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

The Story Behind Page Fault

I am very excited to announce the release of my novella, Page Fault, a high-concept mash-up of cyberpunk, fantasy, post-apocalyptic, and noir fiction. I can't take sole credit for the high-concept idea, though.

Two years ago, I taught a George R.R. Martin author study course at the Orange County School of Arts. As you might expect, the class was great fun. We read Martin's early horror and sci-fi, read one of his Dunk and Egg novellas, watched a few episodes of Beauty and the Beast from his television writing days, and even got a visit from the man himself for a private lecture.

Seeing as how the class was for the Creative Writing conservatory, though, I also wanted to include a writing component to the course. So one day the students and I round-tabled to come up with a shared world in which we could all write stories, a shared world inspired by Martin's writing across the genre spectrum. The result of our collective imaginations was Soteria—a computer generated world that harbored the majority of Earth's population in a post-pandemic future. The students were great, and by the end of the day we had an entire codex written for our shared world.

Page Fault was my contribution to the subsequent short story collection the class wrote; it started off as an introductory vignette for the collection, but there was something about the vignette that called for more, so I revisited it and expanded it once the course was over. The resultant story is the three part novella you have before you now. It's a story I'm very proud of, and one I couldn't have written without the rich imaginations of all my students. So here's a big shout-out and thank you to all the students from that author study course. Cheers!

-Garrett Calcaterra

Misty Massey and the Weird West Anthology

I'm very pleased to welcome a guest post from Misty Massey. You might recall, I interviewed Massey a few years ago to talk about her pirate fantasy novel, Mad Kestrel. She's stopped by today to talk about her newest project—this time in the role of editor.

-GC

Hey y'all! I'm delighted to be Garrett's guest today! My name is Misty Massey, and until last summer, I was a mere writer of fantastic fiction and author of Mad Kestrel (pirates and magic and adventure...oh my!). I say 'until last summer' because that was when things became slightly more crazy and exciting in my world and I agreed to be an editor. I was a guest at Congregate, and I had just finished a rousing session of Live Action Slush. I was in the hallway chatting with my co-conspirators Emily Leverett and Margaret McGraw when the subject of publishing an anthology of weird western stories came up. We all thought it sounded like great fun, so we started approaching authors we believed would add to the thrill of such a project. Nearly all of them said "Yes!" (okay, a couple were squealing with excitement, but I'm not going to try to spell that sound for you!), so we started querying publishers. Danielle Ackley-McPhail of eSpec Books snapped us up, and before we knew it, we were running a Kickstarter to fund the project.

What is weird west? It's fantasy or science fiction set in the world (or the aesthetic) of the American western frontier. Movies like

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

The Whims of the Interwebs

So, over the weekend I wrote a fun blog post over at Prose & Cons called "Fantasy Rocks: 8 Rock Songs Inspired by Fantasy Albums." It includes eight video clips of rockin' nerdy songs with a quick blurb for each song. Simple. Straightforward. Fun. But not anything I figured would make a big splash. Then Reddit/r/fantasy got a hold of it yesterday, though, and now the blog post is trending like crazy. SF Signal included it in their daily links this morning, and then, even bigger, Tor.com included it in their daily roundup. I guess Reddit really is the front page of the Internet!

Head on over to Prose & Cons to see my original post, and if you're at work, make sure to put some headphones on, because the songs are meant to be cranked up to 11.

Rock on,

-Garrett Calcaterra

Code Brown

Because sometimes you just need a good laugh.

Whether you accidentally splotched your underwear right before a big board meeting, got the trots while on a twelve-hour plane ride, or ran into the opposite sex’s restroom at a fancy restaurant because you had to crap so bad you couldn’t see straight, these are the stories we tell when in good company and in need of a hearty laugh.

Code Brown: 13 Humorous True-Life Tales About Poop (Yes, Poop).

"If you’re like me, you love a great story. Code Brown is full of them... all are extremely well written, humorous..." -Read Tom Lucas 5/5 stars!

Available in paperback and e-book formats.

Get your copy now:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble