Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 159

Old ideas

A reader named Jonathan (a different Jonathan than me) asks:

“I had a question. Do you keep copies of various drafts rough darfts and stages your work has gone through? And if you do, how many of the discarded ideas are recycled into later books?”

Prior to 2011, I did that a lot. Back then there was no self-publishing, so if I wrote something and I was unable to sell it anywhere, I would sometimes rework it into a new form and try to sell it somewhere else. This is why the first few books of DEMONSOULED and THE GHOSTS have some concepts that carry over between each other. I would write a book, fail to place it with a traditional publisher, and think “we’ll, let’s recycle this concept elsewhere.”

After 2011, I stopped doing that entirely, because almost everything I wrote went into a self-published book. So there were no discarded ideas left to recycle.

These days, I have more ideas than I have time to turn into books. Like, I’ll be walking along and I’ll see something, and the idea for an entire nine book series pops into my head. Do I have time to write another nine book series right now? Not really!

Listening To Your Own Audibooks

Reader GA. asks:

“How does it feel to hear your own books? Do you get a deep satisfaction or are you self critical , feeling that something could have been written slightly differently?”

Actually, I enjoy it quite a bit. I know some writers hate listening to their own books, but that’s not me. I listen to them and admire my own cleverness.

I Wrote A 103,000 Word Novel In 16 Days With This One Simple Trick!

That title is a bit hyperbolic. It was a reorganization of my workflow, and I think it would be difficult for someone without my level of experience to do it.

But! On to the details.

Around April and May I felt the gears of my brain starting to grind to a halt. It was getting increasingly difficult to get anything done. Some of it was that there was a lot going on in Real Life, but while some of it was onerous, none of it was that bad.  (Granted, I did unexpectedly travel to five different states in one week in May, but still.)

After thinking about it for a while, I realized the problem – I was multitasking too much.

Every other job I’ve had in my life, ever, ran off an “interruption-based workflow”, or what HR managers like to euphemistically call “multitasking in a dynamic work environment”, which meant it was my job to get interrupted constantly. I was really good at this, and carried it over into writing. But it had gotten to the point that I had too many different projects going on at once, and they were all distracting from each other. For example, I originally intended to release each MALISON book at the same time as the final four SEVENFOLD SWORD books, but that turned out to be nonviable. I enjoyed writing the CLOAK & GHOST books, but they turned out to be a distraction from actually writing more Nadia & Caina books.

I needed to focus on the “core objective” – writing full-length novels. So, after the last MALISON book was done, I decided no more short novels like CLOAK & GHOST or MALISON, short stories only in special circumstances, and to drastically cut back on any side projects. I also really needed to focus on one thing at time.

To help with that, I tried something called the Pomodoro Technique (“Pomodoro” is apparently Italian for “tomato”) that I’ve seen floating around various writer forums for a while. Basically, the idea with Pomodoro is that you work on one task and just that task for 25 minutes with no distractions – no email, phone, nothing. Then when the 25 minutes is over, you take a 5 minute break, and then repeat.

It worked really well for me. I was able to write between 1200 to 1500 words per 25 minute block, which drastically upped my daily word count and gave me more time to deal with anything going on in Real Life. Because of that, I wound up spending less time writing while actually getting more writing done. This led to some surreal and hilarious moments. One night I played the MASTER OF ORION remake for 70 minutes, which left me feeling deeply uneasy because I felt like I should be working on something instead of wasting time with games. Except I had already written 8000 words that day! Numerous Real Life tasks had been completed! From a productivity standpoint, not only had the day not been wasted, it had been extremely successful. So why not play computer games for a while?

Overall, I averaged about 6400 words per day while writing DRAGONTIARNA, as opposed to 4300 for SEVENFOLD SWORD: SOVEREIGN, and I even got some writing done on days when I wouldn’t have otherwise because the Pomodoro blocks are so compact.

So, henceforth I’m going to use Pomodoro for writing new novels.

I’m not sure someone else would have the same dramatic results as I did. I already had a lot of experience before writing novels before I tried Pomodoro.  I don’t think anyone can ever say they’ve really mastered fiction writing, but DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS was my hundredth novel. I’m definitely not a novice. That said, if you’re having trouble focusing while writing (or doing any other concentration-based task), Pomodoro might be worth a try.

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS editing underway!

Editing is underway for DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS, so let’s see the cover image!

If all goes well, the book will be out in August.

[image error]

-JM

 

MALISON: Reader questions & answers

Reader Edward asks about the recently completed MALISON series:

“Just out of curiosity was Dragon imperator of the mailison series a dark elf or a dragon of some type? Also how come the Valdictor did not command a few of his subjects goblins or something to overuse magic and become dragons to have an even larger force of dragons. Why do the dark elves of the malison world have normal titles instead of mocking titles?”

1.) The Dragon Imperator was a dark elf.

2.) The dark elves in general don’t force people to transform into dragons because it’s extraordinarily dangerous and it doesn’t always work. The Malison is a danger to everyone who can use magic, but not everyone has the strength to push themselves over the line and succumb to the Malison, and some people (and goblins, etc) have such an aversion to the Malison that it would be like ordering them to put their hand on a hot stove. You could force them to put their hand on the stove, but since the transformation requires the voluntary use of power, that wouldn’t work.

Additionally, dragons quite frequently go berserk and start killing everything in sight immediately after they transform, and they’re difficult to dominate in that state. Eventually they calm down and are easier to dominate, but not at first. So, a dark elf forcing someone else to transform is a “heads I win, tails I get my head melted by dragon fire” kind of situation, and most of them aren’t willing to take that risk.

3.) Because the dark elves are addicted to cruelty since the shadow of Incariel warped their characters, so they give each other these titles and use them among kindreds they consider “inferior”, which is basically everyone. And the dark elves are addicted to cruelty to a point where it causes them to make bad decisions, where they’ll go out of their way to be cruel even when it is plainly self-defeating. Like, think of an alcoholic who decides he’s going to clean up, but winds up skipping a job interview to get a drink. That’s how the dark elves are with cruelty. The smarter and more powerful ones can hold themselves in check when necessary (the Confessor spends most of the last several books of SEVENFOLD SWORD stopping himself from mocking the Visage because he needs her help), but they still have those impulses.

The idea for the dark elves acting that way came from CS Lewis’s classic book PERELANDRA, where when the devil isn’t busy with his grand plan to corrupt the new race about to awaken on Venus, he tortures small animals, and when he can’t catch any small animals, he amuses himself by irritating the protagonist in petty ways.

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS rough draft done!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS is finished!

103,000 words in 16 days.

Observant readers will notice that this is quite a bit faster than usual for me. (SEVENFOLD SWORD: SOVEREIGN, by contrast, was 125,000 words and it took me 29 days.) I made some changes to my workflow that resulted improvements, which I will explain in a later post.

Tune in on Monday to see the cover for DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS!

Meanwhile, here is the book description:

###

Ridmark Arban has faced the power of the Frostborn and the evil of the Seven Swords.

Now he wishes only to live quietly with his family.

But Ridmark’s oldest enemy, the Warden of Urd Morlemoch, has not forgotten him. And the Warden knows a secret that few others do.

After thousands of years, the dragons are returning…

-JM

 

This One Simple Trick Doubled My Ebook Sales!

That headline is a bit of hyperbole. I actually increased the sales of one series by 78%. And while the trick was simple, it was a lot of work.

Basically, at the end of April I changed out the cover design and font for my SILENT ORDER science fiction series. I did it at the end of April because I could then compare the sales data from April to that from May. You can see one of the changed covers here:

[image error]

And it worked! I didn’t do any additional promotions or advertising. All I changed was the covers, and the SILENT ORDER series sold 78% more copies in May than it did in June.

I think we can learn two lessons from that:

1.) It’s important to get the right style of covers for your genre. The book cover doesn’t have to be totally “accurate”, in that it depicts a detailed scene from the book. Rather, the cover has to say “this is the kind of book you can expect”, and it has to say it accurately. So, having a picture of a swooning heroine and shirtless hero in a mansion on a book about, say, fighting cyborgs from the future, that would not work.

This is the third iteration of the SILENT ORDER covers, and clearly it hit the mark closer than the previous two.

2.) Iterations are handy. If you don’t get something right the first time, you can improve it on the second go. You can see that with big-name tradpub books. Think how many different covers the HARRY POTTER series has had, some of them more effective than the others.

-JM

MALISON: DRAGON WAR now available!

I am pleased to report that MALISON: DRAGON WAR, the final book in the MALISON series, is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

Sir Tyrcamber Rigamond swore to defend the Empire, but the Empire is about to fall to the goblin hordes commanded by the malignant dark elven lord known as the Valedictor. 

The fate of the Empire lies in Tyrcamber’s hands, and he will have only one chance to save mankind from enslavement at the hands of the dark elves.

And that chance will cost Tyrcamber more than he can bear to pay…

[image error]

-JM

THE GODFATHER: the book vs the film

Recently, THE GODFATHER was $1.99 on Kindle. I’ve been meaning to watch the movie for years since it’s apparently one of those classic films everyone is supposed to see, but I never like to watch a movie before I read the book, and I had never quite gotten around to it. But I finally managed it this week, reading the book and watching GODFATHER parts I & II.

Usually, the book is better than the movie. With some exceptions, of course. As a writer, it dismayed me to admit that the movie version of the James Bond adventure GOLDFINGER is a lot better than the book version of GOLDFINGER. The movie fixes several of the book’s plot holes, and the villain in the movie is substantially cleverer than his book counterpart. (Also, the movie has Bond’s excellent final duel with Goldfinger’s implacable henchman Oddjob, which would have been hard to do in a book.)

For THE GODFATHER, it was interesting to see that both the book and the movie had different strengths and weaknesses.

The movie’s strength was that it cut out a lot of the extraneous subplots from the book, especially a lot of the stuff involving Johnny Fontaine and Las Vegas. It also dispensed with the book’s  many (and frankly tedious) sex scenes – you could tell that Mario Puzo got his start writing for men’s magazines in the 1950s. The book’s strength was that Puzo was a clear and effective writer. Puzo wrote very transparent prose and made it easy to follow a complicated plot and numerous characters, and that’s harder to do than it looks. I think the movie’s biggest weakness is that it would be very difficult to follow without first reading the book. If I hadn’t read the book a day before seeing the movie, I think it would have been a challenge to understand what was happening and why. (“Like, why are they driving to this place and shooting this one guy?”)

So if you saw the movie and found it hard to follow, I would recommend reading the book. The book was easier to follow than the movie.

But in both the book and the movie, Don Vito Corleone is one of those characters who just springs to life, like Sherlock Holmes or Conan the Cimmerian or Ebenezar Scrooge, and becomes more famous than his creator. I am pretty sure that more people are familiar with Don Corleone as the stereotypical image of a mafia don and the catchphrase “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” than there are people who know who Mario Puzo (or Marlon Brando) actually are.

Vito Corleone seems like he would have been a superb feudal baron, the sort of well-loved and well-feared lord who is a good friend and a formidable enemy. But then organized crime is in many ways a feudal enterprise – supporting the local “big man” in exchange for protection seems to be humanity’s default mode of government. The problem with that system of government, of course, is that it is entirely dependent on the character of the “big man”, who has no check on his destructive behavior save his own restraint. Vito Corleone is a gangster and a racketeer who makes money off misery, but he retains a sense of honor, and he very clearly seems to sincerely believe himself the defender of weaker people against corrupt authority.

His son Michael, by contrast, inherits all of Vito’s intelligence, ruthlessness, and charisma, but he doesn’t inherit his father’s sense of honor, his ability to forgive, and his sense of “social debt” to others. We never really see Michael helping the “little guy” under his protection, the way Vito did with the undertaker’s daughter or the widow about to be evicted from her apartment. Consequently, while Michael wants to stay out of the family business, in the end he become a far darker man than his father. It puts me in mind of the Bible when it says that the iniquity of the fathers will be visited upon their sons. Despite his admirable personal qualities, Vito’s life of organized crime passes to his children, and it ruins all four of them in different ways.

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS and GHOST IN THE VAULT progress updates

June is nearly over, so let’s see where I’m at with my current writing projects.

I’m 50,000 words into DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS, which puts me on chapter 12 of 24. I’m also 7,000 words into GHOST IN THE VAULT, which puts me on Chapter 2 of 23 for that book.

MALISON: DRAGON WAR is ready to publish for next week!

Also, as you can see from the picture, SEVENFOLD SWORD: SOVEREIGN is now in paperback!

-JM