While Track of Words was originally conceived as a site purely for book reviews, over the years it’s expanded to include author interviews, blog posts, and various (hopefully) useful resources for readers and fans of science fiction, fantasy and horror. In the last couple of years I’ve also published quite a few articles and interviews aimed at anyone interested in writing SFF and horror, and I’ve got plans for lots more in this vein. With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to have a single source for all these resources, where I can link out to everything that I’ve created so far and keep updated as and when new resources become available.
A lot of the existing content was originally written with Black Library and Warhammer fiction in mind, but in my opinion it’s just as applicable to any publisher (both for specific IPs and otherwise), so should be useful whether you’re interested in writing Warhammer fiction or not. There will hopefully be lots more publisher-agonistic content to come, as well! I’ll make sure to add in links to all future interviews/articles below, but for the time being I’ve broken things up into headings to try and make what’s currently available as clear as possible.
Pitching horror short stories
I put these together in advance of Black Library’s 2020 open submissions window, which is focused entirely on horror stories. While the articles specify Warhammer Horror, I think the vast majority of the advice and ideas in them are relevant to any kind of horror story…and lots is applicable to any kind of story at all.
- Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror
- Pitching Warhammer Horror – Part One – with David Annandale, Ray Cluley, Lora Gray, Graham McNeill, Jake Ozga and Tim Waggoner
- Pitching Warhammer Horror – Part two – with Justin D. Hill, Nick Kyme, Steven Sheil, JC Stearns, Richard Strachan, CL Werner and Nicholas Wolf
- Tim Waggoner Talks Writing in the Dark (this is about Tim’s guide dedicated to writing horror stories, and it’s fantastic!)
Black Library open submissions windows
These articles and interviews were all released to coincide with previous BL open submissions windows. There’s lots in here which is specific to BL’s submissions process, but also plenty of good advice for writing in general.
- Jamie Crisalli Talks The Open Submissions Window
- Thomas Parrott Talks The Open Submissions Window
- Robert Rath Talks The Open Submissions Window
- Richard Strachan Talks The Open Submissions Window
- Nicholas Wolf Talks The Open Submissions Window
- Black Library Summer of Writing 2019 (including links to lots of wider writing resources)
- Black Library Open Submissions 2018 recap
General author interviews
Not including those already mentioned above, there are over 160 author interviews live on Track of Words at the time I’m writing this! Here are some links to a few of them:
- Click here for all 120+ of my RAPID FIRE interviews – these are designed to be focused more on a specific book than the author’s writing process, but there are all sorts of interesting snippets scattered throughout
- Click here for all of my AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT interviews – overviews of each writer’s background, approach to writing and latest releases
- Chris Dows talking about the similarities between writing for audio and comics
- Peter Fehervari talking about his writing style and complex interwoven storytelling – PART ONE and PART TWO
- John French talking complex, carefully-plotted series (Ahriman, The Horusian Wars)
- Nick Kyme on getting into writing, and working on a Blood Bowl comic book
- Josh Reynolds talking about influences, working with BL, humour and horror – PART ONE and PART TWO
- Celebrating 20 years of Gav Thorpe – PART ONE and PART TWO
- Alec Worley getting deep into themes and characters (specifically regarding Sisters of Battle)
- Nounslayer – William King, Nathan Long, David Guymer and Darius Hinks on writing Gotrek Gurnisson – PART ONE and PART TWO
- Self-publishing spotlight – Rob Hayes talking about his work and the realities of self publishing
***
As I mentioned earlier, I’ll add in links to new interviews/articles whenever they become available. There should be plenty here to get going with though, and hopefully they will prove useful!
I’d love to hear from you if you have questions or comments about any of these resources, of if there’s anything you’d particularly like to see in future! Let me know in the comments below, or find me on Twitter and say hi.