Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Caledonian Gambit
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://dmoren.com/
CITY: Somerville
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: nb2016011746
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/nb2016011746
HEADING: Moren, Dan
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670 __ |a The connected Apple family, [2015]: |b t.p. (Dan Moren) back cover (freelance tech journalist)
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Freelance technology journalist, podcaster, and author. Co-host, Clockwise and The Rebound; writer and host, Inconceivable!; panelist, The Incomparable. Former senior editor, Macworld.
AVOCATIONS:Ultimate frisbee, video games.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Boston Globe, Fast Company, Macworld, Popular Science, Six Colors, The Magazine, TidBITS, Tom’s Guide, and Yahoo Tech.
SIDELIGHTS
The Caledonian Gambit is technology journalist Dan Moren’s science fiction debut. “I’ve been writing stories pretty much since I learned how to put pencil to paper,” Moren said in an interview for the Qwillery. “Back in second grade, my friend and I used to concoct tales about magical anthropomorphic cats and the kids who befriended then. (Funny enough, she actually went on to be a talented non-fiction cartoonist, so who knows, maybe those pencil scrawls will be worth something some day.) As for why, I’ve always been enamored with stories and storytelling. I read incessantly as a kid—no surprise for the child of two librarians—and I loved getting wrapped up in a story.”
The Caledonian Gambit introduces covert operative Simon Kovalic and former soldier Eli Brody. Brody is an Illyrican soldier Kovalic is trying to coerce into revealing information about a superweapon supposedly created by the Illyricans. “The characterization,” explained a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “delves just enough into emotionality to give the characters realism without moving the focus away.” Eventually the two have to band together in order to locate the superweapon and eliminate it before it can plunge the galaxy into war.
The plot of The Caledonian Gambit falls into a classic science-fiction trope: space opera. At the same time, however, reviewers noted that the story is more character-driven than plot-driven, and that the relationship between Brody and Kovalic provides the story with motivation and drive. “While on its face this is a story about spies and space battles,” Moren told his Qwillery interviewer, “it’s really, at heart, about something more fundamental: family. About differences between family members, what it means to leave your family behind, what it means to stay with them and make sacrifices for them. I think that’s something that’s almost all of us can relate to in one way or another.” “Sure, there are space battles and there’s intrigue and spy action,” Moren explained in an author’s question-and-answer appearing on the Skyhorse Publishing blog Carousel, “but I think the most appealing thing about the story is the characters and their essential humanity. My fundamental belief is that people are still people, no matter how far forward in the future you project: they love (often unwisely), they fight (often about stupid things), they have virtues and flaws. This book may take place in the future, on spaceships and far-flung planets, but the characters are still relatable as people; the conflicts and problems that they deal with aren’t so different from what we experience today.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 17, 2017, review of The Caledonian Gambit, p. 52.
ONLINE
Carousel, http://blog.skyhorsepublishing.com/ (February 27, 2017), author Q&A.
Dan Moren Website, https://dmoren.com (January 17, 2018), author profile.
Qwillery, http://qwillery.blogspot.com/ (May 23, 2017), “Interview with Dan Moren, Author of The Caledonian Gambit.“
A novelist, freelance writer, and prolific podcaster, Dan’s work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Macworld, Fast Company, Popular Science, Yahoo Tech, Tom’s Guide, Six Colors, The Magazine, and TidBITS, among other places. He formerly served as a senior editor at Macworld.
His debut novel, the rollicking sci-fi adventure The Caledonian Gambit, is available from Talos Press. Dan’s repped by Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency.
He also co-hosts tech podcasts Clockwise and The Rebound, writes and hosts nerdy quiz show Inconceivable!, and is a frequent panelist on the Parsec-award-winning podcast The Incomparable.
Dan lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, where he plays ultimate frisbee, enjoys games (of the video and tabletop variety), and is generally working on a novel or two. When he’s not wasting time on Twitter, anyway.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Interview with Dan Moren, Author of The Caledonian Gambit
Please welcome Dan Moren to The Qwillery as part of the 2017 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. The Caledonian Gambit is published on May 23rd by Talos.
Please join The Qwillery in wishing Dan a Happy Publication Day!
TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. When and why did you start writing?
Dan: Thanks! Delighted to be here. I've been writing stories pretty much since I learned how to put pencil to paper. Back in second grade, my friend and I used to concoct tales about magical anthropomorphic cats and the kids who befriended then. (Funny enough, she actually went on to be a talented non-fiction cartoonist, so who knows, maybe those pencil scrawls will be worth something some day.) As for why, I've always been enamored with stories and storytelling. I read incessantly as a kid—no surprise for the child of two librarians—and I loved getting wrapped up in a story, so it seemed only natural to tell my own.
TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?
Dan: Mostly a pantser, though I hate to admit it because it gets me into trouble at times. I've experimented with a few different outlining methods in more recent writing to try and forestall that late-in-the-game moment when you realize that you forgot to set up a particularly salient detail, or find that the characters have taken a sharp left turn from the road you set them upon. But I can't lie: I love the thrill of writing on the edge and being surprised at where the story takes me, even if that means I have to dig myself out of some holes when it comes time to rewrite.
TQ: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?
Dan: Speaking of rewriting, that has got to be my biggest bane. I always get anxious that my story is a carefully crafted spider web that will disintegrate if I remove or change the wrong element. That's a tendency I'm trying to combat by reminding myself that rewriting is more like forging steel—hammering on a story until it becomes even stronger than it was initially. But getting over that initial fear that your story is a precarious tower of Jenga blocks is definitely a challenge.
TQ: What has influenced / influences your writing? How does your background in the tech world inform your writing?
Dan: Really, what doesn't influence writing in some way? It's all fodder, from those moments of high drama like break-ups and fights with friends and family, all the way down to riding the subway to work or going to the grocery store. What most inspires me to write and tell stories is still consuming other stories, whether they be movies, TV shows, books, comics, games, and so on. When I experience a really great story, it makes me want to create something that engenders that same feeling in other people.
As for my background in the tech world, I think that's given me two things in particular: first, a pretty good idea of what's plausible, as far as tech goes—that doesn't mean I always want to get down into the nitty gritty of how a technology works, since I think some people's eyes tend to glaze over, but I want the tech to at least seem feasible. Secondly, it's sparked a curiosity about how certain types of technology, especially ones we now take for granted, fundamentally change the way our entire society works.
TQ: Describe The Caledonian Gambit in 140 characters or less.
Dan: An elite covert operative and a washed-up pilot team up to locate a mysterious superweapon that could tip the balance of a galactic cold war
(I couldn't fit a period on the end of that sentence and it's killing the grammarian in me.)
TQ: Tell us something about The Caledonian Gambit that is not found in the book description.
Dan: While on its face this is a story about spies and space battles, it's really, at heart, about something more fundamental: family. About differences between family members, what it means to leave your family behind, what it means to stay with them and make sacrifices for them. I think that's something that's almost all of us can relate to in one way or another—certainly more so than flying a spaceship or being a secret agent.
TQ: What inspired you to write The Caledonian Gambit? What appeals to you about writing Science Fiction?
Dan: Science fiction and fantasy have always been my preferred genres, for about as long as I can remember. This particular book was largely inspired by some of my favorite series, like Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy. I love the feel of an expansive galaxy full of interesting characters, intrigue, and humor. Science fiction, in particular, is always a good way to view current events through a different lens—though I have to say I didn't really think a cold war spy novel in space would be particularly topical when I started working on it eight or nine years ago, and yet...
TQ: What sort of research did you do for The Caledonian Gambit?
Dan: A lot of the research I did—and some of this was quite a long time ago—was into the structure of certain organizations: the military, intelligence organizations, and so on. Obviously, this takes place in the future, and the organizations in it aren't entirely reflective of the ones from the here and now, but I wanted them to feel right.
And of course, since it's largely sent on space, I had to do some research on the science front. I'm lucky enough to have a cousin who's a high school physics teacher, and he gave me notes here and there, including ideas for jumping off points on some of the tech used in the book. (Of course I took many, many liberties for the sake of writing things I thought would be fun and exciting, so any errors are on me alone.)
TQ: Please tell us about The Caledonian Gambit's cover.
Dan: I've delved a bit into this story over on my blog, but when my editor asked about what I'd like to see on the cover, I immediately thought of a pivotal scene right at the beginning of the book: a space battle that takes place around a wormhole gate, which is how you travel between solar systems in this universe. I sent my editor an incredibly crude sketch—thanks, lack of artistic talent!—and our cover artist, Sebastien Hue, somehow managed to create a beautiful depiction of exactly what was going on in my head. I don't know how he pulled it off, but I've only been able to conclude that he's a wizard as well as a supremely talented artist.
TQ: In The Caledonian Gambit who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?
Dan: My favorite character to write is probably Tapper. He's the gruff sergeant, sort of the sidekick and mentor to our covert operative, Simon Kovalic. I enjoy writing him because I find his voice instantly recognizable in my head—I know what a Tapper line sounds like, how he'd say something, and what he'd do while saying it. He's kind of seen it all—or at least likes to think he has—and if he's not exactly jaded, he's at least a bit skeptical of anything outside of his area of knowledge.
The hardest character to write is probably Kovalic. He's extremely competent, and generally presents a stoic exterior, but he hasn't quite become a cynic yet; things still get to him. He's also got a dry sense of humor that shines through his professionalism. The challenge is that he needs to be a more fleshed-out character than someone like Tapper, who can pop in and deliver a wry line; Kovalic, by contrast, is the main act—he's a load-bearing character, if you will. That means a lot more complexity and nuance.
TQ: Which question about The Caledonian Gambit do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!
Dan: "Why aren't there aliens in this universe?"
Glad you asked, random person in no way related to me! While I dig aliens as much as the next person, I was especially interested in examining the relationships of these different factions of humans that have grown apart culturally. While I think aliens can often be used to provide an interesting lens of insight into humanity, too often they seem to me to be merely re-labeled humans (like on so many Star Trek episodes where they just have prosthetics stuck to their forehead so that their appearance can scream "alien!").
Of course, that's not to say there might not be (or have been) aliens in this universe. Absence of evidence, after all, is not evidence of absence...
TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from The Caledonian Gambit.
Dan: For the record, this is a brutal question—it's like asking me to pick a single favorite chocolate dessert. But I have a soft spot in my heart for many of the exchanges between Kovalic and Tapper, such as this one:
“What happens if we don’t?”
“Well, as the general would have it, the Illyrican Empire will roll over the Commonwealth, darkness will swallow the land, and we’ll all be forced to live under the rule of an aging autocratic dictator whose policies are increasingly informed by a coterie of counselors with their own selfish interests at heart.”
“Ah,” said Tapper. “Must be Thursday, then.”
And, just for kicks, a bonus quote from our other protagonist, the aforementioned washed-up pilot:
"If the ascent was bad, the docking maneuver was worse. Like two beached whales mating, his flight instructor had once described the process, and this pilot seemed determined to wring every ounce of truth from that quip."
TQ: What's next?
Dan: I'm hopeful that I'll get an opportunity to continue the story of some of the characters you meet in The Caledonian Gambit. It's a big universe in there, and there's a lot left to explore. Plus, I might possibly have dangled a couple hooks in it that I'd like to investigate in a subsequent book. Or books. If I'm lucky.
I've also been working on an urban fantasy book that takes place around my hometown of Boston and involves a suspicious death tied to a big technology company. You know, just to try my hand at something completely different.
TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.
Dan: Thanks for having me! It was a pleasure. And I'm glad I got through this interview without being horribly qwilled.
I'll see myself out.
12/17/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Print Marked Items
The Caledonian Gambit
Publishers Weekly.
264.16 (Apr. 17, 2017): p52.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Caledonian Gambit
Dan Moren.Talos, $15.99 trade paper (312p) ISBN 978-1-940456-84-3
Tech writer and podcaster Moren's debut is a competent, if unambitious, space adventure. Wisecracking
Elijah Brody decided to sign up for the aggressive Illyrican space fleet even though the Illyricans exert
harsh control over his home world, Caledonia; he cared about flight, not politics. But a transport wormhole
is destroyed in a defensive move that leaves thousands dead and Eli trapped on an isolated planet for five
years. When it reopens, Simon Kovalic, an intelligence officer from the rival superpower called the
Commonweath, collects him in hopes of acquiring information about a game-changing weapon, a task that
gets Eli involved with the radical Caledonian resistance. The political element is bland, but the action
scenes, both on the ground and in space, show a focus on thoughtful planning and careful pacing. The
characterization delves just enough into emotionality to give the characters realism without moving the
focus away from fights, intrigue, and spycraft. Though the ending is less shocking to the reader than to the
characters, Moren makes its unfolding both natural and satisfying. Agent: Sam Morgan, JABberwocky
Literary. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Caledonian Gambit." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 52. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490820798/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f063d872.
Accessed 17 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490820798
Cover Reveal of The Caledonian Gambit and Q&A with Author, Dan Moren
February 27, 2017
The exclusive cover reveal of The Caledonian Gambit and Q&A interview with author, Dan Moren.
Do you love sci-fi adventures and discovering lives of secret spies? What if there was some intergalactic politics in there as well? If all of this appeases you then look out for The Caledonian Gambit! You will be thrown into an out of this world story trapped between two superpowers, the Illyrican Empire and the Commonwealth. Follow a spy and a soldier trying to save the galaxy before Caledonia is gone for good!
The Caledonian Gambit
Comes out May 23 2017!
Q&A with Dan Moren
The Caledonian Gambit is a really terrific story, and your first novel. What initially prompted you to consider writing this book?
Well, I’ve wanted to write a science-fiction book basically since the first time I watched Star Wars. But the impetus for The Caledonian Gambit actually came from a different sci-fi series: Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. When I first read it in college, I was blown away by not only the world she created but the oh-so-human characters that populated it. I’ve also long had a love for Cold War spy stories, from John Le Carré to The Hunt for Red October; my personal favorite is a cult classic British spy series The Sandbaggers. I love the cat-and-mouse games, the tentative alliances, and the wheels within wheels of intrigue and plotting. A Cold War spy story in space seemed like chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (i.e. the best thing ever), so I decided to take a whack at it.
We always hear that some writers are able to knock out a book in a few weeks, while others spend months if not years fine-tuning their work. How long did it take you to complete this work?
Oh, wish I were one of those writers who could knock out a book in mere weeks. I first started jotting down notes for this story back in 2002, when I was a senior in college, but I didn’t sit down to really start writing in earnest until probably 2009. Just the other day, one of my earliest beta readers found an email I’d sent him in 2010 in which I said I thought all the plot lines were pretty much nailed down, which I guess is the writer’s equivalent of saying “What could possibly go wrong?” But I’m very fortunate to have had really incisive beta readers as well as an agent who saw promise in the book and was willing to help me keep refining it until it lived up to its potential. The good news is that I learned a lot from that process, and every time I write a book it goes just a little bit faster and a little bit smoother.
There are a lot of terrific characters in this book, with my favorite being Simon Kovalic. Do you see any of yourself in Simon, or anyone else in the book? Did you take inspiration from your personal life to help develop certain characters?
Simon Kovalic is kind of an aspirational character. I don’t think I see much of myself in him, precisely, but I think there’s a little bit of him in all of us: the best version of ourselves, where we’re cool under pressure and extremely competent. There’s probably more of me in the book’s other protagonist, Eli Brody: he’s cocky, a bit of a smart-ass who doesn’t know when to shut up. Ask any number of my teachers from over the years if that sounds familiar. Or my dad.
I think characters always pull at least somewhat from the experiences that shape us, even if it’s subconscious. In this story, I think it was mainly the relationships between the characters where I ended up drawing from real life. In particular, there’s a sibling relationship in the book that was largely inspired by watching friends and family members who have siblings, since I don’t have any of my own. It’s a hard thing to write about when you have never experienced it first-hand but, then again, I haven’t flown a spaceship through a wormhole either.
The dialogue in The Caledonian Gambit is very quick-witted. Some authors have admitted to struggling when writing dialogue. Did you find any trouble in doing so, or was it able to flow freely?
I love dialogue. Absolutely love it. If I could write a story that was only dialogue, I would do that. Something about cadence and diction and the spoken word has always resonated with me, and it helps that I’ve always been drawn to books, movies, and TV shows with dialogue that just sings. Comedy is a great place in particular to learn about writing dialogue, because word choice and delivery is so integral to landing a joke.
With characters that I’ve spent as much time with as those in The Caledonian Gambit, I actually end up hearing the dialogue in their voices. To me, the lines aren’t interchangeable: Kovalic’s words would never come out of Eli’s mouth, or vice versa. It’d be like AC/DC playing a Mozart sonata.
Dan Moren, Author of The Caledonian Gambit
You include a lot of scientific elements into the story, including spacecrafts and wormholes. Did you do a lot of research on these topics during the writing process?
As I’m sure my more science-minded friends will say, probably not enough research. I do have a cousin who is a physics teacher and I consulted with him about some of the more key elements—but mainly to ask if I could get away with taking certain liberties. In general, I’m more interested in telling a good story than in the science being completely accurate. The good news for me is that while there’s been a lot of theoretical research on wormholes, nobody’s ever seen one, much less traveled through it. So maybe my portrayal of them is totally right! (Spoiler: It probably isn’t.)
I really enjoyed the world building you included. Were there any current events that inspired you when creating Caledonia?
I suppose that depends on your definition of “current.” Obviously, the planet and culture of Caledonia is largely drawn from that of Scotland and Ireland, which in turn was sparked by the time I spent traveling in those countries and learning about their histories and cultures. You certainly don’t have to look very far back to see where I pulled from to flesh out the people and political reality of Caledonia. I don’t think there’s anything “ripped from the headlines,” as it were, but current events and the way they shape our reality are always going to leak into a story.
During the writing process, did you discover anything, either internally or externally, that surprised you and/or changed the course of the book?
I make no bones about it: I’m a pantser—someone who writes by the seat of their pants rather than planning everything out in excruciating detail ahead of time. It’s just the way I work, even though it gets me into trouble rather more often than it gets me out of it. As a pantser, there are always some things that change during the course of writing a story; it’s just a question of how major they are, and how much they affect the rest of the book.
There is one character in The Caledonian Gambit who is not exactly who they appear to be and when that was revealed, I found myself quite as surprised by it as the other characters, even though it made perfect sense. In early drafts, there was also a close compatriot of Eli Brody’s who kicks off the entire plot, but you’ll find him exactly nowhere in the final version. (I’ll admit that I’ve saved him for another story down the road.)
If there’s one thing from The Caledonian Gambit which you think might appeal to readers, what would it be?
Sure, there are space battles and there’s intrigue and spy action, but I think the most appealing thing about the story is the characters and their essential humanity. My fundamental belief is that people are still people, no matter how far forward in the future you project: they love (often unwisely), they fight (often about stupid things), they have virtues and flaws. This book may take place in the future, on spaceships and far-flung planets, but the characters are still relatable as people; the conflicts and problems that they deal with aren’t so different from what we experience today.
While your book has not yet been published, what has been the reaction from your friends and family on you soon becoming a published author?
Whew. Well, I’ve never been shy about wanting to be an author—I started writing stories when I was in first grade. For me, it’s tremendously exciting to see all this hard work pay off with something that I’ve aimed for since I was a kid. But, frankly, I think it might be even more exciting for some of my friends and family, in large part because I have an awesome, incredibly supportive network of people who genuinely just want to see me succeed. But, then again, they also haven’t spent years writing, eating, and sleeping every word of this book—it just comes out and they get to read it. I’m going to be honest: I’m a little jealous of them.
The Caledonian Gambit
By Dan Moren
ISBN: 978-1-9404-5684-3