Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 184
August 9, 2018
Excerpt Thursday: CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING
It’s Excerpt Thursday! This week’s excerpt is from CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING, the crossover novel where Nadia Moran meets Caina Amalas.
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“You’re very open with me,” I said.
Caina took another sip of coffee, and I followed suit.
“Three reasons,” she said. “One, if this goes the way I think it will, you’re going to find out all about me anyway. Two, if that little ‘light show’ last night is any indication of the Congressman’s friends, I’m going to need help finding proof against him. Three, I already know quite a bit about you.”
I scowled. “Suppose you researched me, too.”
Caina shook her head. “No. I just paid attention. Watched the details.”
“That sounds like bullshit,” I said.
Caina set down her coffee cup and leaned closer, the cold blue eyes unblinking. I suddenly felt uneasy under that stare, as if there was nothing I could hide from it.
“You just got married,” she said, her voice quiet, “and you miss your husband terribly. He’s probably out of the country. He’s also a wealthy man, familiar with violence, and one with considerable force of personality. Your magic is much, much stronger than normal for a human, but you learned or obtained that power in highly traumatic circumstances. You exercise a great deal, but have trouble eating, and suffer from chronic insomnia and nightmares.”
My unease increased. All of that was exactly right.
“Oh, bullshit,” I said, trying to hide the unease. “I was on the national news. You just looked me up.”
“I haven’t yet,” said Caina, “and I know all that from talking to you. I’ll prove it.” She pointed at my hand. “Your wedding ring. It’s new, not worn at all. That means you were recently married. You keep touching it because it reminds you of your husband.”
“Okay,” I said. “How did you know he was rich and familiar with violence?”
Caina smiled. “An educated guess after talking with you. You wouldn’t marry any man for whom you had contempt, which means no one weaker than you. You might have married for money, but that would be pointless since if you wanted money, you could just Cloak and steal it. Probably your husband is a confident man who is either in the Wizard’s Legion or an independent mercenary contractor of some kind. As for the fact that he’s rich, your coat is new, and it’s an expensive brand. Your shoes aren’t new, and they’re fairly worn. The logical inference is that he bought the coat for you, and its cost didn’t concern him.”
“And the nightmares and insomnia?” I said, voice quiet.
“It’s nine in the morning, and it’s already eighty degrees out, but you’re wearing a sweater and a pea coat,” said Caina. “Wizards sometimes suffer from a form of PTSD where they keep drawing on their magic and make themselves cold. Combined with your powerful magic, that is the obvious conclusion. Nightmares and insomnia are also a common symptom of PTSD.” She sighed. “I hate to say it, but your bloodshot eyes and the dark circles beneath them are additional evidence for that. You also look rather underweight, which means you have trouble eating. I don’t know whether it’s connected to your other difficulties or not, but it seems likely. Then again, it could just be bad gut bacteria.” She shrugged. “How much did I get right?”
“Most of it,” I said, staring into my coffee. “You’re a very dangerous woman.”
“Yes,” said Caina. “I do apologize. I always regret unsettling people like that.”
“No, you don’t,” I said.
She smiled. “It never hurts to be polite.”
-JM
August 8, 2018
CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL now available!
I am pleased to report that CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL, the final volume in the CLOAK GAMES series, is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.
I was done with Lord Morvilind.
But the war with the Archon Elves was finished with neither of us.
Morvilind has one last job for me. One final heist to decide the fate of humans and Elves both.
And if I screw this one up, the Void will devour both humanity and the Elves…
-JM
August 1, 2018
CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING Table of Contents!
Here’s the Table of Contents for CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING, the Nadia/Caina crossover novel. When CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL comes out at the end of this week or early next week, newsletter subscribers will have the option of getting CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING for free!
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-JM
July 31, 2018
preorder SEVENFOLD SWORD PART II in audio!
I am pleased to report that you can now preorder SEVENFOLD SWORD PART II in audiobook at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon AU!
SEVENFOLD SWORD PART II combines SEVENFOLD SWORD: WARLORD and SEVENFOLD SWORD: NECROMANCER into an unabridged audiobook bundle for over 21 hours of listening enjoyment.
SEVENFOLD SWORD PART II is narrated by Steven Brand, and will be released on August 21st.
And if you want to get caught up, SEVENFOLD SWORD PART I combines SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION and SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER into a an unabridged audiobook bundle for 20 hours of listening enjoyment, and you can listen to it at Audible, iTunes, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon Australia.
-JM
CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL Table of Contents
I’m far enough along that I can now share the Table of Contents from CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL.
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The book should be out early next week.
-JM
July 30, 2018
SEVENFOLD SWORD: SERPENT rough draft finished!
I am pleased to report that the rough draft of SEVENFOLD SWORD: SERPENT is finished! 110,000 words in 19 days.
Next up is SHIELD KNIGHT: RIDERS, a short story I will give away to my newsletter subscribers when SERPENT comes out in September. Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter!
CLOAK GAMES: MAGE FALL and CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING are very nearly finished, and they should come out either this weekend or early next week.
I’m also 16,700 words into GHOST IN THE AMULET, and 29,000 words into SILENT ORDER: IMAGE HAND.
-JM
July 29, 2018
Interesting Links #23: The Darkest Dungeon Of Writing!
In this week’s Interesting Links, we talk about writing, marketing, and computer games!
-If your Kindle keeps syncing to the wrong page in your book, this is how you clear the problem up: How To Clear Your Furthest Read Page On Kindle.
-In this Kboards thread, an author analyzes what worked and didn’t work for her marketing over the last year: Mistakes Were Made.
-I don’t usually link to videos, but writer Nick Cole has some good advice here, especially for authors in Kindle Unlimited: NOT Getting Banned By Amazon.
-Another video, this one relating to a problem I have a great deal of experience in handling: Writing A Series: 7 Continuation Issues To Avoid. (CTRL+F is your friend when it comes to continuity!)
-It is funny how Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing has been around for nearly eleven years now, but mainstream media outlets are just starting to wake up and realize that “wait, self-publishing is a thing?” Maybe next month they’ll write an article about how these newfangled 3 1/2 inch floppy disks are going to threaten the older 5 1/4 inch diskettes: The Authors Who Love Amazon.
-If you buy audiobooks from Google Play, apparently you can download them as DRM-free files: How To Download Audiobooks From Google Play Books – DRM Free.
-I’ve been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon lately, and this is an interesting review of how the game has changed in the last two years: Two Years Later, Darkest Dungeon Is Completely Different For The Better. (Amusingly, the night before I linked to this article, I tried to go after the Fulminating Prophet boss in the Ruins, only to suffer a total party kill.)
-I wrote the entirety of CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING on Ubuntu: A Forbes Writer Spent 2 Weeks Using Ubuntu, This Is What He Thought.
-JM
July 27, 2018
SEVENFOLD SWORD: SERPENT progress
I am now 100k words into SEVENFOLD SWORD: SERPENT.
Still not done, though. This is going to be a long one!
-JM
July 26, 2018
Excerpt Thursday: SOUL OF DRAGONS
For this week’s Excerpt Thursday, we have an excerpt from SOUL OF DRAGONS!
I think more of my books need dragons on the cover. 
July 23, 2018
So how would a Nadia/Caina crossover work?
When I mentioned CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING yesterday, people were excited, but concerned. How would a Caina/Nadia crossover work? Like, would Caina fall through a magic portal or something and land on Nadia’s version of Earth?
A setup like that always seems contrived and forced.
Then I thought about Sherlock Holmes.
The original Holmes stories were set in the 1880s and the 1890s of London (with occasional jaunts into the British countryside), but other writers since have set Holmes stories at different times and places. The Basil Rathbone movies about Holmes, for instance, were set in the 1940s. Recently the BBC made a series about a tech-savvy Sherlock Holmes who lived in 21st century London and dealt with modern crimes like cyber heists and terrorism. Another series had Holmes solving crimes in modern New York while recovering from his cocaine addiction. There’s a version of Sherlock Holmes who solves mysteries in the 22nd century, and another who has battled the cosmic monsters of HP Lovecraft’s mythos.
Thinking along those lines, what if Caina was born and grew up and lived in Nadia’s world? What if Nadia met a version of Caina who lived on Earth?
What would happen when the two of them met?
We’ll find out in CLOAK & GHOST: BLOOD RING next month!
-JM
