JAMES SWALLOW

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Books

Something Borrowed (2021 Edition)

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The New Year brings the gift that keeps on giving for writers (also editors, illustrators and translators) from the UK library service, as the Public Lending Right figures for 2020 are released…

As I always do, I want to show my appreciation to everyone working hard in our libraries across the UK, and to all the people fighting to keep them up and running. Libraries are the lifeblood of many communities and a vital resource that builds lifetime readers, and we need them now more than ever.

If you’re not familiar with how the PLR pays back writers in the UK, here’s my annual explanation:

If you are a writer/editor/illustrator/etc, 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 – this is it.

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.

The PLR and our libraries are constantly under threat from government cutbacks, so if you are a writer or a reader, please do your bit to help support both as best you can.

Here’s my Top Ten Library Loans of my novels for 2020 (with 2019’s position in brackets)

1 (-) Shadow
2 (1) Ghost
3 (2) Exile
4 (3) Nomad
5 (-) The Buried Dagger
6 (6) Ghost in the Shell
7 (5) Sisters of Battle: The Omnibus
8 (4) Garro: Weapon of Fate
9 (7) Peacemaker
10 (9) The Poisoned Chalice

Shadow, the 4th of my Marc Dane thrillers, joined the other books in the series in 2020, and together Marc’s adventures covered the top 4 slots with a combined 26,799 loans across all titles and formats! My co-written novelization of the live-action Ghost in Shell movie was the only non-mover, with my Doctor Who and Star Trek titles Peacemaker and The Poisoned Chalice slipping down; my Warhammer 40,000 and Horus Heresy fiction also dropped a few notches, with new title The Buried Dagger coming in at #5 this year. And for the first time in six years, Jack Bauer was knocked out of the chart, with my 24 tie-in Deadline just bubbling under.

Thank you to everyone who supports their local libraries and borrowed my books in 2020 – and keep reading for 2021!

2K20 Books

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The next of my annual year-ender blogs is my list of what I got through in reading matter during 2020; I’d actually expected to get more reading done what with rolling lockdowns et al, but I think missing a holiday break (where I usually binge-read a bunch of stuff by the pool) contributed to me reading a little less in 2020 than in 2019…

Still, I managed a bunch of SF and thriller fiction, along with a few choice bits of non-fiction. My top books picks for last year were Rowland White’s jump-jet love letter Harrier 809, Amer Anwar’s Stone Cold Trouble and Simon Stålenhag’s moody and evocative art books The Electric State and Tales from the Loop.

Here’s the full list:

Dead Space (Lee Goldberg), Star Trek: Borg (Hilary J. Badler), The Last Best Hope (Una McCormack) Broken Square (Mike Lunnon-Wood), The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard (David A. Goodman), Curse the Day (Judith O’Reilly), The Treadstone Resurrection (Joshua Hood), F-14 Tomcat In Action (Al Adcock), The Chemical Detective (Fiona Erskine), Watch Dogs: Legion Resistance Report (Rick Barba), Harrier 809 (Rowland White), The Electric State (Simon Stålenhag), This is Not a Game (Walter Jon Williams), 100 Deadly Skills: Survival Edition (Clint Emerson), Rocket Science (Ian Sales, ed.), Private Gold (James Patterson with Jassy Mackenzie), X-Planes: Bell X-2 (Peter E. Davies), Private Moscow (Patterson with Adam Hamdy), Tales from the Folly (Ben Aaronovitch), What Abigail Did That Summer (Aaronovitch), Shadow Fall (Alexander Freed), The Revelation of the Word (David Annandale), Morningstar (Graham McNeill), Stone Cold Trouble (Amer Anwar), A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (Alain de Botton), Total Blackout (Alex Shaw), Box 88 (Charles Cumming), Against A Dark Background (Iain M. Banks), The Shut-In (Patterson with Duane Swierczynski), Die Hard: An Oral History (Brian Abrams), So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica (Mark A. Altman & Edward Gross), Big Damn Hero (James Lovegrove), The Military Techno-Thriller: A History (Nader Elhefnawy), The Janson Equation (Douglas Corleone), Scions of Elysia (Chris Dows), Renegades of Elysia (Dows), Martyrs of Elysia (Dows), Steel Terror (Dean Wesley Smith), How To Cheat At Everything (Simon Lovell), The Black Art of Killing (Matthew Hall), Above the Law: The Unofficial Guide to Star Cops (Paul Watts), Lando’s Luck (Justina Ireland), How To Write Dazzling Dialogue (James Scott Bell), True Believer (Jack Carr), Lions of the Sky (Paco Chierici), 8-Bit Apocalypse (Alex Ruebens), Broken Saints (Alec Worley), Tales from the Loop (Stålenhag), Daedalus (L.J. Goulding), The World of Cyberpunk 2077 (Martin Batylda), Illyrium (Darius Hinks), The Oshkosh Connection (Andrew Watts), Typeset in the Future (Dave Addey), Tiny Planetarium: See the Stars! (Nick Perilli).

One Month From Now…

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Marc Dane returns in ROGUE – my new explosive thriller and the fifth novel in my ongoing modern espionage series…

In modern espionage, every action has a reaction. One wrong move could sink an entire region into turmoil – even war.

Ex-MI6 operative Marc Dane understands this better than anyone. Dedicating his life to protecting the country means he’s collected enemies, and a lot of them.

But for those hellbent on bringing the West to its knees, each failed plot has one thing in common: The Rubicon Group, the elite private intelligence agency, and Dane’s employer. Destroy Rubicon, and the world order falls with it.

With the clock ticking, Dane, along with sniper partner Lucy Keyes, must unpick a monstrous and deadly conspiracy that stretches from the marinas of Monaco to the mountains of Mozambique – one that threatens not only Rubicon, but ultimately the lives of millions of innocent civilians. And time is fast running out . . .

Dark secrets of the past, a decades-long quest for revenge, and a brutal conspiracy of lies all collide in ROGUE – the explosive new novel by the bestselling author of NOMAD and EXILE.

ROGUE is available now to pre-order in hardcover, trade paperback, eBook and audiobook editions – click here for details.

World Book Day Event

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It’s World Book Day on March 5th, the global celebration of books and reading, and I can think of no better way to spend it than hanging out in a library with a bunch of readers and my fellow author Ben Aaronovitch…

Ben will be sharing tales from the latest installments in his popular Rivers of London urban fantasy series and I’ll be talking about the latest exploits in my Marc Dane action thrillers, so if you’d like to come along and watch our well-oiled double act, you’ll be able to find us at Bromley Central Library from 6:30pm to 8:00pm.

Ben and I will be happy to sign copies of our books, and there will also be copies available that evening for a specially discounted price. (You can also bring any of of our other books or works for a signature, and we don’t charge for autographs.)

Tickets are free, but you must book in advance – click on the link Here.

Celebrate World Book Day with Ben Aaronovitch & James Swallow takes place on Thursday 5th March from 6:30pm at Bromley Central Library, Floor 4, High Street, Bromley BR1 1EX

Something Borrowed (2020 Edition)

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Another year and another check in with the UK library service, as my Public Lending Right numbers for 2019 are tallied up! As always, my thanks to all the hard-working people in our libraries for supporting this vital part of our culture.

Libraries made books available to me when I was growing up and couldn’t afford them, and every writer (not to mention editor, illustrator and all the other folks involved in making books happen) owes them a debt not just for stimulating readers but also for the magic of the PLR…

Here’s my regular PSA on the PLR:

If you are a writer/editor/illustrator/etc, 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 – this is it.

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.

The PLR and our libraries are constantly under threat from government cutbacks, so if you are a writer or a reader, please do your bit to help support both as best you can.

Here’s my Top Ten Library Loans of my novels for 2019 (with 2018’s position in brackets)

1 (-) Ghost
2 (2) Exile
3 (1) Nomad
4 (3) Garro: Weapon of Fate
5 (4) Sisters of Battle: The Omnibus
6 (5) Ghost in the Shell
7 (6) Peacemaker
8 (-) Sight Unseen
9 (10) The Poisoned Chalice
10 (9) Deadline

Ghost joined my Marc Dane thrillers Nomad and Exile at the top of the chart this year, with a combined 27,589 loans! Most of the rest of the chart stayed the same as last year, just shifted down a place, but out of nowhere my Star Trek Titan novel Sight Unseen (first published back in 2015) popped up to take the #8 spot. And once more, Jack Bauer shows that he’s a hard man to get rid of, as my 24 novel Deadline stayed in the top ten for the 5th year in a row!

As always, thank you to everyone who supports their local libraries and borrowed my books in 2019!

Bexley Literary Festival

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I am happy to announce I’ll be participating in Bexley’s brilliant Book Buzz Literary Festival on Saturday 22nd February, at 2:30pm in the Central Library!

My event is titled “An Afternoon with James Swallow” and the plan is for me to give a 45 minute talk followed by an open question & answer session, and then a book signing. I may also be bringing along some freebies for a few lucky audience members…

Tickets are free, but you must book in advance – click on the link right Here.

You’ll be able to by copies of my Marc Dane novels on the day, and I’ll be chatting about my work writing these action thrillers – and anything else you might like to know!

You can also bring any of my books or other works for signature, and I don’t charge for autographs.

If you’d like to check out the full programme for Book Buzz, go Here. The festival runs from the 15th to the 29th February, and along with me there’s a host of well-known authors in attendance, including my buddies Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, as well as Mark Billingham, Alison Weir, Jacky Hyams, Christy Lefteri, Elaine Everest, Louisa Young, Dorothy Koomson and Jane Dismore. There’s also workshops, non-fiction talks and much more.

I hope to see you there!