I'm Back!

Yes, I am still alive, although you wouldn’t know it judging by my inactivity in the online world the last several months. What can I say? It’s been a momentous time in the real world for me. I got married, moved, somehow kept up with the five writing classes I’m teaching, and still managed to finish writing The Faceless Enemy, the sequel to Dreamwielder. Something had to give (in addition to sleep), and that something was blogging and curating my social media sites. Things are quieting down now, though, so I’m back! Here’s what’s going on in my writing world.

Not the real cover!

-The Faceless Enemy is done! The sequel to Dreamwielder is even more high-action and fast-paced than the first book, and it’s a good deal darker, too—sort of my Empire Strikes Back part of the saga for Makarria, Caile, Natarios Rhodas, and a batch of new characters. Beta readers are going through the manuscript now, and it looks like I’m on track for a Spring 2015 release from Diversion Books. In the meantime, you can take a sneak peek of the pre-published version of Chapter 1, “Enter Darkness,” on Wattpad.

-I’m preparing a self-released ebook title called Page Fault. It’s a novella length story that’s part cyber-punk, part fantasy, and part post-apocalyptic fiction. The novella came about as part of a shared world project in the George R.R. Martin author study course I taught a few years ago at the Orange County School of Arts. Once I have the cover art procured, I’ll announce the official release date.

-My literary story “Choose Your Own Romance” is included in the newest issue (#116) of Confrontation, a prestigious journal that’s published the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, John Steinbeck, T.C. Boyle, and Arthur Miller over the years.

-My good friend and frequent collaborator Ahimsa Kerp recently released his debut novel, Empire of the Undead (Permuted Press). It’s a great novel, mashing up zombies and the Roman Empire—think The Walking Dead meets 300. I interviewed Ahimsa over at the Prose & Cons earlier this week, and he had some great things to say about geek culture, tattoos, and more.

That’s all for now. Happy holidays to everyone!

-Garrett Calcaterra

Feast or Famine

June was a productive month for me. I wrote three successful blog posts over at Prose & Cons, which is where you’ll find my more Internet-friendly writing from this point forward (whereas The Machine Stops will be geared more towards writing updates and reflective meanderings like this one). My Prose & Cons posts include "Fantasy Rocks: 8 Songs Inspired by Fantasy Novels"; "On the Origins of Zombies: 7 Must-See Zombie Films"; and to prove I’m not just a list-making one-trick-pony, "Amazing Author, Horrible Person." All three posts have topped Prose & Cons in site visits, thanks largely to some lively discussions over at Reddit.

In addition to my blogging, I made great headway on the Dreamwielder sequel, The Faceless Enemy, cranking out almost 40k words this last month (a good number for me). I’m down to the last two climatic chapters and am chomping at the bit finish, but unfortunately I’ve been stymied by a glut of summer teaching work the last two weeks. That’s the one downside to being a writer—I’m beholden to work when the work is there. For the majority of June I was productive as hell writing, but equally poor, and those bills started to stack up. When the opportunity for summer teaching work presented itself, I simply couldn’t turn it down. So now, and for at least the next couple of weeks, I’m working at three different schools/tutoring-centers, seven days a week. In the mornings, I tell myself I’ll write at least thousand words on The Faceless Enemy when I get home, but come 8:30pm when I finally stroll in, all I want to do is crack open a beer and relax. But I’m not complaining. I’m happy for the work, just frustrated I’m not finished with the book. It will happen soon, though, and I’ll be looking for a couple of beta readers if anyone is interested.

Until then, I best quit blogging and use what little spare time I have working on The Faceless Enemy. Cheers!

-Garrett Calcaterra

Read Free or Die!!!! (or you could always just pay the 99¢—I mean death is a bit extreme for an e-book, but yeah, you get the idea…)

(Update: My website has undergone several reincarnations since this post and these ebooks are no longer available there. Instead, you can find new versions of these ebook singles on Amazon, here.)


As I mentioned in my previous post, my e-book singles store is up and running on my website, www.garrettcalcaterra.com. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be highlighting each of the e-books, to give readers a little insight into the inspiration, origins, and the story behind the story, so to speak. First up is one of the two stories I’m giving away for free.

The Sway of the Dead

Promo Code: ZOMBIES (Nook, iPad, Android), or ZOMBIES2 (Kindle)

After the infamous Night of the Bear, this story is the raciest and most offensive of my stories. It started with a pen and paper on a plane ride back in 2007, and the first line just came to me:

Ferric Smith found little joy in xxxxxxx zombie girls, but he was too full of life to not be copulating with someone or something, and in a concrete and steel girder city full of zombies, that meant zombie girls.

I’m not sure where my head was at the time, not sure I want to know, but that’s how it started, with a dude boning down on zombies. If I remember correctly, I wanted to a write a story for a specific (and now defunct) magazine that was looking for gritty, urban horror, so yeah, that’s my excuse. Anyhow, it was one of those rare stories that was written more or less in one sitting and came about very organically. After getting feedback from my writing group, The Inklings 2, I made some revisions and sent it out. It got rejected from the magazine I’d specifically written it for, then went on to collect dozens of other rejection letters over the next three years. Getting a ton of rejections is hardly unique in this business, but the nature of the rejection letters I was getting for this story was rather astounding.