Category Archives: Article

John French – New Stories, Old Truths

Hello and welcome to New Stories, Old Truths on Track of Words, where I’m handing the reins over to author John French to tell us a bit about some of the ways he’s using his website to build a new fictional world, and give readers something a little different to look forward to. I’m a huge fan of John’s Black Library fiction, with his Ahriman series being a particular favourite, so when I spotted some new original fiction showing up on John’s website, along with some really insightful articles, I had to find out what was happening! Whether you’re a Black Library fan or just interested in SFF and the craft of writing, I really recommend you check out John’s website to see what he’s up to.

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Amanda Bridgeman – 10 Lessons From 10 Years in Publishing

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where I’m joined by the excellent Amanda Bridgeman – author of books such as The Subjugate, The Sensation, and Pandemic: Patient Zero – to talk about some of the realities of life as a professional writer. As an avid reader and someone who’s fascinated by the publishing industry, I love hearing authors talk about what their careers are really like and what the challenges are, so I was delighted when Amanda kindly offered to share some of her own insights gathered over many years of experience as an author. Whether you’re a writer yourself or just a keen observer of the industry like me, there’s loads of interesting things to think about in this article!

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Best of Black Library 2022

Every year, as we approach the end of December I look back at the best Black Library books I’ve read over the preceding twelve months, and it’s time now to take a look at 2022’s BL highlights. There are plenty to choose from, but I’ve narrowed it down to just five that I can personally recommend as being genuinely fantastic reads. It was hard to cut things down to five though, so I’ve also added a few honourable mentions that I couldn’t help but include. As always this comes with a few caveats, the first of which being that I can only talk about the books I’ve actually read. Black Library publishes somewhere in the region of 40 novels each year, of which I’ve read 14; that’s slightly more than last year, but still nothing like all of them. I’m sure I’ve missed out loads of great titles simply because I haven’t got around to reading them.

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Kate Dylan – My Top 5 YA Sci-fi Books

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, kindly contributed by Kate Dylan – author of the fantastic Mindwalker (and, recently announced, the upcoming Mindbreaker – due in September 2023). I read Mindwalker earlier in 2022 and it’s one of my favourite books of the year, a brilliant example of how YA science fiction can be both tremendous fun and incredibly powerful, so when Kate offered to talk a bit about some of the other YA sci-fi novels that have been released recently I thought it was the perfect topic for a guest post! If you haven’t already picked up Mindwalker I would strongly suggest you grab a copy, and Kate’s recommendations below should give you plenty more to look forward to reading too.

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Cath Lauria – Marvels and Monsters

Welcome to Marvels and Monsters on Track of Words, a brilliant guest post written by the fantastic Cath Lauria. With not one but two novels from Aconyte Books coming out in early 2023, each in a different IP, I asked Cath if she would be interested in talking about what it’s like writing stories in multiple universes, and what the similarities and differences are. The resulting article offers a really interesting insight into the life of an SFF author and the experience of writing IP fiction, and a few hints about what to expect from Terror World and Silver Sable: Payback when they arrive in 2023. Cath’s writing is always full of energy and enthusiasm, and that comes through here in a real sense of hope and excitement for next year, which I love!

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Track of Words Advent Calendar 2022

Hello and welcome to the 2022 Track of Words Advent Calendar – 25 days of reviews, interviews, articles, guest posts and more celebrating the worlds of science fiction and fantasy. Each day between the 1st and 25th of December I’ll post something new, some posts written by me and others contributed by a host of fantastic SFF authors, so make sure you check back every day to see what’s new! You can look forward to interviews with both established and upcoming authors, roundups of some of the best SFF books (of various types) of 2022, brilliant original fiction, and loads of fascinating articles – some looking back at 2022 and/or ahead to 2023, and others tackling all sorts of interesting subjects from an author’s perspective. And that’s only scratching the surface!

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Nicholas Binge – 12 SFF Books of Christmas

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where I’m delighted to be joined by author Nicholas Binge for a look both back at 2022 and ahead to 2023. Author of Professor Everywhere and the upcoming Ascension (coming in April from Harper Voyager), Nicholas has kindly curated a whole host of recommendations for brilliant SFF books, so if you’re on the lookout for a great book released this year, or something coming next year to look forward to, look no further than this article. I’ve read and can happily endorse a few of these recommendations too, but there’s loads here that I’m now really looking forward to getting hold of!

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Monthly Roundup – November 2022

Hello and welcome to November’s Monthly Roundup post here on Track of Words. It’s been a busy month for me, in terms of both writing things to post this month and planning/commissioning/writing things for December. I’ll talk more about December later (how is it almost the end of the year?!), but for now let’s focus on November – eight posts this month (plus this one, which is a little earlier than usual) feels about right, and I’m happy with how everything’s turned out I think. As usual I’ll use the first part of this post to recap on all of the November articles, reviews and interviews, so you can check out anything you might have missed, and then I’ll use the second section to talk mostly about what you can look forward to next month on Track of Words.

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Monthly Roundup – October 2022

Hello and welcome to October’s Monthly Roundup post here on Track of Words. Each month I write this opening paragraph for my roundup post and boggle at how quickly time is passing – we’ve only two months left in 2022! It’s going to be Christmas before we know it. Looking backwards instead of forwards for the time being however, October has passed in a bit of a blur, starting off a bit slowly but ramping up as the weeks have gone on. I’d say it’s been a middling month for me in terms of productivity, but I’ve got plenty to talk about here. As always I’ll kick things off with a recap of what I’ve been posting these last few weeks, then talk a bit more generally towards the end.

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Monthly Roundup – September 2022

It’s October already (can you believe it? Only three months left of 2022!), and so it’s time for September’s Monthly Roundup post on Track of Words. It’s felt like quite a busy month for me, but that’s actually translated into fewer posts written and fewer books read than August. Of course it’s not all about volume though; I’m pleased with what I did get written in September, and likewise with the books that I did read. I’ll talk a bit more about reading and non-Track of Words activities towards the end of the article, but as usual I’ll start off with a quick recap of the nine posts that I published over the last few weeks.

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