Usually before I start work on a new book in a series I read all
the books that went before it- this is getting more difficult as the series get
longer.
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I used the old town in Prague as the basis of the descriptions
of Nuln in Skavenslayer and some of the bars as prototypes for the bars Gotrek
and Felix hang out in. There's another place in the Czech Republic, Cesky
Krumlov, a Unesco world heritage site, a perfectly preserved medieval
town, which could almost be a prototype for Middenheim. Its not on a
mountain top but it does straddle a number of hills with extraordinariily high
bridges and it has a great Renaissance palace/castle looming over it. Will use
this one day I am sure. I even have the maps.
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The writing led to the Game Development work although I have
always been a gamer. I was
first employed at GW to write colour text, those little bits of fiction that go with the games. That was in 89-90 at the infamous Low Pavement Design
Studio. Left to to go travelling. When I went back to work in the Enfield Chambers Studio in 92 I was assigned to work on Man O' War with Andy Jones
and Nigel Stillman-probably because there was nobody else available. Got really into it when I found out I could get paid to stand around and play
games all afternoon- I told them I was playtesting. After that was assigned to Warhammer and the rest is history...
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Always wanted to write. Still do. I actually enjoy it. A lot.
And let's face it, it beats working for a living.
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A long story. I started playing WFRP when it first came out. I
thought it was the best and most original take on fantasy I had seen since Runequest
and I liked the sleaziness and the paranoia of it more. This was about 1986 I think. In 87-88 I started to sell SF and Fantasy stories to
various
professional and semi-pro magazines/anthologies. One of the magazines I had sold a story to was Interzone, whose editor David Pringle had just got a job
as line editor for GW books. I saw the press release announcing it and sent him a letter saying basically; look I play these games, I can write these
stories, give me a job. He gave me a try out and so were born Gotrek and Felix.
The stories proved popular with the folk at GW so I wrote some more. I was in Nottingham at a convention where Zenith, an anthology I had a story in,
was being launched. On Sunday I was just about to leave the convention when I saw Bryan Ansell, then owner of GW, wandering through the convention hall
with what I later found out were some of the senior managment of GW. I recognised him from his picture in Dwarf and walked up to him and introduced
myself. He offered me a job on the spot. To cut a long story short, I took it, moved to Nottingham and sold my soul to the Dark Powers of Chaos. This
Faustian pact has held (more or less) to the present day.
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An interesting question! Games had a big influence on the way I
write my fight scenes, that is for sure. I would say in descending order of
influence the things that most influenced the way I describe battles are:
1) The writings of Robert E Howard, Michael Moorcock and, in particular, Karl Edward Wagner. I read a lot of their books as a teenager and they left
an indelible imprint on my style. Wagner in particular was a superb depictor of violent action, the best in his field,
IMHO.
2) God knows how many thousands of hours GMing roleplaying games, especially the
Hero System and WFRP, two systems which in their way make you think of
action scenes in very graphic terms. WFRP's critical hit system in particular inspires gore-splattered battle sequences.
3) Writing loads and loads of colour text for Warhammer and 40K. Doing this I always tried to capture the feel of the world and the rhythm of the games
themselves (sometimes not entirely successfully, it has to be said.)
4) Playing hundreds of games of Up Front probably influenced me as well, since by its very nature its a game that forces you to imagine a lot of what
is going on. I think UF is quite simply the best simulation of WW2 squad level action and it captures the feel and flow of combat as described by
veterans of that conflict very well.
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