Category Archives: Cataveiro

Cataveiro and Tamaruq: US ebooks now available

I’m very pleased to share that ebook editions of CATAVEIRO and TAMARUQ, Books Two and Three of The Osiris Project trilogy, are now available in the US. The ebooks are published by JABberwocky Literary Agency and are available on Amazon, Kobo and iTunes (Barnes and Noble to follow shortly). My huge thanks to JABberwocky for giving these books a digital home, and especially to Lisa Rodgers for coordinating their production.

You can find the ebooks via the following retailers:

Cataveiro: Amazon // Kobo // iTunes

Tamaruq: Amazon // Kobo // iTunes

OSIRIS, Book One of The Osiris Project, continues to be published by Night Shade Books and you can find it here:

Osiris: Kindle // Kobo // Nook

The beautiful new cover art for the US editions was created by Ben Baldwin, who I can’t recommend highly enough, and you can find out more examples of his work over at his website here.

Here’s Ben on the process of creating the artwork:

“For most of my work the image starts off as a combination of hand drawn or painted elements and photography. I scan/import these elements into my computer and then use a lot of Photoshop to assemble and create the final image. I also use a Wacom pen tablet which allows me to do some digital drawing directly in Photoshop. So the images are basically a mix of different layers of traditional and digital techniques.”

And here’s the set together – as you can see, Ben’s done a brilliant job of tying in the new covers with the original US Osiris cover, to create a cohesive set for the trilogy. Enjoy!

Cataveiro paperback out today!

Cataveiro, Book Two of the Osiris Project, is out in paperback today!

Copies are available through Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones, and The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.

Here’s the synopsis:

A shipwreck. And one lone survivor.

For political exile Taeo Ybanez, this could be his ticket home. Relations between the Antarcticans and the Patagonians are worse than ever, and to be caught on the wrong side could prove deadly.

For pilot and cartographer Ramona Callejas, the presence of the mysterious stranger is one more thing in the way of her saving her mother from a deadly disease.

All roads lead to Cataveiro, the city of fate and fortune, where their destinies will become intertwined and their futures cemented for ever…

And a few reviews:

‘… the soulful latest instalment in The Osiris Project and a superior sequel… new lead characters, a fresh story and some real action… CATAVEIRO has a soulful, lonely quality as Taeo and Ramona embark on their solitary missions, haunted by memories of the past and visions of what lies ahead… Their imperfections keep them grounded and likeable, preventing EJ Swift from slipping into predictable and clichéd characterisation… as dystopian fiction goes it is an intriguing world to get lost in.’ – SciFiNow

‘… the standard dystopian set-up has given way to a compellingly drawn post-collapse world that feels scorchingly real and virtually limitless in its horizons. This is a very human book, a boldly compassionate book, a novel bulging with important questions about our own world which cannot fail to engage the sympathy and imagination of the reader.’ – Nina Allan

‘The characters within are fully rounded, have some wonderful little quirks and when added to the arc really generate a caring response within the reader. Back this up with great prose, solid pace work and of course some magical twists which, when backed with the authors own identifiable writing style all round, makes this a book that hit the spot for me as a reader. Top notch.’ – Falcata Times

‘Another beautifully-written novel… If you enjoy beautifully-written, literary science fiction, with less focus on being an action-packed blockbuster, then The Osiris Project is a must read.’ – Civilian Reader

And Osiris, the first book in the series, was reviewed over at J for Jetpack earlier this week:

‘Machiavellian politics, city in the sea, allegory for our times, great prose, human characters. An excellent debut novel that deserves to be read.’

Update on The Osiris Project in the US

A few people have asked me what’s happening with the next two books in The Osiris Project trilogy in the US, and I’m now able to give a proper update. Night Shade Books will continue to publish Osiris in print and ebook form, but they will not be publishing Cataveiro (Book 2) or the third installment in the trilogy.

For readers across the pond, if you’d like to get hold of a print copy of the Del Rey UK edition of Cataveiro, I’d recommend ordering from The Book Depository, which offers free delivery worldwide. The trade paperback edition is available now, and the smaller paperback will be published in September.

I’m also hoping to have a US ebook of Cataveiro available soon – more information to follow as I have it.

Publication day: Cataveiro

The UK edition of Cataveiro, second volume in The Osiris Project trilogy, was released this week from Del Rey UK in trade paperback and ebook. Del Rey have done a truly beautiful job with the cover and I’m delighted to see the book out in the world.

Second novels are notoriously tricky and it was important to me to create something that could stand on its own, as well as being a sequel. Here’s a bit more about the book:

A shipwreck. And one lone survivor.

For political exile Taeo Ybanez, this could be his ticket home. Relations between the Antarcticans and the Patagonians are worse than ever, and to be caught on the wrong side could prove deadly. For pilot and cartographer Ramona Callejas, the presence of the mysterious stranger is one more thing in the way of her saving her mother from a deadly disease.

All roads lead to Cataveiro, the city of fate and fortune, where their destinies will become intertwined and their futures cemented for ever…

I was really happy to see Nina Allan’s review of the book over at The Spider’s House. You can read the full review on her blog, but here’s an extract:

“… the standard dystopian set-up has given way to a compellingly drawn post-collapse world that feels scorchingly real and virtually limitless in its horizons. This is a very human book, a boldly compassionate book, a novel bulging with important questions about our own world which cannot fail to engage the sympathy and imagination of the reader. I try to avoid the term worldbuilding wherever possible, but I have to concede that I found the worldbuilding in Cataveiro to be a thing of great beauty: both robust and poetical and – that word again – enviably assured.”

I’ll be blogging and guest posting more about the book over the next month or so, and Del Rey will be hosting an extract which I’ll link to once it’s up.

You can order a copy of Cataveiro through Random House here, or via your preferred retailer (links for Amazon, Waterstones, and Foyles.)

First sighting of Cataveiro!

Great excitement today when a box of brand new UK editions of Cataveiro arrived in the post. This book has been a long time in the works, and it’s both wonderful and a bit scary to see it in its final, physical form, knowing it will soon be out in the world. I’m so thrilled with this cover, which features Ramona’s aeroplane, Colibrí (the Spanish word for hummingbird).

Here it is in its multitudes:

And next to a suite of Osiris compadres!

Cataveiro is released from Del Rey UK on 20 February. You can read more about it on the Del Rey website.

Year’s end, and the year ahead

Ends/beginnings of years inevitably call for round-ups, and 2013 has been an eventful one. On the writing front, I was thrilled to see the UK debut of Osiris with Del Rey UK in its trade, audio, and paperback forms, and the Osiris US paperback released in August with Night Shade Books, now part of Skyhorse Publishing. I finished work on the second in The Osiris Project trilogy, Cataveiro (pronounced ca-ta-veh-ro), which is scheduled for publication in February 2014, UK trade paperback, and July 2014, US hardback. I also had a short story, Saga’s Children, in the solar-system themed Pandemonium anthology The Lowest Heaven, and saw The Complex reprinted in Best British Fantasy 2013. I’m now working on the third novel in The Osiris Project and this will be the focus for the first half of 2014. After that – well, plans are in the works.

For the last few years I’ve kept a record of books read, and after some slightly disconcerting analysis of my own reading habits I made a decision that from last year I would read an equal ratio of male and female authors. A lot of the writers that I came to love at university, when I had more time to read than I probably ever will again, were male – looking back, and thinking about the bias of the course curricula, this is no real surprise. So this year I’ve split my reading 50-50.

In total I read 26 novels, 13 male and 13 female authors, plus a few anthologies. As part of my research for Cataveiro I discovered some superb Spanish and Portuguese-speaking authors, and would particularly recommend Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial, Roberto Bolaño’s Last Evenings On Earth, Chico Buarque’s Budapest, and Bernardo Carvalho’s Nine Nights. I started but haven’t yet finished Lygia Fagundes Telles’ The Girl In The Photograph. I found recommendations for several other female writers I would have liked to read but alas, couldn’t find a translation. Meanwhile, Bolaño’s epic 2666 is still on the shelf, awaiting its moment.

I’m usually a year behind with new releases as I tend to wait for the paperback (hardbacks are beautiful but I can’t bear to see them get messed up on the tube, and although I love my Kindle, as a writer there is no substitute for a library you can flick through) so I caught up on a number of older releases. I read a lot of brilliant fragmented novels this year: Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgeway, Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta, Communion Town by Sam Thompson, The Race by Nina Allan. I’d thoroughly recommend the beautiful and haunting All The Birds Singing by Evie Wyld, and was delighted to find Jennifer Egan’s Look At Me to be just as clever, funny and touching as one of my favourite novels of recent years, A Visit from the Goon Squad. My last read of 2013, What Lot’s Wife Saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou is a clever, intriguing conundrum of a novel.

Going to be spoiled for choice for reading in 2014: I want to catch up on novels by Aminatta Forna (The Hired Man), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah), Eleanor Catton (The Luminaries or The Rehearsal), and Kate Atkinson (Life After Life), just for a start, and of course, a new David Mitchell novel, The Bone Clocks, out in September.

Here’s to 2014!

Progress on CATAVEIRO

A progress report, and a few updates:

Last week I sent the manuscript of CATAVEIRO, Book Two of The Osiris Project, to my editors at Night Shade Books and Del Rey UK. I’m beyond happy to have reached the stage where I can look forward to receiving editorial feedback, and coming at the MS with a fresh eye in a couple of weeks or so. All being well, CATAVEIRO is scheduled for August 2013 from Night Shade, and September 2013 from Del Rey UK.

I started some very early work on CATAVEIRO a few years ago, but in between completing my initial draft of OSIRIS and signing with Night Shade, I ended up writing a novel completely unrelated to the trilogy (now consigned to a drawer until post-Osiris Project), so one of the biggest challenges in writing the second book has been feeling my way back into a very different headspace, whilst at the same time promoting OSIRIS – another huge learning curve. It’s a balance I hope I’ll get better at over the next year, as I begin work on Book 3. Meanwhile, I owe endless thanks to my brilliant sister Kim who has read and advised on the versions I wouldn’t dare show anyone else. I keep telling her she should be an editor…

With the UK release, OSIRIS has seen some new reviews – I’ve tried to ban myself from reading them whilst completing the new manuscript, but the odd tweet, FB and email I’ve received over the last few weeks about OSIRIS has been a massive boost and an incentive to put in those final, difficult hours on the sequel – so thank you!

Anthology news – the table of contents for The Lowest Heaven anthology from Pandemonium was announced on the Pornokitsch blog on Friday, and includes my story Saga’s Children. So excited about this, and just looking at that list of contributors makes me feel immensely humbled to be a part of it. The Lowest Heaven will be published in June 2013.

Briefly, some reading recommendations from the start of the year:

Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer – what a gorgeous piece of storytelling. I have huge envy. Gargantuan. Bring on Trafalgar. And please someone translate more of her work!
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson – well, she is one of my heroes, and this memoir doesn’t disappoint.
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil – a sinuous dream of a novel. Stories within stories within stories.
Budapest by Chico Buarque – a Brazilian ghostwriter becomes obsessed with the Hungarian language. Clever, surreal and poetical.

A couple of short stories – I loved Immersion by Aliette de Bodard and Strigoi by Lavie Tidhar, both of which I believe are available online.

Currently reading: dipping in and out of Aloft by William Langewiesche, and now well into the rather dazzling Communion Town by Sam Thompson. At some point I must write a post on some of the books that have inspired CATAVEIRO – there have been some wonderful discoveries. But that’s all for today.