ABOUT YOUR AUTHOR.

Dan Abnett is a bestselling writer of combat SF, and comics, foreign and domestic. He has an English degree from Oxford University, and has spent twenty years honing his several crafts. His work on Torchwood and Doctor Who projects have been particularly well-received, and his novels for Black Library, including the epic Gaunt's Ghosts series, are more than a little popular. He has adopted yet another voice to write original fiction for Angry Robot, and is currently working on the military science fiction epic, Embedded.

When he's not writing, or attending comic and gamesrelated conventions, he can be found in the kitchen, cooking for his family, or in the ballroom, dancing with his wife. He lives and works in Kent, amongst a large, extended family, and his website is at

www.danabnett.com

The AUTHOR REFLECTS Upon

the Inception of Triumff : Her Majesty's Hero

Sir Rupert Triumff, along with his friends, colleagues and, even, enemies, has been an acquaintance of mine for a surprisingly long time. In fact, I cannot say with any degree of accuracy when I first met him, or under what precise circumstances. I think the chances are, it was right at the end of the 1980s, or the very start of the 1990s, when I was first finding gainful employment as a writer and editor in London. An idea flashed upon me, and I was taken with it.

    It's the essence of Triumff that's been with me ever since. The actual material of his adventures, though, has metamorphosed and altered over the years.

    There is something about his basic milieu that particularly appeals to me as a writer and a creator. As soon as I'd thought of it, I was captivated by its possibilities, and knew that, one way or another, it would be the foundation of a piece of work.

    It's possible that I started writing an early draft of what would become the Triumff novel in the late 80s, and that I then adapted part of that text into several episodes' worth of full script for a comic book version that never saw print (although I got as far as collaborating with Simon Coleby, a comic book artist with whom I have worked, with great pleasure, regularly throughout my career). Simon and I certainly tried to get Triumff off the ground as a comic project, and he did some character sketches based on my scripts, although neither the scripts nor the sketches remain.

    It's equally possible that I first envisioned Triumff as a comic, and that I only started to develop it as a novel, adapting the comic scripts I had already written, once I realised that no one wanted to buy an alternate history, magical fantasy, swashbuckling, Elizabethan adventure comic in 1989.

    The point is, Triumff has been lurking in my brain for a long time, trying to find a way out.

    Why has it persisted so? Well, as I have already said, the idea and the setting simply combine so many things that I find particularly appealing (hardly a surprise, seeing as I came up with it), but that doesn't really explain the perseverance of its appeal. I can only conclude that it's one or more of the following reasons:

1. It was an idea that I had at a very particular, formative point in my creative life, and therefore has left an indelible mark.

2. Sir Rupert Triumff is a persistent individual, and he was never going to let me get away that easily.

3. It was simply a good idea that needed to be written, sooner or later.

    Whatever the reason, I'm glad it stuck around, and I'm delighted to have this opportunity to finally let it see the light of day. Taking all those old pages of notes, unfinished drafts, scraps and notebooks and half-remembered scenes, and turning them into a coherent novel has felt both like a catharsis and an exorcism, and I feel I've really owed it to the old bugger. I hope you, constant reader, have enjoyed the result of my labour as much as I enjoyed the labouring.

    The trouble is, of course, that I've let him out now. I'm not entirely sure that he's ever going to go away again.

Dan Abnett Maidstone, September, 2009