How Would You Finish George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire?

George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire currently stands at five books, with book six, The Winds of Winter coming soon, and then likely another two books to “wrap the story up.” I’m using the quotes there because like many readers, I’ve noted that the story is becoming increasingly complex, with more than 24 viewpoint characters and counting. Even with his penchant for killing characters off, Martin has no easy chore before him to wrap up the story.

How in the world can Martin resolve so many storylines to the satisfaction of readers? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, I’ve asked a handful of authors how they would finish the series. Please share how you would finish the series in the comments section. Just subject yourself to the same restraints I placed on the contributors here: try to keep it under 400 words!





With the coming of winter, magic is alive again…

SF/F/H Author Interview: Wendy Wagner

Garrett and Wendy at Westercon 2016

Wendy Wagner is the managing editor at Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, as well as a fast-emerging novelist. Her newest book, Starspawn, is a Pathfinder Tale novel that continues the adventures of the ex-pirate-extraordinaire Jendara, who readers first met in Skinwalkers. Walker also has a new, unrelated novel coming out from Angry Robot books in the summer of 2017, called An Oath of Dogs.

Wendy was kind enough to sit down with me for an interview back in 2013, but a lot has happened since then. In addition, to the new books, she’s taken part in the release of a series of special issues from Lightspeed and Nightmare that feature underrepresented voices in the genre. And of less import to the world at large, but important to me, she was also kind enough to write a blurb for my newest novel, Souldrifter.

All things considered, I figured it was hi-time we caught up, and once again she was kind enough to sit down with me to talk about her new books, her influences, promoting diversity in SF/F, and maybe travelling to Mars…

Con-Volution 2016: My Monstrous Schedule

Con-Volution 2016: The Age of Monsters is this weekend, I'm excited to be participating in a whopping five panels. This will be my first time attending Con-Volution, located in San Francisco, California, and I'm looking forward to hopefully meeting a lot of great new people.

If you'll be in attendance, please flag me down and say hi. Here's the schedule of the panels I'll be appearing on. I'm stoked to chat about the making of monsters, and particularly Saturday's panel, "Fear of the Other," which should touch upon some important issues in the genre (and the world) right now.

Celebrating Seven Years: Best of The Machine Stops

Saying goodbye to the old Machine Stops logo

August 8, 2016 was the seven-year anniversary for this blog, and I finally got around to giving the site a facelift. Hopefully, the new layout will make reading easier on they eyes. I'm also going through and updating broken links, including making sure all the book titles and images now have active links.

The Machine Stops started out with me intermittently rambling on about what I was working on in the infancy of my writing career, but as I became more involved in the SF/F community as a professional (sometime around 2011), the blog become infinitely more interesting, featuring interviews with other authors and the occasional SF/F lists.

Looking forward, I'll still be blogging about my own writing updates (about once a month), but you can expect to see a lot more interviews with other authors and fun features like top-10 lists and whatever other strange ideas pop into my head.

To celebrate the first seven years and kickoff a new chapter for The Machine Stops, here are the

Top 10 Most Popular SF/F Posts

Dreamwielder Ebook Sale and Writing Updates

Good News. Diversion Books has put the ebook version of Dreamwielder on sale for only 99 cents through September 13, so if you've been holding out for a good deal, now's the time to go for it. That price should be valid at all ebook retailers. For your convenience here are some quick links:

-Amazon
-B&N
-Kobo
-iTunes

Introducing DREAMRUSH

I'm very excited to announce the release of DREAMRUSH, my first collection of short fiction. The collection includes several stories that were previous only available in ebook format, including the Dreamwielder prequel "Wulfram," as well the never-before-published story "Deus ex Aurum," which is set during an alternate California gold rush.

The book is available in trade paperback and ebook formats at Amazon and all major online book retailers.

Here's the full book jacket blurb:

"Calcaterra's stories, long and short, are well-crafted, innately readable, and thoroughly kick-ass." –Ahimsa Kerp, author of Cthulhu Kaiju

From the author of The Dreamwielder Chronicles comes 5 tales of fantasy, future past, and gaslamp frontierism, including...

"The Knight's Dog" – The gritty fantasy that's been read over 80k times and is oft compared to The Game of Thrones.

"Page Fault" – A thrilling mashup of cyberpunk, fantasy, noir, and post-apocalyptic fiction.

"Deus ex Aurum" and "Gold Comes Out" – Groundbreaking tales of gaslamp frontierism, set during the California gold rush.

"Wulfram" – The prequel to Dreamwielder, chronicling the story of the mysterious sorcerer Wulfram.

-Garrett Calcaterra

Spring Recap and Summer Events

It's been an eventful spring and early summer of 2016. I kicked things off with a book signing at the Book Carnival in Orange back in April, along with steampunk legend James P. Blaylock. The event was well attended and my trip back down to southern California afforded me the opportunity to meet up with family and the crew from my writing group, The Biscuits.