JAMES SWALLOW

The Official Site of Bestselling Author James Swallow - COMING SOON!

BLOG

We Are About To Launch STINGRAY!

by

Stingray Comic Anthology Volume 2: Battle Lines – featuring my story “Triple Cross”, with artwork by Connor Flanagan (New Captain Scarlet, Space Precinct) – is out now!

This collection reprints classic Stingray comics alongside brand-new stories as part of Deadly Uprising, a celebration of Stingray‘s 60th anniversary – in the original TV show, the crew of the titular atomic submarine (Captain Troy Tempest and sonar operator “Phones” Sheridan) guard the oceans as part of W.A.S.P. – the World Aquanaut Security Patrol – defending the surface world from a rogue’s gallery of undersea troublemakers led by the nefarious King Titan.

For more details about Stingray: Deadly Uprising, visit the official Anderson website at this link – and to order your copy of Battle Lines click here!

Something Borrowed (2024 Edition)

by

With the new year now firmly under way, it’s time for all the hard-working authors across the UK to get a nice little bonus from the equally hard-working team at the British Library’s Public Lending Right – and find out which of our books were borrowed from UK libraries over the course of 2024.

How does that work? Here’s my annual explanation of how the PLR helps writers in the UK…

Administrated by the British Library, the PLR is a system where authors who’ve written books that are in public libraries get a little revenue each time somebody borrows their works. It’s a way to repay writers who won’t be earning a royalty from a sale in a bookstore. The PLR office pay a nominal fee based on how borrowed you were – and in the interests of fairness, you can’t earn more than around £6000, so the big names don’t get to hog all the money.

After 2023’s shenanigans (where a crippling cyber-attack that brought down the British Library’s computers, knocking the whole PLR system off-line for months) those heroic librarians have things back up and running. If you are a writer/editor/illustrator/etc. and a resident of the UK or Ireland, and you ever need a reason for donating your books to the library – on top of all the obvious ones like promoting reading and supporting this valuable and increasingly undermined public service – the PLR is it.

Looking over numbers, here are the Top Ten Library Loans of my novels for 2023-2024, with the previous year’s position in brackets…

1 (-) Dark Horizon
2 (2) Airside
3 (1) Rogue
4 (3) Outlaw
5 (4) Ghost
6 (5) Nomad
7 (6) Shadow
8 (7) Exile
9 (-) Dragonfire
10 (-) Here be Dragons

It’s great to see my two stand-alone thrillers Dark Horizon and Airside at the top of the list, with the former coming in like a bullet! The rest of the chart fills out with my Marc Dane novels still riding high, clocking up over 11,000 combined loans across all formats, and in for the 9th and 10th positions are my 2nd Tom Clancy Splinter Cell novel Dragonfire and the graphic novel release of Here Be Dragons, my story for Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series – my first comicbook work to make the list! Just outside the top ten are my last two Warhammer tie-ins Garro: Weapon of Fate and The Buried Dagger – and somehow, against all reason, my novelization of the movie Ghost in the Shell is still defiantly hanging on!

Once again, my heartfelt thanks go to everyone on the PLR team at the British Library, and to all my readers borrowing books and keeping the lifeblood of libraries flowing…

2K24 Games

by

And so the final part of my annual year-end overview concludes with a look at my gaming habits for 2024; it was another tumultuous year for the industry, with studios getting shuttered and games being cancelled with brutal regularity, and I played a lot less new stuff, instead concentrating on titles from the last two or three years and putting a lot of hours into looter-shooters Warframe and The First Descendent with my regular gaming group. And I still (through deliberate choice!) have yet to complete Cyberpunk 2077…

I also doggedly refused to upgrade my console (although I did renew my PC) and but disappointingly I spent more time buying new boardgames and RPGs than actually playing them! However, thanks to a couple of ace demos (cheers to GM Andrew Peregrine), for the first time in far too long I got to actually roll some dice and roleplay a little in the Space: 1999 RPG, which is due out later in 2025.

Here’s the full list of new plays from 2024 – Power Wash Simulator; Dobble; Rollerdrome; Sniper Elite III; Far Cry Primal; Something Wild! Indiana Jones; Warframe; Borderlands 3; The First Descendant; Little Kitty, Big City; Economy Class; Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged; Call of Duty: Black Ops 6; My First Gran Turismo; Space: 1999 – The Roleplaying Game.

2K24 Books

by

Part three of my annual year-end round-up of stuff is books, glorious books…

Over the 70 titles I read in 2024, science-fiction stuff just edged out thrillers and non-fiction, and I got through a few audiobooks as well over the last twelve months.

I also had 2 DNFs (did-not-finish) titles this year which aren’t on the list; that’s rare for me – usually I stick it out to the bitter end, but sometimes it’s just not worth the candle, as the old saying goes.

My top picks for 2024 were Rowland White’s gripping true-life WW2 story Mosquito, David Goodman’s debut thriller A Reluctant Spy and Duncan Harris’ exhaustive look at the WipEout videogames.

Here’s the full list – Death’s Kiss (Josh Reynolds); The Untold History of Television: Archer and Bob’s Burgers (Kathleen Olmstead); Waste Tide (Chen Qiufan); Operation Afterlight (Robert Lassen); I Was Killed Yesterday (Andrew Smith); Outlaw (Jack Stewart); The Subplot (Megan Walsh); SubOrbital 7 (John Shirley); Adventures in Amity: Tales from the Jaws Ride (Dustin McNeill); The Treadstone Rendition (Joshua Hood); Daughters of Death (Nicola Baldwin); Dragon’s Domain (Marc Platt, Nicholas Briggs); Mosquito (Rowland White); Medal of Honor (Chris Ryan); Blind Fear (Brandon Webb & John David Mann); Troubled Waters (Una McCormack); The Masquerades of Spring (Ben Aaronovitch); MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios (Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, Gavin Edwards); Stingray (Bill Keith); Invasion (Frank Gardner); Curious Video Game Machines (Lewis Packwood); Unmanned (Dan Fesperman); Satellite Scare (Various); Gunfight on Europa Station (Various); Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life (Arnold Schwarzengger); London Zone (Smith); High Noon on Proxima B (Various); Welcome to the Game (Craig Henderson); To Everything That Might Have Been – The Lost Universe Of Space: 1999 (Robert E Wood, David Hirsch, Christopher Penfold); Devis (Roland Moore); Blood and Gasoline (Various); Nightstalker (Timothy Rizzi); Iron Man: Tony Stark Declassified (Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore); Voyager’s Flight (Karen McCreedy); A Reluctant Spy (David Goodman); The Untold Stories of the Space Shuttle Program (Davide Sivolella); The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War (Antonio J. Méndez, Jonna Méndez, Matt Baglio); Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (Calder Walton); Hercules (Scott Bateman); Liftoff (Eric Berger); Death in the Desert (Jim Eldridge); Four Hours to Eternity (Various); Bold Forager (Tom Willard); Operation Carib (Mack Maloney); Operation Sea Ghost (Mack Maloney); Reentry (Eric Berger); Legacy of the Stars (John Gregory); The 37th Parallel (Ben Mezrich); Area 51: An Uncensored History (Annie Jacobsen); Bogey Spades (Jack Stewart); The Calculating Stars (Mary Robinette Kowal); V UK: Visitation Episode One (Jonathan Morris); Mech: Age of Steel (Various); V UK: Visitation Episode Two (Morris); V UK: Visitation Episode Three (Morris); WipEout Futurism: The Graphic Archives (Duncan Harris); Wolf Six (Alex Shaw); Full-Throttle Franchise: The Culture, Business and Politics of Fast & Furious (Various); Maybe There: The Lost Stories From Space: 1999 (Hirsch & Wood); Terror Fake (Briggs); Stone and Sky (Aaronovitch); Rogue Trooper: Welcome to Nu-Earth (Gerry Finley-Day & Dave Gibbons); The Science Fiction in Traveller (Shannon Appelcline); The Nowhere Man (Gregg Hurwitz); Savage Road (Chris Hauty); Kidnapped (James Patterson with Robert Gold); 80s Action Movies on the Cheap (Daniel R Budnik).

2K24 Movies

by

My annual year-ender overview continues with my movie list for 2024; it was a packed one, with almost twice the number of films viewed (a whopping 91, including re-watches!) over the previous year…

One reason for these greater numbers came from my s/o’s expressing an interest in seeing some classic Hong Kong kung-fu movies, which triggered a marathon that had me pulling out blu-rays of the original Police Story trilogy, Yes Madam!, Project A parts I and II, First Strike, Wheels on Meals, Armour of God and Operation Condor along with a bunch of titles that I’d never gotten around to viewing; later we did double-bills of The Fugitive and US Marshals, and Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6 in the summer. I also re-watched Timecop as research for a podcast I did in November, and you can listen to that at this link.

My top picks for 2024 – Rebel Ridge, The Nest, Sisu and Polite Society, with The Fall Guy, Boss Level and Carry-On as runner’s-up.

Here’s the full list – Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire; Crime Story (aka New Police Story); Royal Warriors; Lift; Dragons Forever; Magnificent Warriors; Chinese Zodiac; In the Line of Duty III; Silent Night; In the Line of Duty IV; The Bricklayer; The Young Master; Black Site; Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom; Project S (aka Supercop 2); Security (2017); The Flash; Ferrari; The Beekeeper; Dragon Lord; Dune Part Two; Safe; S Storm; Tears of the Sun; Reindeer Games; Gran Turismo; One More Shot; Fighter; Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King; Bitconned; Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver; Man and the Moon; Relax, I’m From The Future; The Lost City; The Equalizer 3; Retribution; My Neighbors The Yamadas; Cuban Fury; Sisu; City Hunter (2024); Blue Beetle; Atlas; Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga; Meg 2: The Trench; Tenet; Raging Fire; The Blue Angels; Captain Scarlet: Spectrum Declassified; The Batman; Polite Society; The Bouncer (aka Lukas); Trigger Warning; Zero Days; Capsule; The Nest (aka Nid de Guepes); Central Intelligence; Triple Frontier; Beverly Hills Cop: Alex F; The Ice Road; Deadpool & Wolverine; Return to Space; The Union; Breach (2007); Shinjuku Incident; ManHunt (2017); Rebel Ridge; The Fall Guy; Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision; The King’s Man; Madame Web; Canary Black; Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire; Boss Level; Carry-On; Violent Night; Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl; From Roger Moore With Love.

Twenty Four’d

by

Departing 2024 for 2025 on a grey and rainy afternoon feels like a metaphor for the year gone by – not exactly what we all hoped for. For me, it’s been a real mixed bag, with some fun projects and great experiences sharing space with efforts that haven’t borne fruit…

Last year, I resolved to write a new thriller story… One thing I’ve learned since I started writing in the world of mainstream commercial fiction (rather than genre or tie-in work) is that the market is very driven by trends – they love the new thing, the in thing, and that’s what gets commissioned and will dominate the book racks in big store until the wind changes.

Recently that trend was ‘destination thrillers’, and right now it’s ‘cosy crime’ – neither of which I write! After my publisher Welbeck (who released my stand-alone novels Airside and Dark Horizon) were bought out by publishing giant Headline and rebranded as Mountain Leopard Press, it’s been hard to get traction here in the UK for the kind of high-speed, fast-paced action thrillers that are my forte.

But rather than chase the trend, I’ve been developing something new, something that plays to my thriller-writing strengths, and I hope to say more about it later in 2025. But in 2024, I decided to scratch that action itch with a new novella from my Marc Dane/Rubicon series – Moscow Rules, which I release as a free ten-part download on this website. Check it out at this link.

The response for Moscow Rules has been brilliant and enthusiastic, with many readers excited to see Marc Dane return in a new story and asking for more – so who knows, I may make this a semi-regular thing…

In the meantime, while my mainstream stuff was in a holding pattern, I spent most of 2024 back in the familiar territory of science fiction and tie-in stories; I wrote Toward The Night, a new Star Trek novel based on the Strange New Worlds TV series, and readers will see that later in 2025; but the most fun I had was revisiting some classic telefantasy shows from the 1970s – Gerry Anderson’s UFO and Space: 1999 – to pen a pair of original novellas set in those worlds. Shadow Play and The Armageddon Engine were both labours of love for me, as someone who devoured the original TV shows when I was a kid, and the reviews from fans have been terrific, highlighting the ‘authentic’ feel of the writing. That’s exactly what I was aiming for, to make the books feel like “lost episodes”, so I couldn’t be happier.

As well as prose, I also wrote some more comics in 2024, with two new jet age Commando tales – Fallen Sabre, set during the Korean War, and Pressure Point, set during the Cold War – and a surprise offer to work on strips for the 60th anniversary celebration of Stingray, another Gerry Anderson show.

Deadline paperback cover
Warhammer 40,000 Blood Angels Deus Sanguinius
The Butterfly Effect
Judge Dredd Eclipse cover

2024 was also the anniversary of a few of my earlier tie-in works – Ten years since the publication of my 24 novel Deadline, and twenty (!) years since the release of my first Warhammer 40,000 novel Deus Encarmine, my first novelization The Butterfly Effect, and my first Judge Dredd novel Eclipse – click the links to read all about those books.

Of course, I did try to have a life as well as writing loads of things; I had a lovely time guesting at the Orpington Literary Festival, as well as appearing at events like the Stand By For Action 2 concert and London 1999 convention, attending Big Finish Day and Dragonmeet, travelling around the UK to Leicester, Bracknell, Nottingham, Birmingham and more to spend great weekends with old friends, visiting exhibits like Set To Stun at Gunnersbury Park and the DeHavilland museum, and getting some well-enjoyed downtime in the sun on the Balearic Islands.

But arriving in 2025, the plan is to keep doing the thing – tell stories, visit new worlds and old ones, and write on.