Hello and welcome to the first Monthly Roundup post of 2023, here on Track of Words. I hope you had a great January – for me it’s been a pretty busy month with lots of reading (as usual) and a fair amount of writing, as I got myself back into gear for this, my tenth year of running Track of Words. As I always do with these roundups, I’m going to start things off with a recap of everything I posted on the site in January, so you can catch up on anything you might have missed. After that I’m going to do something a little different than usual, talking less about myself (which nobody really needs) and more about what’s going on in the world of SFF books, as I start to tweak the structure and purpose of these articles – so I hope you’ll keep reading, and let me know what you think!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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ToW Advent 2022 – Collected Recommendations
After 24 days of brilliant guest posts, insightful author interviews and compelling original fiction (and a few roundup posts from me), the Track of Words Advent Calendar has come to an end for its second year running. If you’ve been following the series from the start, I really hope you’ve enjoyed at least some – if not all – of the content, while if this is your first engagement with the series I’d strongly recommend you skip to the main article and check out all the great posts there! Either way, now we’ve reached the end of the Advent Calendar I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who contributed to the series, without whom it would have been a quieter and much less interesting month on Track of Words!
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TBR: SFF Books Coming in 2023
Last year I put together a TBR list of science fiction and fantasy books I was particularly looking forward to reading in 2022, and yep…I thought I’d do the same this year! It’s always fun to look ahead and think about what looks particularly exciting, and it’s useful to have a list like this to refer back to as the year progresses. From last year’s list, only nine of the ten books have actually been published yet, so I’ve cheated a bit and included the unpublished one from 2022 on this list too. Of those nine though, I did read seven (and a half)…which is pretty good going I think, and I’d say that they mostly (if not entirely) lived up to expectations.
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Lavie Tidhar – Paradigm Shift
Hello and welcome to Track of Words, where today I’m absolutely delighted to welcome the fantastic Lavie Tidhar with a guest post taking a broad view over the science fiction genre as a whole – a sort of sci-fi state of the nation. A genre-spanning author of so many fantastic books, and editor of the wonderful The Best of World SF anthologies (both of which are available now from Head of Zeus), I can’t think of anyone better placed than Lavie to speak about current trends in SF fiction and publishing. If you’re at all interested in science fiction, whether as a reader or a writer, there’s bound to be food for thought in this excellent post.
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David Towsey – One David To Another: Three Films That Influenced Equinox
Welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m joined by the fantastic author David Towsey who’s going to talk about three films by a single director that had an impact on his brilliant novel Equinox. Published by Head of Zeus, Equinox first came out in May 2022, and the paperback edition is due in February 2023 so it feels like a good moment to look back at this fantastic fantasy novel! I haven’t read anything quite like it, with its fascinating central concept of day and night siblings – each body inhabited by two distinct personalities, one present during the day and the other at night – and I loved its blend of fantasy and horror, and the attention to detail in its setting. It’s always interesting to get an author’s thoughts on some of the inspirations behind their work, and in this post David takes an unusual but really cool approach to talking about what inspired his novel.
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Aliette de Bodard – Favourite Media in a Pandemic Year
Hello and welcome to this guest post on Track of Words where I’m thrilled to welcome the fantastic Aliette de Bodard – author of The Red Scholar’s Wake and so much more – to the site, to talk about the games and TV shows that she’s been turning to over the last year. I recently read (and reviewed) The Red Scholar’s Wake and was blown away by its rich setting, brilliant characters and totally engrossing central romance; it’s space opera in a way I’ve not come across before, and I loved it! I was delighted when Aliette agreed to write this article – it’s always great to get an insight into what your favourite authors are enjoying, and I always appreciate some new recommendations for media to consume, love and be comforted by!
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