Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 256

GHOST IN THE PACT cover image

Editing is underway for GHOST IN THE PACT, so time to share the cover art!

-JM

typing to death

While writing GHOST IN THE PACT, I basically typed my laptop to death. This typically happens about every two years, which makes sense once you realize I wrote about eight Frostborn books on that laptop.

Because I type my laptops to death, I usually get the cheapest one that’s powerful enough to use without becoming annoying.

Solid-state hard drives have gotten much cheaper over the last year, so this time I got a Dell Inspiron 15 3558 that came with a mechanical hard drive and planned to install a solid-state hard drive in it. The only downside to this plan was that it takes a lot of work to install a new hard drive in a Dell Inspiron 15 3558. Specifically, you have to remove this many screws:

But Dell has an excellent service manual for the Inspiron 15 3558, and I installed the drive and Windows 10 without incident. I am looking forward to using this laptop to write many new GHOSTS & FROSTBORN books, and typing it to death in the process!

-JM

GHOST IN THE RAZOR now in paperback!

It took a bit, but GHOST IN THE RAZOR is now available in paperback!

-JM

GHOST IN THE PACT rough draft done

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of GHOST IN THE PACT is finished! 116,100 words in 31 days.

Next up is GHOST SOMETHING (it won’t actually be titled GHOST SOMETHING), which is the short story I’ll give away for free to my newsletter subscribers when GHOST IN THE PACT comes out. Once the short story is done, it’s time to start editing GHOST IN THE PACT.

-JM

how did I learn to write non-fiction?

Antonio asks:

“How in the world do you write so much and such diverse topics?

How did you learn both fiction and non-fiction writing?”

How did I learn to write non-fiction? Long story.

First, I learned the fundamentals in high school. I took a journalism class from a very competent teacher, who taught me the three basics of non-fiction writing: 1.) Avoid passive verbs, 2.) Answer the questions “who, why, where, when, and how”, 3.) You can write an article on any topic by sticking to the basic structure of Introduction/Thesis, Point A, Point B, Point C, and Conclusion, with additional Points added as necessary.

This was to serve me in excellent stead later in life.

Jumping ahead to 2005, DEMONSOULED was published, and author blogs were all the rage back then. Since I wanted DEMONSOULED to sell lots of copies (it didn’t) so the publisher would buy the sequel (they didn’t), I started an author blog, and promptly ran into a problem.

Namely, I didn’t have anything to blog about. The trouble about writing non-fiction is that you need something to write about.

So I tried blogging about various observations and witticisms, but nobody read them, and I gradually started to lose interest until I accidentally did something clever.

Namely, I complained about a Ubuntu Linux problem.

My day job is in IT, and Ubuntu Linux is the most popular version of Linux, and it turns up in a lot of server rooms. Back in early 2008, I upgraded a machine from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04, and in the process the upgrade broke the file sharing functionality. I happened to complain about it on my blog, and the next day I noticed that the blog post had gotten over 60 hits from Google searches. Apparently a lot of people were having that problem, and turn to Google in search of solutions, and so came to my blog.

That suggested possibilities.

I started writing more about Ubuntu Linux and the various things you could do with it – SSH, Samba, web servers, WordPress, and so forth – and my blog traffic climbed steadily, spiking up a bit with every new release of Ubuntu. Soon the site was getting hundreds of hits a day, and then thousands. I started experimenting with Google Adsense ads on the site, and at its peak in 2011 and 2012 it was getting five thousand hits a day and bringing in a few hundred dollars in ad revenue every month.

In fact, it was going so well, and I was so disgusted with the traditional publishing industry, that after I wrote CHILD OF THE GHOSTS in 2010, I decided to stop writing novels and focus entirely on the Linux website. Maybe I would do a short story from time to time if I saw a call for submissions that looked promising, but that would be it.

Then in 2011 I found the Kindle, and discovered self-publishing ebooks. After I got the rights back to DEMONSOULED, I self-published that, and then I realized my various posts on Ubuntu could make a book. So in April of 2011 I combined them, rewrote them, and self-published THE $0.99 UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE, later renamed to simply THE UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE. It sold really well – it was my first book to reach 10,000 copies, as it happens.

However, I also decided to write one more novel to finish off DEMONSOULED, so I wrote SOUL OF SERPENTS, and after I made DEMONSOULED free, the novels started to sell more copies than the nonfiction books, so I’ve been focusing on that ever since.

So that’s how I learned to write nonfiction – real-time feedback from blogging! I don’t do as much nonfiction these days, since all my attention goes into novels. That said, if I lose my day job, I’ll add in non-fiction, since it’s easy to do 500 words here or there as you work on a novel.

-JM

an updated THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE

Let’s talk a little about the business of writing today!

BLADE OF THE GHOSTS leaves Kindle Unlimited on April 17th, and after that happens, I think I’ll add it to THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE to create a new edition. Right now THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE contains CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, GHOST IN THE FLAMES, and GHOST IN THE BLOOD, but the new version will add BLADE OF THE GHOSTS to that, since it fits chronologically between CHILD OF THE GHOSTS and GHOST IN THE FLAMES.

That way, I’ll be able to create a combo cover for THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE containing the covers of all four books. I really like the current cover for THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE, but for omnibus editions, the market really seems to favor either 3-D box set covers, or the sort of four-in-one covers I used for FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE and GHOST EXILE OMNIBUS ONE.

I don’t think I’ll put BLADE OF THE GHOSTS back into Kindle Unlimited in the future. It’s been an interesting experiment, and Kindle Unlimited offers some useful promotional tools, but those tools only really work if you put an entire series of novels into Kindle Unlimited, and I’m not willing to do that. Like, the FROSTBORN series is my best seller on Amazon, but it’s also my best seller on B&N, iTunes, Kobo, and every other platform, so it would be a bad idea to sacrifice the sales on those platforms for Kindle Unlimited.

(This also means that CHAMPION OF THE GHOSTS and FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS will be available on B&N, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play later this year.)

Still, if I was just starting out now, I would probably put my series in Kindle Unlimited at first for greater visibility, and then expand it out to other platforms after the fourth or fifth book.

Now back to working on Chapter 22 of GHOST IN THE PACT!

-JM

GHOST IN THE PACT progress update

Passed 90,000 words of GHOST IN THE PACT today!

I’m not at the end yet. But I can see it there, just off in the distance.

-JM

Howl’s Moving Castle

Purely by accidental serendipity, I wound up watching HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE last night, which is a Japanese animated movie based off a British novel by Diana Wynne Jones.  I don’t know anything about Japanese animation, and I’ve never read any of Diana Wynne Jones’s books (alas), so I went in with no expectations whatsoever.

It was a strange, but thoroughly entertaining movie. It is basically a romance novel – boy meets girl, boy and girl unable to be together due to mutual obstacles, boy and girl struggle to overcome obstacles.

That said, the setting is weird and entertaining, this sort of version of Napoleonic France with flying battleships and a Royal Academy Of Sorcery. All the characters are interesting, and the story is well-crafted.

Recommended. Also, it was amusing that Batman voiced Howl.

-JM

where do book ideas come from?

People sometimes ask where I get ideas for my books, and I usually say I draw on ancient and medieval history.

I can prove it, too. Check out this article about the archaeological discovery of a massive, hitherto unknown Bronze Age battle in northern Europe. Are there not the seeds for a dozen fantasy novels in this article?

-JM

GHOST IN THE PACT progress update

15 chapters of GHOST IN THE PACT down, 11 to go. I think GHOST IN THE PACT will be at least as long as GHOST IN THE THRONE, and that was the longest book in the series so far.

Now! A short excerpt:

Callatas gave a disdainful sneer. “How did Ricimer and Anburj and Kalgri and Rolukhan and Cassander all fail to stop you?”

“Listen to me,” said Caina. “You don’t understand what you’ve done, you…”

“Ah, that was it,” snarled Callatas, pointing at her. “Those fools let you talk. I shall not make the same mistake.”

He gestured, and the gray light exploded from his hand…

-JM