For Your Consideration: Mettlefetchers

As I wrote a while back in an article at Waistcoat & Watch, one of the keys to having a successful career as a writer is creating a large body of work. If you want to make a living as a novelist, you need to have a bunch of books out there for fans to buy and read. I take the idea a step further and really try to diversify my writing, publishing everything from novels and short stories to magazine articles and essays, not to mention writing screenplays to submit to festivals on the long shot some producer will actually want to produce one and write me a fat check (yeah, I know, fat chance). In any case, this usually means I’m juggling multiple projects at any given time, and right now is no exception. In fact, my good friend and frequent collaborator, Ahimsa Kerp, and I have just a launched a new project we’d like to submit for your consideration: Mettlefetchers.



This is an ambitious project we’re proposing, a truly interactive e-book that mashes up multiple spec-fic genres and erotica, and we’re very excited about it. You can find a more detailed description of the book premise at Kickstarter and also see what all of our juicy awards are for contributors to the project (Did someone say a cameo appearance in the book and a custom sex scene? Hell yes, they did!).

And in case you find it incongruous to go from my previous post on climate change SF to this one on erotic steampunk, have no fear! I am still working on my cli-fi novel, Remember the Future, and, as it turns out, Mettlefetchers actually stands to be a strong platform for exploring many of the themes I find important, including dealing with climate change. The Mettlefetchers story takes place in 1857, in the thick of the Victorian era and arguably the beginning of all the serious damage humans have done to our Earth’s immune system. Ahimsa and I will definitely be riffing on the anti-imperialism ethos of steampunk and mixing it in with some Lovecraftian-style cosmic horror triggered by environmental atrocities.

If any of this sounds like something interesting to you, please consider pledging five or more bucks to make this thing happen, and tell your friends. Social media is the way these sorts of things go viral, so we’ll be internally indebted to you if you pimp the project out on FB, Twitter, or what have you. The main reasons Ahimsa and I chose to crowdsource this project were to give fans a chance to take part in the creative process and to make sure we’re not dependent on publishers (who are notoriously fickle on risky book projects). Good in theory, but it’s 100% dependent on people finding out about the project and pledging, so yeah, help us and we promise to write a kick-ass book like you’ve never seen before!

-Garrett Calcaterra