Hot Sh*t!

Yes, yes, I realize it's been a while since I last posted a blog entry. What can I say, I've actually been busy, largely with non-writing related matters, but I have managed to get a fair amount of writing work done too. Dreamwielder is coming along nicely. I had the week off from teaching over Thanksgiving and managed to bang out a few new chapters. If I keep it up, I'm still on pace to finish the first draft by the new year, so that's encouraging.

Pete Vander Pluym and I finally finished work on “Groundwater,” the song I mentioned in a previous post, which was penned for the Dark Days project. It came out about as good as I could have hoped considering it was recorded at my home “studio.” The song is super dark, a little psychedelic, and a whole lot of baddass. If you'd like to check it out (along with new and better mixes of “Sweet Natured Woman” and “Mwaah!”) then go to http://myspace.com/theentropyaffair

Lastly, I'd like to announce that I will be editing a new book, tentatively titled This Book is Shi*t. Let me first describe where the idea came from (and perhaps this will give you a little insight as to where how I got such a warped imagination and sense of humor). Following Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt and uncle's place, I was sitting around chatting with my father, aunt, uncle, and a few cousins, and we started exchanging stories involving embarrassing bowel movements (other families do this too, right?). We had such a varied collection of shitty stories that my dad jokingly suggested we put together a book. After some consideration, I decided it was, in fact, a pretty good idea.

So, consider this a call for submissions. If you have a funny, true story about poop, write it up and send it my way. You can be the pooper, the poopee or merely a poop observer in the story—I don't care, as long as it's funny. I'm looking for stories in the 500 – 2,000 word range, but I'm flexible on that if the story is good. The stories, as I said, should be true, but that doesn't mean they should be boring. Use good story telling techniques and make it funny, damnit. I'll pick the best pieces (the crème of the crap, dare I say?) and once we have 20-30k words total, I'll see if I can't hunt down a proper publisher. Worse case scenario, I'll self-publish the book through Lulu.com or another POD publisher as trade paperback so it can be purchased online. I can't afford to pay advances to any writers, but all writers will receive a by-line and writers' royalties will be split evenly amongst the contributors (if the thing actually sells and manages to make any money).

Send your shit stories to gcalcaterra(at)gmail(dot)com either as a Open Office attachment, Word attachment, or in the body of an e-mail. I'll stay open to submissions until we have enough stories to fill the book. If you have any questions, jet over to my facebook page and check the discussion board: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=11383&uid=112472966300

Thanks, and have a craptastic day!

-Garrett Calcaterra