New Book Day!

It’s that magical mystery moment: new book day. The day when a year* of your life (*quick aside: some of my colleagues write books much faster than I do, and I still have no clue how they do it), a year of agony and ecstasy, creativity and imagination, horror and despair and the whole run of emotions between (not to mention the efforts of your sainted editorium team), is condensed down to cover art, a block of vellum, and a line of stars on Goodreads.

This one, The Rose in Darkness, is Sister Augusta’s first full-length adventure. Following on from her previous Ecclesiarchical missions (find most of these in The Rose at War), facing daemons and xenos, pyskers and  heretics, upon every kind of nightmare planet the galaxy can conjure, this mission takes our Sister Superior and her squad to the holy Shrine World of Opal, a world of hymns and prayers and tocsins, and to its most sacred relic, the skull of Saint Veres.

Augusta and her squad arrive at the height of the world’s most sacred Festival, and swiftly find themselves caught up in, not only the Festival itself, but in its more sinister undercurrents, both social and political. Used to worlds where she can open fire and sing close harmony, Augusta strives to navigate these strange waters, only to discover that their depths are much darker than she’d realised…

…and, when the shadow of the Hive Fleet falls upon this gleaming and entirely unready planet, that its salvation is up to her. And will the Order of the Bloody Rose arrive in time to save the planet?

(Add to the stars and the vellum: the synopsis. The bane of authors everywhere and much harder to write that the bloody book itself).

Whatever book you may have written, you invariably pull out a piece of your soul and put it on display… hoping (and fearing) what people will think and feel in return. This soul-piece comes with particular thinks to editor Will, who probably does deserve canonisation, cover artist Jan, who’s done such a beautiful job of bringing Melia, Augusta and Viola to such rich vivid life, and audio narrator Helen McAlpine.

Grab your copy from the Black Library site, or check out your local Warhammer store - hardcopies may still be available (and they’re beautiful).

And don’t miss out on more tyranid goodness in the eshort subscription!

Reading: Still in a reading slump, I think it’s too hot. Hopefully something will bite me soon… quite possibly some tyranids.

#nom

Watching: Having never seen the last of the Bill & Ted movies, it was every bit as ridiculous, and as wonderful, as you’d expect - and a bit of a jump from watching Keanu as John Wick. Now, about to start on the One Piece adaptation.

Playing: Baldur’s Gate, beloved by almost all of my friends, is driving both Isaac and I up the bloody wall. The game is beautiful, the acting flawless, the characters and story fascinating, and I love the Forgotten Realms, always have - I honestly just want to explore and have adventures. But there’s no clear path through the game, and the second you make one wrong dialogue choice, or fail a dice roll, you’re screwed. I’ll stay with it, because it’s too pretty to quit, but I’m getting quite grumpy about the whole thing!