Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 306

impressions of iOS 7

I’ve made a few jokes about iOS 7 here. But in fairness, I have an iPod Touch I use to listen to music while writing and for testing how my books look in iBooks, and I upgraded it to iOS 7. It’s not all that different from iOS 6, just a little shinier. But there are several little things I like about it:

-The number buttons on the lockscreen are much bigger. It’s a lot easier to unlock the screen one-handed.

-You can control the music playback from the lock screen. It is pleasant not to have to unlock the device to change which song is playing.

-Speaking of control, the new Control Center is nice. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen, and you can control the music playback, the wifi/Bluetooth, and quickly access the camera, the calculator, and a few other commonly used apps. Granted, Apple “borrowed” this feature from Android. But to be fair, Android “borrowed” quite a few things from iOS, so no sense worrying about it.

-You can get to the Spotlight search by swiping down on any home screen. Since I have something like 22 gigabytes of music, and I sometimes I want to play a particular song without digging through several levels of menus, this is nice.

-Navigating in the Music app is easier, because everything is just slightly bigger. Granted, that means more scrolling, but it’s easier to accurately tap on items.

I don’t use the iPod Touch for anything except music and testing how my books look in iBooks, so I can’t really speak to iOS 7’s other features. That said, iOS 7 does make the iPod Touch into a better music player.

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #6

Yesterday was Day #6 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I did 4,400 words.

7 chapters down, 17 to go!

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #5

Yesterday was Day #5 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I did 4,700 words.

6 chapters down, 18 to go!

-JM

the order of DEMONSOULED, THE GHOSTS, THE THIRD SOUL, and THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS

Shay asks:

I’m trying to organise my books right now and wondered if you could update us with a list of the books and short stories/novellas in chronological order again?

Sure. Here are all the series in order, with the various short stories inserted where they would be chronologically:

THE GHOSTS:

#1 Child of the Ghosts

Ghost Aria (Short story)

#2 Ghost in the Flames

Ghost Dagger (novella)

#3 Ghost in the Blood

#4 Ghost in the Storm

#5 Ghost in the Stone

#6 Ghost in the Forge

Ghost Claws (short story)

Ghost Omens (short story)

#7 Ghost in the Ashes

#8 Ghost in the Mask

DEMONSOULED:

The Wandering Knight (short story)

The Tournament Knight (short story)

The Dragon’s Shadow (novella)

#1 Demonsouled

#2 Soul of Tyrants

#3 Soul of Serpents

#4 Soul of Dragons

#5 Soul of Sorcery

#6 Soul of Skulls

#7 Soul of Swords

THE THIRD sOUL

#1 The Testing

#2 The Assassins

#3 The Blood Shaman

#4 The High Demon

#5 The Burning Child

#6 The Outlaw Adept

#7 The Black Paladin

#8 The Tomb of Baligant

(Omnibus One has 1-5, and Omnibus Two has 6-8.)

THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS

#1 The Tower of Endless Worlds

#2 A Knight of the Sacred Blade

#3 A Wizard of the White Council

#4 The Destroyer of Worlds

-JM

Reader Question Day #74 – additional character duels

I didn’t do a Reader Question Day last week, since I focused on finishing GHOST IN THE MASK, so let’s have one this week!

(Note that the answers have SPOILERS! for GHOST IN THE MASK and DEMONSOULED.)

Joseph N asks:

A sorcerer of ancient Maat vs a high king of Old Dracaryl (nonspecific general scenario…since I can’t think of much specific ones in the stories other than Randur).

A showdown between a high lord of Old Dracaryl and a Great Necromancer of ancient Maat would be fairly epic, and would probably reduce most of the surrounding countryside to molten waste. One on one, a high lord would likely prevail over a Great Necromancer, since the high lords tended to be more individually powerful.

In a group, however, (like if Old Dracaryl and the Kingdom of the Rising Sun went to war) the Great Necromancers would defeat the high lords of Old Dracaryl. The Great Necromancers were always fairly collegial with each other, while the high lords were viciously cutthroat. The Great Necromancers, after all, believed themselves representatives of a divine order, while the high lords tended to be ruthless megalomaniacs. Because of that, they chronically could not cooperate with each other at critical moments, which was why Randur Maendrag’s Great Rising failed and destroyed Dracaryl in the first place. (And why Dracaryl never managed to conquer, say, Knightcastle and claim the Door of Souls under the castle, or why they never managed to conquer Deepforest Keep and claim the Door of Souls atop Mount Tynagis.)

The Great Necromancers, by contrast, cooperated collegially right up until the Moroaica destroyed them.

Vance S asks:

Who would win in a fight between Ridmark and Mazael?

As of the end of FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT, Mazael. Mazael has Demonsouled strength and speed, and Ridmark, for all his skill and strength, still has the limitations of an ordinary human man.

That may change as the series goes on, though.

Demonsouled or demonborn?

Demonsouled.

Unless the demonborn is an Adept of the Conclave of Araspan or a blood shaman. A demonborn magic user in the world of THE THIRD SOUL is very dangerous (in practice, demonborn infants tend to be killed). Raelum from THE BLACK PALADIN and THE TOMB OF BALIGANT is a bit of an anomaly, I hope to have the chance to write a bit more about him next year.

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #4

Yesterday was Day #4 of writing the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and I did 4,800 words.

5 chapters down, 19 to go!

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, an excerpt

Let’s have a brief excerpt from FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE:

“It seems,” said Gavin, “that I have fallen in with companions of great renown. You speak of so many strange things.”

“It is,” said Kharlacht, “quite a long story.”

Ridmark looked at Caius. “You can tell it from the beginning. Given how much you enjoy talking.”

“All men have their gifts,” said Caius. He cleared his throat. “Well. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and…”

“Start,” said Ridmark, “a little sooner than that.”

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #3

I did 4,200 words yesterday for Day #3 of the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE.

4 chapters down, 20 to go!

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #2

I did 5,400 words yesterday for Day #2 of the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE.

2 chapters down, 22 to go!

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE Rough Draft Day #1

From time to time, people ask how long it takes to write the rough draft of a book. So to answer that question, I’m going to post daily word counts of how much I have written until I finish the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE.

When writing a new book my goal, ideally, is to write a minimum of 3,000 words a day until the rough draft is done, and preferably to do more than 3,000 words a day. Granted, this is not always possible, depending on what happens in Real Life that day. Some days go really well, and some days it’s a challenge to squeeze in those 3,000 words. And some days Real Life just plain wins. Like, if I wake up and my car has exploded, or the Martians are invading, or some other crisis comes up, it’s pretty obvious that no writing is getting done that day. Fortunately, these days are fairly rare, a trend which I hope continues.

Anyway, I did 5,400 words yesterday for Day #1 of FROSTBORN: THE ROUGH DRAFT. 1 chapter down, 23 to go.

-JM