Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 236

tales of the FROSTBORN

Reader Andrew asks:

There were no Tales for Caius or Gavin, while I realise they would possibly have been giving some plot points of certain books especially The Eightfold Knife any plans now that The Dwarven Prince has been released especially to flesh out Caius’ backstory? (Always knew there was more to him than he was letting on).

Also I have FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS but it doesn’t contain The Traitor’s Tale. Was there any reason it was left out when the Soldier’s Tale was released later?

I never did Tales for Caius or Gavin because Caius’s background was always going to be a big plot point in THE DWARVEN PRINCE.  I never did one for Gavin because he was so young when he was introduced that his entire background was a plot point for THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, so any story would have been a spoiler.

That was also why THE TRAITOR’S TALE wasn’t included in FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS. Everything else that happens in FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS happens before the FROSTBORN series actually begins, but THE TRAITOR’S TALE takes place between THE DARK WARDEN and THE GORGON SPIRIT, and therefore has spoilers for the rest of the series, especially for Morigna, Mara, and the nature of the Frostborn themselves. (THE TRAITOR’S TALE is the first time that the locusari appear in the series, and the first appearance of an actual Frostborn.)

THE BONE QUEST series of short stories are a little different, and describe Ridmark’s journey into the Qazaluuskan Forest before the FROSTBORN series begins in FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT.

-JM

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I suppose in my various fictional settings, the only ones where the birth of Christ would be celebrated would be the CLOAK GAMES and the FROSTBORN settings, though in FROSTBORN they would call it the Festival of the Nativity.

And in Andomhaim, the Festival of the Nativity would likely be interrupted by the attack of a warband of Wilderland orcs or dvargir or kobolds or something, and the knights would have to leap up from their half-eaten feast to rush to the defense of the castra against the foe.

So I hope your Christmas is more peaceful than that! Or at the least has less swordplay.

FROSTBORN & CLOAK GAMES updates

I finished writing THE GHOST HALFLING today, the short story I will give away to free to my newsletter subscribers when FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR comes out.

I think that makes THE GHOST HALFLING the last piece of fiction I shall finish in 2016!

Once Christmas weekend is past, I will start on editing FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR, and it should come out in late January.

I also finished Chapter 3 of CLOAK GAMES: TRUTH CHAIN today. I don’t think I’ve ever written a book quite like this one, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out! If all goes well, CLOAK GAMES: TRUTH CHAIN should come out in February.

-JM

Frostborn meets Ubuntu!

It’s time to write a FROSTBORN short story on a Ubuntu laptop!

I wrote SOUL OF SERPENTS, SOUL OF DRAGONS, about half of SOUL OF SORCERY, and pretty much all of GHOST IN THE STORM in LibreOffice Writer on Ubuntu, so it’s like a nostalgia trip.

-JM

FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR rough draft done!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR is done!

99,000 words in 21 days.

Next up to write is THE GHOST HALFLING, a FROSTBORN short story I’ll give away to subscribers to my newsletter when FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR comes out in January 2017.

Practically speaking, FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR will probably come out sometime after January 8th, as some of the ebook stores are closed to new books until after that time.

-JM

more fun with permafree!

Apropos to an earlier discussion of whether or not permafree is still a good tactic for self-published writers, here’s the recent sales chart for CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER on Amazon, covering from November 1st to Decembe 19th.

Note that the first book in the CLOAK GAMES series, CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP, went permafree on November 30th:

December 19th was the best day that CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER had since it came out back in October of 2015.

So, based on the evidence, I think we can conclude that permafree is still a good tactic for writers of series novels.

-JM

Pillars Of Eternity

And now for a brief digression about computer games!

I have to admit, I really like PILLARS OF ETERNITY, and not just because it heats up my laptop enough that I can quite comfortably leave the thermostat at 60 degree Fahrenheit.

FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR and CLOAK GAMES: TRUTH CHAIN update

16 chapters of FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR down, 8 to go. 2/3 of the way there!

I’m also 10,000 words into CLOAK GAMES: TRUTH CHAIN. The book is about Nadia Moran having an exceptionally bad day.

how to create distinct characters

Reader Zach emailed with a question about how to create distinct personas for characters in a novel.

I think the key to creating distinct characters lies in three parts – perceptions, actions, and speech patterns.

By perceptions, I mean that different characters will notice different things in a situation. There is an old joke says that the first thing a woman notices about a man is the quality of his shoes, but there is a grain of truth to the joke that a writer can use – different characters will notice different things about a situation.

For example, if I looked at a cow, I would see “a cow”.

But one of my relatives was a farm inspector, and if he looked at the cow, he would see its age, its general health, whether it was a Jersey or a Holstein or whatever, and a dozen other details I didn’t know even existed. In the same vein, if he looked at the computer I’m using to write this, he would probably think of it as this annoying necessary evil that had intruded its way into his life over the last fifteen years. When I look at this computer, I see an Asus Transformer T300L tablet with Windows 10, a Core i3 processor, and a 64 gigabyte solid-state hard drive – a dozen different details that my relative would have no idea existed.

Already, you can see that my relative and I were very different people (or distinct characters) based upon our perceptions.

Second, characters act differently. This seems obvious, but one of the best ways to create distinct characters is to think of how a character would react in a stressful or an unusual situation. Like, say a police officer walks up to your character and starts asking him pointed questions about his activities. How does the character react? Does he panic? Make a joke? Threaten to call his lawyer? Cooperate calmly? Run for it? Flirt with the officer? Complain about the loud teenagers across the street? Assume it’s a scam and ask to see the officer’s badge? How a character responds to a stressful situation is a great way of making them a distinct character.

Third, characters talk differently. This is a tricky one to do right, because sometimes it is painful to read a writer’s attempt to render a strong regional or national accent. (An excellent example of this problem is HP Lovecraft’s story THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE, where his attempts to produce the heavily-accented dialogue of a rural New England farmer are just bad.)

That said, it’s a good idea to vary speech patterns. A college professor will talk differently than a car salesman. A teenage girl might talk in one unending run-on sentence, or in sullen one-word answers. Sherlock Holmes said he could determine a man’s trade by the shape of his hands, but it’s also sometimes possible to determine a man’s occupation by how he talks. Having all your characters talk in the same voice and the same speech pattern makes it harder to tell them apart.

So I think those are the three parts of creating a distinct character – perceptions, actions, and speech patterns.

-JM

what is THE BONE QUEST?

Today, I’m going to talk a bit about book marketing, inspired by a reader question!

A reader emailed to ask what THE BONE QUEST short stories are.

Basically, they are a series of linked short stories, set a few years before the start of the FROSTBORN series, that I’ve been giving away to the subscribers of my new-release newsletter when a new FROSTBORN short story comes out.

Previously, for the FROSTBORN short stories I wrote the origin stories of the various companions who had come to join Ridmark on his quest – THE MAGE’S TALE, THE THIEF’S TALE, and so on.

However, I had finally reached a point in the FROSTBORN series where no more companions joined Ridmark, so I needed something else.

Hence THE BONE QUEST, which when it is finished will be an account of Ridmark’s journey to speak with an Elder Shaman in the Qazaluuskan Forest. Once the FROSTBORN series is done, I’ll combine THE BONE QUEST short stories into a single fix-up novel.

It’s also an experiment – I give away the short stories for free with my newsletter, but after that, I would like to find an additional use for them (from a marketing perspective), since individual short stories don’t sell very well. My most successful effort with that has been a fix-up novel – basically, short stories combined into a novel with a frame story. FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS sells pretty well, and that’s a combination of the original TALE series of FROSTBORN short stories.

Since I was planning to do that anyway, why not design the short stories to be joined together anyway? Hence, THE BONE QUEST, which has become something of a serial. It will be interesting to see how it works out!

So far, it has sold well, but the stories have gotten a bunch of annoyed reviews from people who were irritated that the short stories were not, in fact, another full-length FROSTBORN novel. I think I made a mistake with the branding of the short stories – the cover design looks too much like the regular novels. Before FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR comes out, I might redesign the covers of THE BONE QUEST short stories to look less like the novels.

-JM