A Brief History of Eä, the World of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit

A year or so ago, I taught an author study course on J.R.R. Tolkien. For their final project, the students had to create an almanac for The Lord of the Rings, and I decided to write the introduction, a primer of sorts on where all the races of people and creatures came from. This turned out to be much harder than I anticipated, but the final product is a fair summary of the world Tolkien created, or at least I like to think so. My sources included The Silmarillion, The Books of Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales, and of course, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. 

A Brief History of Eä, the World

of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit

 by Garrett Calcaterra

  

In the Beginning...

            Illúvatar is the god and creator of Eä. He first created the Ainur, the Holy Ones, and together they created a song in which they imagined Eä, the world of trees, Elves, and Men. Once the world was imagined in song, Illúvatar created the world amidst the void and sent those of the Ainur who were willing to go make the world as they had imagined it in song. These Ainur who went to Eä were thenceforth known as the Valar and Maiar. The Valar were the more powerful of the two groups, and chief amongst them were Manwë, Aulë, Ulmo, Yavanna, Oromë, and Melkor.

The Non-Idiot's Guide to Finding a Literary Agent

As an author, ghostwriter, and writing teacher, I’m often asked how to find a literary agent—enough times, at least, I decided I should finally write about it. There are a lot of good articles on the various aspects of getting an agent and ultimately a publisher, but not much in the way of a blunt, holistic guide, so without further ado, I present to you…

“The Non-Idiot’s Guide to Finding a Literary Agent.”

Solicited vs. Unsolicited Manuscripts

The first thing to understand as a writer hoping to get published is that you are competing with thousands of other writers with the exact same aspirations. This means agents and editors are swimming in more manuscript submissions than they can read. To make their jobs feasible, agents and editors generally split submissions into two categories: solicited and unsolicited. Solicited means a manuscript was requested by the agent or editor; these types of submissions garner much more time and consideration from the agent or editor. Furthermore, the response time from editors and agents is much quicker with solicited manuscripts; usually no longer than a month. Without any question, this is the better category to be in, but at the same time it’s the more difficult.

My Torrid Affair with Writing Erotica

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Author Ahimsa J. Kerp

Ahimsa Kerp is a man not easily categorized. He can read a book faster than you can thumb through a magazine, he’s an insatiable backpacker and traveler, he has degrees in esoteric subjects like philosophy and history, he has tattoos that make D&D nerds green with envy, and he guzzles fine beers with the best of them. He’s also a writer and good friend of mine. His short story, “Turning On, Tuning In, and Dropping Out at the Mountains of Madness,” has just come out in the erotic, Cthulhu-mythos anthology, Cthulhurotica, and he’s one of my collaborators on the historic fantasy novel, The Roads to Baldairn Motte (along with Craig Comer).

2010 was a good year from Ahimsa. In addition to Baldairn Motte and his erotic short story getting picked up, he published several travel writing pieces on Matador, the Art of Backpacking, and Where I’ve Been, not to mention a flash fiction piece on The New Flesh. As you may remember, Ahimsa interviewed me a month or two ago on his Blog, Be Obscure Clearly, so I decided to return the favor and ask him some tough questions of my own. So, without further ado, here’s my exclusive interview with Ahimsa Kerp.

2010 Didn't Suck

I’m not big on New Year resolutions, but I do think it’s a good idea at this time of year to reflect back on the previous year, assess my writing performance, and see where I can improve. Well, shit, now that I put it that way, it sounds an awful like making New Year resolutions. Well, whatever it may be, I reread my blog post from this time last year and was reminded by how frustrated I was with my 2009 writing performance. 2010 turned out to be a much better year. I finally finished the first draft of Dreamwielder, and after sending out a couple batches of query letters, I’ve gotten a rewrite request from a big league agent. That rewrite is about ¾ of the way done as of right now and I hope to have the finalized rewrite sent off to the agent by the end of the month.

Market Square

I hope this post finds everyone still more or less sane with the holidays fast approaching. Personally, things haven't slowed down much on the writing, editing, and marketing front, but I wanted to take a moment and throw up a few quick links you might want to check out.

First, you'll notice that I stuck the new trailer for Umbral Visions at the top of the blog. It's nice and creepy, just like the book, so I hope you'll take a minute to give it a watch. If you'd like to help me out with my guerrilla marketing for the book, then post the link from YouTube wherever you find fans of dark fiction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_vy2aofAS8

Second, my friend and frequent collaborator Ahimsa Kerp did an interview with me about Umbral Visions, my band Wheel House, and writing and general. It's quite a good interview, if I'm allowed to say so, and you can find it at his blog, Be Obscure Clearly. Beyond my interview, Ahi's blog is a great site to visit for fans of fantasy and horror fiction in general. I highly recommend it.

That's all for now. Back to writing and editing. Cheers!

-Garrett Calcaterra

Buried in Books!

It's been a busy last several weeks. I announced the release of the e-book version of Umbral Visions in my last post. Now, I'm happy to announce that the paperback edition of Umbral Visions is also available for purchase. The book—in both paperback and e-book formats—is available directly from the publisher and most major on-line retailers, including Amazon. It's a great book, if I do say so myself, and I hope you'll find it worthy to part with a few of your hard-earned dollars. Click on the book cover to the right to find purchasing info.

In addition to the release of Umbral Visions, I've gotten some news from a big agent on my novel Dreamwielder. The agent particularly liked the first half, but had some issues with the second half and requested revisions. While it's not exactly what I was hoping to hear (I was hoping to hear that the book was perfect, of course), it's nonetheless encouraging news, and I begrudgingly have to agree that the agent's critiques are pretty spot on. My goal is to make the changes in the next month and send the manuscript back to him.