AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Bradley P. Beaulieu Talks The Dragons of Deepwood Fen

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m delighted to welcome Bradley P. Beaulieu to the site to talk about his brand new fantasy novel The Dragons of Deepwood Fen (out on the 4th January from Head of Zeus). I’ve featured one of Bradley’s books on the site before (Absynthe, written under his alternative guise as Brendan P. Bellecourt) but where that was retrofuturistic science fiction this time we’re very much in the fantasy setting – dragons and all! If you like a good dragon story (and what fantasy fan doesn’t?) then this is going to be right up your street; so read on, and let’s get straight into the interview.

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Eight Books I Rate – Eliza Chan Guest Post

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post where today I’m joined by the brilliant Eliza Chan, author of the upcoming Fathomfolk (coming early 2024 from Orbit), who’s here to share her excitement about a whole host of great fantasy books! I’m delighted to have Eliza on the site – I’ve been a fan ever since reading her short story Knowing Your Type (creepy teddy bears…really creepy teddy bears) in 2019, and I’m really looking forward to her debut novel. If you’re on the lookout for some new additions to your TBR, whether recent releases or upcoming titles, you’ve come to the right place. I know I’m going to be picking some of these up based on Eliza’s recommendations!

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Behind The Scene: Exclusive Excerpt from Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell

Hello and welcome to this Behind the Scene post, where today I’m delighted to present an exclusive excerpt from Play of Shadows by Sebastien de Castell – the first novel in a new series set in the world of the Greatcoats! I’ve included the publisher’s synopsis at the end of the post, but before then there’s loads to enjoy – first a quick note from Sebastien setting the scene for the start of the novel, and then the excerpt from the (brilliant) first chapter of the book. Play of Shadows is due out from Jo Fletcher Books on the 28th March 2024, so read on to get a taste of what to expect, then get your pre-orders in!

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Track of Words Advent Calendar 2023

Hello and welcome to the Track of Words Advent Calendar 2023! Over the course of the next 25 days I’ll be posting author interviews, articles, guest posts and more celebrating the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, some posts written by me and others contributed by a host of fantastic authors. Make sure you keep checking back each day to see what’s what – there’s loads of great content coming up, some looking back over the last 12 months and some looking ahead to next year and onwards.

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Monthly Roundup – November 2023

Hello, and welcome to my November Monthly Roundup post – I can’t quite believe it’s almost December, and therefore almost the end of 2023, but here we are! It’s been a strange month, as I’ve tried to put together some interesting posts for November while spending a lot of time behind the scenes working on the Track of Words Advent Calendar for December. Hopefully this month’s posts have been fun, and I really hope you enjoy what I’ve got planned for next month! In the meantime, for this article I’ve compiled my usual roundup of recent posts along with a bit of an update on the month’s reading. I haven’t spent a lot of time in November looking at what’s going on in the world of SFF publishing so I’ve skipped my usual news section, which means this is a slightly shorter post than usual.

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Short and Sweet – November 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for November 2023, where as usual I’ve picked out a trio of books that I’ve recently read to talk a little about, in lieu of my usual longer reviews. For this month’s roundup I’ve gone for books with quite a range of page counts, from a novella all the way up to a 750+ page doorstopper! Across these three books you’ve got magic, demons, demigods, transhuman soldiers, immortal hunters, wizarding bureaucracy, mystical prophecies and loads more. There’s plenty to enjoy in all of them, although if I’m honest none of them entirely worked for me, personally.

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The Wishing Game – Meg Shaffer

The debut novel from Meg Shaffer, The Wishing Game blends adult and children’s fiction in a warm, delightful tale of hope, heartache, family and the importance of remembering what it was like to be a child. When reclusive children’s author Jack Masterson resumes writing after years away, the eccentric writer announces an unusual competition, inviting four adults to return to his home on Clock Island, where they once visited as children. The prize? The one and only copy of his latest, long-awaited book, to do with as they please. For Lucy Hart, winning the competition would mean more than just the opportunity to read the new Clock Island book – it would give her the one thing she truly wants: a chance to adopt seven year-old orphan Christopher.

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Exclusive Excerpt From In The Shadow Of Their Dying by Anna Smith Spark & Michael R. Fletcher

Hello and welcome to Track of Words, where today I have an exclusive excerpt for you from the upcoming novella In The Shadow of Their Dying by Anna Smith Spark and Michael R. Fletcher, coming in March 2024 from Grimdark Magazine. Featuring two big names from the Grimdark fantasy scene, and excellent cover art by Carlos Diaz (design by Shawn T. King), this looks like one to watch for all you Grimdark fans out there. Read on for the cover and official synopsis for In The Shadow of Their Dying, and then an exclusive excerpt to give you just a little taste of what to expect.

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40k Reading Order: Minka Lesk – Justin D. Hill

Hello and welcome to this 40k Reading Order article – there’s a whole range of these articles here on Track of Words, but for this one I’m focusing on Justin D. Hill’s fantastic Minka Lesk series of Cadian Shock Troops stories. Black Library’s Cadians range has grown a lot recently, and there are loads of options for where to start, but the Minka Lesk series is really the backbone of the whole range. At the time of writing there are eight stories in this series – four novels and four short stories (although I’m also going to mention a few additional short stories that subtly tie in with the Minka Lesk series) – and with Justin’s generous help I’ve put together a comprehensive list of the whole lot, based on their in-universe chronological order.

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A Lot of Very Short Chapters

I’ve recently read a couple of books which were written with a lot of short chapters – and when I say short chapters I mean very short chapters, from a few pages to just a few words. They’re two very different books, both written with a clear idea of what they want to achieve but doing something quite different, and it’s been an interesting experience reading them in fairly close succession. I thought it might be fun to explore this experience a bit, in particular the ways in which I responded to each of the two books and their use of short chapters – there were some similarities, and plenty of differences – and in the process hopefully clarify things in my own mind too.

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