

Fire, forging, all that noble spirit and humanity – these guys were proper heroes! Some folks will know that I write about the Dwarfs for Warhammer (omnibus edition coming soon with both my novels, Gav’s dwarfy book and our combined efforts in the background book Grudgelore – all of which is included, plus a short story – sheesh!) and there was a lot of crossover there – other than the height of course.

A tale began to form in my mind. That one I rejected as it didn’t work for me. Then I came up with something else and the nascent beginnings of ‘Fires of War’ started to form in my head. The original story was actually set on an ocean planet but under the waves, a bit like Bio Shock but Lindsey asked me to nix that setting as it was too similar to Oathbreaker in that it involved flooding an underwater complex (it’s a hold in the Dwarf book). Instead, I plumped for a sort of sky city (or loft-city as I call them in the short) and so the world of Stratos was born.

The short, which became a long on account of its 20,000+ word count, was the beginning of my saga. I remember when I was writing it and discussing the story with Steve Parker that he said: ‘You just want to be writing the novel, don’t you?’ He was right. I totally did. In fact, I was so pumped about the whole thing and the characters that I’d created and thought about – A LOT – that I pitched a trilogy to my editors on the back of the short. They loved it and I had three books in the bank to write. I guess that’s why the Tome of Fire trilogy is so closely linked. It’s one big story that I’ve broken down into three volumes.

I’m not sure if any of that really explains why I went for Salamanders. Maybe it helps to know how the whole thing came in being. I can tell you this, though, I feel a tremendous sense of ownership and closeness to the Chapter. They feel like ‘my boys’ in many ways and I absolutely love the fact that so many fans love what I’m doing with them and the story that I’m telling with Dak’ir, Tsu’gan, Pyriel, Elysius, Ba’ken, Iagon and the rest of the gang. It’s especially tremendous how some of the lesser characters like Ba’ken and Elysius have grown so much with the telling. From what was essentially a character piece driven by Dak’ir, the trilogy has become a real ensemble epic.

I’m going to do more and as soon as I’m done with Nocturne I’ll be planning the Circle of Fire trilogy. Meantime, I need to travel back about 10,000 years and get on with Promethean Sun.

Thanks again for all the questions and I hope you keep coming back for more. Cheers!

Well, happy weekend y’all!

It’s Kyme here and in an effort to increase my general bloggage I have a cheeky little update for you.

After taking the month of December off for A) Christmas and B) so I didn’t lose my mind, it’s been a bit of a journey to get back up to speed writing-wise. A long weekend in Youlgreave on a writer’s retreat definitely helped moisten the joints (see previous post) and I’m pleased to say that I’m firmly back in the saddle as of today.

Stress levels have lessened a bit with the successful completion of 4,000 words today (which is a good target for me, especially with no evening session). I usually write in blocks, kicking off in the morning with a couple of thousand between several cups of coffee and probably a piece of toast and then another couple post-lunch and maybe the odd 500 or so of notes for the next whilst I’m cooking dinner.

Today I cooked at lunch, a big fat plate of pasta with kabanos sausage, green pepper and tomato. It was good. I took a long shower mid-afternoon to help get my brain working again (something about the action of the water just helps for some reason) and was pretty chuffed with my total.

I’m 9,500 words into Promethean Sun. This is a BL novella set during the Horus Heresy and featuring the Salamanders. Oh, and Vulkan is pretty much in it all the way through. And… start the wooting now.

Very happy with how it’s progressing so far. It took a while to find its momentum but almost hitting the first third mark helped. My target for the weekend was actually 10,000 words and with another full session tomorrow I’m easily going to achieve that. Good times.

It’s been a pretty good day all round as my fantasy football team kicked celebrated ass too with both Van Persie and Berbatov both scoring hat-tricks (you get extra points for that in the game – ker-ching!). I’m currently lying in second behind Alex Davis in the BL mini-league and have my eye set firmly on that top spot. I’m coming fer ya…

In other news, I got the first copies of Fall of Damnos in my hands the other day. Here’s a sneaky pic…

Like other SMB books, this one features a real cool insert section with a force organisation chart and planetary map. If you’re a fan of the Ultramarines in any form, but especially if you liked Assault on Black Reach: The Novel and Cato Sicarius’s Second Company, then this is the book for you. For those not familiar with the story, it features the Ultramarines going up against the necrons as they try to save the world of Damnos from certain destruction. Expect to see the return of Scipio, Iulus and Praxor as the sergeants’ complicated relationship is explored further. In the past, quite a few fans have asked me when/if I was going to do anymore with these characters and this is my response.

See? Sometimes wishes do come true…

Fall of Damnos is out in April of this year so not long to wait.

Meanwhile, Firedrake continues to do well and I’m thrilled at all the great reviews it’s been getting. When I’m done with Promethean Sun, I’ll be heading forward in time to 40K again and finishing of the Tome of Fire trilogy with Nocturne.

Short-ish and sweet from me today. I’m still buzzing off too much caffeine, so I’m going for a bit of chill out and a sandwich with Shakespeare before heading off to a murder mystery party tonight.

Super hero fever is gripping the internet super highway as well as the hearts and minds of every geek in the land… nay, the world baby! There’s plenty to look forward to gracing our silver screens this year and next with Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, X-Men: First Class (which, going by the pics only admittedly, looks pretty tasty) and, of course, Dark Knight Rises (I approve, by the way, of both Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane – good combo – more on that later).

Well, I’m here to tell you that super hero-dom has visited my kitchen in no-to-sunny Beeston. Here it is, proof that true super heroes don’t just have to be men in capes and tights or dudes with super-powered rings (ooh-er) or muscle-bound meatheads with massive hammers, y’all.

I give you Super Shakespeare!

Yes, my rabbit has a cape. No, I am quite sane. A lovely lady called Anthea made this for him (not to be confused with my good lady) and as Cawky was haranguing me for pictures of him wearing my hair like a hat/jumper that I didn’t have, I figured this’d do instead.

Able to eat tall carrots in a single bite, faster than a speeding whippet, more powerful than the majority of my chewed up furniture, it’s super rabbit.

That is all. I can actually hear Shakespeare right now trying to chew through the downstairs lounge door so I’d best get back to him. If he learns how to fly I’m really screwed and so are all my appliances… :/

Sorry, dudes. I have been totally lame when it comes to blogging. My bad. By way of a ‘previously on Nick Kyme.com’, here’s what you’ve been missing…

I’ve just returned from a very relaxing long weekend in Youlgreave nr Bakewell in Derbyshire. For those without the knowledge, Youlgreave is a very quaint and very lovely, if extremely small and full of narrow streets, village. It’s got three pubs (natch), a general store, butchers, church and post office and is about as close to the Romantic rural idyll as I’ve seen. Ahhh. Oh, this was also my first ever writer’s retreat, and me likey.

Lovely Youlgreave Church. I drove around it!

And check out the village post office. They sold second hand books as well as stamps etc!

Let me explain the concept. Basically, myself, George Mann and his brother Scott (also a Mann, and a man… er… okay, moving on), put our respective piggybanks together (though mine’s shaped like a LEGO brick, go figure) and rented a very nice cottage for a long weekend of writing, watching movies, talking about writing and eating Chinese food (though there was some pasta, a dodgy beef Yorkshire Pudding and some fajitas too). Good times.

George, who also happens to be the BL head honcho (no connection to this trip), is a fellow writer. You can catch his rather awesome blog present right here at the rather imaginatively titled George Mann. Kudos, George-a-tron. He’s done a bunch of cracking steampunk novels featuring his characters Newbury and Hobbs and the incredible sex-wee-ish Ghosts of Manhatten (a kind of steampunk Batman-esque vigilante who kicks ass and takes names in 1920’s NYC – I’m on the acknowledgements page, don’t you know…). Big George, as he’s also known, was working on his latest opus, which I think I’m allowed to say involves Doctor Who (The G-Mann, another of his pseudonyms – he’s like the freakin’ Jackal this guy – is a HUGE fan of the Time Lord and is rightly chuffed to be writing a story about him). Woot!

Also in the gooey, fondant-centred creative mix was Scott Mann, a Hollywood director no less! I shit you not. Scott wrote and directed The Tournament (I think that’s right), which stars Robert Carlyle, Kelly Hu and Ving Rhames amongst others (not to mention George Mann’s arm firing an uzi – uncredited). Stars are flashing before my eyes, I tell’s ya. Here’s his cheeky entry on IMDB. Scott was working on his latest script, between bouts of procrastination and analysis paralysis ™.

Apparently this version of the movie poster has been made by photoshop monkeys with no respect for the director of the film or the actual script. There are no helicopters in it for starters. This one's not Scott's fave - sorry, dude!

As for little old me, well I decided to take a short soujourn from my warriors of Vulkan (that’s the Salamanders in 40K for those ignorant to the fact, homes) and focus on something I’ve wanted to have a crack at for a while – an original crime novel. Now, I’m sure, most of the folks who frequent this blog (and I love you dearly, one and all), are only interested in hearing when my next 40K novel is out or if I’m doing Heresy (I am, actually, but more on that later…), or whether I’ll go back and tell more stories about dwarfs (er… yes to that, too). Well, tough. Poosticks to you. I want to talk about original crime fiction and my love for it and why I am going to write a novel about it/on it/with it/for it – oh, you get the idea.

I’m not going to say too much about it, as I don’t know when this book will be finished and, though it might be a tad presumptious, I don’t want some douche bag (not you dear reader, but there are dodgy blokes out there who would seek to siphon my creative juices and distill it in a brew of their own – the cads!) stealing my ideas. Gah! It’s gritty and over the course of the weekend I managed a healthy 10,000 words+ in the bag and a shed load of planning.

During our stay, while Scott was wrestling manfully (pun wholly intended – his last name is Mann, remember? Keep up…) with his treatment, George and I ducked out to find this warehouse in Buxton (or about 3 miles south of Buxton – it’s also famous for its spring water, you’ve probably drunk it at some point in your lives) that sells remainder books. Though I was feeling fairly pukey at the time (seriously, I was going to hurl and I still reckon it was down to the dodgy roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding I ate the previous night at the local pub, either that or the pint of Black Bomber I drank was spiked with something unnatural… ugh…), I managed a good root around and found a bunch of reference books for my novel project. Hell yeah!

The plan is to get about 20,000 words done and then go and find me an agent. Let the good crimes roll, baby!

Don’t worry, though. There’s no need to panic. Everyone… JUST STAY CALM AND SIT PERFECTLY STILL. I’m not turning my back on the boys in green or any of the Warhammer and 40K projects. There are still a lot of itches I want to scratch, I just feel like stretching my wings a bit and challenging my writing mojo. I’ve always loved crime fiction (thanks to Dan Sharp for the James Ellroy, by the way. I read a bit of it and thought it was fookin’ nuts… but great!), and always thought I could write a damn good crime novel. Here’s my opportunity to put that theory to the test.

It was kind of freeing too to do something set in the ‘real world’, though what you learn and know about plot and character pretty much translates. I’m still debating whether or not to have a supernatural element in it (a very thickly veiled, is it or isn’t it, supernatural element I stress) and have got a bit more research to do (and that’s the biggest beast – most of my research for 40K and Warhammer was done about 20 years ago and is ongoing on account of me soaking up the lore like a big lore-shaped sponge) but it’s feeling good.

Rest assured, I’m cracking on with my 40K stuff too, but back to the weekend.

It was reasonably hardcore in that we’d get up at around 8.30am (okay, so sometimes 9am… ish), eat breakfast, drink coffee and procrastinate for a bit before getting stuck in to a morning session. After lunch, around 12.30 – 1pm, we’d have another writing session that would probably take us right into the evening when we’d pause/stop for the evening meal. To wind down we brought and watched a bunch of movies/TV shows on George’s kick-ass mutha of a projector screen (it’s bloody awesome and kind of cooly nostalgic, like being transported back to a golden age or some such thing).

In our little film club we watched: Doctor Who: Time of Angels (and whatever the sequel episode was called), The Hound of the Baskervilles (the bloody great Richard Roxburgh and Richard E Grant version – saaaaweeet!), The Dark Knight (can you believe that George hadn’t seen it – what a loser ), LA Confidential and Narc (a pair of excellent crime films if ever there was any). Oh, and Scott ‘treated’ us to a very weird Italian film someone had recommended. I don’t recall the actual name but it translated as ‘Deep Red’. It was very odd and just slightly bollocks.

I’ve never done anything like a writer’s retreat before but the experience was a cool and productive one. I’ll certainly do it again that’s for sure. This is also my first ‘holiday’ of the year, and what a good way to kick things off. There’s just something pretty awesome about being in room with creative people, doing a bit of creation yourself.

Okies, that’s your lot for now. I have to go sweep up the hair I’ve just shaved off my head. It’s all over the kitchen floor and Shakespeare’s probably wearing it like a weird-ass coat by now. Ta ta!