Author Archives: Michael

Science Fiction Debuts in 2022 – Michael Mammay Guest Post

Welcome to the first Track of Words guest post of 2022 – today I’m joined by science fiction author Michael Mammay, who’s here to talk about debut SF novels coming out this year. If you’re on the lookout for some great new reads, this is the article for you! Michael’s Planetside series comes highly recommended, and his latest novel The Misfit Soldier is due out from Harper Voyager in February 2022! If you’re on Twitter and you don’t already follow Michael, I would strongly recommend you do – he’s a really positive presence, and a great advocate for SF, so enjoy reading his guest post and then check him out on Twitter!

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Yearly Roundup: 2021 Numbers and Goals

Every year I do a retrospective post – or series of posts – in which I take a look back over the previous twelve months on Track of Words, and this year is no different. I’ve now been running Track of Words for eight years, which somewhat blows my mind, and I find it fascinating to look back at how the site has developed over those years. Not just how it’s grown in terms of people visiting, but also in how I’ve changed how I work on it, and the relationship between what I do for the site and what I read in general. In this article I’m going to take a look at a couple of retrospective elements, beginning with some numbers before moving on to reflections on how I did with my goals for 2021.

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Monthly Roundup – December 2021

Hello, and welcome to my Monthly Roundup post here on Track of Words. We’ve reached the end of December (not to mention the end of another year), and it’s been a busy few weeks here with a post every day from the 1st to the 25th as part of my Advent Calendar series. I really couldn’t be happier with how this turned out, and I’m incredibly grateful to all of the authors (and one editor) who contributed to the Advent series! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all of the interviews, guest reviews, guest articles and everything else (including a brand new piece of original fiction) as much as I enjoyed working on them. If you haven’t had a chance to read them all I’ve included all of the relevant links below, and as usual as well as talking about this month’s new posts I’ll give a bit of a general update for the month.

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Bleeding From Cold Sleep – Peter Fehervari

Available in the Sword & Planet anthology from Baen Books, Bleeding From Cold Sleep is Peter Fehervari’s first non-Warhammer short story, introducing a brand new setting that’s as rich and full of promise as you could imagine. Set in a bleak, distant future not entirely unlike (yet definitely not) the 40k universe, on the midwinter world of Iscarcha out in “the backwaters of human space”, a man calling himself Vikram is finally brought to heel by the hunters who have long been on his tail. Once an elite soldier for the Frontline, chosen and engineered to fight at the forefront of mankind’s pioneering exploration into space, over the long years of his flight he has taken many identities and lived many lives, accompanied only by his enigmatic shadow. Now, confronted by his hunters and tired of his long flight, Vikram faces the choice of whether to keep running, or stand and tell his side of the story.

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TBR: SFF Books Coming in 2022

I’ve seen lots of people writing their ‘most anticipated’ lists for 2022, and I’ve even published an excellent guest post from author Thomas Parrott along those lines, so I thought it was about time I jumped on the bandwagon and looked ahead to next year myself. If I’m honest, I’m hoping to spend much of 2022 catching up on books I didn’t get round to reading this year, but that’s not to say there aren’t loads of great books due for publication over the coming months that I’m very much looking forward to reading, so I’ve picked out some of my personal highlights to talk about here. For my main list I’ve concentrated on general SFF releases, but I’ve also included a shorter list later on of the Black Library novels I’m currently looking forward to the most.

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The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers – Rob Young Guest Review

Hello and welcome to this guest review on Track of Words, where today I’m handing over to author Rob Young to talk about The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Rob’s debut Black Library story The Roar of the Void is featured in the Inferno! Presents The Inquisition anthology, and it’s a genuinely fantastic debut, so I’m calling it now – Rob is a new BL author to watch! I’m delighted he has agreed to write this guest review, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages, so when Rob suggested it as the subject for a review I jumped at the chance to get his thoughts on it…and now I’m even more determined to read this asap!

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Best SFF Books of 2021

I’ve already talked about my favourite Black Library novels of 2021, but I think it’s time to look more broadly at the best science fiction and fantasy books I’ve had the pleasure of reading this year. Back in 2020 I put together a Top 20 of 2020 list but this year I’m trimming things back down to concentrate on my top 10, all of which are books I’ve given 5* reviews to (over on Goodreads where star ratings are a thing) and all of which I have sung the praises of all year! As ever it’s proved tricky to narrow things down to just ten, but I’m really happy with this selection – so take a look, and let me know what you think.

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To Judge a Book By Its Cover – Thomas Parrott Guest Post

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post where today I’m letting author Thomas Parrott loose on the site to look ahead to 2022 and talk about some of the debut fantasy, horror and sci-fi novels coming soon that have caught his eye. I couldn’t be happier to have Tom on the site and I’m really keen to check out some of his suggestions (in fact as chance would have it I’m currently reading one of them), and I hope you’ll find some great new books to check out too! In addition, if you haven’t read any of Tom’s own work yet then I can highly recommend you check it out – I’ve included a link at the end of the article to all of my reviews of his stories, and make sure you check out his debut novel Recruited, published by Aconyte Books as the first of their stories set in the world of Tom Clancy’s The Division.

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Horror Fiction & Visual Media – David Annandale Guest Post

Hello and welcome to today’s Track of Words guest post where I’m delighted to welcome the brilliant David Annandale to discuss some of the ways in which visual media and horror fiction are influenced by, and in turn influence each other. David will be familiar to a lot of readers as the author of all manner of dark fantasy and science fiction for both Black Library and Aconyte Books, and whether he’s writing all-out horror or not everything he writes has that dark DNA at its core. With two new books already announced for 2022 from Aconyte Books – Reign of the Devourer, a Doctor Doom novel as part of the Marvel: Untold range, and In the Coils of the Labyrinth for Arkham Horror – I can’t think of a better time to hear David’s thoughts on this topic!

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Adrian Tchaikovsky Talks Day of Ascension

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview where I’m delighted to welcome Adrian Tchaikovsky to the site for the first time, to talk primarily about his upcoming Warhammer 40,000 novel Day of Ascension, as well as two more books he’s publishing in 2022. As a well-established, award-winning and incredibly prolific science fiction and fantasy author, it’s great to see Adrian turning his hand to writing for Black Library as well, and with his amazing ability to write compelling non-human characters a novel featuring both the Genestealer Cults and the Adeptus Mechanicus sounds like a perfect fit! Day of Ascension is due out at some point in January, so ahead of its release you can find out a little more about it here – along with a few details of two more sci-fi books coming in 2022 from other publishers: Ogres and Eyes of the Void.

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