Dan Abnett: June 2007

Devastating lack of regular blog action recently. My apologies. The reason is very simple - Legion (that’s Horus Heresy volume 7) has been entirely occupying my attention, and the typing fingers of most of the clones.

So, sorry for the empty landscape and the forlorn tumbleweed. I wasn’t in Aruba or Clackton-On-Sea, I wasn’t indisposed or out for lunch. I was in deep cover with an Alpha Legion insurgency team. Honestly, officer.

While I’m on the subject of apologies, sorry about the centred thing (scroll down and behold). I don’t know what the feth that’s about, and it seems the only way to cure it is to remove the lovely Blood Pact pics from the last post, which I frankly don’t intend to do as Big Steve’s work deserves all the unabashed staring-at it can get.

Creativity certainly breeds oddness. You may care to know that after weeks of no-show my household guest is back. And all the clocks in the house went screwy again yesterday, just like last time. Maybe I generate poltergeist activity when my brain is in full writing mode. Maybe the ‘guest’ is a manifestation of my muse, though I thought my muse was Nik. Maybe it’s Nik, re-setting the clocks when I’m not looking to mess with my head.

I’d like you to run, not walk, directly to your local quality bookstore and purchase a copy of Graham M’s excellent Fulgrim (not that any of you need such encouragement, I’m sure). It’s worth remembering that a man who can write a Horus book that good knows what he’s talking about, so when he tells you that Stornoway black pudding is the best black pudding in the whole wide world, take him seriously. I can confirm that it is, and would only add the word ‘yum’.

What else? Nova has now reached its third issue, and every issue so far has sold out, which either means people like it, or Marvel is only publishing ten copies. Preferring to believe the latter, you’ll pardon me while I do a little happy jig.

By way of amusement, I recommend you google ‘Transformer costumes’ and watch the various U-Tube style clips the links lead you to. Home made transformer costumes that actually transform. Fantastic.

Also amusing was a sign I saw recently sellotaped to the doors of a lift in a department store. It said “This lift is isolated”. I know how it feels. More amusing - well, inexplicable, actually - was a sign I saw about ten minutes later, taped to the closed curtain of a changing cubicle in a clothes shop. It read “This Changing Room is Out of Order”. Uh... but... how could... ? What working parts are there in a changing room that could break down? Or maybe the shop assistants had just had enough of the cubicle’s unrelentingly surly attitude.

Finally for today, I got an e-mail from a ‘lilibat’ who is making an inquisitor costume for her husband and wondered if she could costume herself as the inquisitor’s wife, or would have to settle for being ‘a member of his staff’. I answer her here only because for some reason my e-mails back to her keep getting bounced. Can an inquisitor have a wife? Well, seeing as inquisitors can do pretty much anything they want to, I don’t see why not. May you have and hold, honour and respect, and burn and purge, from this day forward.