Holy cow, it’s five years since Solaris Books published String City, my interdimensional thriller starring a grouchy gumshoe with a magical coat!
I’ve been pondering ways to celebrate this momentous occasion. I considered offering my readers an exclusive guided tour of some of the locations featured in the novel. Unfortunately, the soaring cost of interdimensional travel makes this prohibitively expensive. I also considered giving a free copy of the novel to everyone on the planet, before remembering that I have to make a living somehow.
In the end, I decided to serve up a trio of promotional treats. First up is a slideshow of some String City artwork I posted on Twitter a few years ago, before I decided that social media was bad for my health. This is the first time these “Stringscapes” have seen the light of day since I consigned them to my Twitter wastebasket. I hope you enjoy browsing them as much as I enjoyed stumbling over them again.
The upper limb of the Doubtful Corpuscular Arch, clearly visible above the String City skyline during every other winter month 
The Skein of Importunity, where truth and dream diverge 
The Universal Bloodmesh, last known resting place of the Lesser Cosmological Mistmoth 
The Folds of Fortitude, where many unsuspecting denizens of String City have lost their way – avoid at all costs 
The Loose Jalousie – this roving entanglement of quark isobars is a common sight in the skies over String City 
The Parting of the Ways, one of seven macrocellular causeways leading to the Moon of All Moons 
The Astrobulix, the stellar portal through which Jason first steered the Argo to String City 
The Metaxical Mesh, used as a refuge by the world-weaver Arachne when Titan gang boss Hyperion put a price on her head 
The Vestige of Dawn, a hyperoptical echo of the first cosmic sunrise spawned by Quetzalcoatl shortly after the rise of the Aerlyft 
The Undercut, a quantum loophole in which the Titans conceal undeclared takings from their Tartarus Club casino 
The Nacre Vortex, part of the semi-permanent weather system that hovers above the headquarters of the Aeolus Corporation, String City’s centre for climate control 
The Quantum Harbourlights, a family of transient singularities that make regular passes over String City’s Acheron Lock 
The Riemannian Expressway, an experimental transit system intended to replace String City’s collapsed Long Horn Bridge 
The Canicunabula, breeding ground of the Boundary Wolves which patrol the farthest borderlands of the cosmos 
The Interminable Facet Weft, a skein of cosmic string frequently seen hovering over the Hot Hub, String City’s notorious infra-red-light district 
The Barathrum Braid, an impenetrable interdimensional umbilicus that encircles String City’s maximum security prison pit 
The Imaginary Moon, clearly visible in the skies over String City whenever the month has a negative number of days 
The Forgetful Lagoon, a perilous tributary of the River Lethe in which the wandering dead gamble their immortal souls for the chance to regain a single lost memory
My second anniversary treat is an interview I conducted with the star of String City (sometimes known as the Gumshoe With No Name), to celebrate the novel’s publication in 2014. The interview was originally posted on the Civilian Reader blog, but, hey, that was five years ago. If your memory’s as unreliable as mine, it’ll be like you’re reading it for the first time.
It’s a surreal experience, interviewing a character of your own creation. The task was made doubly difficult by the fact that my fictional detective is a crotchety old so-and-so. Did the interview go well? Click below and judge for yourself!
The third and final anniversary treat is a brand new book trailer. The original String City trailer was the one of the first promotional videos I created for myself. I still like it a lot, but I’ve wanted to update it for a while. The new trailer is a little more sophisticated in the animation department, and includes quotes from some of the lovely reviews that the novel has received since publication.
Graham Edwards 