Author Archives: Michael

Secrets in Scarlet – edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells

Leaving Arkham behind and venturing out into the wider world, Aconyte Books’ Arkham Horror anthology Secrets in Scarlet – edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells – brings together nine authors with globetrotting tales of occult adventure, ancient mysteries and sinister clandestine organisations. Following government agents, artefact hunters, art thieves and more, these nine stories gradually build up a picture of competing agencies, cults and secret societies all searching for objects with the potential to unlock terrible powers, though whether to use those powers or prevent them from falling into the wrong hands remains to be seen. Some stories feature protagonists actively involved in this dangerous search, while others are merely caught in the middle, but one thing unites them all – the consequences of failure are utterly deadly.

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The Lies of the Ajungo – Moses Ose Utomi

Moses Ose Utomi’s fantasy debut The Lies of the Ajungo is a short, beautiful, heart-rending novella set in an Africa-inspired world of magic, monsters and manipulation. In the city of Tutu’s birth, the City of Lies, everyone aged 13 or older must sacrifice their tongue in exchange for a pittance of water from the powerful Ajungo Empire, enough to keep the city just about alive. Days before his 13th birthday, Tutu bravely ventures out from the city in search of water, determined to return a hero and save his ailing mother. Out in the Forever Desert he meets unexpected friends and dangerous enemies, and grows into himself as a man. The truths he learns, however, reveal the true darkness behind the City of Lies and the realities of the Ajungo.

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In the Coils of the Labyrinth – David Annandale

With his first Arkham Horror novel, In the Coils of the Labyrinth, David Annandale delivers a slow-burn tale of physical illness and mental torment that ably demonstrates why this is such a perfect author/setting combination. Worn down by what she’s long suspected is tuberculosis, Professor Miranda Ventham reluctantly checks herself into the Stroud Institute, Arkham’s newly-opened sanatorium. While the care she receives there seems genuinely beneficial to begin with, something about the Institute feels unsettling, and Miranda’s plagued by troubling, confusing dreams. Determined to understand what’s happening, and helped on the outside by her friend, parapsychologist Agatha Crane, Miranda sets out to learn what she can about the Institute and its director, Donovan Stroud. As dreams and reality become harder to tell apart though, the darkness at the heart of the Institute threatens to drag her down and never let her go.

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Demystifying the Pitch: Bone Armour by Victoria Hayward

I’m thrilled to be joined by the fantastic Victoria Hayward who’s very kindly written something a little different for Track of Words, with an intriguing article deconstructing one of her successful short story pitches, and providing a fascinating insight into this lesser-seen aspect of the writing process. Bone Armour was published in Grimdark Magazine, and I absolutely loved it – it’s a genuinely bleak, brilliant, unconventional science fiction story – so I was delighted when Victoria offered to write about her pitch for it. Writing story pitches can seem like something of a dark art, so this article is perfect for anyone interested in pitching their own stories, or indeed anyone who just enjoys a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the writing process. Oh, and keep reading for a short excerpt from Bone Armour too!

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Monthly Roundup – January 2023

Hello and welcome to the first Monthly Roundup post of 2023, here on Track of Words. I hope you had a great January – for me it’s been a pretty busy month with lots of reading (as usual) and a fair amount of writing, as I got myself back into gear for this, my tenth year of running Track of Words. As I always do with these roundups, I’m going to start things off with a recap of everything I posted on the site in January, so you can catch up on anything you might have missed. After that I’m going to do something a little different than usual, talking less about myself (which nobody really needs) and more about what’s going on in the world of SFF books, as I start to tweak the structure and purpose of these articles – so I hope you’ll keep reading, and let me know what you think!

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Short and Sweet – January 2023

Hello and welcome to my first Short and Sweet reviews roundup of 2023, where today I’m taking a quick look at a trio of books I read in January. It’s quite a fun mixture this month, combining gothic horror, contemporary fantasy(ish) and Warhammer fiction (specifically Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra), so hopefully there’s something of interest to you in here! As always with these review roundups, the idea is to take a fairly brief look at a few SFF books that for one reason or another I’m not going to cover in full reviews, but which I’m still keen to talk about. I’ve included buy-now links for each book – I’ll receive a small affilliate fee for anything ordered via these links.

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Godkiller – Hannah Kaner

Hannah Kaner blasts onto the epic fantasy scene with her debut novel Godkiller, an impressively tight and thrilling tale of vengeance, honour, murdered (and murderous) gods and sundered families. With civil war looming and enemies closing in, four disparate characters make their way to a ruined city in search of answers from the old gods – mercenary godkiller Kissen, troubled knight-turned-baker Elogast, and the bound-together duo of runaway young noble Inara and tiny god of white lies Skediceth. Despite their differences, and a conspicuous lack of trust, they find themselves travelling together, forced to rely on each other to survive the curses, demons, gods and men that bar their way to the war-ravaged city and the truths they hope to find there.

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The Mimicking of Known Successes – Malka Older

Set on a colony encircling Jupiter in a distant future, Malka Older’s genre-blending novella The Mimicking of Known Successes opens with Investigator Mossa looking into the disappearance of a university scholar assumed to have jumped or been pushed from a remote transit platform, thereafter presumably perishing in the gas giant’s freezing, punishing atmosphere. Back at the university she recruits her once-girlfriend Pleiti, also a scholar, to assist with her investigation, the two of them attempting to understand what might have prompted an almost universally disliked man to disappear. The deeper they dig the more the mystery thickens, becoming more dangerous than they could have expected, while their unexpected reunion inevitably stirs up old memories and emotions once thought laid to rest.

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Writing For Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 3: Writing Samples

Hello and welcome to the third and final instalment of my January 2023 edition of Writing For Black Library here on Track of Words – in this part our nine brilliant Black Library authors are discussing the tricky task of planning out short stories and putting together writing samples. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking out the previous two articles first: part one, in which we discussed writing 100-word story pitches, and part two, which was all about what makes a great Space Marine story. If you’ve already read both of those, read on to find out what advice and recommendations our authors have for writing short stories in general.

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Writing For Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 2: Space Marines

Welcome to the second in my three-part series of Writing For Black Library articles released to coincide with BL’s January 2023 Open Submissions window. For these articles I spoke to nine Black Library authors who kindly agreed to share their advice and ideas regarding three topics: pitch summaries, Space Marine stories, and generally writing short stories and samples. In Part 1 we covered writing pitches – if you haven’t already, definitely check that out – while for this second part the focus is on Space Marines. Specifically, I asked each of the authors this question: “What would you say makes a great Space Marine story?”

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