E.J. Swift's Blog, page 9

OSIRIS in Forbidden Planet!

On Saturday I dropped in on the small press expo at Forbidden Planet, picked up a lovely signed copy of Jurassic London’s Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke, and was thrilled to discover OSIRIS on the shelves! Obligatory photo:

OSIRIS in the wild… in Forbidden Planet!

OSIRIS on Audible and other things

Some good news this week and a few links – firstly, I’m very happy to announce that Audible have bought the rights to publish OSIRIS in audible format (US). Details of publication dates and further information to follow when available.

The Qwillery very kindly had me over for an interview posted on 9 June 2012, which you can read here:

http://qwillery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/interview-with-ej-swift-june-9-2012.html

Also at The Qwillery, you can vote for the OSIRIS cover with its gorgeous artwork by Sparth, in the 2012 Debut Author Cover Wars Challenge for June. 4 days left to vote!

http://qwillery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/2012-debut-author-challenge-cover-wars.html

Finally, I’ve missed posting a few Night Bazaar posts over the last couple of weeks, so a few back links:

Week 10′s discussion topic was “Anti-hero doesn’t mean bad guy!”:

http://night-bazaar.com/how-do-you-like-your-heroes.html

Week 11′s discussion topic was “Writing on cultures that are not your own”:

http://night-bazaar.com/everything-is-autobiographical-and-everything-is-fictional.html

And this week’s discussion topic is “Comics: tights vs existential angst”. I know very little about comics, but happily I remembered Michael Chabon’s wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay which provided some much needed inspiration for this post:

http://night-bazaar.com/the-question-is-why.html

And as usual, there are lots of great posts from the other Night Bazaar writers on the same topics. Only one week left for me at the Night Bazaar – next week we’ll be discussing “Managing promotion vs writing vs your personal life” – on which I’m sure there will be plenty to discuss…

OSIRIS day, and a shiny OSIRIS book trailer

It’s here! Today I’m thrilled to be celebrating OSIRIS’s official birthday. It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride since signing with Night Shade Books back in January – my first experience of the publishing process, and there’s been a lot to learn very quickly (and I have no doubt, much more to come) – but all the hard work was worth it when the beautiful hardcover editions arrived and I got to see my book in print and ebook for the first time – thank you so much to everyone at Night Shade and to John Berlyne at Zeno Agency for making it happen.

I’ve also been very excited about the book trailer below, which I can finally reveal today. All credit goes to people who know far more about filmmaking than I ever will. When it was suggested I might want to make a book trailer, I had no idea how to depict a book about an ocean city full of pyramid towers. I also had no idea how long it would take to shoot a minute and a half of film, never mind edit it. (The answer: longer than whatever it was I imagined.) So *drumroll* a massive thank you to the super talented:

Bobby Williams (film, production, editing, sound): bobbysaviour.com ; James Harris (film) jamesharris.co.uk ; Alexa Brown (actress) alexabrown.co.uk

Best watched in HD fullscreen with the sound up! (Or, if on a phone, the YouTube version is here)

And if that tickles your fancy, you can get your hands on the actual book OSIRIS here:

Hardback edition: Amazon.com // Amazon.co.uk // Barnes and Noble // Night Shade Books and in real actual bookshops

Ebook edition: Baen ebooks 

Happy reading!

This week’s Night Bazaar and other things

This week at the Night Bazaar we’re talking about the influence of children’s fantasy on adult fantasy. Monday’s post from Paul Tobin made a lot of really good points, but here is my slightly rambling contribution to this week’s theme:

It’s okay for kids’ books to be fantasy – why not adults?

IZ238 cover, art by Ben Baldwin

The Jan/Feb edition of Interzone magazine (issue 238), which featured my short story THE COMPLEX is now available over on Amazon along with lots of other back issues.

With less than a week to go until the official release date for OSIRIS, you can grab the ebook early over at Baen Ebooks along with other June releases from Night Shade Books.

And today Kirkus Reviews included OSIRIS in its list of science fiction and fantasy books for June. All very exciting!

The ones I wish I’d written

This week’s theme at the Night Bazaar is all about the green-eyed monster – we’re discussing whether you feel envy as a writer (that would be a yes) and how you deal with it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this post took a little less time to write than some previous ones… Anyway, here it is:

The ones I wish I’d written

What if all the male characters posed like the female one?

The theme for this week’s Night Bazaar is “Dolls or Action figures? Gender roles in popular culture”. It’s another week where I wish I had a bit more time to write (or alternatively, just wrote quicker. Respect to all the bloggers who post every day – I don’t know how you do it!) because it’s a topic I feel very strongly about. However, I’ve posted a few links to people who talk about gender roles far more eloquently than I can.

Here’s the link to the post:

What if all the male characters posed like the female one?

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need

This week at the Night Bazaar we’re discussing The Politics of Science Fiction: Eco-tastrophy. The title to my post was inspired by this lovely gem tweeted by the brilliant @brainpicker earlier today: http://exp.lore.com/post/22663248289/if-you-have-a-garden-and-a-library-you-have

Here’s the link to the blog:

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need

Please send kittens instead

This week at the Night Bazaar we are discussing horror – what scares you?

My answer to this in short is: everything. The longer version can be found via the link below:

Please send me a basket of kittens instead

Fantasy? Fantastik!

This week over at the Night Bazaar we’re talking about why we write fantasy. What can you do with fantasy that you can’t do with other genres?

You can read my post here:

Fantasy? Fantastik!

With great power…

This week’s theme for the Night Bazaar is Steampunk: Fetishizing a time that never was.

I know very little about Steampunk, although I’d like to learn and read more, and was wondering what on earth I would write. Fortunately, the Internet alerted me to the fact that NORTHERN LIGHTS, one of my favourite books, is considered to have elements of Steampunk, so I very happily talked about that. You can read it here:

With great power