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Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER

It’s Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday! This week we have an excerpt from CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER

This was a significant book for Nadia, since it was the first time the Rebels made an appearance.

Unlike most of my other series, CLOAK GAMES takes place in real locations on Earth, and most of FROST FEVER takes place in Madison, Wisconsin. This at times requires a bit of research. Fortunately, CLOAK GAMES also takes place 300 years in the future, so if anyone emails to complain “hey, Madison isn’t really like that”, I can email back and say “of course not, it’s 300 years in the future, some things have changed.”

a short CLOAK OF DRAGONS excerpt

A short excerpt from CLOAK OF DRAGONS:

“He said they were sending a specialist,” said Dr. Morgan. “You don’t look like a specialist in murder.”

“I’m more of a generalist,” I said. “What do I look like?”

He grunted. “Biker chick with crazy eyes.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet. It’s the jacket, isn’t it?” I said. “But I’m not here for amusing banter.”

-JM

CLOAK OF DRAGONS rough draft done!

The rough draft of CLOAK OF DRAGONS is done at 93,000 words!

I’ve written about dragons before, but I think CLOAK OF DRAGONS definitely has a different take on dragons than anything I’ve done before.

Now on to editing. If all goes well, the book should be out sometime in April.

I think I’m going to give away CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING and WRAITH WOLF to newsletter subscribers when the book comes out, so be sure to subscribe to my newsletter!

-JM

CLOAK OF DRAGONS progress update

18 chapters of CLOAK OF DRAGONS down, 2 to go!

I should wrap up the rough draft next week.

-JM

the 100th book?

CLOAK OF DRAGONS will be my 96th novel, so Bret asks:

“Are you gonna have a big party when you publish your hundredth book?”

(For context, SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN was book #95, and CLOAK OF DRAGONS will be #96.)

First, I should decide what I’m going to do for my 100th book. 3 options present themselves.

-I should write a standalone DEMONSOULED novel. DEMONSOULED was my very first book. It’s important for a writer to remember where he or she started.

-I should continue with my normal schedule and write whatever book happens to be next. Constancy and consistency are important for writers.

-I should write something entirely new with new characters. It’s important for a writer to be creative and try new things.

All these things are true, of course. Now I just have to decide which one of them I’m going to do.

audiobooks!

As of the end of March, I’ve made more from audiobooks in 2019 than I did from the entirety of 2018.

Thanks, everyone! I suggest the best response to this news is to listen to some audiobooks.

Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT

It’s Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday! This week we have an excerpt from FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT.

For FROSTBORN, I wanted to write the sort of story that gradually expands to be epic in scope. Like an RPG campaign where the players start out with small local concerns, and by the end of the campaign they’re deciding the fate of kingdoms and empires.

In FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT, Ridmark agrees to find a missing friar…but it soon gets way more complicated than that.

Way more complicated.

Diablo & a dungeon crawl

I played some of the GOG version of the original Diablo. For such an old game, it’s still quite enjoyable. Like old Rogue with some of the rough edges sanded off.


 


But I do enjoy a good dungeon crawl. Which you can tell if you’ve read FROSTBORN or SEVENFOLD SWORD, since dungeon crawls turn up in them often. (Nadia Moran even did a more modern version of one in CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE.)


 


Someday, if I can find the time, I want to do a (short) series that is entirely a dungeon crawl.


 


Meanwhile, the longest dungeon crawl I’ve written to date is FROSTBORN: THE BROKEN MAGE, when Ridmark & party enter the sprawling ruins of Khald Azalar…


-JM

CLOAK GAMES: Morvilind vs. Tarlia

Working on CLOAK OF DRAGONS today, and considering the difference between the personalities of Morvilind and Tarlia.

(Note that this post will have SPOILERS!!! for most of the CLOAK GAMES series.)

Morvilind was brilliant and driven and possessed remarkable focus and clarity of vision. That said, he was arrogant, vindictive, and downright petty, and his usual approach to his human employees was to terrorize them into following him. He had the singular gift of alienating all the other Elven nobles with his harsh personality and his contempt for them. Technically, he was a vassal of Duke Tamirlas of Milwaukee, but Tamirlas would never have dared to give Morvilind orders. Tarlia was the only one who could ever command Morvilind.

This, as you can imagine, caused him a lot of problems. He had a remarkable gift for alienating people who otherwise would have been enthusiastic supporters of his ultimate goal. (Riordan and Russell both pointed this out to him in MAGE FALL.) Morvilind might have accomplished his goals much sooner and much more easily if he hadn’t driven off everyone who might have helped him otherwise.

Tarlia, by contrast, is much more charming and charismatic, and very good at getting people to help her of their own free will. Morvilind was her teacher and tutor for her childhood and young adulthood, but she was intelligent enough to grasp the failures in Morvilind’s approach and avoid his mistakes. Tarlia is not above using the stick when necessary and can be just as ruthless as Morvilind, but she also offers a very large carrot. That’s one of the reasons the Rebels never managed to gain mass popular support (much to Nicholas Connor’s constant annoyance) – the High Queen has most human societies set up so that people are loyal to her and gain benefits from the loyalty. Veterans who successfully complete their terms of service to their nobles receive benefits that no one else can (legally) have.

She values loyalty a great deal, sometimes more than competence. Tarlia would regard Darth Vader’s school of “You have failed me for the last time, admiral” management as appallingly wasteful. If her servants cannot learn from their mistakes, how else will they achieve excellence? She sometimes values loyalty more than competence to her own detriment. Too much incompetence, though, and the servant in question will be shunted off to the side – incompetent Elven nobles tend to find themselves given modest sinecures with no actual authority. Human officials who make too many mistakes suddenly feel inspired to retire to “spend more time with their families.”

But the one thing guaranteed to earn Tarlia’s merciless fury is betrayal. She can forgive anything but betrayal. And if she is betrayed, her vengeful rage can make Morvilind look mild by comparison. Her husband and eldest son both betrayed her, and because of that, she didn’t shed a single tear for their deaths.

-JM

jealousy, discouragement, and persistence

I recently had a first-time writer tell me about how discouraged he was that another first-time writer’s book was doing so much better than his.

Every writer has that feeling sooner or later – you’ll read a book or even just page through it and think “how the devil is that selling better than mine?!?”

Well, King Solomon had it right 3000 years ago. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance overtake them all. And that goes both ways, too. I guarantee that someone has read one of my books and thought “why is that selling better than mine?!?”

Sometimes they email to tell me that, at length.