Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 121

DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY book description

Now that the New Year is here, it’s time to dig in and start editing DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY.

What’s the book going to be about? I’m glad you asked! Let’s see the book description:

The legions of the Heptarchy have invaded Andomhaim, and Ridmark Arban stands in their way.

But without aid, Andomhaim cannot defeat the Heralds of Ruin. To seek out the weaknesses of his foes, Ridmark must travel into the depths of the Heptarchy to seek out the mysterious wizard called the Master of Keys.

But the brutal rulers of the Heptarchy will not allow Ridmark to escape their grasp…

-JM

a free short story

The last post of 2020!

Be sure to sign up for my new release newsletter, and you’ll get a free copy of the short story SHIELD KNIGHT: MONARCH when DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY comes out in January.

-JM

Did I Meet 2020’s Writing Goals?

As we approach the end of 2020 at long last, in the last week of the year I usually look back and reflect on my writing goals for the past twelve months. Did I reach my writing goals or not?

Let’s review my writing goals for 2020 and see how many I completed!

1.) Write a million words of new fiction.

I did that. With the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY, I got to about 1,278,000 words. Which is an improvement over 1,119,000 in 2019, though I did have twenty-three days of 10k words in 2020, which definitely moved the needle forward.

2.) Continue the DRAGONTIARNA series – reach book #8 or #9.

I almost did that. I published DRAGONTIARNA #7 (CROWNS), and finished the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA #8 (VISIONARY). I would have published VISIONARY this year, but I really slowed down in August/September, partly because CROWNS was really long and complicated. But if all goes well, VISIONARY will be out sometime in January 2021.

3.) Continue the CLOAK MAGE series.

I did that! CLOAK OF ASHES came out in the end of March 2020, and if all goes well I should return to the CLOAK MAGE series in mid-2021.

4.) Continue the GHOST NIGHT series.

I did that as well! GHOST IN THE VISION came out in November, and I’m hoping to conclude the GHOST NIGHT series in 2021.

5.) Reach 34 total audiobooks on Audible.com.

I had planned to get to 34 audiobooks, but now I actually have 44 audiobooks available, so that went really well.

6.) Pass the 100,000th copy of FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE.

I am pleased to report that I was able to do that at the end of February, with FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE my first title to pass over 100,000 copies sold.

7.) THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE audiobook.

I was able to release that in February as well, my first nonfiction audiobook. That one title has been 7% of my total audio sales for 2020.

8.) Project Colossus.

“Project Colossus” was what I called the audiobook of THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE, a massive audiobook that came in at 39 hours. Unsurprisingly, this was my bestselling audiobook of 2020, weighing in at 18% of my total audiobook sales for 2020.

9.) Project Shard.

“Project Shard” was of course the WRAITHSHARD series, which finished this month. I wanted to try releasing a new series completely in Kindle Unlimited, and it did pretty well. But I doubt I will do the Kindle Unlimited thing for new releases again, since I don’t think the KU page reads quite made up for the lack of sales on the other platforms. It also forced me to up my cover design game by a considerable degree.

So of my nine writing goals, I got, say, eight and three-quarters of them. Pretty good! Especially for 2020!

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 60: How To Write 10,000 Words In A Day

It’s time for the final podcast episode of 2020!

In this week’s episode, I take a look at tips to help people write 10,000 words in a day.

I also answer reader questions about the FROSTBORN and CLOAK GAMES series.

-JM

Merry Christmas 2020

Merry Christmas!

It’s time to take a few days off for Christmas. I had hoped to get the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY done by Christmas Eve, and I did! It would have been nice to finish the rough draft of SHIELD KNIGHT: MONARCH, but, well, it’s Christmas. One cannot be greedy.

DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY rough draft done!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY is done at 107,000 words!

Next up is SHIELD KNIGHT: MONARCH, a bonus short story that will take place from the perspective of Mara of Nightmane Forest. (Mara gets asked to arbitrate a dispute between two orcish headmen from a neighboring kingdom, and complications ensue.) Newsletter subscribers will the story for free when I announce the release of VISIONARY in January.

I usually don’t share the cover image until I start editing, but, hey, it’s Christmas. Here is the excellent cover art of VISIONARY as done by Clarissa Yeo!

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA: GATES & WRAITHS now in audio!

I am pleased to report that you can now get DRAGONTIARNA: GATES & WRAITHS in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Steven Brand. The audiobook contains both DRAGONTIARNA: GATES and DRAGONTIARNA: WRAITHS for 27 hours of listening enjoyment.

You can get the audiobook at Audible, iTunes, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon AU.

-JM

 

Episode 59: Don’t Forget To Level Grind

Time for another episode of the Pulp Writer Show!

In this episode, I discuss the experience of learning more about cover design in 2020, and how this has helped with self-publishing.

-JM

Tenet

I finally got a chance to see Tenet.

It’s unfortunate that the virus nerfed Tenet’s performance, but a lot of unfortunate stuff happened recently, and I suspect that moviegoing as a concept was in trouble anyway before 2020.  In 2019, I went to a movie theatre exactly three times, and I haven’t been to a theatre since December 2019.

The problem is that all the trends are against it. It’s much more comfortable to watch a movie at home, with the ability to pause and use the bathroom. Additionally, in a movie theatre that seats 200 people, all it takes is one of those people acting badly to ruin the movie – phone calls, loud conversations, children running up and down the aisles and shouting, etc. And in any group of 200 people, there’s a good chance that one of them will act badly. If that happens, you’ve dropped $20 (or more, probably more) on movie tickets for the privilege of listening to someone’s conversation about how “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING” and “WHO IS THIS GUY AGAIN?” or “SO HELP ME GOD, IF YOU DON’T STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER YOU’RE WAITING IN THE CAR!”

And that was before the virus, which made sitting next a coughing stranger an even less attractive proposition than it was a year ago. So I suspect the future of visual storytelling might be shifting away from movies like Tenet and more towards streaming series like The Mandalorian. Maybe it will be like how people used to read and publish short stories, but the cost of paper went down after World War II and novels became more popular and short stories more of a niche form.

But, anyway, digressions. Back to Tenet!

I really liked Tenet. The concept is that the main character gets recruited by a covert agency that’s fighting a temporal cold war. Humans in the future have figured out how to use a technology called “inversion” that reverses the flow of time for a specific object or individual. Using that technology, the future has declared war on the past by sending weapons and technology to the past (our present) to advance their goals. The main character gets sucked into a spy thriller plot, except in addition to the usual skullduggery and spy tricks, there’s also temporal trickery. A couple of different battle scenes have some characters fighting the battle forward in time and others fighting it backwards.

I don’t usually like time travel stories. I’ve written a bunch of time dilation stories, but people have understood that concept for a long time – the Bible talks about how a thousand years is a day in God’s sight, and there are all the various myths about a man who spends a day in the faerie realm or the Otherworld only to return to Earth and find that a century has passed. But time travel is trickier, since one of the roots of fiction is characters having to deal with the consequences of their decisions, and time travel lets them undo their decisions until they get it right.

That said, a limited form of time travel works, especially with defined rules. The “inversion” technology of Tenet has clear rules and limitations which come to bite the characters several times.

I definitely liked Tenet, and I like the Christopher Nolan formula of “thriller movie, but with exactly one science fiction element added.” Some of the spectacles in the movie are amazing – some shots seem like they must have cost a million dollars a second. That said, you definitely have to pay close attention, and it’s the sort of movie that rewards multiple viewings.

-JM

10k words of DRAGONTIARNA

Yesterday I wrote 10,200 words of DRAGONTIARNA: VISIONARY, for my twenty-third 10k word day of 2020.

About 20,000 to 25,000 words to go, I think!

-JM