Category Archives: Osiris

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.’

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!

In the post today…

A library edition of the UK audio book for OSIRIS, all 12 CDs of it. The UK paperback was also released earlier this month:

Both are available on Amazon/Audible.

US paperback for Osiris

A quick update to say that the US paperback edition of Osiris was released this week. US folks, you can get hold of a copy on Amazon here or Barnes and Noble here.

A few extracts from reviews below, and more over on my links and reviews page:

‘A fantastic blend of world-building, excellent storytelling and complex characters… An engrossing story from start to finish… Osiris would still be good if all it had was world-building, but it offers so much more by way of plot and storytelling. The thrust of the narrative is the motivation of the characters… forces readers to ask themselves what it would take to spur them to action. Now combine this with the other interesting elements of the book like political intrigue, subterfuge, the way the story is told from alternating viewpoints… and you can see why OSIRIS shines. It’s that kind of impressive storytelling that makes OSIRIS hard to put down, and when you have to put it down, something that you remain eager to pick up again.’ – SF Signal

‘Swift’s first novel, with its brilliant near-future vision of an ecologically and socially devastated world and characters who resonate with life and passion, marks her as an author to watch.’ – Library Journal

‘Here is an assured and accomplished debut novel from a writer we’re sure to hear more from in the future. Swift’s intensely observed interplay between the two principals mirrors in microcosm the obstacles to easing tensions between the factions. This is the beauty of the picture – the brushstrokes are broad but look closer and you will discern incredible detail. An absolute gem – there are many who would do well to take note of what this book says.’ – Interzone (#246, May-June 2013)

‘… Swift’s writing is exceptional, vivid and compelling… I found OSIRIS to be a novel that deserves to be read. Swift’s talent as a writer can’t be questioned, and it’s clear to me that there exists an intent behind her work. It lends a depth that helped me persevere, not only to finish, but to anticipate the sequel. I’m hopeful that other patient readers will take the time to find the beauty in it that I ultimately did.’ – Staffer’s Book Review

Music and Suffolk fields

This weekend saw an expedition to Suffolk for Latitude Festival, where I was speaking as part of the Ebury Does… programme. It was my first time at Latitude and as glorious as the music was the chance to get out of London for a few days and switch off the phone.

My talk was on the Friday. I tracked down the Ebury tent in the morning (located in the suitably whimsical Faraway Forest) and found the team setting up after a hellish 9-hour drive from London the previous day. A couple of hours later I returned for my talk and found the tent full of cushions, beanbags, deckchairs, and of course books, including a very shiny array of Del Rey UK titles. I was truly delighted when people turned up for the talk as the tent was a little off the beaten track and I had no idea how it might go. I read the prologue from Osiris and spoke about my influences, how I got into SF, and my inspiration for the trilogy. However, SF readers are everywhere, as I later ended up talking to a group of French electro swing musicians from Toulouse, one of whom recommended some French SF for me after a conversation in Franglais about George Orwell, and my housemate helpfully describing Osiris in his (far better than mine) French.

The rest of the weekend I was free to relax and enjoy the music. Highlights were Beth Orton, who had the crowd mesmerised and was just a joy to hear; Josephine singing with guitar in a small tent away in the forest – her voice was even more stunning live than on her album; the Mark Lanegan Band being generally cool; Laura Mvula; and Everything Everything. I’m always interested in how some artists are far better recorded and others live, and I’d see all of these again. I caught a few songs of Daughter, who I hadn’t heard before, and bought her album as soon as I got home (in fact I’m listening to it as I write this). I also saw the Ballet Boyz on the waterfront stage performing a piece by Russell Maliphant, I think called ‘Falling’, which was spectacular, and reminded me once again just how powerful contemporary ballet can be.

This week it’s back to digital screens and reality. Cataveiro is almost signed off on the edits front and I’ll be getting stuck into Book 3 in the next few weeks. Onward…

OSIRIS launch – Forbidden Planet

It’s been a week of great excitement with the UK release of OSIRIS on Thursday 7 February. Fittingly, I arrived home on Thursday night to discover that with perfect timing, Del Rey had sent a box full of OSIRIS books, which I greeted, as appropriate, with manic dancing, and just about managed to save from Velma’s muddy paws and claws.

Friday was the big day: a joint launch at Forbidden Planet with Liesel Schwarz, author of A CONSPIRACY OF ALCHEMISTS. I was thrilled to be sharing the day with Liesel, who looked beyond awesome in full steampunk garb, including corset and a hat of which I professed great envy (Camden, apparently, is the place to go). The lovely people at Forbidden Planet had a stack of books for us to sign after which we were whisked out in Madonna-style headsets. We each read our prologues and had a few questions from the audience, then it was off to the Phoenix Artist’s Club, a very cool bar which I must frequent more often, for celebratory drinks and general huzzahs.

Many many thank yous are owed to the team at Del Rey UK who organized such a fabulous event and have worked so hard on the book, and to the friends, family and Twitter pals who showed up to support me – you are wonderful! I had the usual dilemma of wanting to talk to everyone and never quite managing to have a full conversation with anyone, but suffice to say it was a wonderful night, and I went home feeling deeply proud and privileged to be part of the new Del Rey UK imprint.

A few photos from the event:

Today it has been very much back to reality and hard work as I continue editing CATAVEIRO. But the weekend has been capped off by a 4* review of OSIRIS in SFX magazine, which concludes with: ‘it’s the characters, and what their lives show us of the fascinating, stratified world of Osiris, that are the heart of this promising debut novel.’ Happy days!

A Conspiracy of Authors

Halfway through January and it’s just a few weeks to go until the UK release of OSIRIS. Last week I received a copy of the final version of the book – the marvellous folk at Del Rey UK have done me proud, it’s a beautiful production, embossed title and all.

To celebrate the release, I’ll be reading/signing at Forbidden Planet on Friday 8 February with the brilliant Liesel Schwarz, whose steampunk novel A CONSPIRACY OF ALCHEMISTS is released on the same date. Do come along and say hello – we’d love to see you there!

A Conspiracy of Authors

Friday 08 February 2013 18:00 – 19:00
London Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR

Forbidden Planet are delighted to bring you a double signing with two of this year’s most exciting new talents! Liesel Schwarz and E. J. Swift will be at the London Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8JR, on Friday 8th February 2013.

Liesel’s ‘Conspiracy of Alchemists’ brings us a Golden Age where spark reactors power the airways, and creatures of Light and Shadow walk openly – and a deadly game of Alchemists and Warlocks has begun. When an unusual cargo drags airship-pilot Elle Chance into the affairs of the mysterious Mr Marsh, she must confront her destiny and do everything in her power to stop the Alchemists from unleashing a magical apocalypse.

In ‘Osiris’, E. J. Swift brings us Adelaide Rechnov, wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, who spends her spends time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family. In the impoverished Western Quarter lives Vikram Bai, poor descendant of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the coming brutal winter promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years. As tensions rise in the city, can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?

The Next Big Thing

The Next Big Thing is here! Or the next thing, or, the something. Last week Guy Adams tagged me in his next big thing blog. So here’s how it works: an author answers the ten questions below on her blog and then tags five authors/unfortunate victims to do so the week after. Answers on a postcard please…

1. What is the working title of your next book?

OSIRIS. (I’m cheating slightly because it’s already out in the US, but is forthcoming in the UK.)

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I wrote a novella called The Last Balloon Flight, a kind of fairy tale about a journey across a flooded world. I read Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynas. Somewhere between the two came the idea for an ocean city in a drastically altered world, and the characters just came out of that

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Science fiction or speculative fiction.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Adelaide is very beautiful and slightly evil in the beginning, but mellows as the book progresses. I have to cite the gorgeous Alexa Brown for Adelaide (who, for the record, is about as far from evil as you can imagine but here she is looking suitably epic in a trailer we made for the book:

Or, someone like Emily Blunt. Susan Sarandon would have to be Adelaide’s mother, because everyone needs Susan Sarandon in a film. And I can see Matt Smith working well for her brother Linus.

Vikram, my hero, is quite young but, as all central protagonists must be tortured, he has been through a lot. Shazad Latif, who was in the later series of the BBC’s series Spooks could work very well

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In a divided ocean city cut off from the rest of the world, miscreant socialite Adelaide meets revolutionary activist Vikram – and consequences ensue

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It’s published by Night Shade Books in the US and is forthcoming from Del Rey UK in February 2013.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About 12 months.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I always hate this question – people have (very kindly) told me it has echoes of China Miéville’s The City and The City and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Wind-up Girl, but I’m not sure either of those is quite apt. It might make more sense to cite my influences – writers like Philip Pullman, David Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, to name a few.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I had a very cinematic vision of the ocean city and I knew it wouldn’t go away until I found out who lived there.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

My friend Katy has just instructed me to say that it is a bodice ripper.

[This is a lie.]

[But there are shiny pyramid towers and waterbikes and underwater cells and coral tea and other things.]

And the authors I hereby tag for next week’s posting are:

Elizabeth Amisu. Writer, reviewer of film and fiction, and a lecturer in Film and English, Elizabeth was a winner in the Southend Literary Festival in 2010 and the MigMag.co.uk Short Story competition in January 2012. The first installment in her fantasy series The Sarcerdos Mysteries tells the story of Caelara, a young girl whose difficult existence with her alcoholic father is turned upside down when she discovers she has the power to manipulate the elements. But all will change when Caelara discovers the mysterious Sarcerdos Institute…

Bradley P Beaulieu. Brad is the author of The Winds of Khalakovo and The Straits of Galahesh, the first two volumes in his fantasy series The Lays of Anuskaya, published by Night Shade Books, and if you go to his website you can view funky interactive maps of the Lays world and other shiny things. In addition to being an L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award winner, Brad’s stories have appeared in various other publications, including Realms of Fantasy Magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Writers of the Future 20.

Betsy Dornbusch. Betsy’s epic fantasy novel Exile is forthcoming from Night Shade Books in February 2013. Betsy also launched her urban fantasy series Sentinel this year and has edited ezine Electric Spec for the last six years. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous print and online venues and in anthologies Tasty Little Tales and Deadly by the Dozen. She also does cool things like snowboarding, a fact of which I am immensely jealous.

Kameron Hurley. Kameron probably needs no introduction for lovers of genre fiction: her Bel Dame Apocrypha series has been published by Night Shade Books to widespread acclaim and she’s been nominated for a fair few awards along the way (and is the winner of a much coveted Golden Tentacle Kitschies Award for debut novel). Good news if you’re in the UK: Del Rey UK will be publishing the first in the series, God’s War, in 2013. Huzzah!

Colin Tucker. Writer and screen-writing coach Colin Tucker worked on award-winning television productions in the 70’s including PORTRAIT OF A MARRIAGE and AMONGST WOMEN. After retiring from producing, he switched to teaching at the London Film School while continuing to work as a script advisor. His short story THE GOAT won a Global Short Story competition earlier this year. His novel DOUGLAS BROWN RUNNING DOWN, is, in Colin’s words, ‘a freewheeling journey in the company of a chaotic mind’. (I’ve read some of it, and it’s awesome, and not quite like anything else I’ve read.)

A few updates

Somewhat belatedly, evidence of me, Liesel Schwarz and Mark Hodder at the Del Rey UK launch at FantasyCon in Brighton. This was a lovely day. I met up with Liesel beforehand at London Victoria. Thanks to the vagaries of Southern Rail cancellations, we spent the journey down to Brighton sitting in the luggage rack (never say there’s no glamour in publishing), but all was worth it when we arrived and got to see proofs of our books for the first time. The OSIRIS cover artwork was still being tweaked, so Del Rey had produced a short run of this cool black and white cover. Needless to say I nabbed copies of Liesel’s and Mark’s books (A Conspiracy of Alchemists, and A Red Sun Also Rises respectively), both of which look fantastic – I can’t wait to read them.

This week, I was sent a new proof of the UK OSIRIS with the actual cover. Isn’t it pretty! It’s released in the UK on 7 February 2013, and you can pre-order from Amazon here.

Lastly, here’s a link to an interview with fellow Night Shade author Paul Tobin as part of his author-to-author series. This was a really fun one and he’s also interviewed Jeff Salyards, Adam Christopher, Chris Roberson and others as part of the series, which you’ll find on the blog.

FantasyCon 2012 and Del Rey UK launch

New imprint Del Rey UK, who will be publishing OSIRIS in the UK next February, are launching at FantasyCon in Brighton on Saturday. The launch is at 5.00 – 6.00pm in Bar Rogue (check out the timetable here). I’ll be there alongside Del Rey authors Liesel Schwarz and Mark Hodder.

The artwork for Liesel’s and Mark’s books was revealed recently on the Del Rey blog, and it looks ace! I can’t wait to see what the designers come up with for OSIRIS. In the meantime, they’ve produced a dead snazzy black and white cover design for a short run of ARCs, which I believe will be at FantasyCon. Exciting!