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.

Umbral Visions is here!

I'm happy to announce that the e-book version of Umbral Visions is here. You can purchase the book for Kindle, iPad, your home computer, or any other e-book reader, for a paltry $4.99 (less than a stiff drink at your local watering hole!). The PDF is available directly from the publisher, the Kindle format is available from Amazon, or you can find an assortment of formats from Smashwords.com

For those of you who prefer traditional books, hold tight--the trade paper back should be available in the next week or two.

As always, thanks so much for everyone's support and encouragement. If you'd like to further help out with the success of this book, please rate and review the book at Amazon.com

-Garrett Calcaterra

Purchase Umbral Visions now:

Kindle from Amazon

PDF version from the Publisher

Multiple e-book formats from Smashwords

Work, work, work. Work, work, work.

Between working on freelance book editing projects and the start of school, I've been damn busy this last month. In addition to the four creative writing high school classes I teach, I'm teaching two creative non-fiction courses at Chapman University this semester. I've got a great batch of students at both schools, and besides having gobs of papers to grade, I can't complain.

Despite this busyness, I've actually had a productive month on the writing front as well. Two stories I've been shopping around for a while found a home this month and both are available free on-line. The first, “Robbie,” is a sci-fi/horror flash fiction story. You can check it out on The New Flesh.

Sailing the Black Seas

On July 27th, I got a call asking if I was available to head out for thirty days to the Gulf of Mexico and perform air testing associated with the BP oil spill cleanup effort. I used to do air sampling work full-time, and still work with my old company on occasion doing odd jobs and technical writing work, so it wasn't a matter of qualification that gave me pause. Neither was it the opportunity to see the oil spill first hand. Rather, it was the prospect of packing up and leaving my life as I know it for thirty days to go live on a barge that made the decision very difficult. After consulting with my girlfriend, family, and house mates—and getting plenty of assurance from them all that they could maintain things without me for a month—I decided it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

All Work and No Play...

Yikes, it's been nearly two months since my last post. Between finishing up the semester of teaching, getting grades in, sneaking in a quick vacation (3 days is all), and getting to work on a freelance book editing project, I've sort of lost track of time. Hopefully, I haven't forgotten how to write.

Not much has happened on the writing front since my last post. I managed to write one flash fiction piece for an anthology, and tried my hand at sports journalism—that's it. The flash piece came out fine, I suppose, and the sports article came out good {I think), but I definitely learned that I'm not cut out for journalism. News publications expect quick turn around times and a lot of articles. I'm a bit too deliberate and slow in my writing, it turns out, and with all my other commitments, I just couldn't keep up. For what it's worth, here's the link to the one article I wrote: RON ARTEST THE ONLY PLAYER SACRAMENTO KINGS FANS CAN ROOT FOR IN FINALS? It's a bit dated now and geared towards Kings fans, so take it or leave it.

That's it on the writing front. No new bites from agents on Dreamwielder, the agent for This Book is Sh*t! hasn't had any luck either, and I've done nothing for the last month except do editing work on someone else's book. It's sort of depressing really, and it's gotten me thinking about how I make money (it's not with my own writing, let me tell you! [at least, not yet]). Teaching is my bread and butter during the school year, and I supplement that with freelance writing and editing work, and some random handyman gigs here and there. Then, in the summer, it's whatever I can scrape up. None of it pays well and I'm usually scraping by one paycheck or invoice to the next, but the bigger problem is that teaching writing and doing writing/editing work for other people sort of burns out my writing fuse. I love writing, but after spending ten hours on the computer copy editing, I certainly don't want to spend another few hours working on my own stuff.

On the Cusp...

It's been an exciting month. As I mentioned in my last post, I've been hunting for agents for both Dreamwielder and This Book is Sh*t! After an initial quick response and request for sample chapters from one of my top agent picks for Dreamwielder, all's been quiet on that front. However, I did find an agent to shop the This Book is Sh*t! proposal to book publishers in New York, and even more exciting, the Baldairn Motte book I worked on with Craig Comer and Ahimsa Kerp has been picked up by L&L Dreamspell. The three of us just inked the contract, and if all goes according to schedule, The Roads to Baldairn Motte will be coming out as a trade paperback and multi-format e-book in the second quarter of 2011!

Taking Care of Business

Well, it's been well over a month and a half since my last post, but I can honestly say I've not been idle. After finishing the first draft of Dreamwielder, I needed to take some time away from it for two purposes: 1) to give my peer reviewers a chance to read the damn thing, and 2) to give myself some distance so I could come back and look at the book with more objectivity.

So during that time I banged out the book proposal for This Book is Sh*t!, sent out the first batch of query letters to agents for This Book is Sh*t!, drew my map for Dreamwielder, and drafted my query letter for Dreamwielder. By then, the feedback was in from my reviewers and I turned my attention to revisions. There weren't any catastrophic problems with the first draft, and I actually enjoy the revision phase, so it went pretty fast. Most of the revision work consisted of fleshing out character motivation, ironing out some dialogue, and adding in scenes that were previously only summarized. All in all, I added about 3,500 new words to the book (knocking it up to 86,500 words), and the resulting product is 100X better. I'd like to officially thank my reviewers: Ahimsa Kerp, Eric Tryon, Mandy Burke, Craig Comer, my Aunt Linda, and my mother, Shirley Phillips. The critiques and suggestions they offered were critical in taking the book to the next level.