Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 176

GHOST IN THE TOWER progress and Nadia Moran update

I’m now on Chapter 15 of 23 of GHOST IN THE TOWER. Entering the final third of the book!

I wasn’t sure if I would have time to write another CLOAK & GHOST book this year, but I should be able to manage it! I’m now on Chapter 1 of 10 of CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL, and I should be able to get that out in December.

I don’t think I’ll give away REBEL CELL when GHOST IN THE TOWER comes out. Instead, I’ll do something different. In previous years, I used to write a Caina short story that I would give away to newsletter subscribers for Christmas. Or shortly before Christmas, since people are usually traveling around the week of Christmas and don’t check their email. So instead, I’ll write CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL and give it away for free to newsletter subscribers before Christmas.

(I should note that some readers very strongly did not care for the crossover idea in CLOAK & GHOST, where Nadia meets a version of Caina who lives on the Earth of CLOAK GAMES. However, quite a lot of people bought CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING and CLOAK & GHOST: LOST GATE even though I gave away the books for free with my newsletter, which is definitely encouragement to write more!)

Writing REBEL CELL will have an additional bonus as a warm up for Nadia’s next stand-alone adventure, CLOAK OF DRAGONS, which I hope to start writing in early 2019.

Needless to say, you should subscribe to my newsletter and get CLOAK & GHOST: REBEL CELL for free when it comes out next month!

-JM

GHOST IN THE TOWER progress update

I’m now 50k words into the rough draft of GHOST IN THE TOWER.

This one feels like it’s going to land in the 90k-95k word range.

-JM

Terminator vs Windows Updates

Whenever I read or watch science fiction about artificial intelligence taking over the world (like the Terminator series), or read articles worrying about the possibility with things like self-driving cars, I have to laugh,

It’s not going to happen. In the last week:

-My MacBook Air corrupted its OS, and I had to reinstall everything from scratch before I could make paperback editions of SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER and MALISON: DRAGON CURSE.

-I was updating SEVENFOLD SWORD: SERPENT with a bonus chapter for TOWER, and for some reason, the software decided to overwrite Chapter 6 with the table of contents. Fortunately, I had many backups, but I had to dump the file and start over.

-On my desktop computer, my video card driver stops working at random for no discernible reason.

-Facebook went down today a bunch of times.

-Amazon.com is suddenly inaccessible to users outside the US (I think this actually began in October), and no one at Amazon has been able to figure out why.

-I needed to find my way to a location in a city I haven’t visited before. Instead of sending me on a straight line via the freeway, the GPS sent me through a maze of residential neighborhoods, and finally got stuck in a loop, apparently confused by a frontage road.

So, sure. Artificial intelligence is totally going take over the world. Yup. Any minute now.

Skynet’s reign of terror would last until the first time it tried to install updates and got caught in a reboot loop. Or it would launch a missile at a major metropolitan area, and the missile would get confused the first time it encountered a frontage road and fly in circles until its fuel ran out.

-JM

Malison: The Orientation?

Andrew asks concerning MALISON: DRAGON CURSE:

“With regards to the very interesting new Malison series; what kind of future do you have planned for it? Will Dragon Fury be a bonus novella or will it be a full length book release? How many instalments do you have planned for the series?”

I wrote MALISON to work out some of the worldbuilding for my next epic fantasy series, which will start in 2019 once SEVENFOLD SWORD is finished.

There are going to be a total of four MALISON books, and each one will be about 40k to 50k words. So, about 1800 to 2000 Kindle locations each.

I’ll give them away for free to my newsletter subscribers every time a new SEVENFOLD SWORD book comes out until the SEVENFOLD SWORD series is done.

So, look for the next book, MALISON: DRAGON FURY, at the same time SEVENFOLD SWORD: MAZE comes out, hopefully in January 2019.

-JM

 

GHOST IN THE TOWER full speed ahead!

Now that SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER is out, it’s time to proceed full speed ahead on GHOST IN THE TOWER. (Which has no connection to SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER – just a quirk of timing that the titles are so similar.) If all goes well, GHOST IN THE TOWER will be out in December.

GHOST IN THE TOWER will have three main POV characters:

1.) Caina.

2.) Ariadne Scorneus, high magus of the Imperial Magisterium.

3.) Calaver Aberon, battle magus of the Imperial Magisterium.

Here’s the official book description:

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…

-JM

Let’s Give Some Writing Advice!

Stephen asks:

“Your writing and self-publishing has been very encouraging to me, and as such I try to tell as many people about you as possible. As an aspiring writer myself, I wanted to ask you what your process is when it comes to planning out and then writing your books? How do you manage to keep writing consistently?”

Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed the books!

As for planning a book, typically what I do is I first write out a synopsis of the book. In the synopsis, I sketch out the main events and subplots of the book. You want to hit all the main points of a well-structured plot – the introduction, the conflict/antagonist, the rising action, the climax, and the resolution. I also like to work out the internal conflicts of the characters when writing the synopsis. Having a character who faces both external and internal conflicts makes for a more interesting read (and makes it easier to write, too). Since I tend to write really long series, I make sure the synopsis also mentions recurring things or scenes that are important to the series.

Once the synopsis is done, I split it up into chapters and expand them out a bit. Then it’s time to start writing.

Some people prefer not to outline in advance, but I think the strength of outlining is that it forces you to think out the plot in advance, and so you can avoid plot holes and writing yourself into a corner. Like, have you ever read a book and wondered why the hero didn’t shoot the villain when he had the chance, or the villain didn’t kill the hero when the opportunity presented itself? Or a book where the ending seemed forced and tacked-on? Or the plot could only continue if one of the characters, whether the protagonist or villain, suddenly and inexplicably became a moron? That can usually be avoided by writing an outline in advance.

(My favorite plots are ones where both the protagonist and villain are intelligent and competent, but are operating on incomplete or incorrect information and so make bad decisions. I think of all my books that use this kind of plot, GHOST IN THE THRONE is my favorite, since Caina and Cassander Nilas both think the other is dead for most of the book.)

As for writing consistently, at this point I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s a habit that’s hard to break. In the old days, I used to try to make myself write at least a thousand words a day when writing something new. After I started self-publishing I raised that to 3,000 words, and now I try to hit at least 5,000 words a day on a new project. We’re talking about a span of twenty years here, so it took me a while to ramp up from a thousand words a day to five thousand.

And if I’m busy on a day and don’t hit my goal, I don’t beat myself up over it. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the possible! Writing 500 words in a day is still better than writing zero words in a day.

As runners like to say, you’re lapping everyone who’s still on the couch.

-JM

SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER now available!

I am pleased to report that SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER is now available at all ebook stores!

You can get it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

The quest of the Seven Swords has brought the world to the edge of destruction.

To defeat the evil of the Seven Swords, Ridmark must learn the secrets of their making. But the creator of the Swords is imprisoned within the dungeons of Urd Maelwyn, once the stronghold of the dark elven tyrant called the Sovereign.

And those who enter the dungeons of Urd Maelwyn never return…

[image error]

-JM

A CLOAK & GHOST obscure in-joke

People have emailed to say they really like this joke in CLOAK & GHOST: LOST GATE.

###

“She reminds me a little of you,” said Riordan. “Almost like you were characters created by the same author.”

“For God’s sake,” I muttered. “Not everything has to be compared to a damn book.” He smiled again. “And any author who could think up someone like me would be a serious jerk.”

###

However, my favorite joke in the book is this one. Though it’s kind of an in-joke.

###

Winston laughed. “I understand what that feels like, sir!” He took Andromache’s arm. “Darling, we shouldn’t keep our guests waiting, and we should let these fearsome security Valkyries you’ve hired,” he winked at Caina and Nadia, “go about their business.”

“Valkyries?” said Nadia. “They’re the ones with the winged hats, right?”

“Kind of,” said Winston, and he smiled and guided a bemused Andromache to the door.

“I don’t think I’d look good with a winged hat,” said Nadia.

###

That refers back to the very first cover of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, back when I started self-publishing in 2011. Back then, I couldn’t afford to hire a cover designer. Many indie authors use stock photos (I still do), but back in 2011, I also couldn’t afford stock photos.

So where did that leave me? Public domain art! I spent a lot of time looking at 19th and early 20th century artwork that had passed into the public domain in search of cover images. The first cover of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS came from the work of Arthur Rackham, specifically some artwork he did to accompany Richard Wagner’s operas:

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Yes, I like to think my abilities with cover design have improved somewhat since then. (For that matter, I can afford stock photos now.) By comparison, the last cover I did myself was CLOAK & GHOST: LOST GATE.

Anyway, if all goes well, Caina’s next stand-alone adventure GHOST IN THE TOWER should be out in December. And Nadia’s next stand-alone adventure CLOAK OF DRAGONS should come out in February! I just got the cover image for CLOAK OF DRAGONS and it looks very good.

-JM

 

GHOST IN THE COWL now free!

I realized that we’re coming up on nearly 5 years since I started the GHOST EXILE series.

So this seems like an excellent time to make the first book of the series, GHOST IN THE COWL, free on all ebook platforms! Links are below:

Available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

[image error]

-JM

writers vs filmmakers

Back when THE LORD OF THE RINGS movies came out, I bought the Extended Edition DVDs when they were released. I suppose this was like fifteen, sixteen years ago by now. The Extended Editions came with all these documentaries about the making of the movies, and I never got around to watching them.

But I spent a few days at home recently, and I wound up watching them. They’re actually really interesting, especially when they get into the titanic logistical and technical difficulties of making movies on an epic scale like THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Chiefly, I came away very grateful that my creative impulses extend to writing and not to film-making.

Like, when it comes to writing, I can (and usually do) whatever I want, at least in a creative sense. I don’t have to collaborate with anyone and make the final decisions for everything myself. For that matter, I don’t have to spend all that money to produce a book, and I don’t have to convince someone to fund the project. I hire out covers, but if I really had to, I could do everything I do for writing/publishing with a $199 laptop and free software. My only expense would be stock photographs for covers.

Filmmaking is nothing like that. For one, everything costs money. And it’s a hugely collaborative process – the director, the writer, the actors, the crew, the technicians, all of them have an influence on the final product. I would much rather try to do everything myself. That’s just possible with self-publishing if you have the right skill set. It is nearly impossible with filmmaking.

So I’m very glad I’m a writer and not a filmmaker! In that spirit, back to editing SEVENFOLD SWORD: TOWER.