Author Archives: Michael

Godkiller – Hannah Kaner

Hannah Kaner blasts onto the epic fantasy scene with her debut novel Godkiller, an impressively tight and thrilling tale of vengeance, honour, murdered (and murderous) gods and sundered families. With civil war looming and enemies closing in, four disparate characters make their way to a ruined city in search of answers from the old gods – mercenary godkiller Kissen, troubled knight-turned-baker Elogast, and the bound-together duo of runaway young noble Inara and tiny god of white lies Skediceth. Despite their differences, and a conspicuous lack of trust, they find themselves travelling together, forced to rely on each other to survive the curses, demons, gods and men that bar their way to the war-ravaged city and the truths they hope to find there.

Continue reading →

The Mimicking of Known Successes – Malka Older

Set on a colony encircling Jupiter in a distant future, Malka Older’s genre-blending novella The Mimicking of Known Successes opens with Investigator Mossa looking into the disappearance of a university scholar assumed to have jumped or been pushed from a remote transit platform, thereafter presumably perishing in the gas giant’s freezing, punishing atmosphere. Back at the university she recruits her once-girlfriend Pleiti, also a scholar, to assist with her investigation, the two of them attempting to understand what might have prompted an almost universally disliked man to disappear. The deeper they dig the more the mystery thickens, becoming more dangerous than they could have expected, while their unexpected reunion inevitably stirs up old memories and emotions once thought laid to rest.

Continue reading →

Writing For Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 3: Writing Samples

Hello and welcome to the third and final instalment of my January 2023 edition of Writing For Black Library here on Track of Words – in this part our nine brilliant Black Library authors are discussing the tricky task of planning out short stories and putting together writing samples. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking out the previous two articles first: part one, in which we discussed writing 100-word story pitches, and part two, which was all about what makes a great Space Marine story. If you’ve already read both of those, read on to find out what advice and recommendations our authors have for writing short stories in general.

Continue reading →

Writing For Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 2: Space Marines

Welcome to the second in my three-part series of Writing For Black Library articles released to coincide with BL’s January 2023 Open Submissions window. For these articles I spoke to nine Black Library authors who kindly agreed to share their advice and ideas regarding three topics: pitch summaries, Space Marine stories, and generally writing short stories and samples. In Part 1 we covered writing pitches – if you haven’t already, definitely check that out – while for this second part the focus is on Space Marines. Specifically, I asked each of the authors this question: “What would you say makes a great Space Marine story?”

Continue reading →

Writing for Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 1: Pitching

Every year or two, Black Library announces an Open Submissions Window – a short period of time during which anyone can pitch a short story to the BL editorial team. Towards the end of 2022 BL announced that its next open subs window will begin in January 2023, with a specific theme of stories exploring Space Marine successor Chapters. In previous years I’ve put together articles and interviews full of advice from Black Library authors on how to pitch and write short stories, but it’s been a while since I’ve done that so now seems like a good time to do another one. Or, to be precise, another three! If you’re interested in writing for BL in general, and submitting to this open subs window in particular, I think you’ll find a lot of interest in these articles.

Continue reading →

2023 Plans and Goals

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but over the nine years (and counting) that I’ve been running Track of Words I’ve found it useful to set myself some rough goals for each year, and spend some time thinking about what I want to achieve with the site. It’s useful to have things to be working towards as I’m planning and writing new content, as long as I give myself enough flexibility to be able to change things or decide to focus elsewhere if need be (I also don’t like hard and fast goals like “I’m only going to read X”, as I don’t want my reading to feel prescriptive). You can read about the goals I set for 2022 here, and how I got on with them here, but in this article I’m going to look ahead to what I’m hoping to achieve in 2023. I’ll start off by talking in general terms about how I see the year going, and then look at some specific goals I’ve set myself for the site, and for my own reading.

Continue reading →

Yearly Roundup – 2022 Numbers and Goals

As 2022 comes to a close it’s time for my usual yearly roundup post, where I look back at the last twelve months on Track of Words. It’s strange to think that 2023 will be my 10th year of running this site – I’m still not sure how this went from something to do just to keep me occupied, into something that I’ve committed a huge amount of time to over nearly a decade! Anyway, at the end of the site’s 9th year let’s have a quick look at how things have been going recently. As usual with these posts, I’ll go through some stats for things like number of posts/words and number of page views/site visits, then talk a bit about the goals I set for the year and how I did with those.

Continue reading →

Monthly Roundup – December 2022

Hello and welcome to the final Track of Words post of 2022 – my Monthly Roundup for December, in which I’m going to look back at what’s been going on over the last month here on Track of Words. As it always is in December, it’s been pretty busy for me – I talked last month about the preparation that went into my Advent Calendar series, and this month it’s been all about getting each of those articles, guest posts, interviews etc. ready and up on the site. I’m quite looking forward to a considerably quieter January, but it’s actually been a lot of fun working on the Advent Calendar series, and I hope you’ve been enjoying all the posts this month. In this article I’ll give a recap of everything that I posted in December as usual, and then follow that up with a quick update talking about the Advent series and how things have gone in December in general.

Continue reading →

Finally! Series I’m Going to Start (At Last)

Like pretty much everyone else, I find there are always too many books I want to read and not enough time in which to read them, so I inevitably end up having a bunch of books that I really, really want to read…but never get around to. With that in mind, in 2023 I’m planning on making an active effort to look back at books that have been on my TBR list for a while but which I haven’t managed to get to. In particular, I’ve picked out 10 trilogies or series which I haven’t yet started but have been meaning to, and I’m going to at least make a start on each one. Ideally I’d like to read the whole trilogy/series (or at least whatever’s been published so far) in each case but I might not manage that, so the plan is to read at least the first book from all 10.

Continue reading →

Witchbringer – Steven B Fischer

After a trio of excellent 40k short stories, Steven B. Fischer makes his Black Library novel debut with Witchbringer, a bleak tale of the Astra Militarum told from the viewpoint of a newly-trained sanctioned psyker. Once a captain in the Cadian 900th before her burgeoning powers saw her shipped off to the Scholastica Psykana, no sooner has Glavia Aerand completed her gruelling training than a portent-filled vision sees her unhappily assigned back to her old regiment, who are embroiled against Traitor Guard on the miserable, mist-shrouded world of Visage. Finding fear and mistrust where once there was comradeship, Glavia has to fight to find a place in the regiment, while trying to understand what lies behind the mysteries of the gloomy, waterlogged world she finds herself on (including the unusually high rate of psykers it generates), and the fate of her missing mentor.

Continue reading →