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Tuesday, 12 May 2009

Thunder from Fenris is in the can!

Boy, what a busy day yesterday! I was down in London with Christian Dunn for the recording of my first ever audio story - Thunder from Fenris.

A 5.30am start (at least when I stirred from my pit to get ready for the booked taxi) and an 8.45pm finish (by the time I got back through my door, comfy slippers on and the last two episodes of Heroes season four to watch on BBC2 - yes, I hung in there until the end: I'm obviously a TV masochist or something) has left me pretty drained, I don't mind saying.

Just by way of a little insight, the actual recording day was around eight hours - roughly 9am-5pm - and generally consists of the writer (me, in this case) and editor (that'll be Christian) sat in the directorial suite with script in hand, listening to the actor go through his lines and weave his magic over the microphone with director and sound engineer guiding and monitoring proceedings respectively.

It's a team effort and, as always, we were surrounded by total pros.

Toby Longworth (who folks will hear voicing James Swallow's excellent Heart of Rage in the not-too-distant future) really delivered for us (and me, I suppose) again with a stellar performance. He had three Space Wolves to nail and he had them down from minute one. Three very different characters; three very distinctive but wonderfully rendered and wholly apt voices. I couldn't have been more pleased.

Easter egg - check out a character called Thorgard in the production and see if you can tell where Toby drew his inspiration from. Great stuff.



Toby Longworth put through his paces on the script...

Ably steering the directorial helm was Jason Haigh-Ellery (Jason runs Big Finish Productions, the audio company that BL works with to produce their audio books - real experts in their field) whose guidance was exemplary and knowledge helped really coax the script into life (oh and huge props to both Toby and Jason for their timely and astute script advice - all part of the creative process).

Our sound engineer, and who pretty much looked after us all on the day, was another Toby, though this time a Mr Hrycek Robinson (I know, I know with that first name he could be a Space Wolf, too!). Always very, very safe hands and wonderfully hospitable.

Jason Haigh-Ellery (left) and Toby Hrycek Robinson work their magic from the other side of the microphone.

Were also joined by David Richardson, BL's principle liaison with Big Finish and a producer himself, who works very closely with the audio books editor to ensure we get the audios done, on time and to schedule.

Being on the other side of the fence, as writer instead of editor, this was a new experience for me and I felt extremely privileged to have been a part of the process during the recording as it was fascinating and exciting from this new point of view.

I'm hoping fans will love Thunder from Fenris as much as I did writing it, and will get the same level of enjoyment I did from hearing it immortalised into audio. I've yet to hear the music and fx edit (we recorded the rushes on the day, and another sound engineer will now be set to work adding atmospheric music, bolters, zombie noises and so on, and generally cutting the whole thing together).

A tiring day, but a great day. I'm told we'll see copies fairly soon (a month or so to give time for editing, reviewing and duplication into CD format) and the audio itself will be released at UK Games Day, I believe, and then later on in Games Workshop stores.

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Wednesday, 29 April 2009

Salamander and Thunder from Fenris are in!

It's been a busy week for me this week, as I've been inputting the editorial changes to both Salamander and my forthcoming audio story Thunder from Fenris.

I am now very pleased to report that I've literally just finished the last of the edits for Salamander, and I'll be submitting this tomorrow morning for the next stage in the process. I'll probably (hopefully) not see it again until the proofreading stage, when I get a final check before it goes off to the printers. All exciting stuff.

As mentioned, I've also now completed the slight reworks needed on Thunder from Fenris, a brand new Space Wolf audio. At 10,000 words (ish), it was a bit easier of a beast to tame than Salamander, but a great and challenging project to work on all the same. I'm very much looking forward to hearing it acted out at the recording session in London on May 11th. It'll be weird, I'm sure, but also very cool.

I understand, Toby Longworth, who did some absoultely sterling work on James Swallow's excellent Heart of Rage (if you haven't already, go and get it - it's ace. That's if it's released yet...), so I can't wait to see what the actor will do with all those pseudo-Viking/Nordic characters. Skoll!

Next up, my editor has me working on the sequels to Salamander (books two and three in the Tome of Fire trilogy - tentatively titled Firedrake and Fireborn respectively). As I've been making copious notes on the next two books, and, as divulged at BL Live, already have the basic story arc down, this shouldn't be too arduous. I'm actually looking forward committing the character arcs to paper and sort of crystallising my note-appended thoughts in full.

Though these two novels won't be out for a long while, and I've got at least one other novel in between, it's good to establish the overall plotline early on and get it approved, so that when I'm ready to get stuck back in to the Salamanders again, I can do so without pause.

In fact, next on the list of actual writing is a short story called 'Hell Night' for Legends of the Space Marines, which features some of the heroes from Salamander and 'Fires of War'. Beyond that, I'm reluctant to speak of in any detail. Suffice it to say, there's another short and an Empire army novel.

Busy, busy, busy!

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