Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 304
October 8, 2013
Free Fiction Tuesday – THE KING OF TEARS UNNUMBERED
It’s Free Fiction Tuesday! This week’s story is THE KING OF TEAR UNNUMBERED. It’s one of my favorite stories, since it’s an entire epic fantasy with the short story form.
Available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and Amazon Canada.
-JM
October 7, 2013
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #20
Yesterday was Day #20 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I wrote 4,200 words.
22 chapters down, 2 to go.
-JM
October 6, 2013
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #19
Yesterday was Day #18 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I wrote 4,700 words.
The end is nigh! 
-JM
October 5, 2013
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #18
Yesterday was Day #18 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I wrote 4,300 words for the third day in a row.
We are now at 80,000 words total.
18 chapters down, 6 to go.
-JM
October 4, 2013
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #17
Yesterday was Day #17 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I wrote 4,300 words.
I can see the end coming.
17 chapters down, 7 to go.
-JM
October 3, 2013
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #16
Yesterday was Day #16 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I wrote 4,300 words, my fingers warmed by the blasts of heat rising off my Core 2 Duo laptop.
(I may have to bite the bullet and upgrade.)
16 chapters down, 8 to go. Two thirds of the way through!
-JM
Thursdays of SWORD & SORCERESS 28 – the Pauline J. Alama interview
As I have done for several years in the past, I will be running interviews with my fellow contributors to Sword & Sorceress 28.
It’s fun to do, and a good chance for the writers to talk about themselves and their work. Our first interview is with Pauline J. Alama.
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a freelance writer from New Jersey whose real life is far less exciting than that of my characters. I have never set out through a pathless wilderness on a half-understood quest, nor ridden out from Joyous Garde with the wind in my hair and a sword in my hand, nor tracked a wild dragon along a rocky ledge over the ocean, nor studied at New England’s finest magnet school for the magically gifted, nor piloted a spaceship through an asteroid belt while distracted by a weapon protruding from my bleeding chest. By contrast, I’ve lived rather a tame life, studying medieval literature (Old English, Middle English, and a bit of Old French) before settling down to write grant proposals for a living. My first fantasy novel, The Eye of Night (Bantam Spectra 2002), was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award, and I’ve published a number of short stories, including several in volumes of Sword & Sorceress. Other than that, what passes for excitement in my life is being able to have a conversation with my husband that does not revolve around cat bodily fluids.
Tell us about your S&S 28 story.
The story is a sort of prequel to one of my earlier stories, “No Tale for Troubadours,” which was published in Realms of Fantasy in 2011. Both the stories play around a bit with fantasy clichés. “No Tale for Troubadours” tweaked the sword-and-sorcery trope of the warrior princess by showing a retired warrior maiden dragged back into action when she’s out of shape and would rather be keeping the peace among her four rambunctious children than setting off to fight another battle. I had a lot of fun with my aging warrior princess, Lady Ursula; she’s the sort of character you can rely on to speak her mind and not mince words, and those are always fun to write. I got to wondering how she became a knight-errant in the first place.
My new story, “The Damsel in the Garden,” shows Ursula at the very beginning of her heroic career. It plays with the archetype of the alluring damsel that knights encounter on their quests. You can find her in Chrétien’s twelfth-century romances, in many of the Grail stories, or in Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Is she the damsel in distress that the knight must rescue, or a temptress bent on seducing him away from his quest? But here, neither the knight nor the damsel are quite according to formula.
Can you share an excerpt from your story?
The damsel leaned against me. She was a head shorter than I, but something in her bearing convinced me she was nothing near as fragile a blossom as she appeared. Her deep blue eyes sought mine–foiled, of course, by the visor of my helm. I slid a hand around her waist, but kept myself masked. Playfully, she put a hand to my visor. “Let me look upon the face of my hero and plant a kiss of welcome on –oh!” the damsel cried as she unmasked me, “you’re a girl!”
“That I am, Jezebel,” I said, “so you can stop pressing your brocaded bosom against me.” I clasped her to myself — an embrace she no longer desired — and glared into her too-perfect face. “Someone went to great expense to deck you out as bait.”
Would you say fantasy needs to reflect real life, or offer an escape from it?
Fantasy–like any fiction–can be both an escape from mundane reality and a way of looking afresh at the overly familiar problems of our lives. One of the wonderful things you can do with fantasy is to make emotional realities concrete and tangible. You can make your setting and plot as impossible as you please and still use it to tell truth about characters and emotions. On the other hand, fantasy also embraces nonsense and pure playfulness–and there’s a value to that, too. As a circus performer says in Dickens’ Hard Times, “People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it.” I don’t believe in taking literature like a pill that we should swallow because it’s good for us.
What are your preferred tools and environment for writing? (Typewriter, computer, pen, coffee shop, and so on.)
When I’m writing fiction, I often start out with a pen and notebook. I like pens with free-flowing ink; I consider it a good sign of productivity if I end the day with blue blots on my hands and face. I do a lot of crossing out, but I like to leave it so that I can see what I crossed out in case I decide to reinstate it. Taking what I’ve written and typing it into my computer becomes an opportunity to revisit every paragraph, reconsider, and make major changes where appropriate, rather than just tinkering around the edges.
How many drafts of a story or novel do you typically write?
It depends on the story. Some spring forth almost fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s head. Some need a lot of tinkering. Others keep having to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up until I get them right.
Have you tried any self-publishing projects yourself?
I’ve self-published a couple of poems on my web site (https://sites.google.com/site/paulinejalama/) because I came to the conclusion that poetry magazines and I had mutually exclusive notions of what constitutes poetry. With everything else, I haven’t yet given up on getting some editor to say “yes.”
If offering advice to a new writer, would you suggest they pursue traditional publication or self-publication?
Unless you are very good at marketing yourself, self-publication means publishing for the exclusive pleasure of your family and friends. And if you are very good at marketing yourself, why not try marketing yourself to a professional publication or agent?
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Thanks, Pauline, for the interview.
Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, Sword & Sorceress 26, and Sword & Sorceress 27.
And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.
October 2, 2013
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #15
Yesterday was Day #15 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I only wrote 1,000 words, since events in Real Life took precedence.
But I made it to Chapter 16! 15 chapters down, 9 to go.
-JM
October 1, 2013
Free Fiction Tuesday – BLOOD ARTISTS
Today is the first Free Fiction Tuesday, and my short story BLOOD ARTISTS is now free for Kindle from today to 10/5. Follow the links below to get it!
Available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and Amazon Canada.
Morgant the Razor was once the most feared assassin in three nations. But now he has retired, and masquerades as a simple artist.
Yet he cannot escape his notoriety so easily, and the man who kills the Razor will receive fame and riches beyond count.
But Morgant did not become the most feared assassin in three nations by remaining idle…
-JM
FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #14
Yesterday was Day #14 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I wrote 4,800 words. Two weeks in!
14 chapters down, 10 to go.
-JM
