One of the previously-mentioned things I could not yet speak about has now emerged into the wild, thanks to a mention in the June podcast from the team at Big Finish Producitons (listen to it Here, if you so choose), so now I feel able to announce that I'm returning to the world of 2000AD (the comicbook, not the year) with some new audio dramas starring future lawman Judge Dredd.

There's going to be an official press release soon, but I can confirm that a new series of audios under the Judge Dredd Crime Chronicles banner are due out later this year.

Back in 2003-04 I worked on three Dredd audios for BF's 2000AD Presents series - Dreddline (which is still up over at the BBC Cult website Here, where it's free to listen to), Jihad and Grud is Dead. As part of the upcoming Crime Chronicles series I've written two new scripts - Blood Will Tell and Double Zero.

More about these in the coming days...

 

A week of meetings gone by and much fruitfulness abounding thereof. Once again, I took part in one of the regular 'state-of-play' get-togethers at Black Library, where we discussed the future of the Horus Heresy series and other things. I joined fellow scribes Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill and Aaron Dembski-Bowden and we made stuff up. Cool stuff.
Having recently completed work on Black Tide, the fourth Blood Angels book, the BL guys wasted no time in talking to me about doing other stuff, and we've hatched some interesting ideas - which of course, I'm not allowed to talk about.
Come to think of it, right now there's a whole load of things out in the Jim-o-sphere that I can't talk about because of legal contraints, or because they may not actually happen, or because they haven't been formally announced.
So people ask me what I'm working on and I have to say "Oh, you know. Stuff."
 

As m'colleage Nick Kyme pointed out over on his blog, genre book site SF Signal have a nice little opinion piece up about why 40K fiction is great, complete with a namecheck for me. Read it Here.

Following on from the first releases in the Blake's 7 Early Years prequel audio series (When Vila Met Gan, Eye of the Machine and my story Point of No Return), we're prepping a new sequence of three releases for 2009. Each story features the core B7 characters prior to the events of the main audio series; we've covered Vila and Gan, Avon and Travis, and the next set of releases will feature the characters of Cally, Jenna and Zen.

Blood and Earth / Flag and Flame are by Ben Aaronovich and Marc Platt, and both stories centre around Cally; The Dust Run / The Trial are both by Simon Guerrier and feature Jenna; Escape Velocity is written by me, and features Zen, the artificial intelligence of the starship Liberator.  These will be single-CDs set for August, October and December release dates respectively.

 

Stolen from Dave Mack and Keith DeCandido, because I should really be working; all the last lines of my published novels...

Spoiler warnings are in effect!

I imagine it's not often that SF guys cross paths with SF guys (in this case, that's Science Fiction and Special Forces), but here's me hanging out with ex-British Army SAS trooper Chris Ryan.

He was doing a "Dads & Lads" promo for the newest in his line of Code Red young adult action novels, and I went along to hear what he had to say.

Ryan steered clear of authory stuff and concentrated on plenty of MilSpec details - det cord looks exactly like washing line; fireproof Nomex underwear is useful; the importance of getting a brew on after making camp - and he talked about his involvement with the Bravo Two Zero incident during the first Gulf Conflict and his time in the Special Air Service.

I offered him some writing tips, and in turn he showed me how to kill a man using only my thumb.
 

As previously blogged, I've been talking on the radio about the Star Trek in the wake of the new movie's release, and apparently BBC Wales liked me so much they had me on again this morning; I like doing these little gigs, but to be honest there's never much opportunity to do much more than say "Star Trek - it's great!" before you're off again.

Elesewhere, though, my voice has also been appearing on the other side of the world, on the Australian national radio channel ABC, as part of The Book Show program; you can hear me talking briefly about Trek and tie-ins on-line Here. Thanks to karenmiller for the rec!

With lots of work to keep my focus, it almost slipped my attention that it's my birthday this week. I guess it's true what they say about getting old; I'm already having "senior moments". Still, another year above ground is a good thing, and despite real life getting in the way of my vague plans for a huge blow-out party, passing this milestone leaves me feeling fine - mostly because at the weekend I got reminded of just how great my friends are.

As a surprise, a gang of my mates arrived at my house and took me off on a mystery drive to This Place - and there they clubbed together and bought me something I've been wanting for years and years.
I'm a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies and I've always wanted a jacket like Indy's; imagine my delight to discover that the leatherwrights who made the originals for Harrison Ford would not only make me one from the actual patterns, but custom tailor it any way I wanted. I'd been promising myself one of these for a while, but never got around to getting measured up. To be honest, I'd forgotten about the whole idea - but my friends hadn't.

Visiting the Wested factory shop was amazing - I spent a while chatting to the owner Peter Botwright about his work, and the guy had some great stories; he's been making clothes for TV and movies for years, with recent shows like Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes on his resume, right back to Roger Moore-era Bond films and the original Star Wars trilogy. New on display that weekend was Wolverine's jacket from X-Men Origins, and hanging on the racks amid the biker gear and Elvis outfits I spotted a Naboo trooper uniform from The Phantom Menace. They'll sell you repros of loads of different screen gear and tailor-make stuff too.

So now I'm the proud owner of a new leather jacket, cut in the Raiders of the Lost Ark style (and I got the matching shirt, natch). It has room for my grail diary and everything. It's one of the greatest geek gifts I've ever had, and made all the more special by the fact it was given to me by my geek mates, who understand exactly how cool it is. Much heartfelt thanks to Mike, Pete, Jo, Steve, Denis, Mark, Suzanne, Ian, Diane and Mandy.

I guess you could suggest that getting the Indy jacket might be the first sign of an oncoming midlife crisis; but if that's so, then I've been having one of those for the last twenty years, at least. For me, passing the four-decade barrier was nicely summed up by a piece of art my 'toonist buddy Denis drew for me; a beaten-up, patched starship - the U.S.S. Middle Age, NCC-40 - drifting through space. The caption says "Still Not Dead, Jim".

Damn right.

One of the things about being an author means that unless you're a huge success, your stuff will eventually go out of print. It's a sad fact, but it's part of the job. These days, in this era of eBooks, Kindle and so on, there's really no reason for books to ever really vanish, even after the last dead-tree edition is snapped up. But of course, there are still folks who want a paper copy, collectors or just avid fans - and there are those who will sell them...at mad prices. 
I've seen this once or twice with my stuff, mostly on eBay, with some things going for ten times the cover price - and a cursory look on Amazon.com reveals my Stargate Atlantis novel Halcyon going for more then $160, and Deus Sanguinius at $116. But all that is beaten into a cocked hat by this listing for my Star Trek Titan novel Synthesis. Yes, for the princely sum of $999.99 (plus $3.99 shipping and handling), you can own a copy of a book by me that isn't even printed yet! Okay, so the listing says it's a used copy, which might put you off, but I think this is a reasonable price considering that the seller probably has to pay for fuel for his time machine...

Thanks tojulioangelortiz !

As I'm on the Beeb's database of SF types thanks to my writing and my Star Trek Voyager connection, I got the call to be a talking head on BBC Radio 5 Live's Breakfast show and enthuse about the new Trek movie; I'd barely finished agreeing to do that before they rang again, this time from the grand heights of the BBC World Service asking me to do the same turn on The World Today. Cue much twatting about with terrible Skype connections before we all gave up and did the call via my cellphone.
All this while I'm trying to concentrate on writing; not to be outdone, I was then tapped by BBC Radio Wales to gab again - so by now I had a spiel down pat - which was all well and good until the presenter told all of Cymru that I'm the writer of the new movie and cut me off before I could correct him... Lucky for me, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman aren't Welsh, so I reckon I dodged a bullet there...

 

Now recovered from the inaugural Black Library Live! event at Warhammer World, and very fine it was too. As ever, it was fun to get some face-time with the regulars on the BL forums and the readers who'd made the trip up to Nottingham for the day. I was on with Nick Kyme in the morning signing stuff and chatting about bookage, past and present. I also brought along a cut of the audio for Heart of Rage, which got some interest, so I'm hoping that'll do well come next month when it hits the stores.

Other highlights of the day were the Author War, where groups of fans played for the honour of us various scribes - my team were the Sisters of Battle (as seen in my novel Faith & Fire) and while the end result was apparently a draw, the Sisters made it through with the least corpses, so I call that victory... There were also some brilliant entries in the miniatures competition, including a stellar diorama based on the covers of my Blood Angels novels - good efforts all round, in fact.

And of course, a day at BL is like a day in the corps, every formation a parade - and I hung out with the rest of the writer crew to talk shop and eat huge chicken pie, including Dan Abnett, Steve Lyons, Graham McNeill, Gav Thorpe, Richard Williams (and his flag), Neil Roberts and Jon Sullivan. Also joining us for the first time was Aaron Dembski-Bowden, a new recruit to our ragged band, whose first novel Cadian Blood is upcoming, to be followed by the first in a kickass Night Lords series.

Hats off to Alex, Christian, Rik, Nick, Mark, Caroline, George and all the rest of the BL team who got this event up and running. I'll do another one like a shot...
 

Sad news today, confirmation of the passing of gamer legend Dave Arneson, who along with the late Gary Gygax was one of the fathers of roleplaying games. Like Gary before him, I owe Dave a debt for many hours of nerd fun around an RPG table. M'colleage Matt Forbeck says more Here, and the esteemed John Kovalic has a nice tribute in his Dork Tower strip Here.