I realise this is somewhat after the event but here is my
write up of the event which took place on 2/3/13. This is mostly focused on the "experience" rather than the information disseminated by authors and editors as I feel these are pretty well covered already, have a look at Warseer, Bolthole & Heresy-Online, check them out if you want to know stuff.
The Venue
As with all the previous Black Library Live! events this took place at
Warhammer World in Nottingham, which is part of the Games Workshop UK HQ. Doors
opened at 9am with the 1st seminar starting at 10am. With knowledge
that the there would be a huge queue by 9am I got there at 8am exactly, at
which time there were about 15 people queueing. Parking is easy as Warhammer
World has a pretty substantial car park on site and a fair few people are
arriving by public transport.
By 9am when the doors opened the queue was wrapped round the
corner and disappeared round a second corner (I wasn’t going to lose my place
to see how far!). So doors open and everyone shuffles in, exchanges their ticket
stub for their copy of the 2013 chapbook and gets the main part of their ticket in a lanyard ID badge thingy and heads
upstairs to the main hall.
Here’s the map of the event from the program:
As you can see from the map, the focus is around the sales
stand (naturally), with lesser stands for the t-shirts, eBooks, signed prints
and next event tickets. Behind the sales stand was the signing area, set up for
a maximum of three authors signing at any one time. The walls were decorated
with numerous posters for the new books on sale, some of them stretching to
10ft tall and in multiple parts. These were auctioned off at the end.
The day
I made a beeline for the sales stand where there were piles of "Traitors Gorge", the chapbook, Horus Heresy Hardbacks including "Mark of Calth", "Shadowsun" and loads of other stuff, except "Shadows over Sylvania" by Johnathan Green, which I really wanted. I had the idea of
rationing out my money quite strictly, with £100 cash to spend that day. This
flew out the window pretty quickly; here is a list of what I purchased:
Books on
pre-release
Traitor’s Gorge (HB, limited number 135/1000, unsigned) – Mike Lee
Blood of Asaheim (HB) – Chris Wraight (signed)
Baneblade (TPB) – Guy Haley (signed)
Fire Caste (TPB) – Peter Feheravi (singed)
Gilead’s Blood (TPB) – Dan Abnett & Nik Vincent (2001,
New Edition to coincide with Gilead’s Curse) (signed by both)
Gilead’s Curse (TPB) – Dan Abnett & Nik Vincent (signed
by both)
The Best of Hammer and Bolter - Volume 2 – Various Authors
(signed by Guy Haley, Andy Smillie, James Swallow and David Guymer)
Shadowsun (HB) – Bradan Campbell
Mark of Calth (Horus Heresy) (HB) – Laurie Goulding (Ed.)
(signed by Guy Haley, John French & Dan Abnett)
The Scripts: Volume 1
(Horus Heresy) (HB) – Christian Dun (Ed.) (signed by James Swallow)
Other Novels
Horus Rising (Horus Heresy) (HB) (2006/2012)– Dan Abnett
(signed)
Other Books
Insignium Astartes (2002) (2010 Print on Demand edition) –
Alan Merritt
The Gothic and the Eldritch: The collected Sketches of Jes
Goodwin (2000) – Jes Goodwin, John Blanche & Andy Chambers
The Horus HeresyVol. IV: Visions of Death (2006) (Limited
Edition Hardback with Slipcase, hand numbered 295/300) – Alan Merritt
The Horus HeresyVol. IV: Visions of Death was a single copy, number 295, most likly they found it while clearing out some cupboard or the like, and I was only happy to snap it up. The opcies of "The GOthic and the Eldrich" were no doubt the same, although they had about 10 on sale.
Proof (minus The Best of Hammer and Bolter - Volume 2):
Some close ups (I'm kind of showing off here):
Yeah, I’m possibly fucking crazy, but I “needed” all of that
stuff. Honestly. So having blown my monetary load at the sales stand I joined
the queue for Dan Abnett’s signing clutching my purchases, the chapbook and my
1st printing near fine condition copy of Hereticus, to complete
my signed set of the Eisenhorn Trilogy 1/1 in near fine condition, woo. I would not
be exaggeration if I said that it took a bloody age to get to the front (1 hour, I
read the chapbook). People were bringing anything they could to get him to sign, I saw a couple of copies of "The Sabbat Worlds Crusade", lots of Horus Heresy paperbacks, Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Gaunt's Ghosts, you get the picture.
If you know Warhammer World you would understand how long the queue is if I
said it went to the gaming tables division then back on itself, round the sales
table to the door to Bugman’s. In an ammusing twist, when I finally got to the front couldn’t think
of anything interesting to say to Mr Abnett at all beyond the pleasantries; cue
semi awkward silence while I got him to write his name 7 times plus sign my
program; classic.
By this time it was 10.59ish and Nik Vincent’s queue was
closed, scuppering my plans to get my program signed by all authors and for her
to sign my “Gilead’s” duology and chapbook... So after a (very) brief detour
via Guy Haley to get him to sign “Baneblade” I snuck into the Vincent queue
while the Warhammer World attendant’s back was turned. She was exceptionally
nice and didn’t begrudge the fact that she overran with signing by about 10
minutes. Looking back I feel that it would have been prudent to have her in a
second signing slot, because of her story in the chapbook, which everyone gets
a copy of and a large amount of people would have wanted signing.
As it ticked over to 11, Peter Ferehvari replaced Guy Haley
and I had a brief chat with him about “Fire Caste” where he put a slight damper
on my hopes for the book by saying that it was “primarily an Imperial Guard
novel, not a Tau one” ah well, he was very nice, and nothing like his slightly
odd picture on the program.
After a sit down in Bugman’s (very full) and a flick
through my purchases I rattled through the rest of the author signings: John French
(I don’t remember this at all), Chris Wraight (nice guy,
probably pleased at the number of copies of Blood of Asaheim he was
selling/signing that day), James Swallow (slightly scary but very nice), David
Guymer (struggled to find anything which he had written, in the end it was his
short story in Best of Hammer and Bolter - vol. 2) and Andy Smillie (Fleash of
Cretacia HB Novella) at 2pm. This all seemed to go in an unmemorable blur of queuing, chatting to people in the queue and wandering round the Miniatures Gallery upstairs waiting for the next author.
It was a bolt from Andy Smillie into the Dan Abnett Q&A which
started at 2pm, room was packed as I sidled in at 3.10. There were the standard
questions about Gaunt’s Ghosts, Double Eagle sequel, Horus Heresy, Bragg etc.
Of note Abnett discussed a bit about the problems with Ultramarines the Movie
and his desire to write more Warhammer Fantasy and other things 40k that
weren’t Horus Heresy/Ghosts related, but that he only had so much time. I think its worth noting that Dan Abnett has a great rapport and good banter with the crowd, he knows that he's one of the most popular Black Library authors, but still manages to make a room packed with hundreds of people seem "informal", plus he makes lots of jokes. I felt doubly bad about going a bit blank when I got to the from of his queue.
3pm was the Horus Heresy Q&A: “2nd and 11th
legion” question...yeah, always.
There was speculated that there would be approx 50 HH books,
there would be a desire to do some immediate post heresy stuff, the scouring
etc. I can’t really remember that much tbh, look up rumours if you want.
4pm was the “new product prieview” which if I'm honest was
somewhat disappointing although “Vulkan Lives” and “Unremembered Empire” will
have excited many. Personally the discussion of the reissue of the Visions of
Heresy Anthology by Alan Merritt was the most exciting as it was mentioned that
it would not be a straight reprint and that the book would be updated both to
address canon issues and to include more content. All buyers be warned, Alan
Merritt may have laid out the blueprint of the Heresy, but he sure as hell
can’t write very well.
It was also cleared up that BL are moving away from MMPBs to
a TP format, except for the HH MMPBs due to their popularity and the uproar
that changing the format mid series would generate. This apparently did not
apply to the Time of legend series. Interestingly the MMPBs for the HH is a
nice touch by BL; people often complain about the financial aspect of BL and GW
but its nice that they understand that fans don’t appreciate format changes all
that much, thanks BL. Although if you think the move to TPB format is bad then you're not going think this is good at all, but face it folks, the MMPB is going to go extinct as eBooks replace it, books are for people who want a story and a book, not just a story nowdays.
At the end the mega artwork was raffled off, you got raffle
tickets according to how much you spent, 2 for £50 and 5 for £100. Apparently, £250+ wasn’t enough to win
some sick posters. Oh well.
Altogether good fun and a pleasant way to spend a lot of
money, but its hard to balance signings and seminars, hence why I missed all
the early ones.
Other titbits:
eBay resellers were evident – guy holding up the queue
getting Abnett to sign 10 copies of the chapbook, people filling up suitcases
etc. also spoke to one of the sales guys, one person bought £1700 worth of
stuff, they kept it in a big box for him behind the sales stand.
Traitor's Gorge may have been advertised as "strictly one per person" but that didn't stop the same guy buying many copies, I think it was 8.
A guy who came with his girlfriend, who wasn’t interested in
BL, didn’t have a ticket and sat in Bugman’s for the entire time...wow.
Miniatures Gallery/Museum, always a pleasant browse, even
though I don’t paint/game anymore
People who like BL are nerdy as shit...no shit :)
Getting up at 5.30am for the privilege of going to an event
for which you have to pay for to spend money is fucking crazy, but great all
the same.
My program by the end of the day:
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