Thinking of submitting to the next Black Library Open Submissions window?

I get frequent requests from aspiring writers who want feedback on a story they have written, but unfortunately my blanket response is always a no.

I simply don’t have the time to provide a useful critique, and also don’t want to open myself up to accusations of plagiarism if the story is similar to something I’m already working on.

However, I always point people to the Black Library Bolthole as a place to get useful feedback on their writing – I’ll hand over to Squiggle from the Bolthole to tell you more.

Squiggle from the Bolthole here. I’m old now – 33, in fact. I also have a five month old daughter, so you will have to forgive me if some of the detail here is chronologically inaccurate.

What is the Bolthole?

The Black Library Bolthole was created way back in 2009 by Sarah Cawkwell, after the sad demise of the official Black Library forums. The Black Library forums had existed for a number of years, as a place to discuss the worlds of Warhammer, interact with the Black Library authors, and post up fan-fiction set in the Games Workshop universes. After the demise, a group of us, led by Sarah, were keen that the space continued. We enjoyed our discussions, arguments, and so on. We benefited greatly from the critique of our fiction – many of the then membership had dreams of getting their work published, either within or without the Black Library.

We meet as a group at Black Library events, we have T-shirts, we get books signed, we sit in Bugmans with some of the Black Library authors and are generally merry. It is ace!

Look how ace we are. Well were – this was 2011 – but still!

In the past we have produced several self-published anthologies, including The Black Winds Whisper and Marching Time. Many of our members have gone on to be successfully published, including Alec McQuay, Andrew Aston, Jonathan Ward and Robbie MacNiven who was involved in those early anthologies and has gone on to write successfully for the Black Library. Of course I couldn’t miss out Sarah Cawkwell, who has had her own fantastic Silver Skulls stories published as well as Valkia the Bloody and a number of shorts (apologies to anyone I have missed out – this list is not exhaustive). You can also follow us on Twitter @BlBolthole – most recently our rogue reporter, Schaferwhat, has been live tweeting from the Black Library Weekender! Expect a blog post to follow over at the Bloghole – no doubt with more information on the upcoming open submissions window!

Unfortunately we have been victims of our own success, with many once active members having moved on to bigger and better things – and so Gav has kindly offered to host this blog post as a way of raising awareness of the Bolthole.

Even as I write this, the Black Library are hosting their Weekender event, and a new Black Library submission window is in the offing – which is a great excuse to start dusting off your writing skills and discussing ideas over at the Bolthole. We have a proud history of supporting each other when preparing submissions and this has led to several authors getting stories published in the Black Library short story anthologies.

So, if you love the worlds created by Games Workshop and the stories told by the Black Library and want a place to talk about them, to ask questions of the authors or if you want to post your fan-fiction up and get critique and improve as a writer, the Bolthole is the place for you. The best part is that membership is free!

As you can see, there’s much more to the Bolthole than writing feedback – so take a look around and say hello to the regulars.

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