Nick Kyme

Just a really quick one. Fall of Damnos is slowly getting out into the world (ahead of its actual release), and I’ve been delighted by the reaction so far.

Here’s a great review on The Emperyan…

I’m a bit short of time this evening so I can’t really go into much more detail than that, but huge thanks to everyone so far for all the support.

Good news everyone! After taking a day off work, I’ve finally finished the first draft of Fall of Damnos. Woot, and there was much rejoicing around the land!

I’ve still got to give it another read through, run the odd spell check and tweak a few sections but I feel like I’m across the finish line. The pressure is most definitely off – phew!

It clocked in at just under 100,000 words (though, I might breech the 100,000 word mark after the tweaks) and there’ll be maps and a character list as per every book in the Space Marine Battles series. This is really just the first part of the story as I hope/plan to do a sequel to this one which describes the second phase of the action on Damnos.

Look out for the new novel in April 2011.

After a short bout of illness (nothing serious, I’m think I was just knackered from the promoting I’ve been doing of late), work continues apace on Fall of Damnos. This is my latest novel and part of the Space Marine Battles series. It’s the first book in this series to feature the Ultramarines, too, and will ocntinue/develop the story arcs of characters I introduced in the novella Assault on Black Reach.

Quite tough these SMB books, as I’m sure any author who’s written one will attest. The problem of writing to established background fluff and still making it work as a narrative and have a few surprises is not an insignificant one. I’m a little late on the book, too, (a bit of knock-on from Firedrake) which doesn’t help matters. Still, it’s going well and at 86,000 words and counting I’m on the final straight.

In related news, Firedrake is released (officially) this week so I hope you’re clambering (or have clambered) over to your local book store to pick up a copy.

Got my first foreign language edition last week, Salamandra is in Spanish and looks very psiffy indeed with a gloss, rather than matte, cover and end flaps; it’s also B-format (so slightly bigger, the same dimensions as an SMB book or an omnibus).

After Damnos, I’m going to do a few tweaks to my Horus Heresy short story ‘Forgotten Sons’ and then take all of December off from writing. I’m feeling a little burned out to be honest (maybe that’s why I’ve been ill) and need the break. I organised some lovely theatrical distractions with my girl friend and she’s promised to get me destressed on a spa weekend in the capital – nice.

Don’t worry, though, I’ll be back in the New Year when my first project out of the gate will be Nocturne. I’ve been spending a lot of thinking time on this already and have multiple story arcs in mind to weave through the story and make the most of what’s already been set up in books one and two. I’ve also managed to sell the idea of a new Salamander audio to my editor and will hopefully get to that once the book’s done.

I do plan to pace myself a little better (I wrote three books this year and several shorts – phew!) in 2011 and will likely only write two novels. I want to do Nocturne (of course – that’s priority number one) but then I have another, slightly different project, I want to have a go at, as well as a novella and at least one other short. As for the year after… who knows?

Okies, that’s about it. I need to get through about 3,000 words of Fall of Damnos today so wish me luck on that score. I’m a little slow on account of me still being a bit weak and feeble from man-flu or whatever, but I’m determined. Hope is that I’ll be done with the first draft by the end of the weekend at which point I’ve got a week to finesse the novel and submit it.

Ta, ta.

Aye, I’ve been working on Fall of Damnos.

Have to say, I’m loving it. Only about 33,000 words in but it’s going well and I’m enjoying balancing the multiple story lines and characters.

By way of ‘the skinny’, it’s kind of a loose sequel Assault on Black Reach as it continues the story of Scipio, Iulus and Praxor as part of Cato Sicarius’s Second Company a century or so later as they try to liberate the stricken world of Damnos.

Fans of the background (those who’ve read Codex: Space Marines, anyway) will know that this is one of the key bits of established mythos of the Ultramarines and as it featured Sicarius and the gang seemed like the natural way to tell a new and longer story about the characters I enjoyed creating so much for Black Reach (they’re also in Graham’s The Chapter’s Due, which is awesome by the way – thank you Mr McNeill).

Slightly more surprising was how much I’m digging writing about the necrons right now. I guess you’ll see them in a slightly different light in this book (an emerald, sickly, flesh-stripping one presumably).

Don’t really want to say too much more than that. One thing does occur, though, and that’s the difference with writing something that’s based on a story that’s already ‘known’ (albeit as background fluff, without characterisation or a proper narrative) and something you’re inventing yourself. Like with Black Reach, part of the challenge with Fall of Damnos was finding the bits in between the lines of the existing story to hopefully surprise and delight the fans with stuff they didn’t know.

There’s a human element to the tale, that’s for sure. I find human characters very useful to play off Space Marines, who can get a little dry if you overload on them and end up suffering from ‘Marine Grind’ as one author I know termed it.

Anywho, I should probably be working on it now. More on the book later when I’ve hit the midway. Ta, ta!

Okay, so I just bezzed over to ultramarinesthemovie.com and witnessed the first trailer for the soon to be released film.

It looks awesome. Go there. Go there now!