Nick Kyme

Man, I’ve been waiting to use that subject line for ages…

Trawling through the goggle alerts (always nice to know when folks are talking about your ’stuff’ online), I see that Thunder from Fenris enjoys its first review online, and a fine one it is at that.

Must admit, since the Black Library forums went on the down low, I’ve been slightly bereft of feedback on this, my first audio. Listened to a bit the other day and like what I heard (well, I was satisfied, but we writers are our harshest critics, as is only right). Jim Swallow said some nice things to me on the subject, which was very cool – Jim is a total legend in general, but particularly mega when it comes to audio – but this was my first ‘fan’ review outside the BL circle.

My thanks and appreciation to ‘The Gabbling Geek’  at ‘Top of the Reading Pile’ for the five stars out of five review. Woo hoo!

Check it out for yourselves right here.

Check it out, people. Fresh from the Black Library website comes the cover to Thunder from Fenris!

I hasten to add, it’s not an original piece (and you won’t hear me saying any more than that), but looks great doesn’t it?

This bad boy has been kept under wraps for a fair while, but has been allowed out into the light of day at last. Still no actual copies of the CD in the office yet, but I’m told end of the month – can’t wait.

For those who don’t know (as I note, there’s been some confusion over this in some quarters), Thunder from Fenris is a totally brand new AUDIO BOOK from the Black Library about the savage Space Wolves. It’s an original, stand-alone, all-new tale with our favourite sons of Fenris doing battle against zombies. Yes, you heard it folks, zombies.

Performed by the excellent Tobey Longworth (of Heart of Rage fame, amongst a host of other things non-BL), some of the Space Wolf voices are so great they’ll have you grabbing your frost-blade and furs, and stepping out into the ciy tundra.

Awooooo! (You’ll be pleased to know that I wasn’t doing any of the sound effects on this one, apart from a small cameo as a zombie…)

Work-wise, it was a fairly quiet day yesterday. I’m trying to take some sage advice (thanks, Sam) and taking a little more time off at the weekends. My Saturday pretty much amounted to an eye test at the opticians (for which I had to buy some new glasses – well lenses, but I bought the glasses anyway – not cheap), swiftly followed by meeting Louise in Nottingham city and heading over to the cinema to watch Terminator Salvation (see the review/verdict in the blog post immediately prior to this one). After gorging myself on a pick n’ mix (must be a throw back to my childhood or something, as I nearly always buy pick n’ mix when I go to the cinema), I headed home to watch the England game (lacklustre, but a good result) and vegged out for the rest of the evening.

Today, however, will be a different story. It’s raining and the clouds are stormy – perfect creative weather for me. I plan to write a couple more blog posts and then my main tasks will be finish listening to Thunder from Fenris and write up my feedback notes (after an audio comes in, we usually sit down and go through it, checking for anything that doesn’t quite work from an FX and music point of view). I’m on my second listening right now (the first was just to get it in my head; the second’s where the detail comes in), and it’s sounding great with just a few tweaks needed. I’m sure Chris and George will have their own thoughts on it when they do their review.

Second job today is finish my synopsis for Grimblades. This is my first fantasy book since Honourkeeper and is part of the Empire army series so ably launched by Richard William’s Reiksguard. I’m esteemed company here, as I’ll be joining authors Chris Wraight, who’s novel Iron Company is book two in the series, and Mitchel Scanlon, who has Call to Arms taking up the third slot. No pressure then.

I’ve started in on the story, which really just had some bones and a vague concept, and am fleshing out both narrative and characters. I’m really enjoying getting back to fantasy and tackling the Empire, which I’ve yet to do in a novel (I’ve written several short stories involving Kislev and the Knights of Morr, so I have some experience writing human characters). Of course, I’ll also be getting my beloved dwarfs in there in some small way (no pun intended). All the work is going down in my moleskine and as stream of conscious-type rattlings on my keyboard below the text I’ve already got for the synopsis. I find it really helpful to work in this way and plot in some detail, only to pare it down for my editor and refer to the detail notes later when I’m actually writing.

Third job, if I can get around to it, is writing the synopsis for Fireborn, the last in the Salamander Tome of Fire trilogy. I’m about halfway through this and will present to Chris either tomorrow or midweek. Fingers crossed it passes muster – if it does, I’ll have something to shout about in the next blog post for sure.

Well, that’s about all I’ll be able to cram in today. Honestly, if I get all of that done I’ll be very pleased indeed.

Boy, what a busy day yesterday! I was down in London with Christian Dunn for the recording of my first ever audio story – Thunder from Fenris.

A 5.30am start (at least when I stirred from my pit to get ready for the booked taxi) and an 8.45pm finish (by the time I got back through my door, comfy slippers on and the last two episodes of Heroes season four to watch on BBC2 – yes, I hung in there until the end: I’m obviously a TV masochist or something) has left me pretty drained, I don’t mind saying.

Just by way of a little insight, the actual recording day was around eight hours – roughly 9am-5pm – and generally consists of the writer (me, in this case) and editor (that’ll be Christian) sat in the directorial suite with script in hand, listening to the actor go through his lines and weave his magic over the microphone with director and sound engineer guiding and monitoring proceedings respectively.

It’s a team effort and, as always, we were surrounded by total pros.

Toby Longworth (who folks will hear voicing James Swallow’s excellent Heart of Rage in the not-too-distant future) really delivered for us (and me, I suppose) again with a stellar performance. He had three Space Wolves to nail and he had them down from minute one. Three very different characters; three very distinctive but wonderfully rendered and wholly apt voices. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

Easter egg – check out a character called Thorgard in the production and see if you can tell where Toby drew his inspiration from. Great stuff.

Toby Longworth put through his paces on the script…

Ably steering the directorial helm was Jason Haigh-Ellery (Jason runs Big Finish Productions, the audio company that BL works with to produce their audio books – real experts in their field) whose guidance was exemplary and knowledge helped really coax the script into life (oh and huge props to both Toby and Jason for their timely and astute script advice – all part of the creative process).

Our sound engineer, and who pretty much looked after us all on the day, was another Toby, though this time a Mr Hrycek Robinson (I know, I know with that first name he could be a Space Wolf, too!). Always very, very safe hands and wonderfully hospitable.

Jason Haigh-Ellery (left) and Toby Hrycek Robinson work their magic from the other side of the microphone.

Were also joined by David Richardson, BL’s principle liaison with Big Finish and a producer himself, who works very closely with the audio books editor to ensure we get the audios done, on time and to schedule.

Being on the other side of the fence, as writer instead of editor, this was a new experience for me and I felt extremely privileged to have been a part of the process during the recording as it was fascinating and exciting from this new point of view.

I’m hoping fans will love Thunder from Fenris as much as I did writing it, and will get the same level of enjoyment I did from hearing it immortalised into audio. I’ve yet to hear the music and fx edit (we recorded the rushes on the day, and another sound engineer will now be set to work adding atmospheric music, bolters, zombie noises and so on, and generally cutting the whole thing together).

A tiring day, but a great day. I’m told we’ll see copies fairly soon (a month or so to give time for editing, reviewing and duplication into CD format) and the audio itself will be released at UK Games Day, I believe, and then later on in Games Workshop stores.

It’s been a busy week for me this week, as I’ve been inputting the editorial changes to both Salamander and my forthcoming audio story Thunder from Fenris.

I am now very pleased to report that I’ve literally just finished the last of the edits for Salamander, and I’ll be submitting this tomorrow morning for the next stage in the process. I’ll probably (hopefully) not see it again until the proofreading stage, when I get a final check before it goes off to the printers. All exciting stuff.

As mentioned, I’ve also now completed the slight reworks needed on Thunder from Fenris, a brand new Space Wolf audio. At 10,000 words (ish), it was a bit easier of a beast to tame than Salamander, but a great and challenging project to work on all the same. I’m very much looking forward to hearing it acted out at the recording session in London on May 11th. It’ll be weird, I’m sure, but also very cool.

I understand, Toby Longworth, who did some absoultely sterling work on James Swallow’s excellent Heart of Rage (if you haven’t already, go and get it – it’s ace. That’s if it’s released yet…), so I can’t wait to see what the actor will do with all those pseudo-Viking/Nordic characters. Skoll!

Next up, my editor has me working on the sequels to Salamander (books two and three in the Tome of Fire trilogy – tentatively titled Firedrake and Fireborn respectively). As I’ve been making copious notes on the next two books, and, as divulged at BL Live, already have the basic story arc down, this shouldn’t be too arduous. I’m actually looking forward committing the character arcs to paper and sort of crystallising my note-appended thoughts in full.

Though these two novels won’t be out for a long while, and I’ve got at least one other novel in between, it’s good to establish the overall plotline early on and get it approved, so that when I’m ready to get stuck back in to the Salamanders again, I can do so without pause.

In fact, next on the list of actual writing is a short story called ‘Hell Night’ for Legends of the Space Marines, which features some of the heroes from Salamander and ‘Fires of War’. Beyond that, I’m reluctant to speak of in any detail. Suffice it to say, there’s another short and an Empire army novel.

Busy, busy, busy!