Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 195

Interesting Links #16: Cricitism and Alexa

This week’s Interesting Links has some interesting articles discussing how famous authors deal with criticism and self-doubt, and how to market books.

Also, Alexa is secretly laughing at us:

-BookBub is the heavyweight champion of the book advertising world, so this is useful for writers: How to Boost Your Chances of Getting a BookBub Featured Deal.

-Self-publishing business advice from Mark Dawson: 5 Important Things That Authors Need To Know About Self-Publishing.

-When it comes to writing I tend to have the opposite problem, but if you suffer self-doubt as a writer, this could be helpful: How To Deal With Self-Doubt As A Writer.

-I remember when BlackBerry owned the mobile space, and I once spent a lot of time setting up a Blackberry messaging server for email sync. Now it’s degenerated down to patent troll. Sic transit gloria mundi! BlackBerry weaponizes instant messaging patents, sues Facebook.

-This is just one of many reasons I don’t use Alexa or Siri or other AI voice assistants: Unprompted, creepy laughter from Alexa is freaking out Echo users.

-Someone once told me that she could never write a book because she couldn’t stand any criticism. Nora Roberts has written like a thousand books and still gets criticism. But since she’s sold like a billion copies of those books, clearly the criticism didn’t make a dent. So perhaps it’s best to ignore criticism! Stuff and Nonsense.

-Speaking of criticism, I like this article about Mickey Spillane. “Mickey Spillane didn’t give a good goddamn what the critics thought about his work. He became one of the best-selling authors in the history of the printed word because the only thing he cared about was satisfying his millions of fans.”

-Apple is buying Texture. For people who like fancy magazines, I believe this is a Big Deal: Apple Is Acquiring The Netflix Of Magazines.

-The answer is no, so that’s why we self-publish! The ‘Profits From Publishing’ Debate: Do Authors Get a Fair Cut?

-JM

SEVENFOLD SWORD & CLOAK GAMES update

I am now 25k words into SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY!

I’m also on Chapter 2 of 16 of CLOAK GAMES #11. It does have a title, and I’ll announce it when CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE comes out in the first week of April.

-JM

how to write a really long series

Reader AP emails to ask about writing a long series. Since FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE hit #31 on the Kindle US store yesterday, this seems like a really good time to answer his questions:

First of all, I absolutely love your writing style and your books in general. I was curious as to how you come up with a series plot. Do you first for example make a map of the land where the action is? And then come up with all the different plot twists etc. Or you have a rough idea of what you want to put in at start and it is developing as you go through? Because I was thinking about the technical aspects of coming up with so many great books within such a short period of time. Keep up the awesome work!

Thanks for the kind words! Now to answer your questions.

First of all, I absolutely hate drawing maps. I refused to do it for years, and finally yielded to popular demand. So I definitely do not write a long series with a map in mind! The map tends to come later after enough people ask for it.

Instead, what I do for a long series is a lot of outlining and planning.

First, I figure out the overall arc for the entire series. What is the central conflict and the main antagonist? Then I decided on the main characters and their specific character arcs.

By that point, this is usually enough to work out a synopsis of the entire series. Then it’s time to divide the synopsis into individual books. It’s important to have an antagonist and a fully formed plot for each individual book. Otherwise you fall prey to one of the weaknesses of long-running fantasy series, where there’s an entire 800 page book where the characters do nothing but walk around the woods or spend like a million chapters sailing down a river or something.

When I write a synopsis of an individual book, I start by writing a list of the really significant or spectacular scenes I want in it, and then I sketch out the rest of the scenes to connect the big scenes. Then I chop the synopsis up into individual chapters and start writing.

It’s good to have both external and internal conflicts for your characters. In FROSTBORN, Ridmark’s external conflict is stopping the return of the Frostborn, but his internal conflict is the fact that he never dealt with his wife’s death and is very bad at processing grief in general. In GHOST EXILE, Caina’s external conflict is fighting Grand Master Callatas and solving the mystery of the wraithblood, but her internal conflict is dealing with her death wish. In CLOAK GAMES, Nadia’s external conflict is carrying out Lord Morvilind’s missions and trying to save her brother’s life, but her internal conflict is her struggle to keep those missions from twisting her into a monster.  In SILENT ORDER, March’s external conflict is carrying out his missions for the Silent Order, but his internal conflict is that he refuses to have anything more than superficial human connections because he hates both what he used to be and the Machinists. (In DEMONSOULED, Mazael’s external and internal conflicts usually wind up overlapping.)

You can also get a lot of plot mileage when the internal conflict bubbles over into the external one.

Best to avoid cliffhangers. People really hate those. It’s good to have a complete story in each book. I will only do a proper cliffhanger in the second-to-last book of a series. (I think GHOST IN THE PACT was the most cliffhangery thing I’ve ever written.)

I do improvise a bit while writing. Like, in the original outline for the FROSTBORN series, the Anathgrimm, the Traveler, Nightmane Forest, and Third weren’t in the story at all. Mara was in the outline, but she was just Jager’s slightly air-headed girlfriend. Except when I got to Mara’s first scene in FROSTBORN: THE MASTER THIEF, I was bored with her character, so I made the change that she was half dark elven and used to work for the Red Family. The Anathgrimm, the Traveler, and Third all sprang from the logical consequences of that change to her character.

And when in doubt about what to do next, have a man with a gun come through the door. Or a sword, if it’s a fantasy novel.

SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY progress

1 chapter of SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY down, 23 to go!

What will the book be about?

The gray elves will be front and center in this book.

Also, you know how in several proceeding books the muridachs have been side villains? Let’s just say they’re running the show in this book!

SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY and CLOAK GAMES #11 now underway!

I’ve started on my next two projects: SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY and CLOAK GAMES #11. (I’ll announced what the title of CLOAK GAMES #11 will be when CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE comes out.)

If all goes well, this is what the next few months should look like.

April: CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE.

May: SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY.

June: The epic conclusion to the CLOAK GAMES series.

After that, it will be back to the GHOST NIGHT series. It’ll be nice to get back to Caina for a while!

I would also like to have another SILENT ORDER book in there somewhere, but we’ll see if I can fit it in. I’m on Chapter 5 of 10 of SILENT ORDER: IMAGE HAND, and I’ll probably try to finish that after SILENT ORDER leaves Kindle Unlimited at the end of April.

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE book description

Here’s the book description for CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE.

All the other CLOAK GAMES book descriptions have been in third person, but this one is in first person. I think one of my March projects will be to convert the CLOAK GAMES book descriptions to first person, since they seem punchier that way.

My master made a deal with the devil, but I’m the one who has to pay.

Two items I’ve stolen for the Rebels, and I only need to steal one more thing for them.

Trouble is, it’s in Last Judge Mountain, a secret military base left over from before the High Queen of the Elves conquered Earth.

There are weapons in Last Judge Mountain that should never again see the light of day.

And if I go into the mountain, I might never come out again…

-JM

SHIELD KNIGHT: RIDMARK’S TALE

People have been asking me for a couple of years now to write the account of Ridmark’s first meeting with Third.

I am pleased to report I have finally done so in the novella SHIELD KNIGHT: RIDMARK’S TALE. It’s available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight of Andomhaim, the defender of the realm against dark magic.

But years before he became the Shield Knight, he faced a deadly urdhracos in battle.

If he can save her, she will become his loyal ally.

But if he fails, she will kill him and everyone he loves…

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-JM

SEVENFOLD SWORD #1!

SEVENFOLD SWORD: SHADOW was #1 in category at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon Australia today.

Thanks everyone! If all goes, I hope to have SEVENFOLD SWORD: UNITY out sometime in May.

-JM

JM vs. Kindle Unlimited, Part II!

A long-time reader had a very insightful comment about Kindle Unlimited, which she has graciously allowed me to share here:

Fixed income means not spending money all willy-nilly. I have a KU membership which works for me so I can try new authors that I wouldn’t otherwise check out if I had to buy the books. It’s saved me quite a bit when I discovered, in the middle of book 2 or 3, that I didn’t care about these characters and the writing wasn’t all that great. 

All that said – I buy, and will continue to buy, your books as they’re released. I’ve re-read the GHOST & GHOST EXILE series at least twice (and am enjoying the GHOST NIGHT series as well). I loved FROSTBORN and am enjoying SEVENFOLD SWORD. I also love the CLOAK GAMES, SILENT ORDER, and DEMONSOULED series. I can count on you to have 1) likable characters that I care about, b) a grasp of grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc., and 3) a good story. Buying your books isn’t a risk. Your fanbase knows that and will talk you up (both in reviews and to their friends). For a new author who hasn’t yet built a fanbase – I think you’re right – KU is too big to be ignored and is probably a very helpful tool for finding a solid fanbase provided you can deliver a decent product.

One of the big weaknesses of writers is that we can disappear up the tailpipe of our own heads. (I’m sometimes as guilty of this as anyone.) So in all the talk of marketing and so forth, it’s important to remember the key principle:

Give the reader what he or she wants!

From the writer’s perspective, Kindle Unlimited is a marketing tool. From the reader’s perspective, Kindle Unlimited is a way to try lots and lots of different books at very low cost. So when considering whether or not to use KU, best to remember the reader’s perspective!

On a related note, in my opinion that’s one of the good things about Amazon and ebooks – it’s driven the cost of novels way down. (This is why Apple and the Big Six publishers got in trouble with the government for fixing prices and Amazon did not – it’s not price-fixing if you drive consumer prices down.) You can get all 20 of the Caina ebooks for about $75 USD, and you can read the first three for just $3.99 total since the first one is free. By contrast, if the Caina books were in hardcover, they would come to $540 new. Traditional publishers like to price their ebooks at $14.99, so if the Caina books were traditionally published, that would come to about $300.

$75 is better than $540 or $300. From the reader’s perspective, you can see how lower prices are a very good thing! And, I think, from the writer’s. Because of low-cost ebooks, more people are reading and writing now than 20 years ago. For another thing, I would make more money from selling 20 ebooks at $3.99 than 20 traditionally published hardbacks at $27.99.

-JM

 

CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE rough draft done!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of CLOAK GAMES: LAST JUDGE is finished!

It is just slightly longer than CLOAK GAMES: BLOOD CAST.

Anyway, if all goes well, LAST JUDGE will be out in the first week of April. I will probably publish it on April 2nd, because if I published it on April 1st, everyone would think I was joking.