So Echopraxia isn’t just coming out in North America, from Tor. It’s also coming out from Astrel/AST (in Russian), Fleuve Noir (in French), Heyne (German), MAG (Polish), and Tokyo Sogen (Japanese). Hopefully it’ll eventually come out in other jurisdictions as well, but these are the guys who signed up sight unseen. I can only hope the book justifies their faith.

It’s also coming out in English. Not US English, but English English. The Queen’s fucking English. It’s being released in the UK (and other Commonwealth nations, if a certain bit of Australian cover art is anything to go on) by London’s Head of Zeus. This is a first for me— not just because I’ve never had a separate English-language release outside of N’Am, but because this is the first time I’ve actually had a hand in the cover art.

I’m not just talking about being allowed to provide input on someone else’s art. I’m not talking about being handed a sketch and asked What do you think?, and saying Cool but this detail isn’t accurate, and them saying Well tough this is how we’re doing it. I’m talking about actually being one of the cover artists. Because if you look at the big beautiful cover at the bottom of this post, you might recognize that model of the Crown of Thorns I cobbled together in an obsolete version of Photoshop.

You might ask why the Crown is in orbit around Big Ben, when everyone knows that it was Theseus that went out there? Well, that was one of the iterations we tried out— one I still prefer very slightly, just because I have a stick up my ass about narrative consistency. Aesthetically, though, Nic Cheetham at Zeus points out that the Crown is easier to see against the background. Mesopone, offered the same choice, opts for “the fat one”. And Caitlin, most eloquent of us all, opines that the Crown of Thorns constitutes “a more significant presence next to the giant, Georgia O’Keefe-like Vagina of Flame.”

You can see why I married her.

You might also ask why Echopraxia is coming out as Firefall in the UK, and the answer is: it isn’t. Firefall ≠ Echopraxia. Firefall = Blindsight + Echopraxia, released as an omnibus volume in celebration of its UK debut. Echopraxia will be getting its own standalone release a few months down the road, so nobody’s forcing you to shell out hard-earned bucks for words you’ve already read just to get a crack at words you haven’t. (In fact, Nick actually asked me to write an introductory note for the omnibus, warning potential re-readers up front that they’d be paying for two books instead of one. It’s a nice change from βehemoth days.)

So that’s the story. Except for the fact that I’ll also be providing HoZ with an illustration of Theseus for the Blindsight half of the omnibus (no, not the LEO picture from my last post— although both are based around the incredibly cool model work of Andrew Chase. So if you’re into that kind of thing, the omnibus might be up your alley even if you have read the first half.

Also, that tag line: is it awesome, or what?



















