Looking through the Gunsight - New Horus Heresy eBook

Last year, Black Library published a new Horus Heresy anthology, Death And Defiance, a limited release hardback special as part of their ongoing series of bespoke super-lovely editions; but for folks who couldn't pick up the dead tree version, BL has now made each tale in the collection individually available in glittery digital form.

That includes the story I wrote called Gunsight, which is can be downloaded directly from BL's website right Here.

I won't blow the plotline (despite the fact that the front cover strapline contains is a major spoiler!) but I will say that Gunsight is a direct sequel to the events of my second Horus Heresy novel Nemesis, which featured a disparate squad of Imperial assassins working together in hopes of terminating the archtraitor Horus Lupercal.

As anyone familiar with the larger scope of the Horus Heresy will know, it didn't go well for them, but it's in the "for want of a nail" what-if, almost-but-not-quite that story lives - and you can think of Gunsight as a coda for it. In this tale, readers meet someone forever changed by his near-miss with the Warmaster, and get a look into the doom that lies at the end of his particular fate line.

Alternatively, if you'd like to pick up the full Death And Defiance collection, you can find it Here.

2K14 Movies

My last list-of-the-year-end, and it's movies. I got a little more flicks in over 2014 than in previous years. The split between my two favourite genres (action vs. sci-fi) was pretty much 50-50 and top picks for 2014 were (perhaps unsuprisingly for me) the hugely fun Guardians of the Galaxy and the great LEGO Movie, which I found unexpectedly clever and charming. Can I just say, being a Marvel comics geek since the 70's, I am still a little amazed that I live in a world where there's a GotG film (and that there's going to be another one). What with the slate of Marvel movies announced way up until 2019, this is probably the best time ever to be a superhero fan.

Here's the list:
A Good Day To Die Hard, Drive, The World's End, Alter Egos, Cloud Atlas, Cars 2, After Earth, Django Unchained, Jack The Giant Slayer, Shoot 'Em Up, Click Print Gun, Fast and Furious 6, Planes, Despicable Me 2, Man of Steel, Marooned, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The LEGO Movie, Iron Man/Hulk: Heroes United, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Europa Report, Moneyball, White House Down, Kick-Ass 2, Edge of Tomorrow, The Wolverine, Empire of Dreams, The Hunger Games, The Lone Ranger [2013], Guardians of the Galaxy, R.I.P.D., Fire With Fire, Tower Heist, Ebirah: Horror of the Deep, End of Watch, 47 Ronin, The Sky Crawlers, Lone Survivor, R2B: Return To Base (aka Black Eagle [2012]), Death Race 2, Captain Phillips, Death Race 3: Inferno

2K14 Games

My second year-end list; and 2014 turned out to be a year where I played less than half as many videogames as I did in the previous year, several of which were add-on titles under the same umbrella (a bunch of Disney Infinity toys-to-life games, episode from the Grand Theft Auto saga and so on). It's been a strange gaming season for me, though, caught as I am in the Old Ways having chosen not to jump to the next generation of consoles with Xbox One and PS4, or indeed upgrade my increasingly cranky PC. Xbox Live does a terrible peer pressure thing with this, showing you that your gamer mates are on-line but then mocking you with the revelation that they're sharing funtimes and laughing as a group on the the Xbone and not your decrepit 360.

Last time, I jumped generations I left a lot of games unfinished (some even untouched) and I've resolved not to do that this time around. I'm determined to work through my "pile of shame" and at least make some attempt to complete the XB360 and PS3 games I've got lying around. But honestly, I've yet to see the killer app that will make me want to make the leap to next gen anyhow, so for now I'm old-gaming, so there. That said, I have been playing some stuff that was actually new in 2014, including a good 60+ hours of my life invested in Destiny on the PS3; but I also played very old stuff in the form of Death Race, a generation one arcade game from 1976 that was one of the first titles to be banned in a panic over "videogame violence". Comparing Death Race's act of running over stick people to Destiny's melonpopping headshots seems almost quaint now... And so, GOTYs for me were the fiendish mobile murder puzzler Hitman GO and the fun-but-flawed Destiny, which I enjoyed while it lasted, and equally enjoyed griping about. I also liked a preview of Battlefield Hardline, which I want to play some more of in the year ahead.

Here's the full list:
Forza Motorsport 5, Catlateral Damage, Deus Ex: The Fall (PC version), Call of Duty: Ghosts, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost & Damned, Death Race, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Star Wars Rebels: Ghost Raid, Disney Infinity 2.0: Guardians of the Galaxy, AirMech Arena, Destiny (PS4 & PS3 versions), Battlefield Hardline, Cat Petting Simulator 2014, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Hitman GO, Parable of the Polygons, Disney Infinity 2.0: The Avengers, Disney Infinity 2.0: Escape From The Kyln, Disney Infinity 2.0: Assault on Asgard, Red Bull Air Race: The Game, Far Cry 4

2K14 Books

My second annual year-end thing is the first of my list-o-ramas; so 2014 was a good year for reading, and it featured some interesting stuff for me - including an advance looks at m'colleagues Ben Aaronovitch's latest urban fantasy tome Foxglove Summer and David Mack's forthcoming 24 tie-in Rogue, the return to SF of one of my favourite authors with William Gibson's The Peripheral, and a look at some new writers I've not read before like Ann Leckie, Terry Hayes and James S.A. Corey. I felt like I read a lot more action-thrillers this year, but on reflection it seems it was roughly a third of my intake; admittedly, I've felt a little adrift from recent SF offerings recently, and I kinda drifted back toward my second love, which is technothrillers and spy-fi. But that said, I also binged on Star Trek ebooks at the start of the year, blasting through the Mere Anarchy and Slings And Arrows miniseries back-to-back.

My top picks of the year are the aforementioned The Peripheral and Terry Hayes's prose debut I Am Pilgrim.

Here's the list:
Mercy Kill (Aaron Allston), Fly Low Fly Fast (Robert Gandt), Absent Enemies (John Jackson Miller), A Sea of Troubles (J. Steven York & Christina F. York), The Opressor's Wrong (Phaedra M. Weldon), The Insolence of Office (William Leisner), That Sleep of Reason (Terri Osborne), A Weary Life (Robert Greenberger), Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment (Keith R.A. DeCandido), Things Fall Apart (Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore), The Center Cannot Hold (Mike W. Barr), Shadows of the Indignant (Dave Galanter), The Darkness Drops Again (Christopher L. Bennett), The Blood-Dimmed Tide (Howard Weinstein), Its Hour Come Round (Margaret Wander Bonanno), How to Land [and Keep] a Literary Agent (Noah Lukeman), Countdown To War (Peter Grimsdale), Operation A.I.M. (Greg Cox), Runner (Patrick Lee), Kenobi (Miller), Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey), The Unremembered Empire (Dan Abnett), Scars (Chris Wraight), Vengeful Spirit (Graham McNeill), Ezra's Gamble (Ryder Windham), The Damnation of Pythos (David Annandale), Pirate Alley (Stephen Coonts), Choke Point (Peter Telep), Joint Force Harrier (Commander Ade Orchard & James Barrington), Foxglove Summer (Ben Aaronovitch), Dreadnought (Thorarinn Gunnarsson), A New Dawn (Miller), The Pen is Mightier than the Nerd (Nev Fountain), Threat Vector (Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney), Rogue (David Mack), Star Wars Rebels: The Visual Guide (Adam Bray), I Am Pilgrim (Terry Hayes), Choosers of the Slain (James Cobb), Flesh of Cretacia (Andy Smillie), Seeds of Earth (Michael Cobley), Path of Destruction (Drew Karpyshyn), The Peripheral (William Gibson), White Lie (John Templeton Smith), YOU (Austin Grossman), Distrust That Particular Flavour (Gibson), Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie)

Fourteen'd

Like I was last year, I'm a little late with the first of my annual series of year-ending blog postings, and the reason is pretty much the same. 2014, like 2013, has been a tough one to assimilate. Without wanting to start off 2015 on a sour note, I kept getting reminded last year of a line from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where Indy says that sooner or later we all reach an age "where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away". Last year there was a lot of bad with the good, and the thing is, you tend to dwell on the bad stuff because that's what leaves the scar.
(And for the record? I thought Crystal Skull was a decent Indy movie. Seriously, if you're still getting your knickers in a twist over ancient aliens in the same milieu where angry Ark of the Covenant angels melt people or immortal knights exist, just let it go. But I won't quibble over the Shia/Monkeys thing, though.)
So; all of that is a long way of saying "Farewell 2014. Don't come back."

So what did I write last year? 2014 saw more than its fair share of crashing and burning, I have to be honest. I slaved away on something very important that went exactly nowhere, which reminded me about how a lot of what writers do comes out of sheer bloody-mindedness, that I [REDACTED] hate [REDACTED] and they should all [REDACTED], and most importantly, to just keep writing. In the crazy world of videogames, I had an awesome superhero project shot out from underneath the studio I was working for, and months later it still burns, damn it. But that's teh gamez for you, and out of the ashes of that came something even cooler which I am not yet allowed to talk about, but I will say it's something I've wanted to work on for a very long time. More on that in the months ahead. For fun, I penned some script shorts on spec, and a couple of new Horus Heresy audio dramas - Shield of Lies, which is out now, and Ashes of Fealty, which will be properly announced in the weeks ahead. I delivered Deadline, my first 24 novel and first action-thriller to deadline at the start of the year (see what I did there?), and a new Star Trek: Titan adventure called Sight Unseen, which will actually be seen some time in the Autumn. Lastly, I wrote the short stories "Gunsight" for the Death And Defiance anthology, "Reflection In Blood" for the Black Library Advent Calendar and a new Doctor Who tale which I'll talk more about later in the year. So, busy in spite of it all. On the edge. *snaps fingers* Where I gotta be. *snaps fingers*

I roved a bit in 2014 too, book-ending the year with panels about games with the great Animex festival at the start, and the now-annual "games writing thing" at the London University of the South Bank at the end; other game-related highlights were getting to crash both the Destiny launch and Eurogamer Expo, and getting deep in boardgame stuff at the UK Games Expo. As well as a couple of Black Library-centred events (Warhammer Fest and a blink-and-you'd-miss-me at Black Library Weekender III), I showed my face at the Worldcon in London - it's my hometown after all, it would have been churlish not to - but I reckon the best gig of the year was Destination Star Trek 3, which was warmly welcoming and just all-around nice to guest at. Travelling in 2014 saw me in Malta, soaking up history and getting too much sun, and San Francisco, where I met Yoda; and last but not least, closer to home, I pegged my fun-o-meter at the Red Bull Air Race, which was, quite certainly, hypercool.

And now onwards.