Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 101

The Spice Must Flow

I admit I’ve read DUNE twice, and I didn’t really 100% get it either time. I mean, it’s obvious an influential book – you can see the influence in a lot of the science fiction that’s come since. That said, it’s very high concept, with some ideas you really have to work to get your mind around.

I’m still going to see the movie tomorrow, mostly because I’m extremely curious how they managed to turn this very weird book into a big-budget movie.

But! One advantage of having read the book first. I can read all the reviews I want without worrying about spoilers. Of course, DUNE is a hard book to spoil, because any spoiler would inevitably turn into a 15,000 word long essay about genetic engineering, Space Nuns, telepathy-inducing drugs, giant worms, interstellar commerce, a detailed flowchart of noble house politics, personal force fields, and full-body water recycling.

-JM

OTHERWORLDS now in paperback

I am pleased to report that the OTHERWORLDS anthology is now available in (a very thick) trade paperback.

Since OTHERWORLDS mostly consists of short stories I wrote back in the early 2000s and never managed to get published in the bad old days before self-publishing came along, this is very satisfying.

-JM

 

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 92: Six Tips For Finishing Your Novel

In this week’s episode, I offer six tips to help you finish your novel.

I also answer reader questions and talk about video games from the 1990s.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

Art, Posthumously

As I mentioned earlier this month, I really liked NO TIME TO DIE, the latest James Bond movie. I think it’s tied with CASINO ROYALE with the second-best Daniel Craig Bond movie. (SKYFALL, in my opinion, is the best modern Bond movie, and GOLDFINGER and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE are tied for the best older ones.)

So this week while I was working on GHOST IN THE SUN, I was listening to the soundtrack to CASINO ROYALE, which I’ve never done before. Now, as you likely know, the Bond movies always include a “Bond song” during the opening credits, usually something thematically related to the movie. The song for CASINO ROYALE was “You Know My Name”, which I concluded was a pretty good song.

So I Googled the song to see who had written and performed it, and exactly as the lyrics “are you willing to die?” played, I read that the song was performed by a guy named Chris Cornell who killed himself in 2017.

Man, that was spooky – to hear this guy singing about death and realizing that Mr. Cornell did, in fact, kill himself. Though after reading a little bit about Mr. Cornell’s life, it proves once again that mental illness and illegal drugs are a very, very bad combination.

This was actually the second time this year I had an experience like that. During Prime Day earlier this year, I saw that the FAST & THE FURIOUS box set was on super-sale at Amazon, and I’ve been curious about them for a while, so I bought the movies to watch them.

Before the very first movie, there’s a message from actor Paul Walker stating that all the car stunts in the movie were performed by trained professionals and urging everyone watching to drive safely and responsibly. When I saw that, I already knew that Mr. Walker died in a catastrophic car accident in 2013, so let me tell you, that was an effective message. I suppose it’s the sort of thing that might get cut from the movie out of respect for Mr. Walker’s memory – but, man, having someone who actually died in a serious accident warn you against irresponsible driving really hits home, doesn’t it?

It is a strange phenomenon that the manner of an actor’s or musician’s death can really reinforce (or perhaps alter) the impact of the things they made while alive.

That said, I think I will continue to drive carefully and avoid hard drugs!

-JM

GHOST IN THE SUN – halfway there!

I am pleased to report that I am now on Chapter 12 of 22 of GHOST IN THE SUN, which means I am over halfway there.

I have to admit this is proving a challenging book to write because it is the tenth and final book in the GHOST NIGHT series and the continuity is really important. Like, do you remember who Svetlana Valcezak is off the top of your head? I sure didn’t. But she was a significant character earlier in the series, and her influence is turning up again in GHOST IN THE SUN. So I’m spending considerable time re-reading parts of GHOST NIGHT to refresh my memory.

But I am still hoping that the book will be out in November if all goes well.

The first half of the book is about continuity, the second half is about blowing stuff up.

-JM

 

Monthly Sale

On October 14th, I had a international Bookbub deal for MASK OF THE DEMONSOULED: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY, and it went pretty well – got to #1 in Epic Fantasy on Apple Books UK and Kobo UK.

But the day before that, I sent a newsletter out to my mailing list announcing that the trilogy was on sale for $0.99. And that went really well, way better than I expected. Almost as well as international Bookbub itself.

Based on that, I think I’m start going to do monthly sales on various titles and box sets. Like, at this point I’ve got a huge backlist. GHOST IN THE SUN will be my 126th novel. So I have a lot of backlist box sets and first-in-series books. I think I’ll pick one to discount every month, and then rotate through them.

So be sure to subscribe to my newsletter for new book announcements AND special sales!

-JM

 

MASK OF THE DEMONSOULED trilogy sale!

It’s time for a mid-October sale! For the next few days you can get MASK OF THE DEMONSOULED: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY for $0.99 USD!

You can get it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play.

-JM

Castlevania Dracula X

I write about two things on this site – my books, and my very obscure interests. Today we’re doing obscure interests!

Specifically, Nintendo games from the 1990s.

When the Castlevania Advance Collection came out, I got it, and I’m pleased to say that after 25 years, I have FINALLY finished playing Castlevania Dracula X.

Dracula X is something of an oddball game. It’s a Super Nintendo port of a PC Engine game called Castlevania: Rondo of Blood that came out for the PC Engine console in Japan. The trouble is that PC Engine games could have something like 650 megabytes of data but a Super Nintendo cartridge can only hold 2 megabytes. So Dracula X is sort of a very limited remix of Rondo of Blood.

It’s also a very hard game – I would say the difficulty is both “unforgiving” and “brutal.” Like, the plot of the game is that Count Dracula has returned (yet again) and kidnapped Richter Belmont’s girlfriend Annette and her sister Maria. So Richter takes up the Belmonts’ trusty magic whip and storms Dracula’s castle, fighting Dracula’s army of monsters. But to rescue Annette and Maria, Richter has to follow a very specific path and pick up the Key sub-item, and not lose it at any point on the third level. If you lose the Key, Annette and Maria die, and you don’t get the best ending.

And at no point does the game or the manual explain that! Not once!

For that matter, some of the levels seem designed specifically to screw with the player as much as possible. Like the clock tower level. Castlevania clock tower levels are traditionally quite hard, but Dracula X’s is extremely tough thanks to the combination of the bats and the spear knights. Oddly enough, I think the boss battle with Dracula himself is easier than in Super Castlevania IV or the NES Castlevanias.

But! It’s still a fun game. It makes the best possible use of the Super Nintendo’s graphics, and is one of the best-looking SNES games. The soundtrack is also amazing. I played Dracula X in the 90s, but I could never get past the third level. Thankfully, Castlevania Advance Collection makes excellent use of the Save State feature, so I was finally able to finish the game with the best ending.

-JM

 

 

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 91: Introducing The DRAGONSKULL Series

In this week’s episode, I take an introductory look at DRAGONSKULL, my new epic fantasy series, which is now available on all ebook stores.

I also answer reader questions and comments.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

GHOST IN THE SUN Progress Update

Starting the week at 31,000 words of GHOST IN THE SUN, which puts me at Chapter 8 of 22.

I’d really like to get to the halfway point of the book by the end of the week, but we’ll see.

-JM