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 …
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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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Ghost Story of a Novelist
18 November 2020
Mrs. Katharine Tynan relates a Weird Tale—May Be a Coincidence.
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Ghosts of the Chit-Chat
3 November 2020
“This Society shall be called the ‘Chit-Chat Club’, and consist of Members of the University, and have for its object the promotion of rational conversation.” “Preface” to Ghosts of the Chit-Chat by Robert Lloyd Parry This rule, the first in the founding charter of the Chit-Chat, was not always strictly observed during the thirty-seven years of the club’s existence. It’s true that membership was only ever drawn from undergraduates and staff of Cambridge University, but the name was subject to variation, and it was for an evening of supernatural storytelling rather than rational conversation that the Chit-Chat has earned its …
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Swan River Press Paperbacks
21 September 2020
So we’ve decided to publish a line of paperbacks. Yes, I know, we’re as shocked as you are. But this new publishing stream only has emerged after much consideration and planning. Our long-time readers will know Swan River Press primarily focuses on limited edition hardbacks. Sometimes these print runs disappear quickly, leaving some readers paying large sums for second-hand copies. Similarly, it is unfair to our authors to allow their works to languish out of print. We hope, also, that these paperbacks will help new readers find our books. And so we’ve decided to reissue as paperbacks a selection of …
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The Green Book 16
23 August 2020
Here we are, after a brief hiatus, with the continued serialisation of the Guide to Irish Writers of Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, which I am co-editing with my long-time collaborator Jim Rockhill.
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The Long Reach of Green Shadows: Ray Bradbury’s Memories of Ireland
22 August 2020
Ray Bradbury Introduction Bradbury’s work has been with me my entire life. I suspect my earliest encounter with his writing was through the television anthology series, The Ray Bradbury Theatre (1985-92); “The Banshee” was then, as now, one of my favourite episodes: Peter O’Toole starring as cocksure director, Charles Martin Smith as the precocious writer, terrified—like me, then as now—of what wailed in the grounds outside the big house. In middle school I read The Martian Chronicles, and my head cracked open with a sense of wonder for the Red Planet and beyond. I spent my adolescence scouring second-hand bookshops …
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Uncertainties 4: A Chat with Timothy J. Jarvis
10 August 2020
Conducted by Lynda E. Rucker Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer and scholar with an interest in the antic, the weird, the strange. His first novel, The Wanderer, was published by Perfect Edge Books in 2014. His short fiction has appeared in The Flower Book, The Shadow Booth Volume 1, The Scarlet Soul, The Far Tower, Murder Ballads, and Uncertainties 1, among other places. He also writes criticism and reviews, and is co-editor of Faunus, the journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen. Lynda: E. Rucker: First, I want to say how much I enjoyed this volume of Uncertainties! …
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