Last year I put together a few different Yearly Roundup posts for 2019, and I’m now doing the same for 2020 – I’ve already done a 2020 In Numbers article, and today it’s time to take a look back at some of my personal highlights from last year. Obviously 2020 was A YEAR so in some respects it feels weird to be talking about highlights, in light of all the madness that’s transpired recently. I think it’s important to look for positives though, rather than focusing on all the horrible stuff, especially as reading and working on Track of Words were two of the main things that got me through last year!
Looking back, the theme of 2020 was trying new things out, and enjoying my reading and writing as much as possible, so that’s what I’m going to focus on. Over the course of the year I took a slightly different approach to the site in general, took breaks from writing, reduced my Black Library reading to free up time for other publishers, chose more books to read purely for fun rather than to review, got heavily into revisiting old favourites as audiobooks…the list goes on. Despite 2020 being tough overall, from the perspective of reading and working on Track of Words, it definitely had some positives!
Site highlights
I may not have hit quite so spectacular a site landmark as I did in 2019 (when I passed 1 million words on Track of Words) but 2020 was still a pretty good year in terms of numbers for Track of Words. You can read all about the most interesting stats in my 2020 in Numbers article, but suffice to say I was very pleased in the end to not just match but ever so slightly exceed 2019’s total of page views, and even more so to see the total visitor numbers increase quite considerably. Numbers are definitely not everything (I’ll touch on that a bit more in a moment), but it’s always nice to see them doing well.
I know that a lot of people come to Track of Words for my Black Library content first and foremost, and that the BL stuff is usually the most popular content that I put out. My decision to slow down on BL reviews and spend more time reading books from other publishers was always likely to result in less interest (from the BL fans, at least) in those reviews, but ultimately I have to make decisions based on what I’m going to enjoy reading and writing about the most. Could I have seen more visitors and page views if I had continued to focus primarily on Black Library? Probably. Would I have enjoyed my reading as much? Probably not. And that’s fine – I’m still going to be covering some BL fiction, and hopefully some of my non-BL content will be bringing in a few new readers too, but enjoyment is more important to me than numbers!
There is one other number that I’m very happy with, however, and that’s the total number of posts I’ve made on Track of Words since I started the site back in 2014. Back in 2018 I published my 1,000th post, and in 2020 I made it to 1,500 – if you’re interested, post number 1,500 was my interview with James Swallow and Josh Reynolds about their new Watchdogs: Legion novel Day Zero. This article you’re reading is number 1,572 so the tally keeps on rising! At this rate, I might pass the 2,000 mark somewhere around the end of 2022 or the start of 2023! Of course, it’s another number that doesn’t really mean all that much – but it’s cool to see the site growing. Oh, and if you’re wondering how many words I’m up to (after passing 1 million in 2019), the current tally (excluding this article) is 1,334,699!
Article highlights
The theme of trying new things definitely extended to the types of content I published, and I think my favourite articles in 2020 all stemmed from attempts to try doing things a little differently. I published my first cover reveal and first announcement of a new novel (big thanks to James at 18th Wall and Anjuli at Aconyte for asking me to get involved with those), not to mention the first guest post on Track of Words – that’s right, Matthew Ward’s excellent article on the importance of legacies in fantasy fiction was the first ever Track of Words post to not be written by me! It’s not all firsts though, as I knuckled down to more longer-form articles and guides too, which I really enjoyed doing.
I’m proud of everything I wrote and published of course, and I can’t talk about them all here, but a few stand out in particular (as well as those I’ve already mentioned). I’ve picked out some of those to highlight here; if you haven’t already checked them out, I’d love for you to take a look!
Nounslayer
I’d been meaning for ages to try a different style of author interview, the sort that incorporates an author’s comments into a continuous article rather than just a straightforward Q&A (although there’s nothing wrong with those). You know, like an actual journalist would write! I might POSSIBLY have bitten off more than I could comfortably chew by choosing to do this sort of interview combining comments from four different authors for my two-part Nounslayer: Gotrek Through the Ages interview…but I think it came out pretty well! Gotrek Gurnisson is one of my all-time favourite Warhammer characters, and it was an absolute joy to talk to authors William King, Nathan Long, David Guymer and Darius Hinks about the grumpiest Slayer to walk the Old World (and the Mortal Realms).
Pitching Horror Stories
The last few years I’ve tried to put together useful content for writers looking to send stories into the Black Library open submissions windows, but this year with the horror-themed window I thought I would try something a bit different and more ambitious. I ended up with three interviews – one in-depth piece with the fantastic Alec Worley, and two more featuring contributions from thirteen different authors, all of whom have written Warhammer Horror stories for Black Library (here are the links to Part One and Part Two). Writing advice always seems like such a personal, individual subject, so I’m delighted with the variety I managed to capture in these pieces, with all sorts of different opinions and viewpoints on a single topic – how to pitch a horror story. In my opinion these are relevant to ANY horror stories, not just for Black Library, and I think the variation, and the way some suggestions seem to perhaps contradict others, is a real positive – there are no real right and wrong answers here, so it’s a case of choosing what works best for you.
The Dark Coil
Peter Fehervari’s 40k stories – his Dark Coil – are exactly what I want from 40k, and while I know they won’t be for everyone I really do think they’re underrated. I always want to support Peter, and my original plan had been to do one of the usual Rapid Fire interviews about his new novel The Reverie, but that ended up not really being possible – largely because someone pretty much nicked my questions for an interview with Peter on the Warhammer Community site (I can’t complain too much – at least they wanted to support him, for once!). Instead, I ended up putting together A Traveller’s Guide to Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil, in which I looked at all of the key worlds and factions featured in these stories, and the connections formed between them. I hope it’s a useful guide for anyone interested in the Dark Coil, although I think the highlights of the piece are the two images that a friend of mine made, providing visual representations of some of the various links and connections that tie the Dark Coil together.
Reading highlights
It’s been a year packed full of great sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories, and as a result of that decision to read a bit less from Black Library I’ve had the opportunity to read some incredible books that I otherwise wouldn’t have come across. I also read A LOT of books, as a result of everything that happened this year (including being furloughed and then made redundant) and just wanting to escape from it all! When I say I read a lot, I know there are folks out there who read way more than I do – my friend Fabienne, who runs the blog Libri Draconis, got through a mind-boggling 365 books in 2020! That being said, my total of 130 is pretty damn good too, and I’m fairly sure it’s the most books I’ve ever read in a single year.
Of course it’s not a race to see how many books I can read, but I’m a naturally fast reader and as I mentioned earlier I’ve done a lot of reading for comfort recently! In particular, I really started to appreciate the joy of audiobooks this year, especially as a way of revisiting books I’ve already read and enjoyed. I started off by picking up a bunch of Black Library audios for 99p back when the first lockdown started, but after that I listened to some of my old favourites in the shape of six of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London audios and Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair, along with all manner of other audiobooks from The Wombles to Death on the Nile. I wrote an article last year about the difference between reading books for fun and reading to review and if there was ever a year which reminded me of how important it is to read purely for fun then that year was 2020!
I can’t talk about 2020 highlights, and reading more widely, without mentioning the revelation that has been Aconyte Books. I first started hearing about this new publisher at some point in 2019, and read my first couple of their books – the short story anthology Tales from the Crucible and Josh Reynolds’ Arkham Horror novel Wrath of N’Kai – in March and April of 2020. Since then I’ve read another eight books of theirs, from Marvel prose novels (my favourite of which has been David Annandale’s The Harrowing of Doom so far) and low fantasy dungeon crawlers (Robbie MacNiven’s The Doom of Fallowhearth) to a high-tech modern thriller (Day Zero by James Swallow and Josh Reynolds) and a pair of very different stories set in the feudal Japan-inspired fantasy world of Legend of the Five Rings (David Annandale’s Curse of Honor and Josh Reynolds’ Poison River).
Obviously I’ve spent a lot of time over the years reading IP fiction in the shape of Black Library stories, but until recently I had never really explored other IPs…but that changed with all these Aconyte releases. I’m not an existing fan of Arkham Horror, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, KeyForge or Legend of the Five Rings, and I know very little about Marvel beyond the basics from the movies, but I’ve had a total blast getting to know these worlds and characters. I really can’t recommend Aconyte enough, and with so much great stuff due out over the coming months I can see myself reading loads more from them in 2021! It doesn’t hurt that I’m pretty familiar with the work of quite a few of their authors (many of whom will be familiar to most BL fans), or that they’re such a great team of people to work with.
Lastly, while I’ve already written my Top 20 Books of 2020 article so I won’t go into too much detail here about all the best books I read in 2020, what I’ll do instead is try to pick out the VERY best of last year’s reads. I’m terrible at choosing just one favourite anything, but I’ll do my best here…
Best book of 2020: XX by Rian Hughes
It’s so hard because I read SO MANY great books in 2020, but if I had to pick just one then for sheer impact it would have to be Rian Hughes’ incredible XX, with its bold and brilliant mixture of vintage sci-fi, modern technology, unconventional storytelling techniques (including serialising a pseudo-70s novella in the midst of the novel), mind-bending visualisations and incredible graphic design. This has to be my top pick simply because it’s the book that has stuck with me the longest – every time I see the cover I just think “damn, that book was amazing!” I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but XX isn’t going to be for everyone; it’s not always the easiest read, it’s full of references and concepts that I definitely didn’t always understand, and it’s LONG! None of that matters, though. For me as a science fiction fan, and a fan of interesting, brave storytelling in general, it’s nothing short of a masterpiece.
Best Black Library book of 2020: Saturnine by Dan Abnett
Ok, so this one is for all the Warhammer fans – while I slowed down a bit on the BL front I did still read plenty, and although it was a tough choice (especially because The Reverie was so damn good) I had to go for Saturnine as my top pick for 2020. My friend Greg (from The Imperial Truth podcast) says it’s the best BL book he’s ever read, and while I’m not sure I’m quite ready to say that just yet…it’s got to be close. It really does have everything you could want in an action-packed military SF book, and when taken in context of the Horus Heresy as a whole it just does such a good job of bringing together so many awesome character arcs while at the same time pushing forward with the Siege of Terra. It’s almost worth reading the whole Heresy just so you can get the most out of this phenomenal book!
Best short story of 2020: A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark
I genuinely could have picked a dozen or more stories to highlight here, including (but not limited to) JC Stearns’ Voice of Experience, CL Werner’s The Perfect Organism, Tamsyn Muir’s The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex, Lavie Tidhar’s Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law, Chris Wraight’s Child of Chaos, Edgar Cantero’s There’s a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed…the list goes on. I settled on A Dead Djinn in Cairo because it’s unlike anything I’ve read before – or at least, it’s full of familiar ideas and concepts but wrapped up in a world and a style that I’d never previously come across. I haven’t yet got round to reading more from Clark, but this one story has lit a fire under me that I’m pretty sure won’t be extinguished until I’ve read everything he’s written – it really is that good!
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There you go, those were my highlights for the year just gone – a few decent positives which made up in some respects for all the rest of the year’s madness. Check out my 2020 in Numbers article for a roundup of the stats and top articles from last year, and all being well I’ll hopefully have another article coming soon in which I’ll look ahead to 2021 and my goals for the year.
If you fancy thinking of a few reading (or writing, if you’re a writer or reviewer) highlights from 2020 I’d love to hear them – whether they’re the best books you read, new authors or series you discovered, or anything else. Let me know in the comments below or get in touch on Twitter, and thank you once again for checking out Track of Words – let’s hope 2021 proves a great year!
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