Last month I announced with a
(20th Century Fox) fanfare that I've been working with games studio
Ninja Theory on the latest iteration of the Disney Infinity toys-to-life videogame - specifically the Disney Infinity 3.0 Star Wars playset Twilight of the Republic; you can see more about that by clicking Here.
But as well as writing the story and scripts for the TotR playset and Clone Wars
era-characters (Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Yoda and
Darth Maul), I also worked on something else that we've been keeping
under wraps until today...
I got to write for Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren and Zeb Orrelios, four of the main cast from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon series, helping to bring them into the world of Disney Infinity! They'll join the Clone Wars characters in Twilight of the Republic and the characters from the original Star Wars trilogy in the Rise of the Empire playset.
For more pictures and information, check out the Infinity Inquirer site fansite.
A couple of weekends ago, I got to round out my merry month of May with three days of relaxing nerdery at the UK Games Expo
convention in Birmingham, a massive board gaming event packed with
interesting folks, cool games and lots of to indulge my cardboard and
dice habit...
While I was there, Steven Hesse of the ace Geek Apocalypse
podcast/YouTube/Twitch channel sat down with me at my signing table for
a chat to talk about such things as my love of games, how I got my
start as a writer and the challenges of writing in a shared universe.
You can find me Here on Episode 80 (from the 26.17 mark), or also via iTunes if you'd like to subscribe to Steven's show.
This episode also features a whole bunch of other folks, including Librium Games, Dice Sports, The Next Great American Board Game, Andrew Harmen of Frankenstein's Bodies, Chris Birch of Modiphius, Dave Cousins of North And South Games and Rob Burnham, editor of the new Tabletop Magazine.
After I had such a great time there this year, it wasn't a a hard choice for me to say yes to an invite to 2016's First Contact Day event; a Star Trek and Sci-Fi TV convention taking place in Leicester over the weekend of 1st-3rd April, FCD 2016 already has Star Trek Voyager's Garret Wang, Babylon 5's Claudia Christian and Patrica Tallman and Trek experts Larry Nemecek and Doug Drexler on the guest list, and I'll be joining them along with my fellow Star Trek writer Una McCormack.
For more information about the event, check out the official site Here.
Once again this month, Black Library's Quick Reads eBook series features a reprint of one of my Warhammer 40,000 short stories, and this time it's "Crimson Night".
Previously seen in the pages of What Price Victory and later the print-on-demand anthology The Book of Blood, "Crimson Night" was in fact the very first thing I wrote for Black Library waaaay back in 2003, before my Blood Angels, Sisters of Battle and Horus Heresy novels hit the stores.
Rich
in iridium deposits, the mining world of Merron is a valuable resource
for the Imperium. When a company of Doom Eagles arrives to take over
garrison duties from the Flesh Tearers, they find the locals completely
traumatised by their contact with these savage warriors. As civil unrest
spreads and rumours fly, the Doom Eagles are forced to investigate
exactly what manner of evil is preying on the people of Merron.
In many ways, "Crimson Night"
was my audition piece for BL, and I wrote it for initial publication in
the pages of Games Workshop's late, lamented short fiction & comics
anthology magazine Inferno!; the focal character of the Doom Eagle Brother Tarikus would return in "Relics", Black Tide and "The Returned", along with warriors from the Blood Angel successor chapter the Flesh Tearers*.
To read this early work of mine, visit the Black Library website Here, or download an excerpt in Mobi or Epub formats.
*
Just FYI; the new cover describes this as 'A Flesh Tearers Story'; and
while they do play an important role, this much more a Doom Eagles
tale...
Back when I started writing for Black Library's 
Warhammer 40,000 tie-in series, My first novels were the Blood Angels duology Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius (later collected in The Blood Angels Omnibus); one of the key characters on those books was the manipulative Inquisitor Ramius Stele, and as part of the project I wrote "Blood Debt", a short story prequel detailing Stele's fall from grace and guest-starring the notorious Blood Angel captain Erasmus Tycho.
"Blood Debt" was originally going to appear in the pages of Inferno!, BL's short fiction & comics anthology magazine, but when Inferno! was cancelled the story was stuck in limbo for a time, first popping up in the print-on-demand anthology The Book of Blood and then later included in The Blood Angels Omnibus.
This week, as part of their Quick Reads digital eBook program, BL has re-released "Blood Debt" as a stand-alone short, and you can download it Here to check out this 'missing link'...
