The Weekender Arrives (plus, some Hallowe’en Curze Art)

The Black Library Weekender is mere hours away. So close in fact that me, Katie, and Shakes are flying over tomorrow for the traditional “Having dinner with Liz and John French on the night before an event” ritual. We were also thinking of taking up the McNeills on Graham’s offer of crashing at theirs, but Shakes has started a recent habit of getting up at 5:00am, so we’re trying to spread that delightfulness around as little as possible.

I love the Weekender. I love the atmosphere, I love the fast and loose feeling the authors get to have that disguises all the organisation the staff have put in,

Last year’s Weekender featured the Fifty Shades of Geek fellows (who can be found on their homepage, as well as Facebook, and Twitter) showing up wearing T-shirts with quotes from my novels running down the front, and I was so humbled and embarrassed, I dealt with this magnanimous gesture by hinting that I never wanted them to do anything like it again. Make note, people: try not to be such an uncharitable cunt when similar moments roll around in your lives. At one point, I actually fled from three of them in the T-shirts, in case a couple of the other authors thought I’d arranged it to make myself look special.

Here they are, saved for posterity. Tim (far left) recently joined our 40K campaign, The Thracian Caul, which I’ll have more details on soon. It’s undergoing sweeping changes based on me and John (French) trying to give it some more unity and purpose, rather than getting distracted and all momentum failing as they so often do with these things. It’s looking good; I’d be interested in your opinions when we start showing some of the datasheets, and stuff. Nikki (in the middle) looks half-asleep. I don’t know why.

Also of note, you may have seen this slice of lushness on various forums, but here’s David Sondered (from Studio Colrouphobia) ‘s freaking killer version of Konrad Curze. You might also remember his Talos, from a little while ago?

One of the things I love most about it is that he’s captured the primarch’s fundamental unhealthiness, which is something a lot of the more, uh, ‘badass’ artwork can ignore. For me, this is one of those images that becomes definitive the moment I see it, much like when I saw the cover of Aurelian, and made unstoppable sex noises for three days straight every time someone asked me about it.

David’s also one of the guys I’m musing over asking about doing some personal commissions in the near future, some based on my TOR character, some for a private project, and some for our games group. I mean, seriously. Just look at this. With the fact Jon Sullivan’s artwork doesn’t feature on the future Night Lords omnibus, I wish I’d discovered David earlier and pimped him, hardcore, to Black Library.

Last of all, I’ve had a bunch of requests for info on my Star Wars: The Old Republic character. I can’t be bothered to go into all the details (and I admit I’ve barely touched the game in about 3 months because of work, so most of my guild has forgotten me), but suffice to say, here he is: