Blog Archives
On the Painting Table – Hydra Miniatures Special
I love the miniature hobby and play a number of board and wargames. Miniatures inspire me. I especially enjoy bringing them to life by painting them, and it so happens that we live in the Golden Age of Miniatures with lots to choose from.
There are a couple of companies, such as Games Workshop (thank you for letting me write Space Wolf novels!) and Privateer Press, who have fantastic games and are often found displayed in your FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store – I have three in my area).
There are also a number of companies that make wonderful miniatures, but are much smaller operations, sometimes a couple of partners with a garage for storage. They may be the sculptors of the figures or the writers of their own rulesets.
One of these companies is Hydra Miniatures. Unlike many gaming companies, I’ve never worked for or with them. To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never met and I doubt that they’ve read any of my books. I’m just a regular customer. Quoting from their website: Read the rest of this entry
An Old Friend Returns – Welcome back to Engage the Enemy!
Unfortunately, the free book promotion on Smashwords has ended, but thank you to everyone who picked up one of my books.
One of my favorite stories to tell about my forays into fiction regards a submission that I made to Inferno! magazine. It was a tale set in the grim darkness of the far future in Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer 40K, and it featured my favorite chapter of Space Marines, the Space Wolves. Anyway, I formed a partnership with my co-author who would later write with me as Lee Lightner. Here’s the amusing part of the story – my short story was rejected.
I had received it back and was basically told that it was unusable. I reached out and contacted the editor and to his immense credit, he took the time to tell me what he didn’t like about it (besides everything). I listened to what he said and asked if I rewrote it and returned it to him the next day if he would at least take the time to read it. He said yes. That evening I typed about as fast as I could and stayed up far too late for my own good as I reworked everything. The next day, it was accepted. Ultimately, it led to my two novels, Sons of Fenris and Wolf’s Honour.
Never give up.
Inferno! is long gone, but Engage the Enemy was republished this week by my good friends at Black Library. No royalties for me on this one, but I’m utterly pleased to see a story that meant so much to me reappear. Here’s the link.
Harry Heckel 