Steph Swainston's Blog, page 4

Above the Snowline

Above the Snowline will be out in ten days and here is the cover:


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This is what you'll get if you order the book, regardless of the pictures showing on Amazon and everywhere else on the net. This is the final cover, it's a very beautiful production indeed. Order yours now! Order more for your friends, family and pet wolves.

E-books

All the Castle books are now available as e-books in a variety of formats.


They are widely available, including from the following stores: Amazon if you're a Kindle reader, Ebooks.com which has .pdf's, Mobipocket, Palm, Fictionwise.com, and Powell's.

The Castle Omnibus

The Castle Omnibus will be published this week and is available from Amazon.


It is a very handsome volume comprising the three Castle books already published: The Year of Our War, No Present Like Time and The Modern World. It's got a very striking cover and is beautifully produced.





The next book, Above the Snowline, is completed and will be published in January. It has a better cover than the one currently showing on Amazon. More soon...

The ammonite on my windowsill

Our Liparoceras was a happy ammonite that swam in the tropical sea of early Jurassic Birmingham 200 million years ago. It bobbed along upright in its shell looking for prey - which was pretty much anything it could catch: fish, other cephalopods and so forth. In fact, it looked quite like a cuttlefish stuffed into a snail shell, with all ten tentacles sticking out. It swam by jet propulsion, squirting water through its siphon, and also squirted ink at any ichthyosaur that came too close.

Constitution

It's less than a week to go to Constitution at New Hall college, Cambridge and I'm looking forward to it. The draft programme is up on their website. Here are the panels I'll be taking part in:

Fri 7pm War in SF and fantasy
War is all too often a backdrop in fiction, a quick and easy way of shaking up your characters and getting the plot going. How do you escape the cliches and address conflict realistically and sensitively?

Sat 11am New myths for old
Myths and folklore have a great influence ...

Åcon 2009

Wednesday 20th Sword School

On Wednesday I flew in to Helsinki airport where my gracious host Jukka met me. Merja Polvinen from the University of Helsinki had arranged for me to visit the School of European Swordsmanship run by Guy Windsor, swordsman, martial arts specialist and stickler historian.

Sword School: click for more

There are more photographs in sequence here.

I was most impressed by how a knowledge of other martial arts and the dynamics of the body allowed Guy to reconstruct the s...

Trip

I was dipped in ink and into nightmares

He was my windburnt darling

Who lived in a customised ambulance

Played the atlas as a game of chance.


We were driving fast off the motorway onto country lanes

Where anything has happened

And I thought: shit, someone's stolen half the moon.

But it was only clouds

I think

So now I am very careful what I drink.

Rhydanne fortune cards

A number of people have asked me whether I fully worked out the Rhydanne fortune cards - the ones Jant uses in The Modern World. Yes! Continuity and realism aren't the only reasons for figuring out background elements such as the cards. I do it because it helps me imagine the characters, for example Jant and Genya sitting at a table in the Filigree Spider, playing cards at lightning speed, even though the scene may not be used in the books.

Rhydanne fortune cards are a reaction to some of the ...

Above the Snowline - the fourth Castle book

Above the Snowline, the fourth Castle book, is finished and with the publishers. At last!

What's it about? Here's the blurb:

Awian exiles are building a stronghold in the Darkling mountains, where the Rhydanne hunt. Their clash of interests soon leads to bloodshed and Shira Dellin, a Rhydanne huntress, appeals to the immortal Circle for justice. The Emperor sends Jant, half-Rhydanne, half-Awian, and all-confidence, to mediate. As Jant is drawn into the spiralling violence he is shaken into...

Some plums for your diary

I will be Guest of Honour this year at Åcon in Finland and Constitution in Cambridge, UK.

Åcon3, Thursday 21 May - Sunday 24 May

Åcon will be held in Hotel Adlon on Mariehamn, an island between Finland and Sweden. The hotel is near the ferry port, and you can arrive by sea from Turku (Finland) or Stockholm (Sweden). All the programming is in English and the membership fee is 25 Euros. Rooms should be booked by April 21.

Finland is an incredibly beautiful country and the fans are intelligent a...