Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 104
September 16, 2021
CLOAK OF BLADES: Telepathy & Shapeshifting 101
Today we’ll answer a couple of questions about CLOAK OF BLADES and the CLOAK MAGE series.
A reader asked why Nadia simply didn’t use the mindtouch spell to ascertain the trustworthiness of her crew in CLOAK OF BLADES.
The reason is that Nadia wanted to conceal her ability to use magic until absolutely necessary, and she can’t use the mindtouch spell without the target realizing what is happening. Owen Quell and Tarlia are skilled enough with the mindtouch spell to use it without the targeting feeling it. Nadia isn’t – with the mindtouch spell, she tends to brute-force things. Additionally, one of Nadia’s crew was another wizard, and it’s much harder to effectively use the mindtouch spell on a wizard. In the CLOAK MAGE world, wizards have to discipline their thoughts to keep from frying their brain like an egg on a skillet when using magic, and so it becomes easier to fight off a telepathic intrusion.
A second reason is that the target has to be conscious for the mindtouch spell to work. Like, if Nadia did her trick of dumping bad memories into the target’s mind and seeking for information while they were unconscious, she wouldn’t be able to find anything because the mind in question would be rebooting. (The mindtouch spell doesn’t work on sleeping people for that reason.)
Finally, Nadia is often reluctant to use the mindtouch spell because it’s a disturbing experience. Imagine walking up to a total stranger and sticking your fingers into their mouth and feeling around. The mindtouch spell is the telepathic equivalent of that. Now, obviously, with training and experience you can get used to sticking your fingers into total strangers’ mouths – dental hygienists and dentists do it all day. Nadia could learn to use the mindtouch spell more effectively, but she doesn’t want to and – more importantly – it hasn’t occurred to her that she could do that.
So I suppose this is an example of something I’ve written about before – how to create challenges for powerful characters without de-powering them to artificially generate dramatic tension. In CLOAK OF BLADES, Nadia could achieve her objective by simply blasting her way through everything. But to actually achieve her objective, she has to not get caught doing it, and her target must not realize that anything happened. This is not a challenge that raw magical power will solve.
Ben asks:
Weird question but can elves shapeshift a little in terms of their appearance. I don’t mean using the mask spell but actually changing it.
Generally not. There are a few exceptions – an Elf with the bloodmorph magical talent could do it, along with specific spells. But it’s generally not a common talent. In the CLOAK MAGE universe, shapechanging tends to be the province of really powerful and innately magical creatures like dragons, or as the result of creatures from other realities inhabiting a human form – like a wraithwolf or a Dark One.
Tarlia, for instance, cannot shapeshift, and neither could Morvilind. Prince Valcander, the most of powerful of the Archons, never bothered with Dark One-induced shapeshifting because he had no need for it. The lack of shapeshifting would not hinder any of the three from destroying entire armies on their own.
Tim asks:
When is Cloak of Iron going to come out?
Tentatively, I think CLOAK OF IRON will come out in January 2022. Which sounds far away, but is a lot closer than you think! 
A little preview. CLOAK OF BLADES had only Nadia’s POV, but CLOAK OF IRON will have three:
-Nadia.
-Neil Freeman, who you might remember from CLOAK OF DRAGONS and CLOAK OF BLADES.
-Lauren, the owner of the best (and only) car & tractor repair shop in a small Montana town.
And on the worst day of her life, Lauren stumbles across something so dangerous that Singularity will unhesitatingly kill thousands to claim it…
-JM
September 15, 2021
10k words of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE!
Wrote 10,000 words of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE today, for my sixth 10k word day of 2021.
Puts me on Chapter 11 of 20 of the book.
-JM
So Your Site Has Been Delisted By Google
I mentioned on Facebook that my site (https://www.jonathanmoeller.com) had been re-listed by Google after it had been de-indexed. Naturally, I used the opportunity to share a Star Wars prequel meme, but some people had substantive questions on what actually happened that were not answered by the prequel meme, so I thought I would answer them here.
Back at the start of August, I noticed a drop in my website traffic. At the time, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Website traffic does fluctuate, and I was busy finishing COVERING FIRE and SILENT ORDER: ROYAL HAND, which held most of my attention. But my website traffic dropped by about 25% and stayed there.
Finally, when I finished the rough draft of SILENT ORDER: ROYAL HAND, I had a chance to look into it further. I thought my web host was having problems, but what actually happened was that my site was removed from the Google search index. So if you searched for “jonathan moeller” in Google, you couldn’t find jonathanmoeller.com.
(Incidentally, you can check if a website has been indexed by Google by using the “site” argument in a search term followed by the site. For example, typing “site:jonathanmoeller.com” into Google will bring up every page that Google has indexed from jonathanmoeller.com.)
I have absolutely no idea why this happened. I keep my site and all the plugins up to date, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a security thing. I think what happened was that Google is really cracking down on non-SSL sites, and while I’ve been using SSL for years, I didn’t have http://www,jonathanmoeller.com automatically set to redirect to the SSL-enabled https://www.jonathanmoeller.com. It’s also possible my XML sitemaps weren’t formed properly. Or maybe it was just a glitch. I don’t really know.
While this was deeply annoying, it was by no means crippling. Traffic only dropped by 25%, and book sales were unaffected. Even if jonathanmoeller.com wasn’t showing up on Google, searching for “jonathan moeller” still brought up my Goodreads page and my Amazon author profile page. So there was still a pathway to my books through Google.
However, while not crippling, no one wants to live with deeply annoying problems. So I started digging into the research, and here’s what I did to get back on the Google search index:
-I registered my site with Google Search Console.
-Specifically, I updated my site’s DNS records following the Google Search Console guidelines, and uploaded the additional HTML files it recommended for site verification.
-I installed the XML Sitemaps plugin for my site to generate new sitemaps.
-I waited three and a half weeks after doing all that.
The site showed up on Google again sometime over the weekend of 9/10, and has stayed there since.
So, it’s good it’s back on the Google search index, but I don’t know why it disappeared. I can only assume that these guys are running Google’s search algorithms:
-JM
September 14, 2021
CLOAK OF BLADES now in audiobook!
CLOAK OF BLADES
September 10, 2021
one more DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE excerpt
It’s Friday! Let’s close out the week with one more excerpt from DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE:
###
A militiaman fell next to Gareth, screaming in agony, a medvarth axe buried in his chest. The medvarth loomed over him and roared, and before the creature could wrench his axe free, Gareth moved. All the teaching his father had given him, all the time spent training with the sword masters of the royal court and under Sir Tragen’s harsh tutelage, informed his movement. Gareth chopped his sword down and took off the medvarth’s right hand, the one that had been holding the axe. The medvarth roared in fury and rage, blood spurting from the stump, thicker and darker than that of a human. Before Gareth could get his sword back for another blow, the medvarth swung its remaining hand in a fist for Gareth’s face.
He snapped his shield up, and the medvarth’s blow landed against the wood. The creature hit hard, at least as hard as Crake, and the impact rocked him back. But Gareth had spent a lot of time training to take blows like that on his shield, and he slashed upward with his blade. This time his sword ripped open the medvarth’s throat. Just as well he had put so much force into the blow – the medvarth’s hide was thick, and its throat was covered in thick brown fur anyway. But Gareth felt the blade rip through the hide and the veins beneath it. Between the blood spraying from its throat and the missing hand, the medvarth staggered back and collapsed onto the rocky ground.
That was a lot harder than killing a scrawny kobold.
-JM
September 8, 2021
DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE progress update & excerpt
Now on Chapter 6 of 20 of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE!
Let’s have another short excerpt.
###
“Your own household?” said Gareth, and then he understood. “Lady Antenora put you up to this, didn’t she?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Lord Gavin, resigned. “She’s probably watching us from the window in the keep. No, don’t turn around and look. She think she’s being subtle.” He looked at Gareth. “After we visited Tarlion, Antenora decided she was going to talk to you about your mother. I convinced her to let me do it instead.”
“Oh,” said Gareth. “Thank you.” That would have been awkward. Lady Antenora was an attractive woman, but she also had a focus and intensity that was more than a little unnerving, especially when she was angry. Philip sometimes described how Antenora used to lecture him for hours when he had done something wrong, calmly citing both appropriate passages from the scriptures and various ancient Greek and Roman philosophers from Old Earth.
“I would stop misbehaving,” Philip had said, “just so I wouldn’t have to hear yet again what Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius had written on the formation of the human character.”
-JM
September 7, 2021
The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 89: Project Updates & Reader Questions
It’s been a while, but I finally had time to record a new episode!
In this week’s episode, I share progress on my current writing projects and answer reader questions about CLOAK GAMES and the FROSTBORN universe.
I also share the results of my ad spending for August 2021.
As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.
-JM
September 5, 2021
Live, Die, Repeat
I watched LIVE, DIE, REPEAT last night and really enjoyed it.
The premise is that aliens invade Earth and overrun most of Europe before they’re contained. Humanity develops “Jacket” technology, basically a powered exoskeleton, that lets human soldiers go toe to toe with the aliens. Equipped with Jacket technology, the human armies plan to launch a massive invasion from the UK into France to drive back the aliens.
Tom Cruise plays Major Cage, a sleazy officer in the PR office of the US Army. When Cage tries to blackmail a general to get out of a dangerous assignment, the unamused general has Cage arrested, demoted to private, and sent to the front line of the invasion. Since Cage doesn’t know how to use a Jacket properly, this is effectively a death sentence. Cage lands with the rest of the troops on the first day of the invasion, which immediately turns into a disaster – the aliens were ready and waiting, and during the battle, Cage is killed when he blasts an alien with a claymore mine.
Except the explosion sprays Cage with the alien’s blood, and he wakes up to find himself back on the day of the invasion. Once again he goes on the invasion, gets killed, and wakes up again on the morning of the invasion. Cage finally figures out that he is caught in a time loop, and dies many, many more times.
However, before one of his deaths, he saves the life of the war hero Sergeant Vrataski, who realizes what is happening to Cage and tells him to find her when he wakes up. When he does, Vrataski tells Cage that the same thing happened to her – she killed an alien Alpha, was drenched in its blood, and got caught in a time loop. The eventual accumulation of prescience over thousands of loops allowed her to win one of the biggest battles of the war, but in her final loop, she was wounded and received a blood transfusion, which lost her ability to reset time.
The aliens apparently have the ability to create time loops, fighting the same battle over and over until they achieve the desired outcome, much like a gamer reloading a save state over and over again. The power accidentally passed to first Vrataski and then Cage – and the aliens know it and want it back. Cage and Vrataski need to find and kill the alien Omega, the governing consciousness of their hive mind, before the aliens find and kill them.
I don’t really like time travel stories in general, but I do like time loop stories, and have written a few of them myself. LIVE, DIE, REPEAT is an excellent example of one, with high-concept sci-fi mixed with big-budget battle spectacle. It’s also interesting to watch Cage’s moral journey from self-centered, amoral officer through despair and finally grim determination.
Definitely recommended if you’re looking for something to watch this weekend.
-JM
September 3, 2021
DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE – a short excerpt
Now on Chapter 3 of 20 of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE, which means it’s time to share an excerpt!
Both characters in this bit are seventeen years old. I haven’t realized this before, but it’s fun to write from the perspective of a seventeen-year-old because they’re kind of oblivious and often do dumb things. Now, you might be seventeen years old and reading this, and be offended. Perhaps you are an exceptionally clever and responsible seventeen-year-old. Such people do exist! However, I guarantee that once enough time passes, even an exceptionally clever and responsible person will look back at some of the things their seventeen-year-old self did and think “that was dumb.”
Anyway, the excerpt!
###
“My father says that the Northerland will never have peace until the medvarth and the ice dwarves are driven past the Black Mountain and into the Wilderland,” said Philip.
Gareth thought about it. “What does your mother think?”
Philip snorted. “She thinks the nature of mankind means there will never be an end to war.”
That sounded like the sort of wise but nonetheless gloomy thing that Lady Antenora would say.
“Of course, Mother isn’t wrong,” said Philip. “Look at you and Crake.”
Gareth sighed. “Not again, Philip.”
“When you came here last year, I really thought the two of you would be friends,” said Philip.
“If he weren’t a braggart and an oaf who never shuts up, we would get along just fine,” said Gareth. “Does he complain about you to me?”
“Yes, frequently,” said Philip.
“I can imagine,” said Gareth. He started doing an impression of Crake. “The Southron’s only the Dux’s squire because his father is the Constable of Tarlion. The Southron got chased out of Tarlion because he fought a duel over some knight’s betrothed. The Southron’s so besotted over a girl that he can’t think straight. The Southron isn’t a hearty northerner like me, even though I’m from bloody Cintarra, but I act like I was born in a blizzard in the Northerland and nursed by a she-wolf.”
Philip said nothing.
“Well?” said Gareth.
Philip sighed. “Animals are so much less quarrelsome than people.”
-JM
