Hello and welcome to this guest post here on Track of Words where I’m delighted to be joined by veteran Black Library (and Angry Robot) author Gav Thorpe, who’s written a fascinating article looking back at how things have changed over the course of his career, and how he’s approaching writing Warhammer fiction now in order to avoid burning out. For anyone with even a faint interest in Black Library and Warhammer, Gav really needs no introduction, having written so much and been involved from the very beginning! I can’t think of anyone better placed to write about the changing realities of life for a Black Library author over the years, and I think this article is going to be of interest to a lot of BL (and SFF in general) fans, and to other writers too.
With that said, over to Gav.
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Gav Thorpe: I’ve been writing in the worlds of Warhammer for a pretty long time. One year short of three decades, to be a bit more precise. When I joined the Design Studio in 1993 it was just after the release of the second edition of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer fourth edition had been out a year. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then…
John Blanche’s glorious cover art for Second Edition 40k
It was a definitive time to be writing for both of the Warhammer settings back then. The Warhammer Armies and 40K Codexes were compiling, rationalising and summarising several years of fairly haphazard setting development and stories. Each was intended to be the definitive guide to a particular faction, and the template for the structure of exploring and expanding the settings was set. Book by book, the ‘comprehensive’ incarnations of the Warhammer world and the Warhammer 40,000 galaxy were being created. Being there at the time I absorbed all of this by a process of creative osmosis, along with the arrival of Necromunda (a ‘modern’ redux of the Confrontation game and Necromunda setting), the development of Gorkamorka, plus several Epic incarnations and Battlefleet Gothic. Alongside that I had a major part in developing the background and characters for the Inquisitor game. On the Warhammer side it was much the same, with Warhammer Quest expanding the setting back towards roleplay dungeonbash roots, as well as Mordheim arriving on the scene.
Being there, part of the conversations if not actually writing the words, meant that I knew those worlds inside-out. Not just the facts, but the themes, archetypes, inspirations and history that informed them. This was deliberate, of course, because I was expected to be able to continue that development in a proper fashion, which I did from about 1997 onwards as a fully fledged games developer.
It was around that time that Andy Jones, with whom I had worked on Warhammer Quest, set up a new publishing wing of Games Workshop called Black Library. Andy invited me to pitch and write a short story for the launch magazine Inferno!, which I duly did, and that was my step into writing short and then longer form fiction. [You can read more about Gav’s first BL short story – Birth of a Legend – in this interview here – ToW]
I spent the ten-eleven years between the launch of BL and my departure from the Design Studio working in those worlds, writing and leading projects that shaped the settings, while in the evenings and weekends I was penning short stories and novels doing the same via the Black Library.
I have written a lot of words about Warhammer.
In 2008 I left Games Workshop, but continued my creative relationship with the Warhammer settings through my freelance involvement. At first it was pretty simple – I was still writing in the worlds I knew so well. In fact, my first BL novel after leaving was Malekith which I had seeded ideas for into a new version of Warhammer Armies – Dark Elves as one of my final projects in the studio.
Then Age of Sigmar came along.
A new setting. One that I had not been a part of creating or developing. One that, while familiar in themes and ideas, was a different rendition of the Warhammer I knew. I had to do research by reading what other people were writing. I had to keep looking up the names of Stormcast Eternals troop types because I couldn’t remember which ones had the hammers and which ones carried swords and shields. I was, without question, now an outsider looking in. Not that it was bad, just different. Harder for sure, but my first Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast won me the David Gemmell Legends award, so perhaps that extra due diligence and feedback made me a better writer.
I’m still not wholly comfortable as a writer in AoS. The world has settled down, but there are ongoing narrative events I don’t always keep track of, and I only know the sketchiest fundamentals of some of the factions. As and when I need to or find the time, I do a bit of a lore dive and enrich my knowledge, but it isn’t the same as being the Warhammer Loremaster with the sum totality of the Warhammer world in my head.
In a similar vein, Horus Heresy arrived for Black Library, and later Forge World publications. Hinted at, but never explored in such detail before, it was the equivalent of a new setting with the added ‘fun’ of not being an easily-digested series of gaming supplements but a growing range of novels. I admit that I never quite kept up with all of the releases as they happened from the time I was asked to join the authorial crew, instead picking and choosing books and stories most relevant to the plot strands I had to focus on. Over the years that has covered pretty much everything, especially given the story threads that all lead to the Siege of Terra, but as with AoS I always felt one step behind knowing what other folks knew, in particular if Dan [Abnett] or Graham [McNeill] or one of the others started talking about particular arcs for secondary characters that I hadn’t come across.
And having just passed the mark for fourteen years as a freelancer – the same amount of time I was at the Design Studio – Warhammer 40,000 is also in a similar place. Codexes have been rewritten several times, large narrative arcs have come and gone, or are ongoing, or revisited, and army lists expand and change. Sometimes it’s a big thing like the Indomitus Crusade, or the Primaris arriving (which put me back in the same place I had with the Stormcast and looking up names…) or it might just be small things, like a new troop type, a change of wargear selection, or the way the background for an army has altered slightly in its presentation.
It is in many ways the same Warhammer I started writing for nearly thirty years ago. And in many ways it is nothing like the Warhammer I started writing for at the tender age of nineteen.
Overall, for the reasons above, it’s become harder. Simply more work trying to keep abreast of stuff, reading unreleased material in PDF format with placeholder text in place, learning about narrative changes second-hand from other writers talking or the internet chatter.
This, combined with highly profitable but difficult books like The First Wall, Indomitus and The Wolftime meant I was in danger of being ground to a creative nubbin. I could keep going, writing stories about Space Marines (in particular) but I was in danger of falling into a rut with it – exploring the themes in the same ways as I’d done before, regurgitating storylines and even specific scenes – and that isn’t how I work best. I like the challenge. I want to think about the subject and the ways I can approach it. I want to challenge myself creatively rather than simply be challenged logistically.
So, without anything being spoken out loud but with silent agreement, I’ve been taking some time off from writing for Black Library. They recognised I was at risk of burnout, and I simply wasn’t feeling it (the pandemic-created eight month delay in writing The Wolftime put my previously high rate schedule into perspective). I sent off the corrections for Rogal Dorn: The Emperor’s Crusader and then didn’t think about a Black Library project for another six months.
It has been the refresher I needed. Not only have I been having fun doing other stuff, I’ve got back some of the brain time I used to have, where I can ponder ideas for longer and work out the nuances of the characters and story rather than having to go full tilt from one project to the next. Stuff can bubble about and distil into cleaner ideas, which makes it easier when I actually get back to the writing.
I delivered a short story earlier in the summer, and we’re now talking about potential novels again, so I expect to be back in Warhammer mode in early 2023. But my output is not going to be the same. I’m not going to make hard and fast decisions about just how much BL writing I can do because schedules and brains don’t work so well, but I am giving myself more time to plan, more time to write than before.
And I think it will show. The stuff we’re putting together now reminds me more of what I was writing back in the 2000s than anything in the last ten years. Not just because we’re focussed on characters rather than events and plotlines, but also because I’ve homed in on territory that is familiar, or that I’m personally intrigued to explore rather than simply professionally required to research.
I take pride in all my work, but the process of writing – any artistic endeavour – is a series of peaks and troughs, and for the first time in a while I look ahead to what I’ll hopefully be writing and consider it to be fun. Not just challenging, financially worthwhile, but with luck the process of thinking and typing out the stories will be enjoyable in themselves.
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Gav Thorpe has a long history with the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes, and has written many novels for the same. He is a New York Times best-selling author with his novella The Lion, and winner of the 2017 David Gemmell Legend Award for his novel Warbeast. His epic swords-and-sandals fantasy Empire of the Blood is available from Angry Robot. Gav has worked on numerous tabletop and video games as designer, writer and world creation consultant. He has also delivered writing workshops and appeared on numerous discussion panels at literature and genre events. He lives near Nottingham with his partner Kez and son Sammy.
For more information, check out Gav’s website and follow him on Twitter.
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As always, big thanks to Gav for taking the time to write this, and for getting involved in the 2022 Track of Words Advent Calendar. I really appreciate Gav’s openness with this post, and I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him the best with his writing in the future! I mentioned it earlier, but if you haven’t read my two-part interview with Gav from 2017 looking back at 20 years of writing for Black Library, I’d definitely recommend you check it out.
See also: all of the Gav Thorpe-related reviews and interviews on Track of Words
Gav’s latest Black Library release is the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Rogal Dorn: The Emperor’s Crusader – check out the links below to order your copy:
*If you buy anything using any of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.
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