Category Archives: Highlight

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: James Logan Talks The Silverblood Promise

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words author interview, where today I’m very pleased to welcome James Logan to talk about his debut fantasy novel The Silverblood Promise, which is out now from Arcadia Books! Like many readers I love a good Epic Fantasy series, and The Silverblood Promise kicks off The Last Legacy in style – it has everything I want in this sort of story, and I absolutely loved it. Given that, I jumped at the chance to chat to James for this interview – so read on to find out all about this brilliant book from characters, world building and influences to magic, themes and the writing process.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: John Wiswell Talks Someone You Can Build A Nest In

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words author interview where today I’m delighted to welcome the excellent John Wiswell, to talk about his fascinating new novel Someone You Can Build A Nest In – which is out now from Arcadia Books (UK)/DAW Books (US). This really is an intriguing book packed full of talking points, and I roped in my good friend (and increasingly regular Track of Words contributor) Fabienne Schwizer to help narrow things down to a manageable number of questions. So read on to find out more about Someone You Can Build A Nest In, its brilliant cast of characters, some of the themes explored throughout the book, and plenty more – and prepare to really want to read this book!

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Writer and Editor: Can You Be Both? (Kate Golden Guest Post)

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m joined by Kate Golden, author of the Dawn of Onyx series, whose second novel A Promise of Peridot is out now via Arcadia Books. I’m always fascinated to hear from anyone who works across multiple writing-related disciplines, and in this case Kate is both a fantasy novelist and a TV and film executive. I was delighted when Kate agreed to write this guest post about the realities of balancing those two aspects of her life, and the end result is a fascinating piece about creativity, passion and the craft of writing. Whether you’re a reader or a writer, and whatever genre(s) you read, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did!

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Track of Words Reviews: What to Expect

Over the years here on Track of Words I’ve written over 1,100 reviews and counting, and for a long time I’ve been meaning to put together a quick article to talk about what you can expect if you check out one or more of my reviews. At the time of writing this I’ve also just posted my first deliberately shorter book review (which I’ve called ‘In Brief’, as the start of a new type of review), which reminded me that I really ought to clarify what you can expect from the different types of reviews too. So what I’ll do here is give a quick overview of my general style of writing and the things you can expect to see or not see in my reviews, then break down the different review types as well. Hopefully this will be useful!

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Black Library: ‘New 40k’ Reading List

After decades of remaining more or less static, these days the Warhammer 40,000 setting is evolving before our eyes, and many of the new and upcoming novels from Black Library are helping to shed light on these new developments in the lore. It’s not always clear how the various stories fit into the ongoing timeline, however, and Black Library as usual doesn’t seem inclined to provide anything in the way of an official reading order. I’ve put together this reading list to try to fit together where all of the recent books go in the ‘new 40k’ timeline – it’s entirely unofficial, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll have got everything right, but hopefully it will be a useful resource to anyone interested in keeping up with Warhammer 40,000 fiction.

NOTE: until such time as BL produces an official resource, I’ll do my best to keep this reading list up to date with new releases as and when they’re published. This version of the article was created in January 2021, but I’ve added books in here and there along the way – the last minor update was in August 2022.

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A Traveller’s Guide to Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil

With the release of the short story Altar of Maws (May 2023), Peter Fehervari’s catalogue of Warhammer 40,000 fiction – known informally as The Dark Coil – currently totals 18 stories. Every piece of 40k fiction is linked by taking place within a single shared universe, but The Dark Coil goes way beyond that. These stories share much deeper connections, between them forming a web of characters, locations, themes and recurring motifs that is gradually becoming more and more apparent as additional stories are published. One of the joys of reading Fehervari’s work is in unpicking these subtle connections, but it can be daunting to know where to start looking.

Welcome, then, to A Traveller’s Guide to the Dark Coil.

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Black Library Pre-Order Tracker

It can be hard to keep track of upcoming Black Library releases – there’s the Coming Soon page on Warhammer Community but that has big gaps and isn’t updated very often; the occasional Warhammer Community article looking at previews/reveals; and the wider book trade, with websites like Amazon often updated with some information well in advance of books being published. Wouldn’t it be great if there was ONE place you could check which consolidated all of that information, and clearly laid it out to help you plan ahead and decide what to buy and when? Well as it happens, I’ve put together a spreadsheet containing all of the information I can find. I’ve embedded it into this article, and I try to keep it as up to date as possible, so check back any time to see what’s coming up. Continue reading →