Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 297

word count for 2013

Did some math, and I wrote about 795,000 words of new novels in 2013, and 68,000 words of new short stories, for a grand total of about 863,000 new words in the Year of Our Lord 2013.

I may need to lie down for a bit.

-JM

Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas,  everyone!

free fiction Tuesday – INEXORABLE

This week’s Free Fiction Tuesday story falls on Christmas Eve, so naturally it has the traditional Christmas elements of pirates and horrifying sea monsters!

Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, and Amazon Canada.

Simon Barras was once a nobleman of prestige and power. But he was betrayed, and to save his life he turned pirate, ravaging the treasure ships of the Maduran King’s navy with his crew of rogues. 

But when a magical horn comes into his possession, Simon finds the entire royal navy hunting for him.

Because the horn has the power to wake creatures that could destroy the world…

Reader Question Day #79: Overpowered Characters

MAM asks:

When you create characters, do you ever worry if you make them too powerful?

Not presently, no. Long-running series about superheroes and wizards face this problem – if Superman is invincible and can fly, how does he face compelling dangerous and foes?

For Caina Amalas in THE GHOSTS, it’s easy to keep her from becoming overpowered. She is, as she occasionally points out, simply a woman with a knife and a shadow-cloak. Ridmark Arban in FROSTBORN is much the same – he doesn’t have any magic, and in fact lost the magic he formerly possessed before the start of FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT. Additionally, they both face foes who possess far greater power.

Mazael is more powerful, since he is the Demonsouled son of the Old Demon, and therefore has superhuman strength and speed and healing. That said, he faces a lot of foes – his own all-consuming rage, tremendously powerful wizards, other Demonsouled, hordes of Malrags and undead – to say nothing of the fact that the world is ending. So he regularly faces villains more dangerous than himself.

The biggest challenge I had was how much political power the characters in DEMONSOULED accrued. Many of the main characters acquired significant amounts of political power, which made it harder to do stuff with them. The President of the United States does not lead troops into battle – he has people who do that stuff for him. That said, medieval and ancient leaders often led men into battle personally. The Roman Emperors Decius and Valens were killed fighting the Goths, the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus II ended his days with his silver-lined skull becoming a drinking vessel for the Bulgarian khan Krum, and as late as 1483 AD, a King of England was killed in battle. So the various politically powerful characters in DEMONSOULED were still in a great deal of danger.

Anyway, I think the amount of power (in whatever form) a character has is irrelevant, so long as he faces an appropriate challenge. THE KING’S SPEECH is an excellent example of this. The main character is wealthy and powerful, and at no point in the film is he in any kind of physical danger with the possible exception of excessive cigarette smoking. Yet he faces an adversary that no amount of money and power will defeat – his speech impediment.

Therefore, the amount of power a character has doesn’t matter so long as he faces an adversary or a challenge that actually tests him and pushes him to the limit.

I suspect the perception of “overpowered characters” comes when a writer relies too much upon a character’s magical abilities or superpowers to solve problems rather than the character’s own efforts.

Nicole asks, concerning DEMONSOULED:

There is a king mentioned, but I have no clue where he is or why he is not involved.

Concerning the king, I’m afraid there was a bit of continuity drift over the years. I wrote DEMONSOULED in 2001, and the final book in 2012, and there was a gap of six years between the second book and the third book. So when I started writing SOUL OF SERPENTS, some things that I had thought were good ideas in 2005 I had changed my mind about by 2011.

Having a king was one of them – I decided the realm of DEMONSOULED was better as a set of warring feudal lords rather than a unified realm. Originally I sort of envisioned a High King ruling over the realm, but instead the realm of DEMONSOULED is more like early Capetian France if the last Carolingian king died and no one bothered to replace him.

-JM

GHOST IN THE SURGE sample chapter

January and GHOST IN THE SURGE are almost upon us, so it’s time for a sample chapter from GHOST IN THE SURGE!

-JM

Free Fiction Tuesday – DRAGONS’ WRATH

This week’s free story is actually two shorter stories bundled together. Both of them have battling dragons! Links below.

Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, and Amazon Canada.

Containing two short stories, DRAGONS’ WRATH shows the power of mighty dragons fighting ancient foes.

In GETTING THE SENIOR DISCOUNT, a dragon pursues a terrible creature through the streets of modern Chicago, a creature that threatens to destroy civilization.

In ANSWERS, a dragon duels a dark wizard atop a mountain, and learns that the higher powers can even use a dragon to fulfill their designs.

GHOST THORNS now available

Two pieces of good news today! First, GHOST IN THE SURGE is a definite lock for the first week of January. (Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to get a free bonus story when the book comes out.)

Second, there is a new GHOSTS short story available – GHOST THORNS. Links are below!

Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Caina Amalas is a nightfighter of the Ghosts, the eyes and ears of the Emperor of Nighmar, and she has defeated both corrupt lords and cruel sorcerers.

But when word of a strange assassination plot reaches her ears, Caina faces a new kind of danger.

For there are other ways to kill than swords and knives…

-JM

how to sideload books

Whenever I give away free books, I usually get a few questions asking how to sideload the free books onto Kindles and Nooks. So I wrote up a set of directions on how to do so for my nonfiction site, one for Kindle devices, and one for Nook devices. Hope these are helpful!

How to sideload Kindle books.

How to sideload Nook books.

-JM

BookBub Ad Results

There’s been a bit of controversy over BookBub among self-published writers this last week, so I thought I would share the results of my most recent BookBub ad. BookBub, if you are unfamiliar with it, offers a daily newsletter of books targeted by genre.  You sign up based on genre (fantasy, romance, whatever) and BookBub sends you emails with recommendations in that genre. Naturally, this presents an advertising opportunity for writers, and  BookBub charges a fee for writers based on the popularity of the genre (if the ad is accepted – BookBub reserves the right to decline the ad).

I had a BookBub ad for my free book CHILD OF THE GHOSTS (the first in a series of eight books, with the ninth coming in January 2014) on November 28th. 11/28, you might recall, was Thanksgiving Day in the United States. I was quite pleased by this, as family togetherness is a wonderful thing, but eventually people get sick of togetherness and go check their email on their phones. An additional idea came to me when I saw that fantasy writer Lindsay Buroker had a BookBub ad on her book THE EMPEROR’S EDGE earlier in November, and lowered the price of EDGE’S two immediate sequels to $0.99 for a limited time.

I thought that a good idea, so I followed suit.  I decided to call it the “Black Friday & Cyber Monday special sale”, and so from Thanksgiving to Monday, December 2nd, I lowered the price of GHOST IN THE FLAMES and GHOST IN THE BLOOD (the 2nd and 3rd books in the series) to $0.99.

Now, on to the results. Note that all these figures are for Amazon US, since I didn’t have a way to track free downloads on Barnes & Noble, and BookBub’s subscriber base seems to be mostly American.

The first day, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS was downloaded 8,372 times, GHOST IN THE FLAMES sold 47 copies, and GHOST IN THE BLOOD sold 46. This was enough to put both GHOST IN THE FLAMES and GHOST IN THE BLOOD in the top 100 books for Epic Fantasy on Amazon US, which has been a goal of mine for years.

By the end of the sale on December 2nd, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS had been downloaded 11,341 times, GHOST IN THE FLAMES had sold 134 copies, and GHOST IN THE BLOOD had sold 120. By comparison, in the entire month of October on Amazon US, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS had been downloaded 1,803 times, GHOST IN THE FLAMES had sold 118 copies, and GHOST IN THE BLOOD had sold 112.

The entirety of THE GHOSTS series has stayed higher in the sales rankings than it did in October. Netflix recently argued that binge-watching is the new normal for TV viewing, and the same rule applies to series of books. Sales for the remaining five books in THE GHOSTS series have been higher in December than they were in October and November. Additionally, I received nearly 50 additional subscribers for my new release newsletter.

To sum up, I have been entirely satisfied with BookBub, and hope to advertise with it again at some point in the future. Though given that GHOST IN THE FLAMES, a former top 100 Epic Fantasy bestseller on Amazon US, was rejected by something like 30 different agents before BookBub and the Kindle even existed, the source of my satisfaction may be apparent.

-JM

a bonus story

This is a good day to subscribe to my newsletter – next week subscribers will get a new THE GHOSTS short story for free.

Follow this link to subscribe!

-JM