Authorised - Bill's Monthly Column

September 2003

Hi- As you have no doubt spotted, I survived the holidays just fine. The High Tatras, an outpost of the Carpathians, were lovely. I love the mountains- maybe there is some dwarf ancestry there! We walked up several of them, rode in cable cars and visited a number of waterfalls. The landscape was the sort of thing you imagine when you read a fantasy novel. I may have some pictures somewhere. I will see if I can dig them out. To tell the truth I used descriptions from previous visits in the Fenrisian mountain scenes in Space Wolf- now you know! 

Anyway, I’m back now and looking forward to Gamesday. 

New Releases

Those of you who are planning to attend, and even those who are not, may be interested to know a couple of new books are about to be released. 

The first is, of course, Wolfblade, the fourth Ragnar book dealing with his experiences among the Navigator Houses of Terra. I will be doing a reading from it and appearing on a panel at Gamesday. It goes without saying that I will be happy to sign any copies should you purchase them at Gamesday, along with any other books of mine you might want to bring along or even buy there!

Also due to be released shortly is the hardback compilation of the first four Gotrek and Felix novels. This hefty tome weighs in at 1008 pages of Slayage, all wrapped in lovely Geoff Taylor cover. This should be out in early October, all going to plan.

Pirates of the Caribbean

I saw this at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Frankly, if anyone had told me a couple of months back I would have been so pleased by a movie based on a Disneyland ride I would have laughed in their face. I confess I was impressed; it was the most FUN movie I have seen all summer, and featured some excellent fantasy sea battles too. Johnny Depp was great as Captain Jack Sparrow. 

Made me want to break out my old copy of Man O’ War, I can tell you…

Games

On the subject of games I have whiled away a fair few hours on the PS2 this summer. I have been particularly impressed by The Two Towers game. The battles in Balin’s Tomb and on the walls of Helm’s Deep are the next best thing to being there. Actually in my case, they are probably better. I don’t really rate my chances against a horde of slavering orcs all that highly. At the moment, I am slashing and blasting my way through Devil May Cry 2 which is another superb actioner with some excellently horrible monsters, and a hero who can wall-walk and blast away with two pistols as well as any Hong Kong action hero. Oh for a 40K version of this! I can see those Eldar Harlequins at work right now!

On the PC I finally managed to get my paws on an English language version of Warcraft 3: the Frozen Throne (the Czech language version refused to run alongside my English version of WC3) and have been thoroughly enjoying it, although I confess so far the storyline looks remarkably similar to that of WC3 and indeed the first part of Starcraft. You never know, maybe I will be surprised.

Anyway, that’s about it for this month. Back next month with a report on Gamesday and maybe some news on the next book!

All the best

Bill

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