Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 135

THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS TWO and THREE now in audiobook!

I am pleased to report that THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS TWO and THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS THREE are now available in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy.

OMNIBUS TWO combines GHOST IN THE STORM, GHOST IN THE STONE, and GHOST IN THE FORGE, and OMNIBUS THREE combines GHOST IN THE ASHES, GHOST IN THE MASK, and GHOST IN THE SURGE. Each omnibus gives you over 30 hours of listening enjoyment for one credit.

You can get OMNIBUS TWO at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, and iTunes.

You can get OMNIBUS THREE at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, and iTunes.

Also! If you want a download code for a copy of GHOST IN THE STORM, GHOST IN THE STONE, or GHOST IN THE FORGE, email me at jmcontact@jonathanmoeller.com and I’ll send them out until I run out of codes. (Limit 1 code per person.)

-JM

Dragontiarna: Schwerpunkt

A reader had a few questions about the inspiration for the military strategy of Warlord Agravhask in DRAGONTIARNA: LEGIONS. (No spoilers for the book follow.)

Agravhask is a big believer in the concept of “schwerpunkt”, which is a German word that means “strong point.” It was an idea first articulated by a 19th century Prussian general named Carl Von Clausewitz in his “On War” book of military theory. To simplify it down, the concept basically means that the enemy has a “strong point” or a “center of gravity”, and to win, you identify and break the strong point to destroy their ability to make war. A lot of significant people in the 20th century were heavily influenced by Clausewitz’s writing, and it’s still mandatory reading at most military academies around the world. (And argued about at tedious length on the Internet, as are all topics.)

Anyway, that’s a historical digression. Back in the realm of fiction, Agravhask usually follows 4 steps in his military strategies:

ONE: Act, forcing the enemy to react.

TWO: Anticipate how the enemy will react to Step One.

THREE: Respond in such a way that the enemy’s reaction does them more harm than good.

FOUR: Use the chaos of the reaction to find the strong point and shatter it.

This is precisely what Agravhask does in LEGIONS. He generally doesn’t follow any particular tactical plan, choosing instead whatever tactics are best-suited to achieve his four-step strategy. That said, unlike many orcish warlords, Agravhask is very, very interested in logistics, and his army is extremely well-organized and well-supplied. This is what gives him the flexibility to change tactical plans on the fly – his army is organized enough to handle that.

I often say that I get ideas for my books from history, and if you’re looking for an example, this is one of them.

-JM

 

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 30: 6 Tips For Writing Compelling Characters

We’ve reached a milestone with the 30th episode of the Pulp Writer Show!

In this week’s episode, I discuss 6 ways to create compelling and memorable characters.

-JM

May 2020

Well, May was a bad month for a lot of people, but I had my best ever month for both audiobooks and Kindle Unlimited page reads.

Thanks for reading (and listening) everyone! Since it seems like a good idea to stay inside for a variety of reasons just now, hopefully the books and audiobooks will help you pass the time.

Meanwhile, if all goes well, hopefully I will have the rough draft of WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT done by the end of this week.

-JM

WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT progress

14 chapters down, 6 to go!

Hopefully I will finish up the rough draft towards the end of next week.

On an unrelated topic, it appears that April 2020 was my best month ever for self-published audiobooks. Thanks for listening, everyone! I honestly expected audiobooks to crash hard during the Great Virus Meltdown, but that doesn’t appear to have been the case.

Truly, if 2020 has taught us anything, it is the futility of attempting to predict the future.

What about Caina? Nadia? Jack March?

I mentioned earlier that I’m going to be working on DRAGONTIARNA and WRAITHSHARD, alternating books every other month, until WRAITHSHARD is done. Then I’ll alternate between DRAGONTIARNA and GHOST NIGHT until both series are done, which should be around the same time.

A few people asked when I’m going to get back to Nadia in CLOAK MAGE and Jack March in SILENT ORDER.

I’ll probably write a CLOAK MAGE book here and there when I want a mental break from epic fantasy – they’re more stand-alone than the rest of my books. (You’ll notice that the CLOAK MAGE books don’t have any epilogues, which is where I usually set up the hook for the next book.) Once I finish some of my other series, I’ll start writing a CLOAK MAGE book every other month and bring the overall arc to an end.

Now, SILENT ORDER.

I’ve actually written about two-thirds of the tenth SILENT ORDER book. But there are two problems with publishing it.

-SILENT ORDER #10 is going to be a bit of a cliffhanger. I don’t want to publish a cliffhanger and then not get back to it for like a year.

-The SILENT ORDER books are overall too short, which makes them hard to market. They’re all in the neighborhood of 50,000 words. In the old days, 50,000 was a perfectly acceptable length for a novel. But the modern genre expectation for science fiction books is around 80,000 to 90,000 words.

The solution to this problem is to start a new series after SILENT ORDER – the SILENT WAR series, which will revolve around the mystery of the Pulse superweapon from the previous books. They’ll be longer, around the 80,000 to 90,000 word range.

So, after GHOST NIGHT is done, then I’ll switch back to SILENT ORDER and SILENT WAR.

Of course, if the Great Virus Meltdown of 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that long-term planning is always tentative.

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 29: 6 Things I Have Learned About Selling Audiobooks

In this week’s episode of the Pulp Writer Show, I discuss 6 things I have learned about selling audiobooks over the last few years.

-JM

WRAITHSHARD, DRAGONTIARNA, and other updates

I haven’t done a general update post for a while, so this seems like a good time to share what I’m working on:

-I’m on Chapter 11 of 20 of WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT. Over halfway there! If all goes well the book should be out sometime in June.

-I’m listening to the audio proofs of GHOST IN THE HUNT. Dunno when that will be ready, but probably June.

-I also have all the files I need for THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS TWO and THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS THREE in audio, and I’ll start uploading those this coming week. OMNIBUS TWO will combine the audiobooks of GHOST IN THE STORM, STONE, and FORGE, and OMNIBUS THREE will combine GHOST IN THE ASHES, MASK, and SURGE. Hopefully those will be out in June sometime as well, though there might be processing lags.

-Once WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT is out, it will be time to start on the next DRAGONTIARNA book, DRAGONTIARNA: DEFENDERS. If all goes well that will be out in July.

On a completely unrelated topic, here is a picture of a paranoid rabbit giving me a suspicious look when I was out for a run.

Of course, like in Ghost nightfighters and shadow agents of Elven nobles, paranoia is an excellent and healthy quality in a rabbit.

Project Colossi

You might recall that one of my writing goals for the year was named “Project Colossus” – to release THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE as an audiobook. That happened on March 26th, and within 6 days THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE became my bestselling book of 2020 to date, and it will probably be my bestselling audiobook for all of 2020 unless something unexpected happens.

It’s a lot easier to sell an audiobook when it’s over 20 hours in length!

This worked really well, so I’m doing it again. Over the next few months I hope to release THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS TWO and THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS THREE in audiobook format. OMNIBUS TWO will combine GHOST IN THE STORM, GHOST IN THE STONE, and GHOST IN THE FORGE, and OMNIBUS THREE will combine GHOST IN THE ASHES, GHOST IN THE MASK, and GHOST IN SURGE.

If all goes well, both OMNIBUS TWO and OMNIBUS THREE should be available in the coming months.

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 28: 4 Ways To Find Cover Art For Your Self-Published Novel

In this week’s episode of the Pulp Writer Show, I discuss 4 ways you can find cover art for your self-published novel.

1.) Hire an artist to create custom art.

2.) Hire an artist to create a cover from stock photos in Photoshop.

3.) Buy a premade cover.

4.) Make the cover yourself.

-JM