Welcome to this instalment of my Author Spotlight series of interviews, in which I’m chatting to author Gary Kloster to find out a bit more about his work, especially the writing he’s done for Black Library in the Necromunda setting. With his first BL novella – Spark of Revolution – available to order now, there’s no better time to take a look at it, and what makes Necromunda such an interesting setting to explore.
Without further ado, let’s get straight into the interview and over to Gary.
Track of Words: To start off with, tell us a little about yourself as an author – who you are, where you’re from, what you like to write etc.
Gary Kloster: Hi! Thanks for inviting me. I’m an American writer from the Midwest who’s had a long obsession with SF and fantasy, in writing, movies, and games. I started writing while being the stay-at-home parent for our first child. We’d just moved to rural Minnesota for my wife’s work, and I was taking care of a toddler with no friends or relatives close, and going a bit bonkers. Maybe more than a bit.
So I started writing during nap time, to have something to do that didn’t involve diapers. Just random stuff that was in my head, no real plan to do anything with it, but… I ended up writing a book. Then some short stories. And I decided I wanted to make them better so I joined an online critique group and eventually started sending things out. And, well… places started buying some of them. Very slowly, but that encouragement kept me going. Well, that and the fact that as frustrating as it sometimes was, I really liked writing.
ToW: You’ve written for quite a few publishers and magazines over the years, including Apex, Analog, Clarkesworld, Paizo Publishing and recently Black Library. Could you give us a few highlights from your back catalogue, and what readers can expect from them?
GK: Most of my published short fiction has been SF, but I’ve hit a lot of different topics. The Farthest Born, one of my first published stories, is about parenting at interstellar distances. Then there’s Llamacide, a comedy about academic research and a killer llama. Riding the Signal is an action near-future story about advanced drone warfare. My novel, Firesoul, is fantasy, with a main character trapped in a fight with powers far stronger than her.
ToW: Can you remember a defining moment when you were growing up, or a particular book or author, that steered you towards science fiction and/or fantasy?
GK: I started out as a kid with the old stuff. Jules Verne, Bulfinch’s Mythology, things like that. Then in grade school I made the jump to modern speculative fiction and started tearing my way through the bookstore. There was no particular book or author – I tried to read them all.
ToW: What would you say your strengths are as a writer? Alternatively, what do you enjoy writing the most?
GK: The first stories I told were through role playing games, running D&D, Warhammer Fantasy, Werewolf, and so many others. That taught me a lot about how to build a world, how to describe things so that people can picture the scene in their head, and to really think about the motivations of my characters. When you run a game, as opposed to telling a story, you can’t control the heroes – your players are always doing…interesting things. I found that as long as I had a good idea of what the non-player characters’ personalities were and what they wanted, I could roll with anything the players came up with. Well, almost anything.
ToW: Do you have any key pieces of advice for anyone wanting to write professionally, whether in terms of pitching, writing or generally just working with editors and publishers?
GK: I wish I had the magical advice that leads straight to success, but writing, like everything else, involves lots of practice, lots of stubbornness, and some luck. But I will say that one important thing when dealing with anyone – editors, publishers, other writers, fans – be a person that other people like to deal with.
ToW: How did you end up writing for Black Library?
GK: One of their editors saw a story of mine, liked it, and asked me if I was interested in pitching them some ideas. Which was a great email to get, but…it literally reached me while I was sitting in the hospital ICU with my wife, who’d just had an aneurysm (she’s much better now, thankfully). So I told them that I was interested, but could I get back to them later, and they very politely said yes.
So while sitting there in a hospital, stressed out of my mind, I started reading a bunch of Warhammer as distraction. When she’d recovered and I got back to them, I pitched a Necromunda story because I liked the setting so much. That ended up becoming Curse of the Lucky, my first Black Library story, which is in Inferno! Volume 5. They asked if I’d like to do another Necroumnda story, so I did His Terrible Visage, which is out in Uprising, a Necroumnda collection. And those two stories lead to Spark of Revolution, though none are tied to each other.
ToW: What was it about Necromunda that made you choose it as a setting for your first BL stories?
GK: First off, Necromunda is just a great setting. There are the houses, the gangs, the guilders, the denizens of the underhive, and the decadent members of the upper castes living in the spires…it’s all ripe for conflict, plus the world is so gritty. It would be an absolute nightmare to live there, but it’s amazing for stories.
Thing is though, I think what really attracted me at the start to Necromunda was that the Warhammer 40K universe is so big, with such a deep history, and such epic, sprawling battles, it can be kind of intimidating to wade into. Necromunda isn’t small, with its hives of billions, but…it’s a little easier to grasp at the start.
ToW: Your latest release for Black Library is Spark of Revolution, a Necromunda novella. Tell us a bit about this story.
GK: Like most Necromunda stories, Spark of Revolution is about conflict. A fight between factions of House Goliath sets it off, but it builds into something bigger, a servitor revolt led by a very unlikely leader. It takes place mostly in a factorum controlled by House Goliath, with some forays into the deep Underhive, and while there is a lot of action, there’s also some exploration of the Ogryns and their culture.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
GK: Breaker Brass is an Ogryn servitor, slaving away for one of House Goliath’s factorums. He’s a standard Ogryn, strong but limited, his mind conditioned from birth to work until he drops. But when a vicious Goliath gang leader destroys Breaker’s people, then Breaker…is reborn as something very different, and very dangerous.
ToW: Why this story? Of all the possible Necromunda stories you could have written, what made you go for this one?
GK: I like telling stories about underdogs. Characters trapped in terrible circumstances who suddenly get a chance to seize control of their fate. What was fun about this story was taking a character that seems to have power – Breaker Brass is an Ogryn, strong and tough as steel, but he’s really powerless. He’s trapped, a servitor…until he has a chance to break out. If he’s willing to take it.
ToW: What do you hope Necromunda fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished this?
GK: There’s information about internal House Goliath politics – they’re not nearly as complicated as some of the other houses, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any scheming going on. And there’s a lot about Ogryn servitors. I tried to flesh them out, to make them more complex than simple grunts who like to hit things. Which, okay, is part of them, but there’s more!
ToW: What else can you tell us about what you’re working on (for BL or otherwise), or what you’ve got coming out over the coming months?
GK: I actually have a lot coming out with BL in the next few months. They’re keeping me busy, not just with Necromunda. I’ll have stories set in Age of Sigmar and other areas of 40K.
ToW: When you’re not writing, what might we find you getting up to?
GK: Well, being currently caught in a pandemic, NOT SO MUCH. But in addition to reading and gaming, I’m a stay-at-home father, which keeps me fairly busy, and I do martial arts to keep in shape.
ToW: If someone wants to keep up with what you’re doing, how’s best to do that?
GK: You can check out my webpage garykloster.com, or follow me on twitter @GaryKloster.
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Thanks so much to Gary for getting involved with this interview, and taking the time to chat about Spark of Revolution in particular! If you don’t already, make sure you check out Gary on Twitter, and take a look at his website. In the meantime, if you’d like to read reviews and more interviews about other Necromunda titles, you can find lots of those here.
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