Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 243

THE RUNE KNIGHT: a DEMONSOULED short story

Working on THE RUNE KNIGHT today, the short story that will come out with MASK OF SPELLS next month.

I always enjoy writing Mazael Cravenlock as a younger man. Younger Mazael had much worse impulse control and liked to drink and to fight, and not necessarily in that order, and his girlfriend at the time was a schemer with questionable morals.

So you wouldn’t want to meet them in real life, but they’re fun to write about!

MASK OF SPELLS rough draft finished!

I am pleased to report that despite many, many, many obstacles over the last two months, last night I finished the rough draft of MASK OF SPELLS at 94,000 words.

Tomorrow I’m going to start THE RUNE KNIGHT, the short story I’ll give away for free to my new-release newsletter subscribers when MASK OF SPELLS comes out in late October. Be sure to subscribe today!

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: SHATTER STONE update

Whenever I’m sitting in the mechanic’s waiting room, I always seem to be working on a CLOAK GAMES book.

Given how much automotive mayhem Nadia Moran has caused, perhaps that’s only just.

more MASK OF SPELLS progress

I did 7,500 words of MASK OF SPELLS today.

I think the last time I did that many words was back on July 16th, and I’ve only had four days over 7000 words in 2016.

-JM

MASK OF SPELLS progress!

Yesterday I did 7100 words of MASK OF SPELLS. That makes for my best writing day since…well, the entirety of 2016!

-JM

MASK OF SPELLS: 17 of 20!

Now 80,000 words into MASK OF SPELLS, and I am entering Chapter 17 of 20.

-JM

CHILD OF THE GHOSTS review count

I noticed that CHILD OF THE GHOSTS passed 350 reviews on Amazon US.

I don’t think I know 350 people in real life!

Dr. No the prototype hacker

I’ve now read the original James Bond novel of DR. NO and seen the film version with Sean Connery. Both were excellent and well worth the reading and the viewing, though I liked the book version of the villainous Dr. No better than the movie version.

It is interesting to note that the book was unusually prescient. In both the book and the movie, Dr. No is able to sabotage the flights of American ballistic missiles by messing with their telemetry via radio waves.

Essentially, that means that Dr. No is a hacker, even though to my knowledge the term “hacker” did not enter circulation until sometime in the 1980s. It is interesting that Fleming used the basic concept of the “hacker” in DR. NO even though the idea of cyberwarfare was just barely in its infancy in the 1950s.

Nowadays, of course, cyberwarfare has become a standard tactic of conflict, and hacks and counter-hacks are a regular feature of the news. It is also interesting how the rise of information technology has changed the James Bond films. When I saw CASINO ROYALE for the first time, I was struck by how much effort Bond expended towards capturing the cell phones of his enemies, since of course the phones are troves of intelligence. For that matter, the main villains of both SKYFALL and SPECTRE were essentially hackers.

In medieval times, the wicked baron, the corrupt bishop, the cheating merchant, and the robber knight were stock villains of the fiction of the era. It seems in the fiction of the 21st century, the sinister hacker lord has taken their place.

Anyway, these are the kinds of things that I think about that lead to the plots for books.

MASK OF SPELLS – 75%

15 chapters of MASK OF SPELLS done, 5 to go.

Three quarters of the way through the rough draft!

-JM

THE SANCTUARY SPARROW by Ellis Peters

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I finished reading THE SANCTUARY SPARROW by Ellis Peters, one of her series about the mystery-solving monk Brother Cadfael, set in medieval England during the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda.

I really enjoyed it! In this book, a desperate singer named Liliwin takes sanctuary at Brother Cadfael’s abbey, pursued by an angry mob that claims he assaulted and robbed a local goldsmith. Liliwin protests his innocence, and Brother Cadfael starts to investigate. Naturally, darker things are afoot than mere robbery.

I always enjoy it when Cadfael teams up with Hugh Beringar, the deputy sheriff of Shropshire. I definitely recommend this book, and the entire series. Always a pleasure to read a really good book from a writer at the top of her game.

-JM