24

Like I was last year, I’m a little late with the first of my annual series of year-ending blog postings, and the reason is pretty much the same. 2014, like 2013, has been a tough one to assimilate. Without wanting to start off 2015 on a sour note, I kept getting reminded last year of a line from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where Indy says that sooner or later we all reach an age “where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away“. Last year there was a lot of bad with the good, and the thing is, you tend to dwell on the bad stuff because that’s what leaves the scar.
(And for the record? I thought Crystal Skull was a decent Indy movie. Seriously, if you’re still getting your knickers in a twist over ancient aliens in the same milieu where angry Ark of the Covenant angels melt people or immortal knights exist, just let it go. But I won’t quibble over the Shia/Monkeys thing, though.)
So; all of that is a long way of saying “Farewell 2014. Don’t come back.”

So what did I write last year? 2014 saw more than its fair share of crashing and burning, I have to be honest. I slaved away on something very important that went exactly nowhere, which reminded me about how a lot of what writers do comes out of sheer bloody-mindedness, that I [REDACTED] hate [REDACTED] and they should all [REDACTED], and most importantly, to just keep writing. In the crazy world of videogames, I had an awesome superhero project shot out from underneath the studio I was working for, and months later it still burns, damn it. But that’s teh gamez for you, and out of the ashes of that came something even cooler which I am not yet allowed to talk about, but I will say it’s something I’ve wanted to work on for a very long time. More on that in the months ahead. For fun, I penned some script shorts on spec, and a couple of new Horus Heresy audio dramas – Shield of Lies, which is out now, and Ashes of Fealty, which will be properly announced in the weeks ahead. I delivered Deadline, my first 24 novel and first action-thriller to deadline at the start of the year (see what I did there?), and a new Star Trek: Titan adventure called Sight Unseen, which will actually be seen some time in the Autumn. Lastly, I wrote the short stories “Gunsight” for the Death And Defiance anthology, “Reflection In Blood” for the Black Library Advent Calendar and a new Doctor Who tale which I’ll talk more about later in the year. So, busy in spite of it all. On the edge. *snaps fingers* Where I gotta be. *snaps fingers*

I roved a bit in 2014 too, book-ending the year with panels about games with the great Animex festival at the start, and the now-annual “games writing thing” at the London University of the South Bank at the end; other game-related highlights were getting to crash both the Destiny launch and Eurogamer Expo, and getting deep in boardgame stuff at the UK Games Expo. As well as a couple of Black Library-centred events (Warhammer Fest and a blink-and-you’d-miss-me at Black Library Weekender III), I showed my face at the Worldcon in London – it’s my hometown after all, it would have been churlish not to – but I reckon the best gig of the year was Destination Star Trek 3, which was warmly welcoming and just all-around nice to guest at. Travelling in 2014 saw me in Malta, soaking up history and getting too much sun, and San Francisco, where I met Yoda; and last but not least, closer to home, I pegged my fun-o-meter at the Red Bull Air Race, which was, quite certainly, hypercool.

And now onwards.