Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 216

social awkwardness in CLOAK GAMES

And speaking of CLOAK GAMES, Nadia would absolutely hate this:

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-JM

a CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK review

I have to quote from a review of CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK. It’s always nice to find a reviewer who gets exactly what I intended with the book:

“The rebels in this series unlike many other similar series aren’t the good guys and it shows. It is also nice to find a series that doesn’t have the necro-bestial heroine love triangle going, will she choose the animate corpse or the furry animal. Interesting to see where this series is going with the Sky Hammer.”

-JM

new monsters in SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER?

Will SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER have new kinds of monsters?

After all, past FROSTBORN/SEVENFOLD SWORD books have introduced the urvaalgs, the spitfangs, the ursaars, the urdhracosi, and many others.

So the answer is yes. Of course SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER will have new kinds of monsters.

But, man! These new monsters are creepy. I think they’re the creepiest monsters since the motaylakars back in MASK OF SPELLS.

SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER cover image

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Editing is underway for SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER, and I am pleased to share the excellent cover image.

Like the cover for SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION (and all the FROSTBORN books before it), it was done by the excellent Clarissa Yeo of Yocla Designs.

-JM

the map of Owyllain

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Here is the map of Owyllain. As with the map of Andomhaim and FROSTBORN, I think I will put an author’s note at the beginning of SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER with links to both this map and the Glossary of Characters and Glossary of Locations.

I made the map in Campaign Cartographer 3. Useful program.

-JM

a map of Owyllain?

Is there going to be a map of the realm of Owyllain from the SEVENFOLD SWORD series?

Yes, yes there is. Later this week!

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-JM

SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER rough draft finished!

I am pleased to report that SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER’s rough draft is now finished.

It came to just about 109,300 words. About 10k words longer than SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION.

Next up is UNTITLED SEVENFOLD SWORD PREQUEL NOVELLA, which I will give away for free to my newsletter subscribers via Smashwords coupon code once SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER comes out. (And once I’ve thought up an actual title.)

I have to admit I hadn’t yet decided what kind of short stories I would write for SEVENFOLD SWORD, or even if I was going to write any short stories for SEVENFOLD SWORD at all. Then I decided I needed to do a prequel novella for reasons that will become more clear in 2018, so that’s next.

Hopefully I’ll have the rough draft of that wrapped up by Wednesday or Thursday.

Then it will be time to show the cover image for SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER!

-JM

icebergs and THE GHOSTS

I started outlining GHOST IN THE GLASS today, since I want to start working on that in September. For plot-related reasons, I had to check to see if I had ever used the word “iceberg” before in the GHOSTS series.


 


I did, exactly once, in GHOST IN THE STONE.


-JM

four years of FROSTBORN!

Four years after it began, four years after that day in the Year Of Our Lord 2013 when Jonathan Moeller started publishing the FROSTBORN series, I realized that it’s been four years since I started FROSTBORN.

Four years! Man. That’s 15 books in four years. Combined with the short stories, that’s like 1.7 million words written in four years.

When I started FROSTBORN, what I wanted to do was to capture the feel of a really epic RPG campaign. You know, the sort where the characters start out dealing with petty local problems (such as the classic farmer complaining about his missing pigs), and then by the end are arbitrating the fate of nations and battling evil archmagi and malevolent gods.

I think with FROSTBORN I succeeded with that goal.

a CLOAK GAMES summary

Yesterday’s post about CLOAK GAMES and urban fantasy genre conventions inspired some interesting comments, but I like these ones from Matthew. It’s a neat summary of the series:

In fact between her boyfriend troubles, her emotional instability, and the fact she has a lot of brute strength, but not a lot of finesse, Nadia’s basically going through her magical puberty, isn’t she?

Actually I realized what my overall problem is. This series is an RPG game waiting to happen. I want her to explore the world, pick up some items, do some side quests. If it were me I’d stop main questing and find a couple of sweet dungeons to crawl for a level up. Go look in the shadowlands for a magic gauntlet that let me stop bullets or block dark magic or something. She’s a glass cannon, all offense and no defense. Then she combines that with way too much mercy when her opponents are going to cheat to win. GIVE THE GIRL SOME POINTS IN DEFENSE JM!

So to sum up. I just called your book series a video game based around a girl going through puberty which features ancient Elven school teachers, sociopathic ex-boyfriends and the potential end of the world. Feel to use that in a review….

See? Breaking genre conventions.