Hello and welcome to the Track of Words Advent Calendar 2021! Every day from the 1st to the 25th December I’m going to be posting a new article on the site – it could be a book review, an author interview, a blog post, or something totally different! I’ve been running Track of Words since 2014 and every year I’ve published (at least) one post per day in December; it started off as a way of following the Black Library Advent Calendar series, where BL would release a new short story each day and I would publish my review of the story. Over the last couple of years it’s become less focused around BL reviews though as I’ve broadened things out to cover a wider range of SFF books, authors and publishers.
This time around I wanted to carry on in the same vein of covering the broad sweep of SFF but make things just a little more focused, so I’ve gone with a loose theme of ‘looking back at 2021 and looking ahead to 2022’. It’s not a hard and fast theme, but generally speaking I’m going to focus on books or publishing trends from this year, or thinking ahead to what’s to come next year. Long-term Track of Words readers who like to hear about all things Black Library should find plenty to enjoy, but as with the last couple of years you can expect to read about books and authors from all across the industry.
There’s more to talk about than just a theme, though – this year I’m not just going to be publishing author interviews and my own reviews and articles. I’ve got a few of those lined up for sure, but I’m also going to be welcoming a range of authors and publishing professionals to Track of Words, each of whom has very kindly contributed a post of their own to this year’s Advent calendar! I won’t spoil any of the surprises, but suffice to say you can look forward to guest reviews and blog posts from some fantastic authors, many of whom will be familiar to regular Track of Words readers, plus a few other treats as well. I hope you’re as excited to read all of these articles as I am to publish them!
Think of this article as a sort of landing page, where each day I’ll add a link below to the new post. So make sure you bookmark this page, and keep checking back every day!
Day 1: Prologues & Premonitions – Peter McLean Guest Post
Day 2: Carrie Harris Talks Witches Unleashed (plus sample chapters)
Day 3: A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark – Josh Reynolds Guest Review
Day 4: Best of Black Library 2021
Day 5: Richard Lee Byers Talks The Rebels of Vanaheim (plus sample chapters)
Day 6: Original Fiction: Valkyrie by Danie Ware
Day 7: Mischief, Power and Tricksters – Gabriela Houston Guest Post
Day 8: The Hood by Lavie Tidhar (review)
Day 9: S.A. Sidor Talks Cult of the Spider Queen (plus sample chapters)
Day 10: Don’t Give Up: 2021 as a Debut Author – Marc Collins Guest Post
Day 11: The Twice-dead King: Ruin by Nate Crowley – Victoria Hayward Guest Review
Day 12: Black Library in 2022
Day 13: Gwendolyn Nix Talks School of X (plus sample chapters)
Day 14: Things I Read & Loved in 2021 – Lora Gray Guest Post
Day 15: The Most Popular Reviews in 2021
Day 16: Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill – Graham McNeill Guest Review
Day 17: When Life Gives You Bushfires – Nate Crowley Guest Post
Day 18: The Spy Novels That Inspired Assassinorum: Kingmaker – Robert Rath Guest Post
Day 19: In Praise of Susanna Clarke
Day 20: Adrian Tchaikovsky Talks Day of Ascension
Day 21: Horror Fiction & Visual Media – David Annandale Guest Post
Day 22: To Judge a Book by its Cover – Thomas Parrott Guest Post
Day 23: Best SFF Books of 2021
Day 24: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers – Rob Young Guest Review
Day 25: TBR: SFF Books Coming in 2022
So that’s all 25 of this year’s Advent Calendar posts! I really hope you enjoy all of these articles, and I’d love to hear what you think so please do let me know in the comments below or over on Twitter.
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