Most audio books start out as a published volume before making the leap to voice actors, scripts and possibly even sound effects.

But Lincolnshire author Nick Kyme, from Grimsby, a rising star of the Black Library publishing house, has created a new sci-fi action story specifically to be heard rather than read.

Thunder From Fenris is his new audio drama – a term Black Library uses to describe a short-ish tale which fits on to a single CD.

It features a team of futuristic warriors hunting one of their own across the blasted arctic wastes of a world all but consumed by evil.

The Space Marines' rescue/mercy mission rapidly becomes a battle for survival against the zombified victims of an horrific plague and the forces behind it.

"I wrote it as a normal short story, but with audio in mind," says Nick. "You have to be aware of how it is going to sound when it is being read out by the voice actor. The actor on Thunder From Fenris, Toby Longworth, did a very good job."

Nick says the experience of writing his first aural piece has been an enjoyable challenge.

He says: "You can't have too many characters and if you've got a male actor, you can't really ask them to perform female parts – unless they've got a very good range.

"If you produce something that is quite complicated and densely written with very long sentences, it is going to be more difficult for the voice actor to perform it around those words."

In addition to Toby's gravelly voice, pitched half a dozen different ways to bring Nick's characters to life, the story also features sound effects ranging from the howl of wolves to the rattle of automatic weapons fire.

"You also have to be aware that there are going to be sound effects which are useful to enhance the story," says Nick. "And you want something with lots of action and fast changes of scene and lots of atmosphere.

"You also don't need to be so descriptive of sound in your writing and you don't need to say 'the character said that sadly' because the voice actor can just put a sad tone into his voice.

"All those things I had to bear in mind. I wasn't writing a script – it was a short story – but I had to be aware that it was going to be read aloud and write accordingly."

Nick's day job is looking at other authors' work as an editor at the Black Library, so he writes his own fiction in his own time at night. And it was this process which yielded his second work in the space of just a few months – Salamander.

This novel also features Space Marines, but this time they are of an entirely different character to the Space Wolves marines detailed in Thunder From Fenris.

The Salamanders Chapter hail from a world of fire and Nick's novel, the first in a planned trilogy, leads the warriors to uncover secrets from their own past and develop rivalries which threaten their future.

"Salamander is doing really well," says Nick. "I couldn't say which I enjoyed more – Salamander or Thunder From Fenris – you get different things out of different projects. It may not seem it to the outsider, but they are about two different parts of the Warhammer 40k universe and it was refreshing to write that way.

"The good thing about writing a novel is you can go to town on the characters, play a lot of tricks and build things up to a dramatic conclusion. You have a lot of opportunities to leave dangling threads which can be picked up in the next book in the Salamanders series – which I'm writing at the moment.

"Thunder From Fenris was a nice shot in the arm project with a quick turnaround time. You get to put a lot of action in and then add what is, hopefully, a cute little twist at the end. I really enjoy writing this sort of stuff. I've just finished a second audio drama called Fireborn, which will be out around June and the experience I got from writing Thunder From Fenris was invaluable."

Nick says his writing draws on many different influences.

"I think the thing about writing is that everything influences you," he says. "You have to pay attention to everything. Observe everything. Think about everything. Influences could come from films or from books. You might see or read something, whether it is mundane or extraordinary, which evokes a certain something in your mind that you might draw upon later. I read a lot of crime and mystery fiction by people like John Connelly. Recently I've been reading some of the early noir stuff by writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I love the style of the crime novel and a good mystery that is hard to put down."

To find out more about Nick Kyme's projects, visit www.nickkyme.com

For details of how to buy Thunder From Fenris, £10, or Salamander, £6.99, see www.blacklibrary.com