Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 169
February 24, 2019
another SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN update
18 chapters of SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN down, 6 to go. 3/4 of the way there!
I really hope I can finish the rough draft this coming week, barring unexpected developments. Then again, there has been so much snow lately that my roof rake broke on Friday, so it’s wise to be prepared for unexpected developments!
-JM
February 23, 2019
Dinosaurs!
DAY 1:
I got a dinosaur egg as a gift. Think I’ll try to hatch it.
That couldn’t possibly go wrong, right? I mean, it’s not like Michael Crichton wrote an entire series of novels about it or anything.
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DAY 2:
The instructions said to soak the dinosaur egg in water for 72 hours to hatch it, so that’s what I’m doing.
I dunno. If I wake up tomorrow and the bowl is empty, I’m getting out of the house immediately.
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DAY 3:
You can see that the dinosaur egg is beginning to hatch.
I heard an ominous cracking noise, as if the very bones of the earth were grinding against each other, and wondered if trying to hatch the egg was a mistake.
Then I realized the cracking noise came from large quantities of ice falling off the roof. Time to break out the roof rake!
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DAY 4:
The dinosaur is beginning to emerge from its egg! On the downside, I bet every Jurassic Park movie started this way. Though they might have had equipment more advanced than a mixing bowl.
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DAY 5: THE BEAST RISES FROM THE DEPTHS!
Of, you know, the mixing bowl.
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DAY 6: The dinosaur has hatched!
I think it was hungry because it immediately tried to find some lunch.
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DAY 7: Now that the dinosaur egg has hatched, it can take part in historical reenactments.
For example, in the picture below, you can see a TOTALLY 100% ACCURATE reenactment of the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, when Julius Caesar’s knights charged alongside his war dinosaurs to attack Pompey the Great’s camp and cut off his soldiers’ Spam rations.
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-JM
February 22, 2019
A Tale Of Writing Progress
Some days you just know in your bones that it’s going to be a good writing day.
And then some days you have that feeling, but you happen to adjust the blinds over the bathroom window, and the entire blinds assembly breaks loose and crashes into thunderous ruin atop the toilet tank, and you suddenly know in your bones that your writing time today will be spent on a trip to the hardware store and quality time with power tools.
Still got 600 words of SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN written, though.
-JM
progress update on SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN
16 chapters down, 8 to go. 2/3 of the way there!
The book has monsters, of course. Lots and lots of monsters. 
February 21, 2019
GHOST IN THE BLOOD audiobook on the way
I am pleased to report that work on the audiobook for GHOST IN THE BLOOD (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is finished! It should be available sometime in the 1st half of March. It turned out really well. GHOST IN THE BLOOD, in my opinion (though a writer’s opinion of his own work is often erroneous), was especially suited to the audio format.
If you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll get a free GHOSTS short story when the audiobook of GHOST IN THE BLOOD comes out next month.
The question remains, though, which short story? There are so many! Leave your suggestions for which of the GHOSTS short stories should be free with the newsletter in the comments.
-BLOOD ARTISTS.
-BOUND TO THE EYE.
-THE FALL OF KYRACE.
-GHOST ARIA.
-GHOST ARTS.
-GHOST CLAWS.
-GHOST DAGGER.
-GHOST KEEPER.
-GHOST LIGHT.
-GHOST LOCK.
-GHOST MIMIC.
-GHOST NAILS.
-GHOST OMENS.
-GHOST PRICE.
-GHOST RELICS.
-GHOST SWORD.
-GHOST THORNS.
-GHOST UNDYING.
-GHOST VESSEL.
-GHOST VIGIL.
-JM
February 19, 2019
Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesday: CHILD OF THE GHOSTS
How busy did I get in the last quarter of 2018? I got so busy that I’ve forgotten to do Excerpt Thursdays since October!
But! It’s a new year, and since I’ve written 94 books, I can post an excerpt from one once a week and take nearly two years to go through them all. So, Excerpt Thursdays is relaunching as the more SEO-friendly Jonathan Moeller Novel Excerpt Tuesdays!
We’ll start with a short excerpt from CHILD OF THE GHOSTS. The ebook version can be read for free at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, Google Play, and Smashwords, and you can listen to the audiobook at at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, and iTunes.
###
Caina blinked. “You’re the circlemaster of Malarae.”
Both Halfdan and Theodosia looked at her.
“I told you she was clever,” said Halfdan.
“Indeed you did,” said Theodosia. She smiled and tapped one finger against her lips. “Halfdan also said you were most observant. Tell me what you see about me.”
Caina shrugged, looked at Theodosia for a moment, and then at the room.
“Well?” said Theodosia.
“You’re a widow,” said Caina, “and you have at least two children, both sons. They probably went into the Legion or the Civic Militia.”
“The scar from the ring,” said Theodosia, tapping her finger, “and the candles?”
“Yes,” said Caina. It was common for mothers with children in the Legions or the militias to light votive candles to Markoin, god of soldiers.
“What else?” said Theodosia.
“You’re carrying at least three knives,” said Caina, “two in your boots, one in your belt, and I would wager that you have more that I haven’t been able to find. You’ve had a bad cold, and only just got over it. And you dye your hair.”
Halfdan burst out laughing.
“I most certainly do not!” said Theodosia, touching her hair.
Caina shrugged. “But you have all those bottles of dye on the table, and I can see the stains where your hair brushed the walls while still wet.”
Theodosia sniffed. “How did you know about the cold?”
“The spots on the mirror, from sneezes,” said Caina. “You haven’t cleaned them off.”
“So I see,” said Theodosia, tapping her finger against her lips again. “Well, Halfdan said you were clever, and I see he was right. No doubt he had Riogan teach you to kill, hmm? There is more to being a Ghost than killing and fighting. You must know how to disguise yourself. How to blend in, whether you are dancing at a noble ball or strolling the slums. You must know how to mask yourself so well that your best friend and dearest lover could not recognize you.”
“How?” said Caina.
“Why, I shall teach you,” said Theodosia.
-JM
February 18, 2019
SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN progress report
12 chapters of SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN down, 12 go to. Halfway there!
-JM
February 17, 2019
Interesting Links #29: Indiepub, Tradpub & Games!
It’s been a while since I had an Interesting Links post, but I haven’t had much time for recreational reading lately.
-Indie publishing. Obviously. But to be fair, this article does a really good job of weighing the pros and cons of indie vs tradpub, but the pros of indie are vastly stronger than even the best pros of tradpub. Indie vs Traditional Publishing: Which Path Is Right for You?
-An interesting look back at the last eight years of self-publishing, from someone who’s been self-publishing even longer than I have. Thoughts After Eight Years Of Self-Publishing And About What’s Ahead.
-A good look at cover design mistakes: The 5 Most Common Mistakes in Book Cover Design and How to Avoid Them.
-Here’s a history of LiveJournal, the blogging platform that predated social media back in the days when the Internet wasn’t quite so tetchy as it is now. “The Linux of social media” – How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging
-Taxes are complicated: “The complexity and weirdness of the US tax laws cannot be overstated.” (He’s not kidding.)
-A history of GOG.com, my favorite place to buy old computer games. GOG’s 10 year journey to bring old games back to life.
-Now that I’m up to four self-published audiobooks, I might give this a try. Creating a SoundCloud Link to Promote Your Audiobook.
-For Linux, I mostly use Ubuntu, but I do like Linux Mint: Linux Mint 19.1: A sneaky popular distro skips upheaval, offers small upgrades.
-JM
February 14, 2019
Volumes Of Work
A multi-part question from a fellow writer:
“Was hoping to pick your brain. Would you credit your success to (besides writing great books – that’s a given) to volume of work like your productivity? Do you have a big newsletter list? I admire how well you do especially since you’ve gone wide with your books and I’m still feeling like I do best in KU. But I also haven’t upped my productivity to be anywhere close to yours. You’re a machine!”
Thanks! I’ll split my answer into three parts – newsletter, productivity, and Kindle Unlimited.
1.) NEWSLETTER
I do have a good-sized newsletter list, but it did take a while to build up – about seven years or so. One writer (I think it was Michael Sullivan but I’m not sure) said that building an audience was like building a beach one grain of sand at a time. I include a link to my newsletter at the end of every book and feature it prominently on my website, so I try to build up subscribers organically. There’s a lot of advice about newsletters out there saying you need to email your list every week or share personal details, but I don’t bother with that. I usually publish a book once a month, so I use the list then, and I always try to make sure I add value to the newsletter by giving something away for free when I send one out. Fortunately, I’ve written a lot of short stories, so I can rotate through them, and I can of course always write more.
2.) PRODUCTIVITY
As for productivity, I would say that I’m pretty good at putting my head down and plodding along. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly smart or talented, but I am persistent, and that is often more valuable. The best advice I can give is to not let the possible be the enemy of the perfect. That’s a common error in many areas of life – people say they can’t run an 8 minute mile, so they don’t try running at all, overlooking the fact that some exercise is always better than zero exercise. (In fact, that is a formal logical fallacy called the Nirvana Fallacy.)
Like, I’ll use myself as an example. When I’m working on a new book, I try to write 6,000 words a day. Except right now it’s the middle of blizzard, flu, and tax season, and none of those things are conducive to getting productive work done. I’ve been working on SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN for 9 days, but I’ve only written 6,000 words on one of those days.
But! I have written every single one of those 9 days, even when I had to spend most of the day doing other stuff and it was difficult to squeeze in writing time. Remember not letting the perfect be the enemy of the possible? Some writing is better than no writing, and it adds up over time, and I’ve written 38,000 words of GUARDIAN in those 9 days. That’s not the “perfect” goal of 54,000 in nine days, but it is still a LOT better than zero!
2A.) PRODUCTIVITY & FOCUS
It’s also important to keep focus on writing new books, and not let writing-adjacent tasks choke out that time. By “writing-adjacent”, I mean additional work that the books generate. Like, taxes, keeping business records, working with a cover designer (or making your own covers), making paperback editions, social media, updating the website, answering reader emails, maintaining the newsletter, audiobook production, and so forth.
Basically, the Business of Writing, as opposed to Actual Writing.
All that stuff is important (especially taxes!) and needs to get done, but it can take away time from writing new material. It’s a bit like a farmer who gets so preoccupied with organizing his tractors or upgrading his silo that he starts to neglect the wheat harvest, which is the main point. I admit this is something I’ve struggled with – I wrote 100,000 fewer words in 2018 than I did in 2017 because I spent so much time on writing-adjacent tasks (especially taxes!), but they had to get done.
2B.) PRODUCTIVITY & CRITICISM
In my opinion, it is also extremely important to learn to ignore criticism. This doesn’t come naturally to people, and in some areas of life, it isn’t at all healthy. But in writing fiction, it’s really necessary to ignore criticism because otherwise you get tangled up in your own head and can’t get anything done.
It was a gradual process for me. When I started writing, I cared what my family and friends thought of my work. Then I realized that this didn’t matter, because (with all respect to them) my family and friends were not the ones who could buy my work and get it published. Then I cared what editors, agents, and publishers thought, but towards the end of the 2010s, I realized that (almost) all of them were inept at best and incompetent and corrupt at worst and I stopped caring what they thought. (And some of them are actually crooks.) Since they were the gatekeepers, in 2010 I decided to stop writing novels and focus on blogging about Linux, but then the Kindle came along and made gatekeepers obsolete.
Now with self-publishing, the only ones whose opinion really matters are the readers. And there are a lot of readers, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. So if I someone doesn’t like my book, that’s unfortunate, but there are always more readers out there. The bald face is that it’s impossible to write a book that everyone likes, but so what? There are something like 1.5 billion English speakers on Earth, and even if only 0.005% of them like your book, that’s still 750,000 people (which, to put in perspective, is about the current population of North Dakota), and a book that sells 750,000 copies is called a bestseller. Thanks to the Internet and self-publishing, you have the ability to reach those 1.5 billion English speakers, and at least some of them will like your book.
3.) KINDLE UNLIMITED
I’ve done some stuff in Kindle Unlimited, and my SILENT ORDER series is in KU right now, but KU is never going to be my main focus. The problem with KU is that it’s difficult to turn a profit since you have to advertise constantly. To make a book work in KU at present, it seems to take a focused combination of AMS ads, Bookbub ads, and Facebook ads, and you have to be tweaking them constantly. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does take a lot of effort and you have to watch the ads carefully to make sure you aren’t spending too much or that they stop working. I usually prefer to make the first book in a series free on all platforms and then advertise it occasionally.
So, the TLDR version – keep writing, and don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the possible!
Also, a blog post I wrote last year, The Indie Author Skill Stack, might have some insights on the topic.
-JM
February 13, 2019
SEVENFOLD SWORD: GUARDIAN progress update
6 chapters down 18 to go. 1/4 of the way there!
So far, the POV characters have been Ridmark, Calliande, Tamlin, Third, Selene, the Maledictus of Shadows (who is, of course, no threat to anyone), and the Confessor.
Usually, there is one main secondary POV in the SEVENFOLD SWORD books (like Tamara in SHADOW, Third in UNITY, and Kalussa in SERPENT), but for the last two SEVENFOLD SWORD books, everyone who was previously a POV character and is still alive is coming back for the finale!
-JM
