Dark Secrets
Alright everyone, after consulting with Flakk and having quite a bit of time to think on this, I am posting the following. I have no interest in going back to the publishing/writing world, having left it long ago. Therefore this will not come back to bite me. I am also not responding to any comments on what I am about to post seeing as how it is very personal. When you have a homosexual cousin who you know and have looked up to your entire life, any level of discrimination against gay men sets you on the warpath; this is why I broke ties with Black Library at the end of the day. Bigotry does not sit well with me.
1. Steve Saville meant for the main character in Curse of the Necrach to be a kind and cultured gay man in a loving and stable relationship. Nick Kyme and Lindsay Priestly would not allow this. In the Ciphas Cain series Sandy Mitchell has a minor character as a redhead womanizing lesbian who is battle crazy and generally as irresponsible and immature as they come. Nick Kyme and Lindsay Priestly had no problem with this.
2. Nick Kyme has short man syndrome. He keeps overdoing things and posts any pictures of him next to a female no matter what their age or level of attractiveness is on his blog. He also has been rejected by essentially every single publishing company in the business. Black Library is *THE* only publishing company who would publish him.
3. Lee Lightner did not write Wolf's Honor. They were fired midway through writing it after their other book bombed and Mike Lee was hired on to finish it up.
4. Galaxy in Flames was not entirely written by Ben Counter. His original draft was so badly written ala Battle for the Abyss that they had Graham McNeil quickly come to the rescue.
5. There was supposed to be a third Battlefleet Gothic Novel. This did not come to be because they did not pay Gordon Rennie his dues.
6. Black Library is terrible at paying writers their royalties. They take returns out of your royalties (i.e. if you return a Black Library book the author loses the money they'd get for it, even though it doesn't hurt Black Library's bottom line). After Orcslayer went into publication in addition to him publishing a few other Blackheart novels, Nathan Long was owed about four months worth of royalties.
7. There was supposed to be a sequel to the Valhalla First Born book. This did not happen because Dan Abnett wanted a book about the Defixio (Commissar Yarrick's tank). Therefore that happened.
8. Lindsay Priestly was a secretary before she met, dated, copulated with, and married Rick Priestly (one of the founder of Games Workshop). After marriage she became their Senior Editor. She has absolutely no editing background or any qualifications besides Rick Priestly.
9. Black Library has a well known habit of reducing the page count of writers who displease them. For example, Steve Saville wrote a short story that won an award through another publishing company. Curse of the Necrach was halved in size.
10. Simon Spurrier was screwed out of royalties and left Black Library forever, swearing never to work with them again.
11. William King was fired, he did not leave. He became very flaky after his divorce. When he complained about the company he helped found letting him go during the hardest time of his life they punished him by giving his series to two totally new writers.
12. The only reason Henry Zhou got a job at Black Library was by kissing Nick Kyme's ass repeatedly. He was totally unqualified by anyone's standards.
13. There will never, ever be a continuation to Malus Darkblade. Mike Lee was fired and all his projects canceled due to the fear that he leaked secrets of Black Library to the public (the irony being that he is the only person on the Black Library staff, both editing and authors, who refused to discuss his work).
