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.
November’s Posts
If you read October’s roundup you’ll know that last month was pretty quiet, but I’ve got back into my usual rhythm for November and this post you’re reading makes it nine for the month (and that’s despite an annoying website problem that stopped me posting for a while). Only one review (plus a review roundup) this month, with the rest being articles and author-contributed posts.
Surprise! (or I Bet You Did See That Coming) – Matthew Ward Guest Post – the first of two posts from the excellent Matthew Ward (for his latest blog tour, and on a double-post day no less), this fascinating guest post sees Matthew explore the topic of surprises in fiction, including why we enjoy them so much as readers, and some ideas for how to incorporate them as writers.
Exclusive Excerpt: The Darkness Before Them by Matthew Ward – the second post on my day of Matthew’s latest blog tour, this excerpt gives you the chance to whet your appetite for his new novel The Darkness Before Them, and get a sense for what to expect! And then you can head straight out and buy a copy of the book!
Five AoS Books That Deserve Sequels (But Probably Won’t Get Them) – it’s a strange fact about Black Library’s Age of Sigmar range that besides the Gotrek Gurnisson novels there’s a notable lack of trilogies or series, with most AoS novels being standalone stories. I’ve picked out five AoS novels that I’d love to see expanded out into trilogies or series, although in most of these cases I think that ship has long ago sailed. Still, we can hope!
A Lot of Very Short Chapters – recently I’ve read a couple of wildly different novels which were both structured using very short chapters, to…let’s say varying degrees of success (in my opinion). In this article I compare the two books and talk about why I think one worked better for me than the other, and generally explore the purpose and risks of this sort of structural choice in novels.
40k Reading Order: Minka Lesk – Justin D. Hill – it’s been a while since my last 40k reading order, but with the generous assistance of Justin himself I’ve put this together to provide as clear a picture as possible of the chronological order for the Minka Lesk stories (plus a few other of Justin’s Cadian stories).
Exclusive Excerpt From In the Shadows of Their Dying by Anna Smith Spark and Michael R. Fletcher – my second book excerpt of the month, this is a snippet of the upcoming novella from Grimdark Magazine, co-written by two of the big names in Grimdark fantasy!
The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer – while this is a bit different to my usual fare, being more ‘magical-meaning-heartwarming’ than ‘magical-with-actual-spells’, it’s absolutely one of my books of the year. If you need a hug in a book, and you like the idea of a modern, grown up-centric interpretation of a Dahl classic, I can definitely recommend checking this out!
Short and Sweet – November 2023 – this month’s trio of short reviews includes a pair of Black Library novels (one of which is an absolute monster) and a strange little modern fantasy novella. Lots of interesting elements in all three, but I have to say I found every one of them a little bit hard going.
My November
After taking a break in October to rest up for a bit, I got back into the swing of things this month – and not just working on the site, but generally just getting back to all of my usual routines. I said this last month, but it’s worth reiterating: taking that break was absolutely the right thing to do! It gave me the chance to rest and get better physically, and also to gently nudge myself back on course psychologically as well, and I’ve really felt the benefits this month. So if you’re feeling tired, ill, burned out or anything like that, whether you run a website or do anything else, I would definitely recommend giving yourself a break and taking some time to unwind!
Interestingly, in terms of working on the site this month I’ve felt much more in the mood to work on articles than book reviews. That might have been partially down to the books I chose to read – lots of ‘just for fun’ reads, along with a couple directly related to Advent posts that you’ll see next month – but I think I also go through phases of having the energy and enthusiasm for article writing. Maybe this was just the right time for it! Certainly I did enjoy putting together my latest 40k reading order article, and likewise writing about the problem with Black Library’s Age of Sigmar range with its dearth of trilogies or series (an article I’d been meaning to write for ages). The article about short chapters was a spur of the moment thing that I decided to write after finishing The End and the Death Volume 2 – a book that’s generated more conversation among BL readers than anything I’ve seen for a long time!
I mentioned earlier that I’ve been doing lots of prep for the Advent Calendar series that I’ll be running in December. If you haven’t seen my previous Advent Calendars, here are the links to the landing pages for each of them: the 2021 series and the 2022 series. The idea is that I post something every day in the run up to Christmas, inviting SFF authors to contribute guest posts, interviews, guest reviews etc. alongside a few of my own posts, and hopefully exploring a broad range of viewpoints on what’s been happening – and is going to happen – in SFF publishing. I’ve had a lot of fun putting together the previous series, and while it’s always a lot of work (certainly proving that way this year) it’s definitely worth it for the end result. I hope you’ll keep checking back throughout December to read all the different articles, interviews and reviews – let me know what you think!
While this is the third year I’ve done an Advent series (after several years of reviewing BL’s Advent short stories throughout December), I’m actually approaching the end of my 10th year running Track of Words. It feels weird to say that, and very strange to think that I’ve been doing this for almost a decade. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to do next year, and how Track of Words fits into that, so keep an eye out for an article coming soon-ish (maybe during Advent, maybe a little after) in which I’m going to be talking about my plans for next year and onwards.
Reading Update
November has been another great month for me on the reading front, in terms of time spent reading at least. I’m well on the way to matching last year’s total number of books read (see below), and I’ve been loving my audiobooks in particular this month. In terms of enjoyment, I’ve had a bit of a hard time with a few of this month’s books, but nothing so difficult as to tempt me to give up on any of them, and the majority have been a real pleasure to read.
Interestingly, while I only published one full-length review in November I hardly read any (non-audio) books purely for fun. I tackled two in my Short and Sweet review roundup, read two as preparation for author interviews I’m planning for Advent, I’m planning a review of another, and lastly I reread a friend’s novel as part of some editorial work I’m doing for him. Maybe that’s why I went through so many audiobooks, to keep up my for-fun reading?
Anyway, to finish off let’s take the usual look at a few numbers:
- I read 15 books for the month (again – that’s two months running!), taking me to 139 for the year so far
- I said last month that it was looking doable to match 2022’s total of 150 for the year, and right now it’s looking very doable indeed! At this rate I might hit 154…
- Of those fifteen, a surprising 6 of them were audiobooks – that’s way more audios than I usually get through in a month. In large part that’s down to the fact that I’m really enjoying Val McDermid’s Kate Brannigan series of crime books, which are all about 8 hours long and very entertaining. It helps that they’re set in Manchester, a city I’m very familiar with
- After spending the year reading very little (for me) in the way of Black Library, I’m now starting to try and catch up a bit on my BL 2023 releases. I read three this month (The End and the Death Volume 2, Blacktalon and Cypher: Lord of the Fallen), and I’ll probably try and read another couple next month
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If you’re still reading this, thanks for sticking with me! I think that’s a good point at which to end this – like I said at the top, I’ve skipped my usual Cool SFF News section for this month, as I haven’t been keeping an eye on what’s been going on.
I hope there’s been something interesting for you this month, amongst everything I’ve posted. If you’ve got any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments below or on social media.
In the meantime, I hope you have a great December – happy reading, and I really hope you’ll enjoy the Advent Calendar series!
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