...But just for a couple of days over this weekend in Utrecht, in The Netherlands - I'll be appearing on Saturday 31st March and Sunday 1st April at the Heroes Dutch Comic Con, as a guest of the American Book Center.
Here's my schedule of appearances and signings over the weekend; come along and say hello!
Saturday 31st March
10:15am-11:00am: "Games & Stories, Stories & Games" at the Cozy Corner.
11:00am-12:00pm, 12:30pm-1:30pm & 2:45pm-3:30pm: Book signings at the ABC pop-up bookshop.
Sunday 1st April
10:15am-11:00am: "Writing Unforgettable Characters" at the Cozy Corner. 11:00am-11:45am: "Secrets, Mysteries & Plot Twists" at the Cozy Corner. 12:00pm-1:00pm: Book signing at the ABC pop-up bookshop.
Here's where you can find me during the event, in Hall 9....
For more details of the panel sessions, click Here, or for general information on the convention, look Here.
I was very pleased to sign on with the folks at Tor/Forge over in the United States for the American editions of my Marc Dane action thriller novels, and now I can officially reveal the cover art for the US release of Nomad, the first book in the series...
It's great to be teaming up with Forge Books to bring Marc Dane to an American readership, and it also means I get to work with my good friend and top editor Marco Palmieri once again!
Nomad will be out in the USA on the 11th of September in a new hardcover edition, and there are more details Here about where you can get a copy.
Having been working on videogame projects since 1999 and written for the grim dark future of Warhammer 40,000 since 2003, it was clearly fated that one day I was going to get to combine the two...
...and so I am pleased to announce that I have teamed up with Cyanide Studios and Focus Interactive, to work with them on the narrative for their forthcoming turn-based tactical game Space Hulk: Tactics!
Bringing a unique twist to the classic gameplay of the cult board game, engage in bloody battles through an immense Space Hulk - a twisted mass of asteroids, wrecked ships and debris – as either a squad of Terminator Space Marines or the deadly alien Genestealers. Which side will you choose?
Battle through two distinct, narrative-driven campaigns, from the points of view of two different factions: one campaign puts you in control of a Blood Angels squad, which you will customise and upgrade as you progress, while the other puts you in control of the Genestealers for the first time in a Space Hulk game!
Test your skills against other players in the expansive online competitive multiplayer, letting you command a swarm of Genestealers or a custom squad of different unit types from one of four Space Marine Chapters – the Blood Angels, the Space Wolves, the Ultramarines, and the Dark Angels. Multiplayer modes and tools offer a rich and deep online experience, and include an intuitive map creation tool, which gives players everything they need to create original maps with custom objective, and share them with other players to play either online or against the AI, all from within the game!
Space Hulk: Tactics will be released later in 2018 on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 platforms, and you can find more details about the game at the official website Here.
There are times in your life when the passage of time, it smack you inna head. All things are fleeting, sunrise, sunset, cat's in the cradle, down to a sunless sea, etc. And so, with this in mind, I salute Shadbolt International, manufacturer and purveyor of finest quality veneered doors. Why, you may ask, am I doing this? Because in 2007 this small piece of the North London landscape closed down and moved to Braintree, along with a little bit of my personal history.
For anyone who traveled along the North Circular Road on the way toward Walthamstow Stadium back then, the Shadbolt factory had been a landmark for years, and each week the good folks working there displayed a sample veneer from their most commodious range, as you can see from the picture below.
Each Friday, when my friends and I got together for a regular evening's gaming, we would begin with a small ritual. One of our number would pass Shadbolt's on his way to my flat. On arrival, with great gravitas, he would announce the name of the Veneer Of The Week.
Some times it was East Indian Satinwood. Australian Silky Oak. Wenge. Even the rare Macassar Ebony. That ever-changing panel outside their factory was part of our shared experience, just as it was for the millions of people passing up and down the A406. Even years later, when we'd all moved away, if one of us passed Shadbolt's on the way somewhere, we were duty-bound to inform the others. Text messages would arrive and simply say "Veneer of the Week is Sen", and we'd nod and smile knowingly, connected by our appreciation of high quality wood surfacing.
But the factory is gone now, and that roadside panel exists only in virtual form, displayed here against the information superhighway instead of a London A-road. This week it was Straight Grain Smoked Pear, in case you were wondering.
So Shadbolt's lives on, in our memories. The Guardian covered it here. Veneer Of The Week has its own Facebook page. And if you want a sense of what this shared moment of North London industrial surreality was like, then this video will take you there.
A reader over on the Trek BBS site drew my attention to the fact that January 25th 2018 was the 10th anniversary of the release of my first full-length Star Trek novel - Day of the Vipers – so I thought I’d mark the occasion with a brief post.
When then-Pocket Books editor Marco Palmieri came to me with the idea of writing a novel that was a prequel to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and a taut political thriller, I said no. Twice.
Up until then, I’d made my bones in long-form fiction writing action stories with stuff-blowing-up and the idea of crafting a work that would be carried by hushed conversations, conspiracies and like sent me backing away to my safe place.
But Marco – an insightful chap and a great collaborator – insisted I mull it over. And I came around to it, I saw it as a way to test myself as a writer by doing something outside my comfort zone.
Day of the Vipers was the first in a series of novels that covered the turmoil during the Cardassian occupation of the planet Bajor, as hinted at in the early episodes of DS9; book one was written by me to help round out a trilogy with books two and three - Night of the Wolves and Dawn of the Eagles - written by S.D. Perry and Britta Dennison.
Before the Dominion War and the decimation of Cardassia... Before the coming of the Emissary and the discovery of the wormhole... Before space station Terok Nor became Deep Space Nine... There was the Occupation; the military takeover of an alien planet and the violent insurgency that fought against it. The Star Trek: Terok Nor trilogy chronicles this perilous period in the history of the planet Bajor.
All three books got a fantastic cover treatment by the amazing John Picacio, and I still have a big print of the Vipers art in my office...
The series was well received by fans, and set me off writing Trek novels – my latest, Fear Itself, which ties in to the new Star Trek Discovery series, will be out later this year. Vipers went on to win in the ‘Best Speculative Fiction Original’ category for the 2009 Scribe Awards for tie-ins, an endorsement that I was proud to have – and a sign that I’d made the right choice in taking on the gig.
You can hear me talking about the novel (and some of my other Trek fiction) in this interview I did for Trek FM’s Literary Treks podcast Matthew Rushing and Christopher Jones.
If you’d like to read them, dead-tree editions of the Terok Nor series are harder to come by these days, but eBooks are available from Amazon UK, Amazon US or via Simon & Schuster’s website.
