Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 164

CLOAK OF DRAGONS / DEMONSOULED gag

Apropos to recent posts about cover design, in CLOAK OF DRAGONS I wrote an in-joke about cover design. It’s in a scene where Nadia is walking through an art gallery’s exhibit of Russian art:

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My eyes fell on a painting of a knight on horseback facing a carved standing stone. The knight looked weary, his head bowed, and there were bones scattered around the base of the stone. Something about the knight’s weariness spoke to me, and I had a disquieting memory of the Eternity Crucible, of repeating the same endless death over and over again.

I shoved aside that train of thought before it could get up to steam.

The accompanying plaque said that the portrait was a reproduction of a painting called “Knight At The Crossroads,” and the original had been painted about a hundred and thirty years before the Conquest by some guy named Viktor Vasnetsov. There were quite a few paintings by Vasnetsov throughout the exhibit, most of them showing either bogatyrs or figures from pre-Conquest Russian history.

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I added that scene because way back in 2011 and 2012 I couldn’t afford to use stock images for cover design. What I could afford to use, however, was public domain artwork from the 19th and early 20th century. One of those was Viktor Vasnetsov’s “Knight At The Crossroads”, which I used for the cover of DEMONSOULED for a while in 2012:

[image error]

-JM

 

MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA Table of Contents

I’m far enough along with MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA to share the Table of Contents! If all goes well, the book should come out in the first week of May.

Let’s also have a short excerpt from the book:

“Aye,” said Rilmael. “Perhaps we shall be able to stop this plot before it begins.”

Tyrcamber looked at the rippling blue light of the sky fire and remembered the night the Dragon Cult had tried to hand Tongur to the Valedictor’s armies.

“There’s a first time for everything,” he said.

[image error]

-JM

 

Cover design DIY

Reader question time! For some of my books, I commission covers, and for others I make the covers myself. About that, Michael asks:

“If you don’t mind me asking, what determines if you provide the cover art yourself, or commission an artist to do so? Is it a financial calculation based on your estimate of likely sales/costs?”

Basically, it boils down to three factors: 1.) Cost, 2.) Scheduling, and 3.) Will I give this book away for free or not?

Before I get into those, I should mention that I am confident in my ability to produce a reasonable cover. Like, I’m not Great, merely Adequate, and I wouldn’t hire out to make covers for other people. But I can make a cover I’m happy with using photos I buy off stock image sites, and some of the covers I’ve made have been attached to books that have been #1 in their categories on Amazon US at various times.

To make a cover, I license suitable photos off stock image sites, making sure to pick photos that allow for 1.) unlimited electronic impressions, and 2.) model release, if the picture features a human model. Then I make the cover using GIMP on Ubuntu, since 1.) GIMP is free, and 2.) GIMP runs a lot smoother on Linux than it does on Windows. I try to follow the Rule of Thirds and choose appropriate foreground/background colors while making a cover.

I realize, of course, that this isn’t an option for many writers, or even for most writers. (You can always tell when an author designed his own covers when he really shouldn’t have.) GIMP has a learning curve like Mount Everest, and it’s taken me a couple of years of practice to be able to make my own covers. Of course, I’m a lot better at cover design than I was eight years ago, and sometimes the best way to learn something is to fail repeatedly while getting slightly better with each iteration.

As for deciding on whether or not to make my own cover or hire someone to do it, here’s how I make the decision.

-Cost. A good cover can cost a couple hundred bucks, sometimes more. Will the book earn it back? I always make my own covers for short stories because it’s rare for a short story to sell more than a few hundred copies.

-Scheduling time. Really good cover designers are booked months in advance. Given how far out in advance I plan out my series, this usually isn’t a problem, but if I need to make a cover right now, I can do it myself.

-Will I give this book away for free? If I’m planning to give a book away for free via my newsletter, I’ll do the cover myself. (This is another reason why I make the short story cover images myself.)

Finally, I would say that I prefer to hire out covers over making them myself. I’m pretty good with the mechanics of GIMP, but I don’t have any eye for aesthetics. That said, knowing how to make my own covers has been really useful and saved me a lot of money, so I’m glad I learned how to do it.

If you want to get started learning how to use GIMP, I strongly recommend THE ARTIST’S GUIDE TO GIMP by Michael Hammel.

-JM

 

MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA editing underway!

I am now editing MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA. I would share the cover image, but I haven’t actually finished it yet.

Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE

It’s Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday! This week’s excerpt is from FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE.

I do enjoy “small-town-terrorized-by-mysterious-monster” stories, and I got to write a novel-length one in EIGHTFOLD KNIFE.

In this excerpt, Calliande unknowingly helps chart the course of Gavin of Aranaeus’s life.

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE is available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, and Smashwords and available in audiobook at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, & Audible.

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“Aye,” said Gavin. He started to draw the fake scar upon her forehead. “More than I would like.” He drew the spider’s body, and then traced the legs across her left temple. “I’m going to kill my father.”

“I see,” said Calliande.

“Are you going to try and talk me out of it?” said Gavin. He felt his voice grow angry, but he did not care. “After all the people he killed? After he kept that spiderling in our house for years? He probably murdered my mother so he could marry Morwen.”

“I know,” said Calliande. “And I won’t try to talk you out of anything.” He finished the legs on her left temple and started upon the right. “I have no right to give you commands. You ought to forgive him, true, because the Dominus Christus commands it and otherwise your hatred will eat you out from the inside. But if any man deserves death for his crimes, it is Cornelius.”

“Then you think I should kill him?” said Gavin, reaching into the pot for more paste.

“No,” said Calliande. “You should let Ridmark or Kharlacht do it.”

“Why?” said Gavin. “My father betrayed me and everyone else in Aranaeus.”

“Because if you kill him,” said Calliande, “I think you’ll become like Ridmark.”

Gavin frowned, finishing the legs upon her temples. “Is that bad? He is a great knight and warrior.”

“He is,” said Calliande. “Has he told you anything about his past?”

Gavin shook his head and then remembered that she could not see him. “No.”

“He lost his wife,” said Calliande, “and he blamed himself for her death, even though it was not his fault. He has never forgiven himself for it, and believes he deserves death. So he drives himself on, putting himself in greater and greater danger.”

“What does that have to do with me?” said Gavin, painting the lines upon her jaw. “I want to kill my father, not…”

“You want revenge,” said Calliande, “but it won’t end with your father. Ridmark puts himself in danger because he believes he deserves to die. Your father does deserve to die. But killing him will not quench the fury in your heart. So you’ll look for someone else who deserves to die, and someone else, and someone else, and it will consume you the way guilt and despair have consumed Ridmark.”

Gavin said nothing as he painted the rest of the fake scars. He remembered the day his father had wed Morwen, remembered the cold smirk upon her red lips. He remembered the tired, dull look upon Cornelius’s face as he gave the dead woman to the spiderlings.

And he remembered Ridmark’s icy, hard eyes.

“Done,” said Gavin, stepping away.

Calliande opened her eyes. “That itches more than I expect. I can only imagine how it feels with beard stubble. How do I look?”

“Positively ghastly,” said Gavin.

“Good,” said Calliande. She smiled. “But you probably shouldn’t say that to women very often.”

-JM

GHOST IN THE FLAMES: what happened to Maltaer?

Reader question time! Chelsea asks:

“I was just rereading Ghost in the Flames and I was struck by what a cool character Maltaer – the slaver murdering, sorcery sensing pirate – is. I’m surprised that he never showed back up in the series!”

Time for a trip down memory lane!

If I can remember correctly (it’s been 11 years at this point) when I wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES I had vague idea of Maltaer someday coming back as a potential love interest for Caina.

But this was back in the Bad Old Days before the Kindle and self-publishing. There was no guarantee that I would ever have a chance to write any more GHOSTS books, let alone the chance to ever publish the first one.

Anyway, I wrote the first three GHOSTS books (CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, GHOST IN THE FLAMES, and GHOST IN THE BLOOD) and gave up on the idea of getting them tradpublished.

But then the Kindle came along, I wrote GHOST IN THE STORM, and the series went in a totally different direction than whatever I had planned back in 2007/8 when I wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES. And to be fair, I don’t actually remember what I had planned back in 2007/8 for future books because the prospect of future books seemed so unlikely.

This is actually a fairly common thing in long series – it’s nicknamed Early Installment Weirdness. When you write the first book or first few books in what becomes a long-running series, there are always a few ideas or concepts that don’t gel or that you decide later on don’t really work. Like, in the 1st three GHOSTS books, sorcerers were Always Chaotic Evil, but that changed when GHOST IN THE STORM came along. In CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, the rivalries between the different factions of the nobility is a big plot point, but that gets dropped in later books once the Empire goes to war with New Kyre and Istarinmul, and then with the civil war against the Umbarians.

And sometimes you change plans for the series on the fly. I tried to write Kylon out a bunch of times, and look how that worked out!

MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA rough draft done!

The rough draft of MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA is done!

I’ll start editing it next week, and it should be out in the first part of May if all goes well.

The muridachs make an appearance in this one, and Tyrcamber finds out the muridachs are just as pleasant and neighborly as they are in Owyllain.

squirrels are evil

Today I wrote a large check to the very nice man who trapped the squirrel that’s been living in one of my walls.

See, everybody thinks squirrels are cute, but they’re actually evil little monsters. I once saw a squirrel bite off the head of a field mouse. And the field mouse was still alive to appreciate the experience.

When JRR Tolkien wrote the first draft of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, originally the true shape of the Dark Lord Sauron was a form which reflected his evil, which of course was that of a giant squirrel (pictured above). Later, after squirrels started living in his attic, Tolkien was pressured to revise THE LORD OF THE RINGS to omit that scene, but we all know the truth!

Eight Years Of Self Publishing!

As of this week, I’ve now been self-publishing for eight years.

Eight years! Man.

In the past eight years, I’ve written over eighty novels, nine nonfiction books, and a whole ton of short stories. Most of my novels are available in paperback, and I have 14 audiobook titles. Overall I’ve sold something like 1.29 million copies of my books.

I suppose I could make a speech, but I would just like say that 1.) I am grateful to God that I’ve had the opportunity to do this for eight years, and 2.) grateful to all of you for reading the books.

Speaking of that, back to MALISON: DRAGON UMBRA! I am now on Chapter 9 of 11.

-JM

Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: GHOST IN THE STORM

Since the audiobook version came out last week, this week’s Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday is from GHOST IN THE STORM.

I have to admit that of the first four GHOSTS books, this is my favorite. The excerpt below turns out to be an important conversation both for Caina’s current predicament and for the rest of the series.

GHOST IN THE STORM is available in ebook at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords. , and also available in audiobook at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, and iTunes.

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“We have succeeded so far,” said Kylon.

“But it might not last,” said Caina. “You could seize a city the size of Marsis with ten thousand men, but to hold it? The other Legions are north of Marsis, but they will return soon enough. And even if you fend them off, do you think the Emperor and the Imperial Curia will give up? They will send a great army to reclaim Marsis. And once they do, they will not stop there. The Emperor will want revenge for what happened here. New Kyre and Istarinmul are strong – but do you think they can stand against the gathered Legions of the Empire?”

Kylon said nothing.

“You’ve started a war,” said Caina. “For what? Marsis? New Kyre is the best port on the western sea. Holding Marsis would gain you nothing. For slaves? You could buy all the slaves you needed in Istarinmul. For plunder? Surely there are richer prizes closer to home. What do you hope to gain from this attack?”

Still Kylon said nothing.

“The Tomb of Scorikhon,” said Caina. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Kylon sighed.

“Andromache wants whatever power the necromancers of the Red Circle left behind,” said Caina. “So she started a war to get it. I don’t know what she promised Rezir Shahan. Probably Marsis, and as much land as he could carve out of the western Empire. But she’s going to abandon him, isn’t she? Once she has what she wants.”

“She has…considered such,” said Kylon.

“So,” said Caina. “Andromache convinced Rezir to join her in attacking Marsis. She knows the attack might fail, and even if it succeeds, you’ll have a hard time holding on to your conquests. But Andromache doesn’t care, because she only wants the power in the Tomb of Scorikhon. Once she has it, she intends to leave Rezir and Marsis to their fates. She is willing to slaughter thousands just to increase her arcane power. Have I got it right?”

Kylon gave a slow, hesitant nod.

“And does that sound,” said Caina, “like the behavior of a necromancer?”

A shudder went through Kylon, so violent that he almost cut Caina’s throat even as her dagger scraped against his neck.

“She cannot be,” said Kylon, his voice a hoarse whisper. “She saved our family. She saved me. House Kardamnos would have been ripped apart by our enemies, had she not become High Seat. Necromancy is against the laws of both Old Kyrace and the gods themselves. It is an abomination. She could not do such a thing. She could not.”

“I saw her do it,” said Caina.

“You lie,” said Kylon, but there was no heat to his words.

“You must have your doubts,” said Caina. “Else you would dismiss them out of hand. Yet you’ve listened.”

“Because you have a dagger to my throat,” said Kylon, “and your story is a lie.”

“But you’re not sure,” said Caina.

“How do you know?” said Kylon. “Can you use sorcery to read my emotions? Or to hear my thoughts?”

“No,” said Caina, “but if you were sure, you would have laughed at me. You wouldn’t have gotten angry. Men who are secure in their beliefs laugh at challenges. They do not grow angry.”

-JM