Autumnal Musings and Goodbyes

Jack 2006 – 2017

Early in the morning of October 9, my wife and I had to say goodbye to our dog, Jack, who had been suffering from a cancerous tumor. Despite the fact he was a 120+ lb dog, he's always been my little guy, happy to be anywhere, as long as he was at my side. In years past, that was often on the hiking trail. In recent years, it was more often on the carpet alongside my writing desk. It's bizarre and sad working from home now without him here anymore, but I'm glad he's not suffering anymore, at least.

The science fiction and fantasy community also suffered a loss this October with the passing of author ElizaBeth Gilligan. I met Beth last year at a convention, and she was kind enough to invite me to join her local writers group. As part of that group, she provided invaluable feedback on my work-in-progress, The Beasts of Qaza, and I had the pleasure of reading her work-in-progress, a sprawling fantasy novel about a tribe of women wylf soldiers. She and her husband were also gracious enough to give me advice on being a parent and a writer. I regret that Beth didn't get a chance to meet my daughter after she was born, and my sympathies go out to her husband and the rest of her family. Beth was a kind and wonderful person, and she'll be missed.

#NaNoFailMo

Well, I came into the month of November—National Novel Writing Month—hopeful that I would get back on track with my work in progress, a Cli-Fi novel called Remember the Future. I even updated my NaNoWriMo profile, but alas, I never touched the damn manuscript.

I did do a bit of non-fiction writing of my own, and a lot of freelance writing work, but I couldn't seem to carve out the time to work on Remember the Future. I can't help but wonder if part of the problem is that I've lost the initial enthusiasm I had when starting the project. A lot has happened in my life since I last worked on it, and I'm finding that there are other projects I'd much rather be working on. I'm not officially shelving Remember the Future, but I'm close to doing so. I'll give you my final decision in my next post.

In the meantime, the word has slowly been getting out about Souldrifter and reviews are starting to trickle in. I have a few more interviews and guest posts that will be coming out soon, but here's what's dropped so far.

• Goodreads reviews of Souldrifter
• Black Gate excerpt of Souldrifter
• SF Signal guest post on storytelling and finding your voice as a writer
• BooksChatter Dreamwielder excerpt and author Q&A 

-Garrett Calcaterra

The Faceless Enemy by the Numbers

The  sequel to Dreamwielder has 

more action, more airships, and 

more of Makarria kicking ass!

(Dreamwielder art 

courtesy of Patrick Williams)

(Update: After a bit of debate, my publisher, agent, and I decided to change the name of The Faceless Enemy to Souldrifter, so as to better tie-in to the first novel, Dreamwielder. 3/23/15)

My new fantasy novel, The Faceless Enemy, is done and sent off to my publisher! As you might expect, it feels good to be done, and I'm excited for the book to get into the hands of readers. In the interim, though, here's some details on how the book came about for those of you who are interested in the writing process or just like to break things down by the numbers.


15 MONTHS. From start to finish—planning, writing, and revising—the book took me fifteen months to complete. I started the book during NaNoWriMo in November of 2013 and sent the final draft to my editors at Diversion Books here in February 2015. Considering it took me thirty-nine months to get through the same process with the first book in the series, Dreamwielder, fifteen months is pretty good. Considering also that I got engaged, married, and moved during 2014, and fifteen months really ain't bad!

97,200 WORDS. The final draft I sent to my publisher weighs in at a respectable 97K words, which is 4K words longer than Dreamwielder. The first draft of The Faceless Enemy was only 92K words, but was light on setting description, background exposition, and secondary character viewpoint. Fleshing those aspects out during the revision process accounted for the 5K boost.

4 PARTS. With Dreamwielder, I closely followed the 3 Act, 8 Sequence structure used for film scripts, but with The Faceless Enemy I instead loosely followed the 4 part structure Michael Moorcock prescribed in

November Happenings: Mysterious Galaxy, NaNoWriMo, and More

This autumn has been an eventful season, full of big projects and literary events, and there's no slowing down in sight. Here's a quick and dirty recap of what's going on.

Mysterious Galaxy Local Author Meet and Greet, Saturday, November 9, from 2:30-5:30 PM. I'm stoked to be one of the featured authors for this event. Swing by if you're local for a very cool, informal event. I'd love to meet with you and chat. I'll also have some books for sale, but don't worry I'm an author, not a used car salesman. See the Mysterious Galaxy website for more details.