Attention, aspiring writers! If you have a Warhammer 40k Space Marine short story in development, now’s your chance to submit it to Games Workshop’s fiction publishing imprint Black Library. GW announced via a Warhammer Community article on Wednesday that it was accepting unsolicited story submissions – the window will close on February 11.
Your submission must contain a 100 word synopsis and 500 word writing sample from a Warhammer 40k short story, according to GW’s announcement. During this submission window, the firm only wants stories starring Space Marine successor Chapters. Tales must be set during the current, ‘Indomitus’ era of the Warhammer 40k universe: that means nothing set before the fall of Cadia, and certainly not as far back as the Horus Heresy.
In case you’re not familiar with the tortured genealogy of the Warhammer 40k factions, all Space Marine Chapters owe their lineage to nine ‘First Founding’ Legions of Space marines created by the Emperor of Mankind in the year 30,000.
Those formations were broken up after the Horus Heresy, some keeping the heraldry of their parent Legion, others adopting new names, banners, homeworlds, and martial traditions – those are the successor Chapters. There have been many foundings of successor Chapters since then, most recently the Ultima founding, which introduced the Primaris Space Marines.
The article is explicit that you can’t write about the Deathwatch, Grey Knights, or Legion of the Damned, which are neither First Founding nor successor Chapters but their own, weird offshoots. If you have a homebrew Chapter of your own devising, that’s out too – GW only wants stories about established Chapters.
Once you’re done writing, you can submit your story through an online submission form. If you want inspiration, we recommend you check out Black Library’s Warhammer 40k books to see how the pros do it – but you’ll have to be quick!