I wouldn’t normally write a post this personal, but I’m terrible at grieving, so forgive me my indulgence.

Today, we laid my gran to rest.

She was my favourite person in all the world, and I attribute every virtue I posses to her. The three lines engraved on the plaque of her coffin (pictured above), hardly seemed enough to sum up her life. To help, I wrote the following, and read it aloud at the service:

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write.

For how can any word or arrangement of sentences sum up a life?

Ruby, not Rebecca because her mum disliked Becca, was a sister, a mother, a grandmother, a friend.

She was a soft women from a hard upbringing.

She was many things to many people.

To me she was Gran. She was warmth. She was safety.

She was a Tea Genie. A caramel wafer dunker and Twix fan.

She was homemade soup, and bacon sandwiches.

She was a hearty laugh, and a smile that filled her face.

She was ice-blue eyes, that were always warm.

She was an asthmatic who called her inhaler a ‘puffer’.

She was a TV addict who perched on the edge of her seat, yet she never fell off when she napped.

She was bed-time stories and Bible readings.

She used the word ‘weeshed’, called me ‘son’, and never took the Lord’s name in vain.

Gran was all these things, a hundred more, and far more than the sum of them all.

I’ll miss her more than words can say, and the pain at her passing is greater than any I’ve felt. But my sadness is as nothing compared to how happy I am to have had her in my life.

Ruby lived for her family, for her loved ones, and we are all the better for having loved her.

Goodbye, Gran. I’ll miss you.

‘Do you mind tucking your jacket under your chair?’ the air hostess asked.

I looked at her, confused.

‘Your coat, do you mind putting it under your seat for takeoff?’

I looked at my hoodie and then back at her.

Surely she didn’t mean that the several grams my hoodie weighed was enough to make it a dangerous object, a lethal projectile destined to shoot forward through the cabin and bludgeon my fellow passengers into unconsciousness.

She held my gaze.

Huh. It seemed that was exactly what she thought.

Having spent several dumbfounded moments considering her request, I decided that, I did in fact mind putting my hoodie on the floor under my seat. There was no way I was soiling my clothing for such a stupid request.

I picked up the offending hoodie and tucked it behind me. The air hostess seemed happy with this. She’d obviously reasoned that my weight, a little more than said hoodie, was enough to fix it firmly in place and thus remove the threat.

But before I could devolve into an vengeful internal monologue where I cursed her, her kin and all of her descendants, while objectively examining just how ridiculous the whole exchange had been, I heard another hostess say:

‘We’re not trained to identify which Kindles have wifi and which don’t.’

This time, it was a middle-age women sat across the aisle to my left, who was the focus of Air Hostess Idiocy.

No laptop and electrical devices can be used during takeoff. Bad things may happen. Nonsense. If that were really the case then terrorists wouldn’t need bombs or shoes with secret compartments in their soles that even James Bond would be jealous of. No, all your average Western World Hating Nutter would need is a mobile phone and a few pence of credit to text his pals and confirm a job well done. I mean, armed with an iPad I expect your average passenger could take control of the plane and all others within 500 miles*. There’s probably even an app for that…

No, not yet. Still.

In protest of the Electrical Device Embargo, I put on my headphones. Sure, they were little more than expensive earmuffs but when a hostess cited the aforementioned embargo and asked me to take them off, I got to enjoy waving the loose connector at her while practicing my Evil Genius Grin.

Childish, yes. More stupid than the rules surrounding takeoff and the omnipotent fasten seatbelt light – no, not even close.

Guaranteed to stay in the air even near your laptop. Though perhaps not if it rains.

This guy had better hope his phone doesn’t ring.

*If this were true, Die Hard 2 would have been a much duller film.

After scolding myself for once again failing to post regularly, I was almost certainly going to write a new blog entry. However, as it turns out, the folks over at blacklibrary.com have beaten me to it. On Friday, they posted this blog about my new Flesh Tearer’s eShort. Take a look:

BENEATH THE FLESH

Andy Smillie’s Beneath the Flesh hits the virtual shelves today. We managed to grab a moment with Andy (which is harder than it sounds when his day is filled with working, writing, and pumping enough iron to make a Space Marine jealous) and asked him a few questions:

What do you enjoy about writing for Black Library?
It’s great fun. I grew up playing games of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, so getting to write about the stuff I used to game with is like a dream come true, a real privilege. What can I say? It’s awesome.

Beneath the Flesh is a story about the Flesh Tearers, arguably the most bloodthirsty of the Blood Angels’ successor Chapters. What made you want to write about them?
Blood Angels were the first army I collected for Warhammer 40,000, and the old Angels of Death Codex remains one of my favourites. So I guess the sons of Sanguinius have always held a special place for me. Then when I started looking into the different Chapters in more detail and really thinking about who they were, the Flesh Tearers struck me as having a lot of depth.

At first glance, you could accuse the Flesh Tearers of being rather one-dimensional. But there’s a lot more to them than that, and their story is a tragic one. They’re addicts, possessed of an unquenchable rage that drives them to horrendous acts of violence and ultimately, death. They’re a Chapter on the very brink of extinction. Yet through force of will, and in the face of persecution, they’ve managed to remain loyal to the Emperor.

Besides, they fight with massive chain weapons and their Chapter Master is prone to head-butting folk. Brilliant.

 This story is longer than your previous works. What challenges did that pose?
The longer format gave me more room to push the story a bit further. I was able to include an ensemble cast and even begin to form a mini-verse around them that I can develop later on.

You mentioned developing a universe to revisit; does that mean that we’ll be seeing some more Flesh Tearers stories from you in the future?
In a word, yes. I can’t really say anymore at the moment, but there is a lot of exciting, rage-fuelled stuff on the horizon, some of which I think you’ll see at the Black Library Weekender later this year.

Thanks for that Andy

You’ll find the original post here:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/Blog/Beneath-the-Flesh.html

With The Final Crusade of Vran Hychax campaign weekend fast approaching, I spent this weekend getting my Grey Knights painted and ready for action. Initially, I’d allocated all of three hours for the task – spray silver, wash, paint weapons, relax with mug of tea. That was of course before I found the damn Knights to be covered in all manner of extra details.  They’re festooned in purity seals and books, which, as you can see from the chap below*, require considerably more effort to paint.

Now, the purity seals are fairly self explanatory – they ward off daemons, psychic attacks and protect the Grey Knights from, you know, harm. Books, on the other hand, seem a little out of place. The Emperor’s champions are unlikely to stop and leaf through a quick chapter mid banishing. Perhaps they use them as notebooks, somewhere to chalk up their kills and record their exploits. Maybe the books contain a list of witty one-liners the Grey Knights can shout as they slay baddies. But what I think is really going on, is that they’ve watched way too many films where the hero inexplicably avoids death because the single round his arch nemesis fires at him, is stopped by a pesky book that’s nestled in his breast pocket or some other serendipitous location. The Grey Knights obviously plaster books all over themselves just in case their tactical dreadnought armour fails. Perhaps that’s why they get an invulnerable save.

Well, if it’s good enough for the Knights, then who am I to argue. In fact, a quick google for ‘books to block bullets’ revealed there are recommended volumes. This handy set even comes with a gun so you can be equally awesome on the offensive.

You’ll notice the book is rather thick, with a raft of pages and a sturdy leather cover. Kindles on the other hand are, as Amazon are found of telling us, super light and very thin.  Not what you’d want from a bullet-stopping totem. So the question is, with the humble book being pushed aside by eReaders, will more heroes bite the bullet? Yes. I believe they will**.

That said, books do have their limitations. Should your nemesis fire a plethora of bullets at you, say from a machine gun, then you’ve had it. Unless of course, someone’s helpfully stapled the entire library of Alexandria to you. Otherwise, you’ll need some magical powers or some wicked-mad hacking skills, like the smug guy in the shades below.

If you don’t find yourself possessed of pure awesome, then don’t worry. I have it on good authority that all you really need to do to ward of potentially lethal projectiles, is a knock out a load of crunches.

Just don’t tell the MoD or they’ll round off the cuts by swapping out flack jackets for early morning fitness routines.

*Note, model shown is not representative of my meagre efforts.

**There’s a very bad, Bond style plot in there somewhere. Dr e, working from his secret base in the Amazon… etc

This week has flown by in a valium induced haze as I struggled to recover from the horror of last Monday. Around 7pm, as the moon settled overhead, a pack of ravenous children broke into my garden. Dressed in bits of old tat, they pounded on my door and demanded treats.

Just as I was fetching the hose (if water slays witches, then it’s bound to deal with children dressed as witches, right?) a ‘kind’ soul decided to hand over my Thornton’s chocolates. The caramels, the fudges, even the pralines!

A week on and my nerves have about settled. Though my eye continues to twitch at the mention of costumes. That is to say, I’ve done nothing of note this week other than journey to Thornton’s for more chocolate.

Luckily, I found some pictures I took while on the road with fellow author Nick Kyme.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Nick. Travelled with him to a lot of seminars, signings and talks. He’s always asked a multitude of questions – What are you working on next? Who inspires you? Will you sign my chest? But there’s one question he’s never been asked, one question I know Nick fans everywhere are dying to know the answer to – ‘What do two traveling authors have for breakfast?’ Why everything on Starbucks’ menu, of course. Now you know.

Next stop Bournemouth, where the car parks are particularly dangerous. The local council are doing their bit though, and have hired a crack team of lifeguards to make sure that should someone beat your ass to the curb, you wont be left to drown in a puddle.

Times are hard, alarm systems costly, attack dogs unreliable. Not to worry. Just smash up some glass bottles, perhaps the one you’ve used to assault that-bloke-you-didn’t-like-the-look-of-in-a-nearby-car-park, and then glue the resultant shards to the top of your wall. Home secured.

So it’s almost Halloween. Creepy things are afoot. There have been ill omens and dark portents. More worryingly, there’s been a whole spate of badly worded signs. Here are two that caught my attention:

When I asked the shop assistant if I qualified, she looked confused. But just for the record, I totally do.

There’s something not quite right about this one.

Right, enough procrastinating. Back to writing…

-Andy

I’d be this guy:

'Grr! Andius smash!'

At least according to Demetris Tampakoudis, the hobbyist extraordinaire who painted and modelled this Flesh Tearer based on my Facebook profile picture (inserted above).

In other Flesh Tearer related news, I’ve almost finished ‘Beneath the Flesh’ the two-part short I’ve been working on for the past few months. Actually, ‘working on’ is perhaps too generous. Mostly i’ve been fitting the writing around severe bouts of procrastination. Productive procrastination but procrastination none the less. I’ve scripted an audio drama, pitched and started a novella, outlined a trilogy of novels, and beaten the computer into a shameful bankruptcy three times in Monopoly.

‘Beneath the Flesh’ is out in the next couple of months. Here’s a quick teaser to tide you over until then:

Amaru dropped to one knee, screaming in rage as the machine spirit’s emotions threatened to overcome him. ‘My work is iron, my will steel.’ The Techmarine held his clenched fist against the machine-cog on his left pauldron as he growled his way through the devotion, ‘I shall not falter, I shall not heel.’  Defend, Amaruforced the order onto the machine spirt and drew his mind away, severing the link to the Raven and the violence outside. Panting hard, he focused on finishing the download protocol. ‘There is no truth beyond the data, it is the muniment of the future. Guard it well.’ Amaru unplugged himself from the compound’s data-stacks and completed the rites of remembrance, secreting the data-keeper within his armour.

It’s been almost three months since my last blog post. Hardly the regular update I had planned. In fairness though. I have been travelling a lot (Dublin, Belfast, New York, Chicago, London, Dubi and Mauritius). I even went and got married. Still, I’m sure I could have found some time for the odd random musing. Thankfully, I was in Tesco recently and saw this.

Just the inspiration I needed to write a post. Even if it was only to ask WTF?

Seriously, are there now disabled people with extra arms? Because surely that makes them extra-able?