NOMAD is out now in North America!

Today the first of my ongoing series of action thrillers is officially released in North America, in it's US hardcover edition from Tor/Forge! I'm excited to introduce ex-MI6 officer turned freelancer Marc Dane to a whole new audience with the launch of Nomad... 

HIS ONLY NATION IS JUSTICE

New York Times bestselling author James Swallow begins his espionage thriller series with Nomad, featuring a British desk jockey intelligence operative turned active agent.

Marc Dane is a MI6 field agent at home behind a computer screen, one step away from the action. But when a brutal attack on his team leaves Dane the only survivor—and with the shocking knowledge that there are traitors inside MI6—he's forced into the front line.

Matters spiral out of control when the evidence points toward Dane as the perpetrator of the attack. Accused of betraying his country, he must race against time to clear his name. With nowhere to turn to for help and no one left to trust, Marc is forced to rely on the elusive Rubicon group and their operative Lucy Keyes. Ex US Army, Lucy also knows what it's like to be an outsider, and she's got the skills that Dane needs.

A terrorist attack is coming, one bigger and more deadly than has ever been seen before. With the eyes of the security establishment elsewhere, only Keyes and Dane can stop the attack before it's too late.

North America is a fierce, dedicated market for thriller fiction and the home of some of my favorite authors in the genre! It's my great hope that Marc Dane can stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Jason Bourne, Mitch Rapp, Thea Paris, Evan Smoak and all the other great US thriller heroes! 

To read the first chapter, click Here to visit Tor/Forge's Criminal Element site.

Praise for Nomad:
“In Marc Dane, James Swallow has created a wonderfully unlikely hero who can outfox the best of the best. A pulse-pounding thriller of the highest order.”— Ward Larsen, USA Today bestselling author of Cutting Edge

“Ian Fleming meets John LeCarre in James Swallow's Nomad: vivid and gritty with nonstop action, in which nothing is as it seems.” —David Hagberg

“Unputdownable. A must-read.” —Wilbur Smith

“Very enjoyable.” —The Guardian

“Exciting.” —The Sun

“Right on the money, bang up to date, Nomad is a scorching romp. A killer of a thriller.”— Jon Wise, Weekend Sport

“A debut spy thriller from a veteran author who delivers his (...) enjoyable narrative at a frenzied pace, with plenty of narrow escapes for reluctant hero Dane.” —Jon Coates, Daily Express

“Ferociously paced thriller, a high-concept tale of the solitary hero on the run, bristling with technology and frequently erupting into lethal violence.” —Declan Burke, The Irish Times

“Followers of Jason Bourne or those who are familiar with I Am Pilgrim and / or Homeland will agree that this book is a rattling good yarn. Well written with plenty of cliffhangers and thoroughly enjoyable.” —Woman's Way

“This is edge of the seat stuff that is terrifyingly real in places and pushes the boundaries of reality in others, not unlike most high-action thrillers. If you're a fan of the novels of Lee Child, Frederik Forsyth and Chris Ryan or you can't wait for the new Bond film and love the TV series 24, then this is for you.” —Closer Magazine

Nomad is out now in hardcover, eBook, digital audio and CD audio editions on-line and in all good bookstores; full details are Here, or you can order a copy direct from Amazon.com via this link.

To keep up to date on the Marc Dane series, click on the tab on the top right of this page ("Sign Up For Free!") to join the Reader's Club mailing list.

Who Dares Wins

A couple of years back, I had the opportunity to write for one of the most iconic British comic-book heroes every created - the square-jawed, stiff-upper-lipped Dan Dare, astronaut, pilot and all-around top chap... 

Here's a link to the blog post about that I wrote back in 2016, which covers a lot of the high points about Dan and his dramatic return to radio adventures.

This month, Dan Dare: The Audio Adventures has been picked up by BBC Radio 4 Extra for broadcast, and the series will be ongoing over the next few weeks - each episode will be broken into two parts, airing on Sunday evening and early Monday morning. 
 

My story - The Red Moon Mystery - is up on the BBC iPlayer's listen again service (free to use, but requires a sign-up).

Click Here for Part One; Part Two will be available Here from the weekend, or you can tune in live on Sunday 26th at 6:00pm BST or Midnight for the repeat.

If you're interesting in picking up the complete series on CD, visit Big Finish's website right Here for more details on the full saga!
 

Warhammer Fest Europe

It's been a while since my last Games Workshop/Black Library event, so I'm looking forward to appearing at Warhammer Fest Europe 2018 in Düsseldorf this weekend. It'll be great to visit Germany again; last time was to take part in Games Day in Cologne, and the welcome I got from the fans over there was fantastic.

 

WFE 2018 is taking place on Saturday August 18th and Sunday August 19th at the Maritim Hotel in Düsseldorf, and it's going to be a big one, with a ton of stuff going one for fans of the worlds of Warhammer and the Horus Heresy.

I'm appearing on the Saturday to represent the Black Library - First off, I'll be signing books from Midday to 1:00pm, and then straight after from 1:00pm-2:00pm I'll be talking about my forthcoming Horus Heresy novel The Buried Dagger, the fate of the Knights Errant and the Doom of the Death Guard. 

Then from 3:00pm-4:00pm I'll join BL Germany's head of translation Tobias Roesner to talk more about our books, before a final signing session from 4:00pm. The signing will be a short one, as I have to dash off to catch my flight home...

M'colleague David Guymer will be there to fly the flag on the Sunday, so be sure to check out his talks and signings as well.

Along with me and David, there will be folks from the Forge World, Citadel, White Dwarf, Army Painter and ‘Eavy Metal Teams, plus the usual Golden Demon painting competition, displays, workshops, demo games and a whole load of tournaments

Full details of the other seminars taking place can be found Here.

The main event is 10.00am to 6.00pm on Saturday and 10.00am to 4.00pm on Sunday - for more details, tickets and the like, click Here.

And for or those of you who can't make it along, there will be a live blog covering the event at the Warhammer Community site Here.

Bis bald!

Here be Dragons!

Some days you wake up and find out a neat thing has happened without you even knowing about it...

Case in point is today's announcement of the nominees for the Dragon Awards (held at the huge and awesome Dragon Con convention in Atlanta at the end of this month), where I was delighted to see that my new Star Trek Discovery novel Fear Itself is in the running in the "Best Media Tie-In" category!

I'm in some amazing company on a very strong list of nominees. Along with my fellow Discovery and Star Trek novelist David Mack and Warhammer alumni Matt Forbeck, a couple of terrific Star Wars books by Claudia Gray and Delilah S. Dawson, and a great Warcraft tale from Christie Golden are also up for the gong. 

I have to say, it is both very cool and very daunting to be on a list with such stiff competition, from a bunch of writers who are not only at the top of their game, but who I am a fan and reader of to boot. 

There's that old saying at times like these that goes "it's an honour just to be nominated" but in this case, I really mean it!

Here's the full list for the tie-in award: 

Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray
Before the Storm by Christie Golden
Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson
Fear Itself by James Swallow
Legacy of Onyx by Matt Forbeck
Desperate Hours by David Mack

If you'd like to take part and cast your vote for who you'd like to win this award - and bunch of others for novels, movies, TV shows, games and comics - you can do so for free by registering for the 2018 ballot.
  
Click on the Dragon Awards Nominee panel to the right and it'll take you straight to the Dragon Awards website. 

Mission to Malmo

A couple of weeks back I was chatting with another author about the inescapable value of “walking the territory” – that is, the importance of visiting a place to get the sense of it, to make your writing feel as authentic as possible. It got me thinking about my own research jaunts, and so partly inspired by the travelogues of fellow thriller writer JF Penn (check out her great website Here) I thought I’d post some observations from one of my most recent trips...

Ever since I was kid, airports have always been intertwined in my mind with thrillers. I think part of it is the whole romance of travel/thrilling locations stuff right out of a James Bond novel, mixed with my love of the classic “airport novel” that fills the shelves of duty free bookstores. And what’s cool for me is that now my books get to fit in that space...

I was heading to Malmo in Sweden, under a non-disclosure agreement, on a two-day flying visit to talk about a new videogame project connected to one of the thriller world’s biggest names. But the quickest way there is actually through Denmark. So my route in was via Copenhagen airport....

...and then across the Øresund Bridge by train. 

And it was neat for me to look down the carriage and see this gentleman and think... Hey. That book cover looks familiar... (What are the odds?!)

My first real glimpse of Sweden through my window was an orchard of wind-farms, a strange and slightly alien sight rising up from the straight along the coastline. I have to admit that my perception of what to expect in Sweden was warped a little by the work of an artist named Simon Stålenhag... Check out his stuff Here and you’ll see what I mean. He's just had a TV show based on his stuff green-lighted by Amazon.

His art fuses a 1980’s view of the world with odd, invasive technologies that look like they come from some alternate reality, and wandering through Malmo I soon understood how this country influenced him.

Malmo reminded me of the kind of brutalist, concrete-cube architecture that was all new and futuristic when I was growing up in the 1970's, the buildings that were the backdrop of austere dystopian SF movies - Farenheit 451, Alphaville, THX 1138 and the like – but with flashes of artistic weirdness here and there.

One morning I woke up and realized that the hotel I was staying up reminded me of City 17, the location of the game Half-Life 2 - check out the similarity Here.

All this might make Malmo sound a little distant and unwelcoming, but it wasn’t! 

I loved the artwork and the river winding through the town, the great restaurants and numerous craft beer places. I also want to highlight the Science Fiction Bokhandeln for accommodating a quick drive-by signing by me, and The Bishops Arms pub off Gustav Adolf Square for having an amazing book-laden snug in the back that was very conducive to a glass of scotch and some writerly company.

But I was here to work; I’d come to Sweden to meet with Massive Entertainment, developers of The Division 2 – the sequel to the hit action game under the Tom Clancy franchise banner. 

As well as being a long-time reader of the Clancy novels, I’ve also been a dedicated player of the videogames created under the author’s name. Last year I worked on the Ghost Recon Wildlands open-world shooter game, and having expended a lot of hours on the first iteration of The Division, I was excited to work on the sequel...

Details on the elements I contributed to The Division 2 haven’t been announced yet, but I can say my part is just one component of a massive (ha ha) project, involving several other scriptwriters and a great many talented people. 

(Also, as some fans of the game have asked, I should make it clear I’m not writing a Division novel or a comicbook – as cool as that would be! – but writing scripts for the game itself). 

48 hours later, and I was done. While the trip was short, I liked the city enough to want to come back and see more of it. And while I don’t (right now) have plans to write something set in Malmo, I’m pretty sure I’ll make use of my exposure to the city somewhere down the line. 

Writers store all this experiential stuff away and it rises back to surface when you least expect it. I never intended to draw on my trip to Madeira as detail for a 31st century planet of vintners in my Horus Heresy novel Nemesis, or my visit to the Maltese “silent city” of Mdina in my latest Marc Dane thriller Ghost, but both places inspired me and helped me make those stories feel authentic. Travel doesn’t just broaden the mind, it stimulates it.

If you enjoyed this travel blog and you'd like to see more of the same, let me know in the comments below or via my Twitter feed...