Welcome to this instalment of my Rapid Fire series of author interviews – today I’m chatting to David Annandale about his new Warhammer Horror novel The Deacon of Wounds, his second book in Black Library’s growing range of Warhammer 40,000-set horror stories. If you’re keen to know more about this novel, and how a plague story came to be released in the midst of a global pandemic, read on to find out! The Deacon of Wounds will be be available to pre-order from Black Library on the 30th January, in both hardback and ebook formats (no word as yet on whether there will be an audiobook or not).
Without further ado, let’s get on with the interview.
Track of Words: How would you describe your new novel The Deacon of Wounds?
David Annandale: The Deacon of Wounds is a gothic horror novel, and a plague novel. There’s rather more body horror this time around than in The House of Night and Chain.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
DA: The main character is Ambrose, arch-deacon on the planet of Theotokos. He is a beacon of rectitude, struggling to do his best for the people of his world, but this is hard under the corrupt regime of Cardinal Lorenz, who effectively rules Theotokos. When Lorenz dies, and a plague known as the Grey Tears spreads over the land, the people look to Ambrose for salvation. His conviction that he can see them through the crisis leads Ambrose down a dark path.
ToW: Where and when is it set?
DA: The novel takes place on Theotokos, a world whose economy is in ruins after years and years of drought and famine. The setting is the ‘here and now’, as it were, of the Imperium.
ToW: How would you say this differs from your first Warhammer Horror novel, 2019’s The House of Night and Chain?
DA: Since this is a plague novel, the scale of the events is larger than in The House of Night and Chain, which was more intimate in its locale. As well, this is a more visceral text. I’m trying to trigger your gag reflex a bit more with this one.
ToW: You mentioned body horror – for you personally, how do you find a balance with the gorier side of horror, and judge what’s going to have the most impact without going too far?
DA: This is always a tricky one, and my answer has evolved over time. If you had asked my younger self this, he would have said that there was no such thing as going too far. I no longer believe that, but the question of precisely how far to go varies from story to story. Given the nature of The Deacon of Wounds, with the plague playing an important role in the novel, it seemed right to tickle the reader’s gag reflex (as it were) more than in The House of Night and Chain. But there comes a point where the visceral is self-defeating, in that it can break the narrative by becoming silly, boring, or otherwise pushing the reader out of the story. Where that point is, though, is obviously quite subjective, and it will be up to readers to say if I’ve gone too far or not far enough.
ToW: Can you tell us a bit about some of the influences that you drew upon when writing this, whether literary or real-world?
DA: The big literary influence on The Deacon of Wounds is The Monk (1796) by Matthew Lewis. The genesis of the book was, in fact, the idea to do a kind of retelling of Lewis’ book, as filtered through a 40k setting.
As for a real-world influence, I think I’d better address the whole issue of this being a novel about a plague. The current pandemic was not an influence, at least not in the conception of the novel. I pitched the novel in August of 2019, and I had much of the book written before the pandemic started. But that means I also wrote part of it in the midst of the pandemic, and of course what I was experiencing, and what I was fearing, had an impact on the writing, just as this terrible experience has shaped all of us at the most profound level.
ToW: The Ecclesiarchy is a core part of the Imperium but it’s often portrayed in the background or shown via secondary characters rather than being the focus of stories. What did you enjoy the most about telling a story with the Ecclesiarchy front and centre?
DA: Having the Ecclesiarchy at the centre of the story gave me the chance to explore more about what it meant to be an Ecclesiarch, and what the different motivations might be that would animate the members of the Adeptus Ministorum.
There’s a very long tradition of priestly characters in horror, going all the way back to the Gothic era. Whether we’re looking at The Monk, Anne Radcliffe’s The Italian, Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, or, for that matter, Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, priests, monks, the Inquisition and more have crucial (frequently very dark) roles to play. I think the Ecclesiarchy in 40k offers a lot to play with in this regard. Corruption and abuse of power is one obvious angle. As well, there’s an interesting and rather ironic situation in that, by and large, the members of the Ministorum know no more about the existence of daemons and how to deal with them than do their congregations. They aren’t the Inquisition or Space Marines.
ToW: In your two Warhammer Horror novels so far you’ve picked quite high-ranking characters with considerable importance within their worlds, as opposed to ‘regular’, everyday characters. Was that a deliberate choice to maybe give yourself as broad a view of these worlds as possible? What are the pros and cons of characters like this?
DA: In the case of The House of Night and Chain, I wanted the family and political sagas to intertwine, and thus to give another sense of how the danger of Malveil spreads beyond the confines of the house itself. Having a protagonist with political power gave me that opportunity. There are some related concerns and themes in The Deacon of Wounds, but in this case, my choice of character was informed by the model I used as inspiration: Lewis’ title character in The Monk has a great deal of sway (more, in fact than does Ambrose at the start of The Deacon of Wounds), and that power becomes part of the horror narrative as things start going wrong.
These are people whose mistakes can have a wide impact. At the same time, they’re still ordinary human beings, with no more training or ability to withstand what is coming at them than the most impoverished serf. In both cases, the goal was to have access to that broader canvas while keeping the character focus intimate.
ToW: Now that the Warhammer Horror imprint has been around for a while, do you think its remit or purpose has developed at all? Is there a sense that fans are ready to dig deeper into the horror elements?
DA: This is probably going to sound like I’m dodging the questions, but I’m really not. I think that they’re best answered by the readers themselves, who can tell us whether we’re succeeding at what we’ve set out to do. Speaking only for myself, I’ve felt the freedom to indulge in my love of horror from the start of the imprint, and that certainly hasn’t changed.
ToW: What do you hope 40k and horror fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
DA: I hope they’ll find the story entertaining and frightening, and I hope they’ll enjoy exploring this aspect of the Ecclesiarchy.
ToW: Do you have plans to continue any aspects of this story, or is it a standalone piece?
DA: It is a standalone piece, though there is some possibility of some threads or characters extending beyond it.
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Thanks as always to David for taking the time to answer these questions, and give us an idea of what to expect from The Deacon of Wounds. I’ve enjoyed all of the Warhammer Horror novels so far, so I’ve got high hopes for this one too.
See also: my review of David’s first Warhammer Horror novel, The House of Night and Chain.
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