Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 192

Excerpt Thursday: FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE

It’s Excerpt Thursday! This week’s excerpt is from FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE.

###

Paul scoffed. “And I suppose you intend to find whatever is behind these disappearances, exile? I am not surprised. You were ever the fool, running after every mud-stained freeholder than came to you with a tale of woe.”

Calliande bristled. Ridmark’s penchant for running after every mud-stained freeholder with a tale of woe had saved her life, kept the empty soulstone from falling into the hands of Shadowbearer, and had saved the town of Dun Licinia. However much Ridmark hated himself, he did not deserve to have this preening jackass insult him.

But Ridmark answered before she could speak.

“Innocent people may be dead,” said Ridmark. “Would you have me abandon the rest of them to their fate?”

Paul shrugged. “Do whatever you like, exile. But these people left Andomhaim. They chose to forsake the protection and wisdom of our High King. We are not obliged to defend them.” He smiled. “Frankly, if the inn caught fire, I would not cross the street to piss upon the flames.”

“They are still sons and daughters of the church,” said Ridmark.

“Have you seen the church’s state of repair?” said Paul. “Or talked to that senile old priest? These villagers care nothing for the sacred traditions of the faith. It would not surprise me if that red-haired bitch led them to a circle of dark elven menhirs to sacrifice to the blood gods of the orcs.” He grinned. “Or maybe they’re looking for the Frostborn, too, like a certain pathetic coward with a stick and a brand…”

“Enough,” said Calliande. Paul looked at her, blinking in surprise. “The Frostborn are returning. The realm must prepare itself to face the danger.”

Paul and his men laughed. “Who is this, exile? Some tart dressed up in men’s clothing?” He stepped towards her, grinning. “Your whore, perhaps? Your prostitute that…”

A heartbeat later Paul was on the floor, his eyes wide, blood streaming from his nose. The men-at-arms shouted and drew their swords. Ridmark remained calm, though he grimaced as he shook his fist.

Agnes hooted with laughter, took another drink of her beer, and closed her eyes.

“Apologize,” said Ridmark.

“You hit me!” said Paul. He sounded more astonished than angry.

“Apologize,” said Ridmark again. “This woman is a Magistria of the Order, and you have insulted her. Apologize, now, or I will challenge you to a duel.” His eyes were flinty. “And if I do, you will not leave Aranaeus alive.”

Paul growled and got to his feet with a clatter of armor, and Calliande was sure he would throw himself at Ridmark. Ridmark stared at him without blinking, and the anger drained from Paul’s face, replaced by a hint of fear.

-JM

FROSTBORN/DEMONSOULED crossover?

Reader JS asks a question to which I don’t know the answer:

“Have you ever considered merging some of your story lines? I have read and reread the demonsouled series and frostborn series (currently rereading Necromancer). At times during both series, it seemed like there may have been overlap of histories. Just an idea, one I am sure you have heard before many times, to keep in mind. You lured me in with free books and I have enjoyed traveling your worlds, thank you.”

I suppose some of the similarity is that both Mazael’s and Ridmark’s worlds are medieval cultures. Though Ridmark’s world is more like the High Medieval period, and Mazael’s is more like the Dark Ages. (Britain in 600 AD and in Britain in 1300 AD were very different places.) There is nothing in Mazael’s world with the central authority of the High King, the Order of the Magistri, or the church of Andomhaim. Mazael’s world did have orders of knights, but he destroyed two of them.

As for a crossover between FROSTBORN and DEMONSOULED, I don’t know. I’ve had people tell me that it would be an amazing idea and that it would be a terrible idea.

My gut reaction is that crossovers are a bad idea…

…but the first two AVENGERS movies made like three billion dollars, so clearly my opinion is in the minority. (Then again, hardly anyone liked the JUSTICE LEAGUE movie.)

What do you think? Are crossovers in general a good idea or a bad idea?

-JM

 

seven years of self-publishing: posting word count

A reader asks:

“I noticed you update and share your progress/word count/status on books in a public manner on your blog and twitter. I was wondering if you had any specific reasons for this and if so, I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. Is keeping track of status/word count more for yourself or is it more for other people/readers?”

That’s a good question.

I do it for readers. For myself, I keep track of my daily word count in a spreadsheet. But for readers, I talk about book progress and word counts for two reasons:

1.) If people are visiting my website/social media, it’s because they want more information about my books and when the new books are coming out. So why not give it to them? “Give the customer what he wants” is one of those simple principles that really does work. (Too many business tend to shift to the model of “give the customer what I think he should want, and then overcharge for it.”)

2.) We all know That One Fantasy Writer (let’s not name names) who is very late on his next book, and yet somehow manages to post 200 times a day on Twitter, usually complaining about something. I regard this as a salutary example of what not to do. So it lets people know that I am indeed working on the next book.

So, in that vein, I’m nearly done editing SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY, I’m almost to the end of the rough draft of CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER, and I’m 41k words into SILENT ORDER: IMAGE HAND!

-JM

 

SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY book description!

Nearly finished with SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY, so let’s have the book description:

The quest of the Seven Swords will destroy kingdoms.

Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight, questing to stop the rise of the evil New God. But Ridmark and his companions are caught in the war between the final remnant of the dying gray elves and the brutal muridach horde.

Unless Ridmark can save the gray elves, he and his friends will die, and the New God will rise in power to enslave the world…

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER progress

Made good progress on CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER and SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY this weekend.

I can’t post any excerpts from SKY HAMMER because the entire book is a giant spoiler… but an excerpt from CLOAK GAMES: SHADOW JUMP might give a suitable preview.

seven years of self-publishing – changing writing style

AL asks about seven years of self-publishing:

“Have you felt your writing style changes as you write more and more? Have reader responses changed how you continue series?”

For the first question, definitely.  I meander less now. In my first books, it tended to take me a while to get to the point. This is less of a problem now. Like, if I look back at my older books, I think “I would do this differently now.” SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY will be about 102k words when it’s done, but if I had written it fifteen years ago, it would be twice as long for no good reason.

For the second question, I do (sometimes) listen to reader responses when writing a series. The biggest example of that would be Kylon of House Kardamnos in THE GHOSTS books. I wrote him out of the series a bunch of different times, but people kept asking for him to come back, so I finally gave in. (You can find a full description of this in the introduction to GHOST SWORD in my EXILE OF THE GHOSTS short story collection.)

Third from FROSTBORN/SEVENFOLD SWORD would be another example. I had always planned for her to be in SEVENFOLD SWORD, but the reader response to her return was so strong that I made her a POV character, which I hadn’t planned to do originally.

And, who knows? Maybe I’ll have another example of unplanned changes in a series due to reader input this summer.

10k words of CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER

I am pleased to report that yesterday I wrote 10,000 words of CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER.

I write a lot, and can average around 6k words a day when I really get going, but 10k word days are special. They’re gifts from God.

Like days when you find a $20 bill in the gutter, or there’s an extra chicken nugget in the box.

They can only happen on days when everything goes right and there are no unexpected complications.

This is the first 10k word day of 2018, and the first 10k day ever for any CLOAK GAMES book.

Definitely looking forward to publishing SKY HAMMER in June!

-JM

Excerpt Thursday: GHOST IN THE BLOOD

It’s Excerpt Thursday! Today we have an excerpt from GHOST IN THE BLOOD.

###

A man in his middle fifties sat there, staring into his wine. His lank gray hair had been pulled into a tail, and he wore the rough clothes of a common laborer. Muscle corded his arms, and ugly red scars marked his hands and forearms. His disguise was perfect, but Caina recognized him at once. She would have known him anywhere.

She sat across from him.

His gray eyes narrowed. Then a corner of his mouth twisted.

“Should I fear the shadows?” he muttered, speaking in High Nighmarian, the formal language of the Imperial court.

“There are Ghosts in the shadows,” said Caina, reciting the countersign in High Nighmarian, “and let the tyrants tremble in their beds, for the shadows are ever watchful.”

“Indeed,” said the Halfdan, circlemaster of the Ghosts, Caina’s oldest teacher. He switched to Caerish. “Let take a walk along the beach. The air will do me good.” He downed the rest of his wine. “Vile swill. And the fewer secrets our friendly innkeeper knows, the happier we all shall be.”

Caina nodded, left her wine on the table, and followed Halfdan outside. They walked in silence down the bluffs until they reached the shore. The air here smelled of salt and seagull dung, and the constant roar of the surf would stymie any eavesdroppers.

“That is a good disguise, girl,” said Halfdan. “I didn’t recognize you at first. Though you make for an ugly man.”

She laughed. “That is the point.”

“By the by,” said Halfdan, “last night I saw a fire to the north. Sometime after that, I saw the master of the White Road Inn making for Marsis as fast as his legs could carry him, with his family and all his servants.” He looked at her. “You smell like smoke.”

“Things got a little out of hand,” said Caina.

Halfdan said nothing.

Caina sighed. “I burned down the Inn.”

“Did you? That’s a shame,” said Halfdan. “Old Oscar kept an excellent wine cellar.”

“Naelon Icaraeus was there,” said Caina.

Halfdan’s eyes sharpened. “He was?”

“In the flesh,” said Caina. “I thought that Icaraeus would have a courier there, maybe Tigrane or one of his other lieutenants. But Icaraeus was there, along with Tigrane and a dozen men. They’d taken over the Inn, kept Oscar and his family as captives in that excellent wine cellar.” Caina made a fist. “I almost had Icaraeus’s head. I should have had Icaraeus’s head.”

“What went wrong?” said Halfdan.

Caina reached into the satchel, handed Halfdan the twisted throwing knife. “The stories were true. Icaraeus has access to some level of sorcery. That’s how he’s been able to evade capture for so long. A brother of the Imperial Magisterium is aiding him.”

“Or,” said Halfdan, examining the ruined throwing knife, “a renegade, or a foreign sorcerer. Not every incident of illegal sorcery in the Empire is the fault of the Magisterium.”

“No,” said Caina, her hand twitching towards the ring on its cord, “just most of them.”

-JM

seven years of self publishing

The Lord has been good to me, and I have now been self-publishing for seven years.

Seven years! Man. I’ve been doing this for a while.

In that seven years, I’ve published 78 books. 10 of them were written before 2011, and 68 after. I’m about to publish #79 in two weeks or so.

And as of March, I have officially sold one million ebooks in that time.

Thanks for coming along for the ride! Looking forward to seeing if I can write another 68 books (or more) in the next seven years!

SEVENFOLD SWORD, CLOAK GAMES, and SILENT ORDER update

Time for a general update on book progress!

-On the final editing stage for SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY. If all goes well, the book will come out in the first week of May.

-I’m 36,000 words into CLOAK GAMES: SKY HAMMER. The plan is to have this book come out in the first half of June.

-I’m also 38,000 words into SILENT ORDER: IMAGE HAND. I want this book to come out after SKY HAMMER, probably in the second half of June.

-JM