Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 213

three questions about the SILENT ORDER series

Editing is underway for SILENT ORDER: WRAITH HAND, the second book in the SILENT ORDER series!

The last few posts about the SILENT ORDER science fiction (coming in October!) series inspired three questions.

1.) Am I going to put any of my other new (or old) books in Kindle Unlimited?

No. That would be counterproductive, because it would betray reader expectations. SEVENFOLD SWORD, THE GHOSTS, and CLOAK GAMES already have a good audience on Kobo and Google Play and iBooks and Barnes & Noble. So people expect (rightly) that future books in those series are going to be on Kobo and Google Play and iBooks and Barnes & Noble.

Jerking the rug out mid-series would be kind of a useless thing to do.

But since the SILENT ORDER series doesn’t actually exist yet, there are no reader expectations to betray.

SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER #1 in category

I am pleased to report that SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER is #1 in its category on Amazon US! Thanks everyone!

(And it is a competitive category, too!)

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I finished writing the outline for SEVENFOLD SWORD: WARLORD, and if all goes well I want to start writing it in the final week of September.

And if you want to check out SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER, you can get it at the links below:

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Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play, and Smashwords.

-JM

Dr. Jerry Pournelle and There Will Be War

It was sad to see that Jerry Pournelle died this weekend. Wikipedia has a good summary of his many accomplishments. I read his website on a regular basis for years, and he was a great mind and a great writer. (I especially enjoyed reading about his battles with the Microsoft Surface computer.) If I live to my 80s, may my mind be half as clear as his!

(In fact, he was the first writer to ever use a word processor to publish a novel.)

One of his accomplishments was THERE WILL BE WAR, an anthology of military science fiction stories that went for nine volumes in the 1980s, and was revived for a tenth volume in 2015 thanks to electronic publishing. In honor of Dr. Pournelle, the publisher of the series is making THERE WILL BE WAR VOLUME I free on Kindle for the next three days.

I definitely, definitely recommend it. It’s a classic with a lot of good stories and interesting essays – the first version of ENDER’S WAR is in this volume.

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-JM

 

print books coming!

I am pleased to report that a lot more of my books will be available in print soon!

The reason: I don’t like Macs very much.

how many novels have I actually written?

Recently on Twitter a writer mentioned to me that it was really hard to find the self-confidence to self-publish a book. I started to reply that it got easier the more you did it, and I ought to know because I had published a lot of novels.

Then I realized I didn’t know how many novels I had published.

How many novels had I published? I published so many novels that I needed to use Excel to help me work out how many I have published:

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The total comes to 65 novels. When SILENT ORDER comes out next month, it will be seventy.

I suppose you could quibble about some of that. BLADE OF THE GHOSTS and FROSTBORN: THE FIRST QUEST are short novels, but they’re still novels. I basically wrote THE THIRD SOUL as three novels, though it was released in 8 parts in an experiment in serialized storytelling (it didn’t really work), so I put it down on the list as 3. FROSTBORN: THE BONE QUEST was written as a series of novellas, but I always intended to stitch them together into a novel. The short story collections EXILE OF THE GHOSTS and FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS aren’t structured as novels so they don’t count.

So, I have self-published 65 novels, and if all goes well by the end of 2017 it’s going to be 72.

I’m occasionally surprised that people will ask me for writing advice, but then I remember that I’ve self-published 65 novels, so in light of that I suppose it makes sense.

SILENT ORDER rough drafts finished!

I am pleased to report that I finished the rough draft of the fifth SILENT ORDER science fiction book, written entirely in LibreOffice running Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus.

Editing is underway, and I hope to release all five books in October.

Here’s a spoiler-free excerpt from the first book:

“Why, March,” said Bishop. “You didn’t tell me your ship’s computer had such a charming voice. No wonder you had no need to seek out female companionship.”

March would have rolled his eyes, but he wanted to keep an eye on the crowds around him. “For God’s sake, Bishop. You can’t flirt with a computer pseudointelligence.”

“I take that as a challenge.”

“That’s been the downfall of a hundred spacefaring human civilizations since the discovery of hyperspace,” said March. “Some lonely fellow programs an artificial intelligence to flirt with him, and it goes berserk and wipes out all the organic life it can find.”

“Fortunately, I am a restaurant owner, not a software developer,” said Bishop.

“Well, thank God for that.”

-JM

 

the SILENT ORDER series and Ubuntu Linux

My original plan for my SILENT ORDER science fiction series was to release the first four books over the space of four weeks (like one every week in October), but as I thought about my marketing plan, I realized that it would work a lot better if I released the first five books. So I’m going to write a fifth book!

It also gives me a chance to prove a point.

I recently read an article complaining about Windows 10 S, which is this new version of Windows that can only install new apps from the Windows Store. (The idea is that this makes the computer more secure and is good for schools, public kiosk computers and so forth, but in practice it limits the computer considerably since all the best Windows apps tend not to be in the Windows Store.) The article noted that this won’t actually work for most users, and then suggested a list of four alternatives, and claimed that it would be easier to do real work on an iPad Pro than on a Linux desktop computer.

I disagree strongly with this. The iPad’s great for consumption, but if you want to actually do something – like write & publish a book, or to build a website, or to develop an application, or to do a graphic design – you’re better of with a Linux desktop.

So to prove the point, I’m going to do the bulk of the work on the fifth science fiction book entirely on Ubuntu Linux and programs available on Ubuntu:

-I’ll write and edit it in LibreOffice.

-I will do the layout of the ebook in Sigil.

-I will convert it to the appropriate ebook format in Calibre.

-I will make the cover using the GIMP image editor.

Ubuntu Linux and all four of these programs are free, which is why I’m writing the book and preparing it with them. (Granted, I’ve also written a bestselling book on Ubuntu Linux.) I think it’s important that people have access to free software tools that can meet their needs.

A Surface Laptop or an iPad Pro are lovely tools, and I don’t have anything against them, but they’re expensive.

Like, really, really expensive. The base-level iPad Pro is $649 and the keyboard (not included) is another $159.

By contrast, a brand new $200 PC desktop will have more than enough juice to run Ubuntu and all the software I listed above. Even a used desktop computer from 2010 onward will have enough power to run all that software.

Perhaps this is romantic of me, but I really like the idea that someone using a low-cost desktop and free software running on free Ubuntu Linux can write, prepare, and publish a book. I like the idea that publishing has become democratized – in the old days, only governments and large companies had access to a publishing infrastructure, but now everyone does. Anyone with a low-cost computer, free software, and an Internet connection can publish a book.

And to prove it is possible, I’m going to do just that!

(And, for added Irony Points, while I was writing this post Microsoft screwed up my Surface Pro 4 with a bad update, so I finished writing this post on my Ubuntu computer.)

-JM

introducing the SILENT ORDER series – coming soon!

Back in March, someone asked if I ever intended to write something in a new setting or genre, or if I would just keep writing new stuff for THE GHOSTS, FROSTBORN/SEVENFOLD SWORD, CLOAK GAMES, and DEMONSOULED.

It was amusing that the question came about two days after I finished the rough draft of the second book in my new SILENT ORDER science fiction series.

I’ve been chipping away at it since October 2016, and I’m about 95% done with the fifth book of the SILENT ORDER science fiction series. In October 2017, I’m going to release all five of the books over the course of five weeks – one book a week for five weeks.

What will the Silent Order series be about? I’d say the three chief inspirations for the series were 1.) space opera stories about privateers and pirates, 2.) the James Bond books by Ian Fleming, and 3.) the Philip Marlowe stories by Raymond Chandler. In fact, I sort of envisioned the main character as the “opposite of James Bond” – while Bond is a gregarious and cultured English gentleman, the protagonist of the SILENT ORDER series is a roughneck loner who gets the mission done.

Here’s the description for the first book:

The galaxy is at war, but wars are won and lost in the shadows.

To the galaxy at large, Jack March is a privateer of the interstellar Kingdom of Calaskar and a former Iron Hand commando of the malevolent Final Consciousness. In truth, he is an alpha operative of the Silent Order, the most efficient and feared intelligence organization in human space. When there is a crisis, Jack March is the man to call.

But there are many forces that wish to enslave or destroy humanity.

And when a mission leads March to a lawless asteroid space station, March might be the only one left to stop those forces…

I want to try some new marketing tactics, so I think I’m going to try Kindle Unlimited for this series. I don’t like Kindle Unlimited as a concept, but I’ve seen a lot of writers who know what they’re doing use KU to have very successful launches. I wouldn’t do this with an established series, but I’ve never written extensively in the science fiction genre before, so something brand-new seems like a good time to experiment.

And if the experiment doesn’t work, the enrollment term for Kindle Unlimited is only three months.

Here are the titles of the five books in the series:

SILENT ORDER: IRON HAND

SILENT ORDER: WRAITH HAND

SILENT ORDER: AXIOM HAND

SILENT ORDER: ECLIPSE HAND

SILENT ORDER: FIRE HAND

Coming in October 2017! And I’m writing and publishing the last book using some different tools, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.

(If all goes well, I want to have SEVENFOLD SWORD: WARLORD out in November and GHOST IN THE GLASS in December.)

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-JM

 

GHOST IN THE GLASS underway

I have started working on GHOST IN THE GLASS! It will be my side project for September and October. In November I’ll finish it up, and if all goes well I will publish it in December.

What is my main project for September? I’ll talk about that tomorrow, so be sure to tune in! It’s something I’ve never done before.

SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER now available!

I am very pleased to report that SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play, and Smashwords.

The quest of the Seven Swords kills anyone foolish enough to seek its secret.

Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight, but he is the only Swordbearer in the realm of Owyllain.

That means he is the only warrior capable of defending Owyllain from the forces of dark magic.

But the powers of darkness have servants in Owyllain, servants who are more than willing to put a dagger in Ridmark’s back…

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