Tag Archives: Writing Resources

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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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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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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Writing Resources on Track of Words

While Track of Words was originally conceived as a site purely for book reviews, over the years it’s expanded to include author interviews, blog posts, and various (hopefully) useful resources for readers and fans of science fiction, fantasy and horror. In the last couple of years I’ve also published quite a few articles and interviews aimed at anyone interested in writing SFF and horror, and I’ve got plans for lots more in this vein. With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to have a single source for all these resources, where I can link out to everything that I’ve created so far and keep updated as and when new resources become available.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Tim Waggoner Talks Writing in the Dark

Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, my ongoing series of quick interviews with authors talking about their new releases. These are short and sweet interviews, with the idea being that each author will answer (more or less) the same questions – by the end of each interview I hope you will have a good idea of what the new book (or audio drama) is about, what inspired it and why you might want to read or listen to it.

This time around I spoke to veteran horror writer Tim Waggoner about his new book Writing in the Dark, a guide to writing horror stories which is packed full of advice, suggestions, exercises and inspiration from Tim’s decades of writing experience. It’s available to order now from Raw Dog Screaming Press, and if you have any interest in writing horror then this is the book for you!

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Writing for Black Library – Pitching Warhammer Horror (Part Two)

Welcome to the second part of Writing for Black Library – Pitching Warhammer Horror, in which another seven fantastic authors talk about writing horror short stories and pitching Warhammer Horror stories in particular. If you haven’t already, I would recommend you first check out these two interviews: Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror and part one of Writing for Black Library – Pitching Warhammer Horror. Assuming you’ve read both of those, check this out for loads more great advice, ideas and suggestions that I hope will prove helpful whether you’re preparing a pitch for this year’s Black Library open submissions window or you’re just interested in writing horror stories in general.

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Writing for Black Library – Pitching Warhammer Horror (Part One)

With the Black Library Open Submissions window themed around Warhammer Horror this year, I asked over a dozen fantastic authors for their thoughts on what makes a great horror short story, and their advice on writing and pitching a Warhammer Horror story to Black Library. I’ve already published the results of one conversation in my article Writing For Black Library – Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror, and I’ve gathered together the thoughts of the remaining authors to give you as broad a range of opinions, ideas and advice as possible to help you plan your submission this year. There’s way too much for just a single article, so I’ve split things into two parts, of which this is the first!

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Writing for Black Library – Alec Worley Talks Pitching Warhammer Horror

Welcome to this instalment of Writing for Black Library, in which the fantastic Alec Worley offers some amazing advice, ideas and suggestions for writing and pitching Warhammer Horror stories. The 2020 Black Library Open Submissions window is opening in October (for just two weeks) and this time around it’s focusing specifically on Warhammer Horror. I thought it might be interesting to ask Alec about not just writing horror stories but also the difficult job of pitching them to editors, so this interview covers quite a wide range of topics which I hope will be of use to anyone planning on submitting a story. There’s really no better time to tap into the considerable experience of an industry pro like Alec!

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Writing for Black Library – Summer of Writing 2019

The 2019 Black Library open submissions window has been officially confirmed – with the tagline “comrades in arms”, no less, as part of a summer of writing – and it’s running from the 26th August to the 23rd September. Check out my article Black Library Open Submissions – 2018 Recap for a look back at 2018’s open submissions window, including thoughts on some of the authors who successfully made it through, but in this article I’m going to talk a little about the guidelines for the 2019 window, and provide some useful resources for anyone interested in submitting including nterviews with some of the authors who successfully made it through and had stories published by Black Library.

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