As mentioned in social media, Rising Tide got a great review in Publisher’s Weekly, a review that I got to see in print, firsthand, while away for Labor Day weekend.

Rather than repeat it here or excerpt it, I thought I would hire a celebrity to read part of the review so as to give it a bit more class.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Sean Connery:

I’m late in getting the word out, but I will be reading on September 8 at the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series along with a young upstart named Michael Swanwick. The reading will take place at The Commons in Brooklyn and will start at 7:00 PM. This will be my second NYRSF reading and the first to feature Rising Tide, my novel which will be out on October 6. If you’re local, please come out.

Anyone who knows me at all probably knows that I’m enthusiastic about beer. In fact my enthusiasm made it into Falling Sky in one chapter that’s essentially an ode to beer.

What I didn’t realize until after the book was out, was that there is a Falling Sky Brewery in Eugene, Oregon. I briefly thought about setting up a reading there when I was supposed to be heading out west.

While working on Rising Tide, I discovered that there’s also a Rising Tide Brewery in Portland, Maine. It’s a common phrase, I know, but I thought that was cool as well.

The weird thing, though, is that the tentative title for the last book, known only to me at this point, also shares a name with a brewery, something that I only discovered when I googled for it. Feels like it might need to be the title.

At some point I hope to be able to visit all three breweries, a copy of the namesake book in hand.

I suppose it’s too much to expect that all of my books will share names with breweries. Unless I’m very careful…

Oh, and if you happen to guess the title of the third book, confirmed by the presence of the brewery, by all means let me know. I’ll send you something if you guess correctly.

I haven’t seen it, but I got word this weekend that Wired magazine featured Lightspeed Magazine’s podcast as the Staff Pick for science fiction podcasts in their July issue. As part of that they picked a standout episode and the one they picked was my story, “Second Hand.” Lightspeed publishes so many great stories that I’m really chuffed that Wired singled out my story. Thanks to the folks at Brilliance Audio for putting together the narration. If you’d like to check out the podcast, you can listen to the narration here. 

I guess I really should get to work on more stories in that universe, shouldn’t I…

And apparently it’s been 4 months since I last posted. What’s been going on? Well, I’ve been hard at work on Rising Tide. I turned the manuscript in last week and am already on to copyedits. It was a hard slog at times, but such a great learning experience. I feel like I leveled up as a result. I’m hoping this is the start of the next phase of writing for me.

Speaking of coming out from under, I didn’t get a chance to post the cover of Rising Tide. Yet another amazing Chris McGrath masterpiece. Hope you enjoy it!