Graham McNeill

Graham McNeill is a British novelist and video game writer. He is best known for his Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 novels, and his previous role as games designer for Games Workshop. He is currently working as a Senior Writer and Junior at Riot Games.

Career

In 1996 McNeill started work in an architects’ office designing new flats and commercial properties, until he saw an advertisement for a writer in the December 1999 copy of White Dwarf.

In February 2000, McNeill started work for Games Workshop as a staff writer for games development, writing articles for White Dwarf and army-specific books. In May 2000 he started writing for the ''Warhammer 40,000'' team, but continued to write articles for White Dwarf. McNeill has been heavily involved working on codexes, especially ''Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Tau'' between late 2000 and June 2001. Other codexes he has been involved with are ''Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Necrons'', ''Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Chaos Space Marines'', ''Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Imperial Guard,'' and ''Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Daemonhunters''. McNeill continued to write codexes after moving into games development.

McNeill has written extensively for The Black Library. His works — ''False Gods (''2006), ''Fulgrim'' (2007) and ''Mechanicum'' (2008), are part of The Black Library's Horus Heresy novel series. Another part to McNeill's story about the Ultramarines, ''The Killing Ground'', was released in May 2008. Early 2009 saw the release of his first novel outside of the Black Library, ''I, Mengsk'' (McNeill, 2009), set in Blizzard Entertainment's ''StarCraft'' universe. The novel tells the tale of three generations of the Mengsk family - Angus and his revolutionary activities, his son Arcturus and his rise to power (leading up to the events of the first game), and Arcturus' son Valerian as he struggles to embrace his family's legacy (leading up to the events of the second game).

In April 2009, McNeill contributed a story entitled "The Last Church" to the anthology''Tales of Heresy''. This was one of the first stories in the Black Library imprint in which the Emperor spoke directly and at length.

McNeill's ''A Thousand Sons'', a Horus Heresy novel focusing on the Thousand Sons legion and their fall from the graces of the Emperor by the hand of the Space Wolves, was released in 2011, and entered at number 22 on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller List. This novel was written in sync with Dan Abnett's '' Prospero Burns'' (2011) which recounts the same narrative from an opposing perspective. Graham worked closely with Abnett on the two novels, ensuring they met at certain points and would not contradict one another.

In 2011, McNeill wrote his first novel for Fantasy Flight Games (known for a wide range of roleplaying games, card games, and board games), ''Ghouls of the Miskatonic'', the first story of the ''Dark Waters Trilogy'', based on the company's H.P. Lovecraft-derived ''Arkham Horror'' board game.

In June 2015 McNeill commenced work with Riot Games, the developing studio of the multiplayer online battle arena game ''League of Legends'', after visiting their main office in West Los Angeles in December 2014. As a senior narrative writer, McNeill develops backstories and lore for individual characters of the game and the in-game world. He is known for focusing on the lore of Demacia, a fictional region which lies in the ''League of Legends'' universe. Within the ''League of Legends'' community he is primarily known by his alias "Dinopawz".

Personal

McNeill plays both ''Warhammer 40,000'', in which he plays with both Tau and Necron armies, he started with The Ultramarines, and ''Warhammer'', in which he plays an Empire army.

Bibliography

Books

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Novels

Warhammer
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The Legend of Sigmar
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Warhammer 40,000
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Horus Heresy
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StarCraft
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Other
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Comics

* ''Warhammer 40,000'' (Boom! Studios):
** " Fire and Honour" (with Tony Parker, August 2008)
** "Defenders of Ultramar" (with Kevin Hopgood, November 2008)
* ''Warhammer Online: Prelude to War'' (graphic novel given away as part of the Collectors Edition)Collectors Edition details
at Warhammer Online

Notes

References

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Graham McNeill
at the Black Library

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:McNeill, Graham
Living people
Riot Games people
Scottish comics writers
Scottish novelists
Warhammer Fantasy writers
Warhammer 40,000 writers
Year of birth missing (living people)