Getting Darker
9 March 2023
Photo: Peter Coleborn “Getting Darker: An Interview with Lynda E. Rucker” Conducted by Steve Duffy © March 2023 Steve: In preparing for this chat, I reread all three of your collections [The Moon Will Look Strange, You’ll Know When You Get There, Now It’s Dark], and what struck me was that your style was pretty much intact from the beginning of your writing career—it wasn’t a case of “freshman to sophomore to senior”, or anything like that. Do you see an evolution in your stories? Lynda: I definitely see an evolution in the way I write them, in that I …
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Our Haunted Year 2022
28 December 2022
Art: Brian Coldrick From an outside perspective, Swan River Press has probably looked very quiet this year, reduced to a trickle. Though we didn’t publish as much within these last twelve months as I had planned, the year was still a significant one behind the scenes, hopefully positioning us for a more (outwardly) eventful 2023. In fact, I’d been lamenting how few new titles we had published this year, which is probably why stepping back to take stock in this annual post remains a useful exercise. Because we did accomplish more than I’d initially considered. So with the year now …
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Swan River Press Is Moving
16 December 2022
I mentioned in our September newsletter that Swan River Press would be moving in October. That hectic week is now upon us! I will remain in Dublin, but will be moving to ÆON HOUSE, a small, Edwardian cottage in a secluded and less frequented quarter of the inner city. The house is situated between a maternity hospital and a local funeral parlour. If there is a metaphor here, perhaps it’s best not to dwell on it. I’ll endeavour to keep on top of correspondence and orders during all of this, but the latter half of October and early November might …
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Our Haunted Year 2021
14 December 2021
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that running a small press is not an easy job. It’s a precarious balancing act with limited resources on one side and an ever-shifting set of challenges on the other. This year was perhaps the most difficult I’ve experienced, due not only to the continuing pandemic, but also from the very real fallout caused by those twin bad decisions: Brexit and the Trump administration. We’ve been subjected to significant jumps in postage, reams of customs forms where there were none before, and supply chain issues that are likely to affect …
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The Green Book 18
8 October 2021
Editor’s Note Buy a copy of The Green Book 18 This issue is another selection of profiles from our tentatively named Guide to Irish Writers of Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature. The keen-eyed will spot one name that might seem out of place: Harry Clarke (1889-1931). Clarke, of course, was not a writer, but an artist who worked in watercolour, pen and ink, and stained glass. As an illustrator, Clarke put his indelible mark on literature of the macabre and fantastic. His best-known illustrations are those accompanying Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1919/23), though his illustrations for …
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“How I Write My Books”: An Interview with Mrs. L. T. Meade
7 October 2021
Despite her wide contributions to genre literature, Irish author L. T. Meade is now remembered, if at all, for her girls’ school stories. However, in 1898 the Strand Magazine, famous for its fictions of crime, detection, and the uncanny, proclaimed Meade one of its most popular writers for her contributions to its signature fare. Her stories, widely published in popular fin de siècle magazines, included classic tales of the supernatural, but her specialty was medical or scientific mysteries featuring doctors, scientists, occult detectives, criminal women with weird powers, unusual medical interventions, fantastic scientific devices, murder, mesmerism, and manifestations of insanity. …
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Publication Delay
27 May 2021
Update: All pre-orders and most contributor copies will be in the post by Friday, 4 June. Thank you again for your patience. – Brian First of all, please let me apologise for the continued delay in shipping our three recent titles: The Fatal Move, Uncertainties 5, and The Green Book 17, which were supposed to have been delivered here in Dublin by our UK printed at the end of April. The story briefly goes like this: Delay #1: Printer broke downDelay #2: Ran out of cloth for bindingDelay #3: Cloth needs more time to dryDelay #4: I was informed I …
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Swan River Press Publishing Chronology
20 May 2021
I’ve been spending the occasional odd moment assembling a Swan River Press bibliography. I started the press in 2003, so am getting to the point when I can no longer hold all the publishing details in my head. The bibliography (intended as a forthcoming publication) is meant as much a resource for me as I hope it will be of interest to readers, collectors, and bibliophiles. The book will contain my own notes on each publication as well as insights and reminiscences from authors, editors, and artists. I think there’s a certain personality type that’s drawn to bibliographies; we possibly …
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Conall Cearnach’s “The Fatal Move”
27 April 2021
A few years back I wrote a short piece on how we put together Lafcadio Hearn’s Insect Literature (2015) from a design point of view. There are often embedded design details of significance in our books—the sort of things you might not notice until they’re pointed out and the various meanings explained. With the imminent publication of The Fatal Move by Conall Cearnach, I thought it might be a good time to write another such essay looking at how we designed this particular book. Irish author F. W. O’Connell (1875-1929)—who often published as “Conall Cearnach”—was brought to my attention by …
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THE GREEN BOOK 17
16 April 2021
The Green Book 17 (Bealtaine 2021) – Editor’s Note. #IrishWriters #OscarWilde #AltheaGyles #HdeVereStacpoole #KatharineTynan #DoraSigersonShorter #LTMeade
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“That Didn’t Scare Me”: Thoughts on Horror Fiction
7 April 2021
“Horror is not a genre like the mystery or science fiction or the western . . . Horror is an emotion.” – Douglas E. Winter “That didn’t scare me.” This level of criticism grates my sensibilities. That didn’t scare me. It’s the sort of comment you overhear when leaving the cinema or that you might witness among a torrent of social-media posts, not generally known for their insight or elucidation in the first place. It’s not even the brevity of this comment that bothers me, but rather that this grunt seems to convey a shallow understanding of horror: “That didn’t …
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Our Haunted Year 2020
27 December 2020
We can probably safely say that few could have guessed what 2020 would have in store for us. I haven’t quite decided yet whether or not I take comfort in the fact that this can be said at the start of any given year. Anyway, here at Swan River Press I had to adjust quickly: I started to work my day job from home last March, which then blurred daily into the evening hours that I put into the press. Time is a bit elastic in this room, and it isn’t uncommon to find myself wondering what day of the …
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