Graham McNeill, a few questions about Vengeful Spirit to a master writer

Could you please let us know how an architect ended up writing for Black Library?

As far back as I can remember I’ve always written stories. I wrote mini-stories when I was in primary school and tried to write my first horror novel in high school. I’d also written a number of card games, RPG systems and board games based on stories in 2000AD (A Judge Dredd board game and a proto-wargame based on Rogue Trooper) so telling stories has been a part of my DNA from an early age.

I wrote the first half of a fantasy novel at the end of high school, and the first half of a 40k novel at university (which goes some way to explaining why I’m not currently an architect). I’d fallen into the trap of starting lots of projects, but not finishing them – a cardinal sin! – and when real life intruded and insisted I get a proper job, I studied for one that seemed interesting; architecture. Turns out I wasn’t suited for that career and fortunately I’d kept up my passion for writing, so when an advert for a Staff Writer in the Games Workshop Design Studio appeared in White Dwarf magazine, I sent off an application the very next day. Two rounds of fun, terrifying, bizarre and cunning interviews later, I started work with Games Workshop in February 2000.

It was another two years before Nightbringer was published and I learned a lot working in the Design Studio, and there’s few training arenas as harsh, instructive and downright illuminating as that. I learned so much there that’s stood me in good stead. And when the chance came to write full time for Black Library it was tough to leave, but I’ve never had cause to regret that decision over the last eight years.

Lord of Mars has recently been released, ending your trilogy. Would you write something else about the Mechanicum? Is there some aspect you haven’t approached yet?

Gods of Mars is the final book in the trilogy, and all through the series it veered from being a trilogy to a duology and back to a trilogy. In the course of writing Gods, I frayed some threads I might come back to with further stories (if there’s a demand for it…) and planted some seeds that could result in some great upheavals on Mars if that’s something people would like to see. I’ve written a short story (Zero Day Exploit) set on Mars to play as a companion piece for when Gods of Mars is released, and its characters would more than likely appear again if I play with the cast of the …of Mars books.

I think if there’s another book about the Adeptus Mechanicus in me, then I’d like to set it on Mars. I purposefully avoided doing that with this trilogy so as to avoid unwittingly going down any of the same roads I’d explored in my Horus Heresy novel, Mechanicum. But with three books set beyond the edges of the galaxy, I think enough time has passed that it’d be interesting to see a very different Mars from the one we saw during the Horus Heresy. And with the Adeptus Mechanicus, there’e always some new aspect to explore.

Will we see Sharowkyn & Wayland again, the most badass commando in Horus Heresy ?

Funny you should mention that… I’ve written a Horus Heresy novella that should be out relatively soon and which has them as the two of its main characters. The story follows the crew of the Sisypheum (last seen in Angel Exterminatus) as they meet up with fellow survivors of the Isstvan V Massacre and find a mission that will allow them to strike a devastating blow against the traitors, specifically a ‹many-headed› Legion.

I really liked Vengeful Spirit and the existing antagonism between Loken and Horus. How did you feel about writing on those great characters? What did you want to achieve with them?

Thanks for that! I loved writing those characters, as I’ve missed them since the opening trilogy. Yes, Horus has had some screen time since then, but aside from stomping about on his ship, he hadn’t had much chance to do anything that really  showed us why he was the Warmaster and not anyone else. What I primarily wanted to achieve was getting Horus back in the driving seat of the rebellion, and this was a perfect opportunity to do that (and reintroduce the readers to characters I felt had been absent from the series for too long). Writing Loken was fun in the early stages of the series, as he was our hero, a straight up and down guy who knew right from wrong and was our avatar in the story.

But now, after so much betrayal, so much loss and so much madness, is the man Nathaniel Garro found on Isstvan III still Loken? Can anyone’s psyche suffer that much torment and come back without horrific mental scars…? Playing up that aspect of Loken was great as it allowed us to see how far he’s come since the early days. Horus was a real challenge, but a great one. He still had to be the charismatic hero we’d seen before, but that had to be tempered by the fact that he’s slipping deeper and deeper into the embrace of the dark powers (even if he doesn’t see it that way).

What happened on Davin wasn’t his fall in its entirety, it was his unwitting opening of a door in his soul that has allowed Chaos to seep in gradually. After all if Horus went Full-Chaos that early, none of the legions would have followed him, they’d have turned away, repulsed. You never go Full-Chaos. You corrupt with small steps, seemingly inconsequential decisions that have grave ramifications further down the line

Vengeful Spirit has really exceptional new characters. Do you think we would meet them again?

Absolutely. When certain members of the cast needed to start dying, it was a really tough decision as to which ones would get the chop. The ones I thought I’d kill turned out to be too interesting to get rid of, and when once scene turned into a bloodbath, it was really hard for me to choose who lived and who died. In the end, I kept the ones I felt had most life beyond this particular story, the ones I felt would offer the most opportunities for ongoing drama and conflict. I feel Severian and Proximo Tarchon are especially ripe for further stories.

Something is going to change Horus on Molech. How soon are we going to find out more about this event since it is not fully related in your book? What was the reason why you did not include it (apart from making me extremely frustrated)?

Yeah, Horus has come back from Molech massively changed, but we won’t see the full extent of that for a while. I originally wanted to include the ‹other side› element within the book, but realised it would slow the main narrative down too much and had the potential to become a huge story arc in its own right. So I think we’ll see more of what Horus did through the portal, but mostly as flashbacks or interludes, as to fully detail it (based on the little snippet of description Horus himself gives) would take a series of books as long as the Heresy itself !

To Which extent have you been free to write Vengeful Spirit? Have you had some element to submit to Alan Merrett?

I had a pretty free hand with this book – as I do with most of them, within reason – though we always keep in mind that Alan is the ultimate arbiter if we stray off-piste as it were. Usually a talk with the other authors or the editors is enough to get an answer to any contentious issues, though if I wanted to do anything that really changed the dynamic of what’s previously been established in the background (albeit in a way that’s plausible and in keeping with the setting) then, yeah, going to Alan Merrett would be the way forward.