Author Archives: Michael

Writing for Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 1: Pitching

Every year or two, Black Library announces an Open Submissions Window – a short period of time during which anyone can pitch a short story to the BL editorial team. Towards the end of 2022 BL announced that its next open subs window will begin in January 2023, with a specific theme of stories exploring Space Marine successor Chapters. In previous years I’ve put together articles and interviews full of advice from Black Library authors on how to pitch and write short stories, but it’s been a while since I’ve done that so now seems like a good time to do another one. Or, to be precise, another three! If you’re interested in writing for BL in general, and submitting to this open subs window in particular, I think you’ll find a lot of interest in these articles.

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2023 Plans and Goals

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but over the nine years (and counting) that I’ve been running Track of Words I’ve found it useful to set myself some rough goals for each year, and spend some time thinking about what I want to achieve with the site. It’s useful to have things to be working towards as I’m planning and writing new content, as long as I give myself enough flexibility to be able to change things or decide to focus elsewhere if need be (I also don’t like hard and fast goals like “I’m only going to read X”, as I don’t want my reading to feel prescriptive). You can read about the goals I set for 2022 here, and how I got on with them here, but in this article I’m going to look ahead to what I’m hoping to achieve in 2023. I’ll start off by talking in general terms about how I see the year going, and then look at some specific goals I’ve set myself for the site, and for my own reading.

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Yearly Roundup – 2022 Numbers and Goals

As 2022 comes to a close it’s time for my usual yearly roundup post, where I look back at the last twelve months on Track of Words. It’s strange to think that 2023 will be my 10th year of running this site – I’m still not sure how this went from something to do just to keep me occupied, into something that I’ve committed a huge amount of time to over nearly a decade! Anyway, at the end of the site’s 9th year let’s have a quick look at how things have been going recently. As usual with these posts, I’ll go through some stats for things like number of posts/words and number of page views/site visits, then talk a bit about the goals I set for the year and how I did with those.

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Monthly Roundup – December 2022

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.

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Finally! Series I’m Going to Start (At Last)

Like pretty much everyone else, I find there are always too many books I want to read and not enough time in which to read them, so I inevitably end up having a bunch of books that I really, really want to read…but never get around to. With that in mind, in 2023 I’m planning on making an active effort to look back at books that have been on my TBR list for a while but which I haven’t managed to get to. In particular, I’ve picked out 10 trilogies or series which I haven’t yet started but have been meaning to, and I’m going to at least make a start on each one. Ideally I’d like to read the whole trilogy/series (or at least whatever’s been published so far) in each case but I might not manage that, so the plan is to read at least the first book from all 10.

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Witchbringer – Steven B Fischer

After a trio of excellent 40k short stories, Steven B. Fischer makes his Black Library novel debut with Witchbringer, a bleak tale of the Astra Militarum told from the viewpoint of a newly-trained sanctioned psyker. Once a captain in the Cadian 900th before her burgeoning powers saw her shipped off to the Scholastica Psykana, no sooner has Glavia Aerand completed her gruelling training than a portent-filled vision sees her unhappily assigned back to her old regiment, who are embroiled against Traitor Guard on the miserable, mist-shrouded world of Visage. Finding fear and mistrust where once there was comradeship, Glavia has to fight to find a place in the regiment, while trying to understand what lies behind the mysteries of the gloomy, waterlogged world she finds herself on (including the unusually high rate of psykers it generates), and the fate of her missing mentor.

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Short and Sweet – December 2022

Hello and welcome to the third instalment of Short and Sweet, my ongoing series of short review roundups. I’m using these roundups to gather together a few brief thoughts on books that I’ve been reading recently but haven’t been able to write full reviews for, concentrating as always on my usual SFF fare. If you’re a Black Library reader, it’s worth pointing out that this is where you’re likely to find most of my BL content in future! In this instalment I’m going to talk about a pair of Black Library books – an Age of Sigmar novel (sort of) and a 40k short story anthology – and a science fiction novella that’s a sequel to something I read and loved in 2019. I could have included more books in this roundup, but I’m going to try and stick to three each time as a nice balanced amount to write about (and for each one I’ve included buy-now links – I’ll receive a small affilliate fee for anything ordered via these links).

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QUICK REVIEW: Aria Arcana – Peter Fehervari

The 17th instalment (short story number 12) in Peter Fehervari’s incredible Warhammer 40,000 Dark Coil series, Aria Arcana takes place during the finale of Requiem Infernal, offering a little insight into what the Angels Resplendent of the Ninth Rhapsody were doing as the city of Sophia Argentum burned. In the midst of the madness, Epistolary Ignacio Verlaine and a squad of Angels Resplendent patrol the storm-wracked skies waiting for revelation. When their gunship is destroyed, Verlaine falls from the sky only to find himself on an unexpected path that leads him inexorably towards the light of the Candelabrum, the great cathedral of the Koronatus Ring, and the destiny it heralds.

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A Few Thoughts On: Everybody Wins by James Wallis

Before I talk about James Wallis’ excellent board game retrospective Everybody Wins, out now from Aconyte Books, I have a confession to make: I enjoy a good board game now and then, but I’m really not what you’d call an aficionado. I’ve never played Catan, I have in fact only played three of the games featured here (Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Camel Up), and these days most of my involvement with any kind of games comes from reading IP fiction and enjoying the background rather than the games themselves. When Aconyte very kindly sent me a review copy of Everybody Wins I honestly thought I’d dip in and out of this very nicely-presented coffee table book, but right from the first page it had me hooked and wanting to keep reading, and what’s more it’s got me thinking about actually playing games again for the first time in…well, in ages.

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ToW Advent 2022 – Collected Recommendations

After 24 days of brilliant guest posts, insightful author interviews and compelling original fiction (and a few roundup posts from me), the Track of Words Advent Calendar has come to an end for its second year running. If you’ve been following the series from the start, I really hope you’ve enjoyed at least some – if not all – of the content, while if this is your first engagement with the series I’d strongly recommend you skip to the main article and check out all the great posts there! Either way, now we’ve reached the end of the Advent Calendar I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who contributed to the series, without whom it would have been a quieter and much less interesting month on Track of Words!

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