Hello and welcome to the final Track of Words post of 2022 – my Monthly Roundup for December, in which I’m going to look back at what’s been going on over the last month here on Track of Words. As it always is in December, it’s been pretty busy for me – I talked last month about the preparation that went into my Advent Calendar series, and this month it’s been all about getting each of those articles, guest posts, interviews etc. ready and up on the site. I’m quite looking forward to a considerably quieter January, but it’s actually been a lot of fun working on the Advent Calendar series, and I hope you’ve been enjoying all the posts this month. In this article I’ll give a recap of everything that I posted in December as usual, and then follow that up with a quick update talking about the Advent series and how things have gone in December in general.
December’s posts
This post you’re reading is my 32nd of the month, which is a bit mad when I think about it! Whether you’ve kept up with all of my December posts, you’ve dipped in and out, or you haven’t got around to reading any of them, I hope there’s at least a few things here that you’ll enjoy. On top of the Advent posts there’s also a few reviews and other bits and pieces that I posted right at the end of the month.
Advent Calendar Posts
I wanted this year’s Advent Calendar series to just be a celebration of everything I love about SFF, so there wasn’t a theme as such. I included a few of my own posts, but mostly it was about author (and reviewer) interviews, really interesting guest posts, and great original fiction, all from across the SFF spectrum.
Track of Words Advent Calendar 2022 – this is essentially the landing page for the Advent series, with links out to all 25 of the Advent posts.
Nicholas Binge – 12 SFF Books of Christmas – author of the upcoming Ascension, Nicholas wrote a great guest post looking back at six SFF books he loved in 2022 and six that he’s looking forward to in 2023.
RAPID FIRE: Steven B. Fischer Talks Witchbringer – insight from the fantastic author Steven B. Fischer about the inspiration and writing process for his recent Black Library debut novel, which is a cracking Imperial Guard story offering an unusual perspective on 40k.
Cath Lauria – Marvels and Monsters – with novels coming out in 2023 in both Marvel and Zombicide IPs, I thought it was a perfect moment to ask Cath to talk about what it’s liking writing in multiple worlds, and I love how well her enthusiasm and joie de vivre come through in this guest post.
Kate Dylan – Top 5 YA Sci-Fi Books – author of Mindwalker and the upcoming Mindbreaker, Kate is the perfect person to recommend a few great science fiction novels for YA readers. YA fantasy might rule the roost, but there’s plenty for SF fans too.
Best of Black Library 2022 – looking back on my BL reading in 2022, I picked out the five books released this year that I enjoyed reading the most, along with a selection of honourable mentions (because I can never keep these lists down to just 5) and a few that I didn’t manage to read, but do still want to.
Amanda Bridgeman – 10 Lessons From 10 Years in Publishing – drawing upon her experiences from a decade in the publishing industry, author Amanda Bridgeman (who’s written her own SF novels as well as stories for Black Library, Marvel and Pandemic) offers up advice and observations that are as wide-ranging as they are fascinating.
Author Spotlight: S.A. Tholin – I read Sofie’s brilliant novel Iron Truth a couple of years ago and loved it, so it was about time we chatted for an interview, especially in the light of her winning the inaugural Self Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC)! We talked about all sorts, from the inspirations and writing process for her Primaterre series to the realities of life as a self-published author.
John French – New Stories, Old Truths – John will be familiar to a lot of ToW readers for his fantastic Black Library fiction, but if you head over to his website he’s gradually building up an intriguing body of work exploring a new, standalone fantasy world and some brilliantly insightful writing advice. In this guest post John gives us the lowdown of what he’s using his website for and why.
The First King of All the Earth – Original Fiction by Edoardo Albert – I’m a huge fan of Edoardo’s writing so it’s an absolute honour to be able to exclusively publish one of his original short stories. This is part historical fiction, part fantasy, and a tale that’s deceptively powerful despite its brevity.
Ren Hutchings – Why We Love Ragtag Crews – author of the fantastic space opera Under Fortunate Stars, Ren uses this guest post to ponder why the idea of the ragtag crew – a disparate group of characters usually brought together by circumstance – remains such an endearingly popular trope in fiction, and science fiction in particular.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Mike Shackle Talks The Last War – with book three in this dark, powerful fantasy trilogy (Until the Last) having been published in 2022, now’s the perfect time to chat to Mike about the trilogy as a whole, his feelings now it’s all finished, the challenging writing process, and loads more.
The Keeper’s Six – Kate Elliott – my one review during the actual Advent Calendar series. I loved this portal fantasy novella, a tale of travelling magic, bureaucratic dragons, the spaces between realms, and a mother who’ll do whatever it takes to get her son back. I just wish there was more of it!
Shauna Lawless – The Rise of Historical Fantasy – author of The Children of Gods and Fighting Men (love that title), Shauna contributed a fantastic guest post exploring what the historical fantasy subgenre actually is and why it’s increasingly popular, and also offering some brilliant recommendations for readers keen to read more.
RAPID FIRE: David Guymer Talks Grombrindal – I chatted to David about this brilliant Age of Sigmar book, talking about how it went from a series of short stories in (appropriately) White Dwarf to a single volume complete with a whole extra novel, what it was like writing about the various different duardin sub-factions, and – perhaps most importantly – which type of duardin David thinks he would be!
Best SFF Books of 2022 – having already written about my top BL books, this time I picked out the 10 best general SFF books that I read this year, concentrating only on books published in 2022. It was pretty tricky to settle on just 10 as I’ve read loads of great books of late, but in the end this is a list packed full of absolute bangers!
Gav Thorpe – Coming Up For Air – the legendary Black Library author and ex-Warhammer Loremaster talks about how writing for Warhammer has changed over the nearly 30 years he’s been doing it, and how he’s been adapting his processes and approach recently to avoid burning out.
Author Spotlight: David Goodman – I’ve recently come across David’s writing through his two brilliant short stories published in Clarkesworld Magazine (you can read my review of Carapace here), and I’m really looking forward to being able to read more. In this fascinating interview we chatted about his writing process and inspirations, the different challenges of writing short and long-form fiction, and what his experiences have been like of sending novels out on submission.
Aliette de Bodard – Favourite Media in a Pandemic Year – author of the wonderful sapphic space opera The Red Scholar’s Wake, in this guest post Aliette tells us about some of the TV shows and video games that she’s been turning to for comfort over the last year. There are some fantastic recommendations in here!
Showtime – Original Fiction by J.S. Collyer – for the second piece of original fiction in this year’s Advent Calendar here’s a brilliant, dark story from J.S. Collyer which involves a dangerous, dystopian circus, a troublingly sinister ringmistress, and a very risky two-man act. It’s really great, I love it.
David Towsey – From One David To Another – Three Films That Influenced Equinox – David’s dark fantasy novel Equinox features one of the most intriguing and unconventional central ideas I’ve ever come across, and in this great guest post he discusses a trio of films from legendary director David Fincher that in some way influenced the book.
SFF Community Spotlight – Sarah Deeming From The British Fantasy Society – in the latest instalment of this ongoing interview series I chatted to the British Fantasy Society Reviews Editor about writing and commissioning reviews, supporting indie publishers, great SFF book recommendations, and loads more.
Lavie Tidhar – Paradigm Shift – author of way too many brilliant books to mention here and editor of the fantastic The Best of World SF anthologies from Head of Zeus, Lavie has a wonderful viewpoint on where the genre of science fiction is right now and where it might be going. I asked if he would write a sort of ‘state of the nation’ guest post for SF, and the resulting article is brilliantly written and utterly fascinating.
TBR: SFF Books Coming in 2023 – looking ahead to next year, I picked out the 10 (well…technically 11, but you’ll see what I mean if you read the post) books publishing in 2023 that I’m most looking forward to reading. There’s a chance that a couple of these might not actually come out next year, but I can’t wait to read them all as soon as I can get my hands on them.
V. Castro – Excerpts From Las Posadas and Hairspray & Switchblades – horror author V. Castro shares with us a couple of excerpts from her stories, including a Latinx Christmas (horror) story and a tale of shapeshifting jaguars.
ToW Advent 2022 – Collected Recommendations – to finish off the Advent Calendar I put together a mega list of SFF book/short story/website recommendations based on all of the guests who contributed to the Advent series. I invited these guests because I either love their writing or I’m keen to try out their work, so this list is a pretty thorough representation of what I love about SFF publishing!
Post-Advent posts
I had so many guest contributions to the Advent Calendar that there really wasn’t much room for my own reviews, so I only actually included one review in the main Advent series. Towards the end of December I did write a few more reviews though, so I kept up the one-a-day momentum and finished off the month with two book reviews, a short story review, a quick review roundup, and one last article.
A Few Thoughts On: Everybody Wins by James Wallis – Aconyte Books kindly sent me a review copy of this lovely coffee-table book, which looks at the last 40-plus years of board game design through the lens of the Spiel des Jahres award and the winning games from 1979 to 2022. I honestly didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did, but it’s really well written and put together, full of wit and insight from a real expert in and enthusiast for board games. Now I just want to go out and play a bunch of these games!
QUICK REVIEW: Aria Arcana – Peter Fehervari – continuing my coverage of Peter’s Dark Coil stories here’s a quick review of the latest instalment (story #17, short story #12), which was released as an e-short in December. It’s pretty weird even by Fehervari stories, but if you’re an existing Coil Traveller then there’s a lot to dig into here.
Short and Sweet – December 2022 – I’m enjoying putting these quick review roundups together, talking in brief about a few books that I wouldn’t otherwise have had time to cover. This time around I’m looking at Grombrindal by David Guymer, the Inferno! Presents The Emperor’s Finest 40k anthology, and Lina Rather’s novella Sisters of the Forsaken Stars.
Witchbringer – Steven B. Fischer – Black Library very kindly sent me a review copy of this dark, unconventional Imperial Guard novel, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve chatted to Steve in a couple of interviews (see earlier in this article for one, and here for the other) and I love the way he looks at 40k and ‘grimdark’ fiction in general. If you can, read the short stories The Weight of Silver and The Taste of Fire before tackling the novel – but even if not, this takes an enjoyably different approach to the usual Imperial Guard tropes, and is well worth checking out.
Finally! Series I’m Going to Start (At Last) – I always end up with loads of books that I want to read but that I never get around to, so for 2023 I’ve picked out 10 trilogies or series that I’m determined to at least make a start on…at last. I’m really looking forward to finally getting around to reading these, and hopefully I’ll review some or all of them over the course of next year.
General update
As you can probably imagine, December has been dominated by preparing and publishing all of the Advent Calendar posts. On the one hand putting this sort of series together is great because asking guests to write articles, do interviews or (very generously) contribute short stories means I have to do much less writing than if I wanted to do 25 reviews or articles of my own. On the other hand, there’s WAY more organisation involved, and it still takes a lot of work to put everything together, especially with the new style of graphics I’ve been using for the last month or so. I’m incredibly pleased with the end result though, and I’m so grateful to all 20 of the guests who contributed something this year – if you’re reading this, thank you (again) so much!
I think all of the Advent posts this year have gone down pretty well, and I really hope everyone who’s read any of them has enjoyed them. I think as a concept it works great, making December a really interesting month on ToW with a great sense of variety and diversity, and just loads of cool things to read about. Back when Black Library used to do a 24-day Advent Calendar of their own, with a new short story or short audio drama published every day between the 1st and 24th December, I used to read each story in the morning and get a review written and published later that day. This was of course exhausting, but kinda fun at the same time, but it was very much a representation of ToW at that time – i.e. very Warhammer-focused. These days I cover much less BL stuff and a much wider variety of SFF, and I think my Advent Calendar series reflects this.
I’d love to know what you – the ToW readers – think of the Advent Calendar, and what you’d like to see on the site in future, whether in 2023’s Advent series or in reviews, interviews, articles and guest posts in general. If you have any feedback, questions, ideas or suggestions, please do drop them into the comments below, let me know on Twitter, or send me an email at michael@trackofwords.com. Likewise if you’re an SFF author, publishing professional, blogger/reviewer or anything else along those lines, and you’d be interested in getting involved and writing something for Track of Words, I’d be very happy to hear from you!
Advent aside, December has been a decent month for me on the reading front. At the time of writing this I’ve read 11 books (including 2 in audio) and may well finish another one by the end of the month, which would take me up to a whopping 150 for the year as a whole! I’ll talk more in a future post about my overall 2022 reading goals and achievements so I won’t go into any more detail on that front here, other than to say (again) that I’ve had a lot of fun reading this month, and this year as a whole. And that’s the most important thing, right? I’ve made a conscious effort to not worry about putting books aside if I’m not enjoying them, which has meant that I’ve mostly (although not entirely) concentrated on books that I’ve genuinely really enjoyed.
Again, I’ll talk in another post about overall stats and achievements for Track of Words across the whole of 2022, but it’s worth mentioning here that this post you’re reading is not just my 32nd of December, but my 125th and final post of 2022! Now 125 is a pretty small number compared to the crazy 348 I posted in 2018, and is in fact the lowest number since my first year of running ToW (113 in 2014), but it’s still a decent amount of content, and a number that I’m very happy with. Running a site like this (which I do completely on my own – nobody else helps me with this) is a lot of work, and over the years my enthusiasm for it has waxed and waned, but with the Advent Calendar series as a real high point I’m finishing the year feeling pretty good about things. If you’ve read even one post this year (and you’re reading this, so you have!) then I’d like to say thanks for visiting the site, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it!
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So there we go, that’s my final roundup of 2022 finished – if you’ve got to this point, thanks for keeping reading and for sticking with me this long! I might change up how I do these posts in 2023, so keep checking back and we’ll see what happens when it gets to the end of January.
In the meantime, all that’s left is to say that I hope you had a great December and a lovely Christmas if you celebrate it (hopefully with lots of great new books to look forward to reading), and to wish you a happy New Year. I’ll see you back here in 2023!
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