12 September 2014

What language are we speaking today? Understanding the worlds of Stephen Swartz


As he has often stated, Author Stephen Swartz has always been fascinated by other places and other cultures and languages. That life-long interest translates into the kind of stories he writes, full of exotic locations and smatterings of other cultures and their languages. In that sense, every novel he has written has certain attributes which can be easily cataloged. For example, each novel has characters who use languages other than English. As a linguist, Swartz enjoys dabbling in that intersection of culture and language. Each novel has exotic locations, as well, including another planet. 



To keep them clear, I've created this handy-dandy chart--just as any good archivist would. 


Title
Genre
Settings/Time
Languages
Plot
A Beautiful Chill
Literary/ Romance
Wichita, Kansas;
Padre Island, Texas;
Toronto, Canada;
Akureyri & Reykjavik, Iceland - 1999-2000
English, Icelandic
Boy meets younger wrong girl
After Ilium
Literary/ Adventure
Greece, Aegean Sea, Istanbul & the ruins of Troy, Turkey - 1993
English, Turkish, Greek
Boy meets older wrong girl
The Dream Land I, Long Distance Voyager
Sci-Fi/ Steampunk
Kansas City, Missouri; various places on planet Ghoupallesz - Earth time: 1975-1983
English, Ghoupallean, Zetin, Roue
Boy loses girl, finds another
The Dream Land II, Dreams of Future’s Past
Sci-Fi/ Steampunk
Kansas City, Missouri; various places on planet Ghoupallesz - Earth time: 1983-1986
English, French, Ghoupallean, Zetin, Roue, Danid
Boy searches for girl, loses everything else
The Dream Land III, Diaspora
Sci-Fi/ Steampunk
Kansas City, Missouri; various places on planet Ghoupallesz - Earth time: 1989-1993
English, Ghoupallean, Zetin, Roue, Danid, Kobareli
Girl doesn't look for boy but there's a comet coming anyway
A Dry Patch of Skin 
(coming Fall 2014)
Literary/ Horror
Oklahoma City; Utica, New York; New Orleans;
Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, Croatia - 2012-2014
English, French, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Croatian
Boy meets skin disease, fears losing girl

Aiko 
(coming in 2015)
Literary/ Romance
Seattle;
Hawaii;
Nagoya & Ishikawa, Japan - 1986-1991
English, Japanese
Boy loses girl, finds their daughter
Year of the Tiger
(coming in 2015)
Literary/ Adventure
Kansas City, Missouri;
India: Bombay, Jaipur & other locations - 1986
English, Hindi
Boy meets tiger
A Time of Kings 
(coming in 2016)
Sci-Fi/ Fantasy
Kingdom of Chicago and other locations in the lands of the Americus - 2990-3089
English, French, Spanish, Arabic
Brothers meet their fates

Boldface = available now in print or for Kindle, or coming this fall.

I hope this chart will provide useful information to aid you in choosing your next reading club selection or something delightful to escape reality on some weekend. Happy reading!



---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

2 comments:

  1. I love that chart! That is a useful tool!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It seems I posted a reply a while back but I see it did not stick. Now I've forgotten what I wrote. Thus, it must have been very important.

    ReplyDelete