Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 174

CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL question & answer!

For a book that I gave a way for free, I sold a lot of copies of CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL. Thanks everyone!

I’ll answer some questions people had about the book here. Spoilers alert!

JLH asks:

“Curious though how Nadia is supposed to function as a shadow agent for the queen when she is so well known.”

With the Cloak, Mask, and Occlusion spells, Nadia can be as unobtrusive as she likes. Also, she’s not a very large woman, so all she really needs to do is put on a big coat, a ball cap, and sunglasses, and she’ll immediately look non-threatening to most people. The High Queen usually recruits shadow agents with a variety of different skill sets, but with Nadia she has someone who can be a scalpel or a hammer as needed.

Also, Nadia is only a certain level of famous. Like, the governor of a smaller US state level of famous. (Or a backbencher MP, for those of you from countries with Westminster-style governments.) Like, I have no idea who the governor of New Jersey is at the moment. But within a certain circle of people, the governor of New Jersey is very well known and influential. But if you’re outside of that circle of people and you met the governor of New Jersey, like you saw him in line at McDonalds or something, you’d have no idea who he was. Nadia’s about that level of famous. She was on the national news for a while, but the news cycle does move on.

“Also looking forward to seeing her interact with more human wizards. Wonder what they think of her?”

Nearly all the other human wizards are part of the Wizard’s Legion and personally sworn to the High Queen. (The Wizard’s Legion is one of the hammers she uses to keep the Elven nobles in line.) A human wizard meeting Nadia would first be frightened when he or she realized how strong Nadia was, and then would suspect that she was either an Inquisition agent or one of the High Queen’s scalpels or hammers.

Matthew asks:

“Question though, what was the point of Markus?”

I want to do more with the Shadow Hunters as a organization further down the road, but the only members of the Family Nadia had met so far have been Riordan, Nora, and Adler. So it was time to start introducing more of them.

“Or was he just there to give me a sense that Shadow Hunters are apparently attracted to slightly insane females?”

LOL. That would be Riordan. As Nora points out to him (repeatedly), he does have a type. Both his previous long-term relationships tried to kill him, which is why he took things so slowly with Nadia. Markus was just being charming.

Nadia would be attractive, but the longer you talk to her, the more apparent it would be that there’s something…off about her, to the point where it’s off-putting and unsettling. Like, people who look into her eyes usually have to look away first, she’s hyper-vigilant about her surroundings, that kind of thing. Caina has much better poise, and it much better at controlling her emotions. The flip side of that is Nadia tends to boil over and lose her temper and be fine after, while Caina internalize emotions and deal with them by doing things like overthrowing governments.

Anyway! CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL was a good warmup for CLOAK OF DRAGONS, which I should be able to start writing in January.

-JM

CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL now available!

I am pleased to report that CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

My last book of 2018! It was also a good warm up for CLOAK OF DRAGONS, which I’m going to start in January.

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-JM

CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL Table of Contents

I think I’ll finish up work on CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL later today. It was a good warmup for CLOAK OF DRAGONS early next year.

CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL coming soon!

CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL is almost done, and should be out soon! So that means it’s time to share the cover image, which you can see below.

I’m going to give the REBEL CELL away for free to newsletter subscribers when the book comes out, so be sure to sign up for my newsletter!

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-JM

CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL underway

Now that GHOST IN THE TOWER is out, I’m going to finish up CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL. It’s another Caina/Nadia crossover novel, and I’m going to give it away for free to newsletter subscribers. (So be sure to subscribe to my newsletter!) I’ve only got about 10,000 words or so to do on it, and I’m going to wrap it up soon. If all goes well, that should come out next week.

Then it will be time to start on SEVENFOLD SWORD: MAZE, which should be my first book of 2019.

I’m also on Chapter 1 of MALISON: DRAGON FURY. Tyrcamber Rigamond is a fun character to write, because he really wants to be thoughtless and arrogant, but his brain keeps getting in the way.

And! I’m listening to the final audio proofs of FROSTBORN: THE GORGON SPIRIT and GHOST IN THE FLAMES this week. If all goes well, in the next 45 days I’m going to have three new audiobooks come out: GHOST IN THE FLAMES, FROSTBORN: THE GORGON SPIRIT, and then SEVENFOLD SWORD: PART III (a 2-book bundle containing SHADOW and UNITY) from Podium.

-JM

GHOST IN THE TOWER now available!

I am pleased to report that GHOST IN THE TOWER is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

Caina has hated the Imperial Magisterium, the Empire’s college of magi, for all her life…and the magi hate and fear her right back.

But the Magisterium has much bigger problems right now, and the First Magus is willing to make a deal. If Caina can find the root cause of a mysterious string of suicides, the Magisterium will leave her in peace.

Except the suicides are actually murders.

And unless Caina is clever, she’ll be the murderer’s next victim…

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-JM

The Silmarillion for $2.99

I noticed that J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE SILMARILLION is $2.99 on Kindle today.

I read the Silmarillion for the first time when I was a teenager (a very long time ago), specifically a paperback edition that shows the Fall of Númenor on the cover. I have to admit that was a hard book for my teenaged self to get through, but I was agog at the scope of it. And it had so many epic moments that could have made for novels in their own right – Melkor & Ungoliant, Glaurung and Turin, Beren and Lúthien, the duel between Finrod and Sauron, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the War of Wrath, and so many others.

And at the end, after thousands of years of suffering and loss, Maedhros and Maglor finally recover the Silmarils only for the jewels to reject them for all their crimes, and so in despair Maedhros throws himself and his Silmaril into a fiery pit, and Maglor casts his Silmaril into the sea and spends the rest of time wandering Middle-earth and singing of his grief and guilt…man, that was a moment!

So definitely worth the read! A challenging book to get through, but very worth the effort.

And if Amazon wants their new LORD OF THE RINGS series to be successful, I think it should be about the War of Wrath. Imagine the scene when Eärendil and the eagles arrive to fight Ancalagon the Black!

-JM

GHOST IN THE TOWER & other updates

The last month of 2018 is before us, and here’s where I am with various projects!

-GHOST IN THE TOWER is almost done, and if all goes well I should release the book towards the end of this week.

-I’m on Chapter 2 of 10 of CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL, and I will release that to newsletter subscribers for free sometime in the middle of the month.

-I finished the outline for SEVENFOLD SWORD: MAZE, and will start on that soon.

-I just started MALISON: DRAGON FURY.

-I just listened to the first five chapters of FROSTBORN: THE GORGON SPIRIT, as narrated by Brad Wills. They turned out really great, and I’m looking forward to releasing the audiobook.

Lest you think I spend all my time working, it’s not true – this weekend I finished reading my 101st book for the year, which marks the first time I’ve read more than a hundred books in a calendar year.

-JM

GHOST IN THE TOWER table of contents & book description

You can see the Table of Contents and the official book description for GHOST IN THE TOWER below!

If all goes well, the book should be published towards the end of this coming week.

Caina has hated the Imperial Magisterium, the Empire’s college of magi, for all her life…and the magi hate and fear her right back.

But the Magisterium has much bigger problems right now, and the First Magus is willing to make a deal. If Caina can find the root cause of a mysterious string of suicides, the Magisterium will leave her in peace.

Except the suicides are actually murders. 

And unless Caina is clever, she’ll be the murderer’s next victim…

[image error]

-JM

Christmas paperbacks!

A book is a classy and excellent Christmas present. By pure coincidence, both SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER and MALISON: DRAGON CURSE are now available in paperback!

-JM