Love Warhammer 40000? Love to write? Why not combine the two?
Nevermind Valentine’s Day. Let’s talk about first loves with books. I first fell in love with Warhammer 40000 way back in 2008, when Borders was still around. There was one right next to the office I worked in, and I’d spend more lunch breaks than I care to admit in the bookstore, browsing and trying to figure out what to read on my commute back home. I’m normally into fantasy, so you’d think my first foray would be a rousing, sword-slinging tale of Sigmar’s Empire and its eternal fight against Chaos, but no. The first one I picked up was the first Gaunt’s Ghosts Omnibus, “The Founding” by Dan Abnett. I burned through the first few chapters in my short lunch break, then bought it and spent the next several days reading it to and from work. Then I grabbed the next one, then it was on to the more recent ones that hadn’t been combined yet, and so on until I’d read them all and needed more Warhammer. At that point I didn’t care if it was fantasy or sci-fi; I just wanted more Warhammer.
That’s a really long lead-in to the subject of tonight’s post: the Black Library (Publisher of Warhammer fiction) is doing another open submissions period where they seek short story proposals from new authors. Back when I first started reading and submitting it was done more like a short story contest, where you’d be given some sort of premise, you’d submit, and there would be winners and honorable mentions. Now it’s done more like a magazine submission period, except you don’t need to submit the full story. In fact, they don’t want that. They want a brief synopsis (100 words or less) of what the story is about without giving away the ending, and a sample scene of no more than 500 words. Think of the synopsis as more of a back-cover blurb for a book, with a sentence or two of introduction, another sentence or two for the main character and his goal for the story, and then another sentence that presents a complication (But then…) with maybe a final sentence that asks a question (Will they…?). Take a look at all of the synopses on the Black Library’s website and you’ll see what I mean. The deadline is April 10th, 2018, so get to work! It’ll be here before we know it.
Following is a list of some of my favorite Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 books, with links to them on Amazon. Please note that all of these links are through my affiliate account, so any purchases made through that link will generate a little bit of advertising revenue for the maintenance of this site at no extra cost to you. It is appreciated! Now, enough of the legalese and on to the list: