Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 313

Reader Question Day #65 – the family of Caina’s mother

Loretta C writes with kind words about THE GHOSTS books, but has some questions about Caina’s family. Note that the following answers have spoilers for all six GHOSTS books so far:

Does Caina’s mother Laeria have any family? If so, why don’t they turn up in the books?

Yes. They haven’t turned up in the books yet because they don’t know about Caina and Caina doesn’t know about them. They will be a plot point later on, though.

Caina’s mother was a member of House Scorneus, a noble House powerful in the northeastern Empire. The members of House Scorneus are often powerful magi, and often rise to prominence in both the Magisterium and the magistracies of the eastern Empire, which was why Laeria left them. She wasn’t strong enough to become a full magus, and the Magisterium expelled her before she completed her course of study. That was why Laeria seduced and married Caina’s father, Sebastian Amalas. She thought Sebastian would rise high in the Empire, and could then force the Magisterium to take her back. Sebastian, however, was never interested in politics, and Laeria quickly came to despise him – and the daughter she had with him.

Caina doesn’t know about Laeria’s family, partly because Laeria never talked about them while Caina was a child, partly because Caina detested her mother and never cared enough to find out about her mother’s family, and partly because Caina has never traveled in the northeastern Empire. House Scorneus doesn’t know about Caina, because they didn’t care very much about Laeria, and as far as they know, Sebastian, Laeria, and Caina were all killed by Istarish slavers. (The Empire, of course, has neither Facebook nor Google, so it’s much easier to remain anonymous than in 21st century America.)

But if Caina ever declared herself openly – that she was the Countess Caina Amalas, daughter of the late Count Sebastian Amalas, then House Scorneus would quickly realize who she was. And might find she has some new enemies, or perhaps new friends.

But, you know. Spoilers.

Why didn’t her father divorce her mother if she was so horrible to them both? And why did he marry her in the first place?

Because Sebastian Amalas was, in the end, a man who only took action if he had no other choice left.

If he wanted to divorce Laeria, he would start by first reading what the ancient authors of the Empire had to say on the topic, or historical accounts of noble divorces in the past. He might write a short treatise on the topic. But in the end, he would prefer to ponder and ruminate and let someone else take the initiative. If Laeria had wanted to divorce him, he would have gone along without protest, but Laeria hated her family even more than she hated Sebastian.

In answer to the other question, that is why he married her in the first place, because Laeria seduced him. When they met, he was a.) young, b.) foolish, and c.) Laeria was very attractive. Later he realized his mistake, but again, he tended not to take the initiative.

The one thing that would make him take the initiative is when he thought Caina was threatened, which is why he intervened to keep her away from Laeria, and why he contacted the Ghosts when Laeria became Maglarion’s student. Unfortunately, Sebastian always tended to take the initiative too late.

Why does Caina stay with Corvalis is she is smarter?

Caina is smarter than Corvalis, but that doesn’t trouble either of them. Caina is smarter, though Corvalis is hardly an idiot, even though he did make some questionable decisions. (To paraphrase Albus Dumbledore, being smart simply means you have the opportunity to make bigger mistakes.) As for Corvalis, his relationship with Caina is a bit like Conan of Cimmeria’s relationship with Belit in Robert E. Howard’s QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST:

Conan agreed. He generally agreed to her plans. Hers was the mind that directed their raids, his the arm that carried out her ideas. It mattered little to him where they sailed or whom they fought, so long as they sailed and fought. He found the life good.

Though Caina is plotting against the enemies of the Emperor rather than planning corsair raids. But the dynamic is basically the same.

-JM

This wins Quote of the Month

From Michael Flynn:

Suppose you wrote a story about a poor struggling artist devoted to his late mother.  He becomes homeless, hungry on the streets of the big city, sleeping in shelters or under bridges, selling cityscape watercolors to small-time vendors.  He is a vegetarian and believes in animal rights.  He is vehemently anti-smoking. His homosexual tendencies come out when he is forced into close quarters with other men during a war and for the almost rest of his life he never marries. 

At what point do you realize that you are writing about Adolph Hitler?

The entire post is well worth a read.

-JM

Ghost Claws

I am now writing GHOST CLAWS, the short story that will accompany GHOST IN THE ASHES when it comes out next month.

Newsletter subscribers will get the short story for free when GHOST IN THE ASHES comes out, so this is an excellent time to sign up for my new release newsletter!

-JM

SOUL OF SWORDS is now available on iTunes

It took longer than I hoped, but SOUL OF SWORDS is finally available on iTunes!

-JM

GHOST IN THE ASHES – rough draft is done

I’m pleased to report that the rough draft for GHOST IN THE ASHES is done. 22 days, 25 chapters, and 94,000 words.

-JM

GHOST IN THE ASHES progress update

Even with all the excitement about SOUL OF SWORDS, I’ve still been plugging away on GHOST IN THE ASHES, and I’ve made good progress. In fact, I’m on chapter 24 of 25, and I expect to be done with the rough draft next week.

So unless something unexpected happens, the book should be out in July.

-JM

SOUL OF TYRANTS on the historical fantasy bestseller list

I am pleased to report that SOUL OF TYRANTS briefly got up to #86 on the Amazon US Historical Fantasy bestseller list:

Thanks, everyone! It’s long been a goal of mine to have a novel appear on on the Amazon US bestseller lists, and with SOUL OF SWORDS, it’s now happened twice.

Of course, one might point out I did this artificially. I deliberately moved SOUL OF TYRANTS to the Historical Fantasy category, since it’s less heavily trafficked than the Epic Fantasy. I also had the BookBub ad for DEMONSOULED on the 11th, and apparently enough people liked DEMONSOULED to move on to SOUL OF TYRANTS. So this happened because I planned it and the plan worked, and I know a lot of writers find this sort of marketing distasteful.

But I think they are wrong. Many people in general and writers in particular have this sort of idea that the Magic Success Fairies will visit them if they just show up and mean well. But the world does not work that way, alas, and I think it is better to work for something rather than to hope the world simply drops it into your lap. Even if you fail, failure often teaches valuable lessons.

But, again, thank you everyone – all the planning in the world would do me no good if you didn’t buy SOUL OF TYRANTS.

-JM

LEVIATHAN WAKES, CALIBAN’S WAR, and ABADDON’S GATE by James S.A. Corey

I’ve read and enjoyed Daniel Abraham’s THE DAGGER AND COIN fantasy series (possibly the only fantasy series to feature an alcoholic banker as a protagonist – which is more interesting than it sounds), so when I heard he was one of half of the writers behind the pseudonym James S.A. Corey and THE EXPANSE series of science fiction novels, I was intrigued. When I heard that the other half of the pseudonym was Ty Franck, George R.R. Martin’s assistant, I was less intrigued, since I have grown wary of the underlying nihilism of A SONG OF FIRE AND ICE, and had no wish to read a piece of science fiction where all the likeable characters die halfway through the third book.

Nevertheless, I admit my wariness was misplaced – THE EXPANSE is a fascinating piece of science fiction, and is not in the least nihilistic.

The premise is that some indeterminate point in the future, mankind has figured out interplanetary travel, and human settlements are scattered everywhere from Earth to the moons of Saturn. (The first few paragraphs of LEVIATHAN WAKES, describing the fusion drive that made this possible, are a masterpiece of worldbuilding.) The solar system has divided into three power blocs – the Earth, ruled by a highly dysfunctional United Nations (frankly I think the scenario shown in Marko Kloos’s RULES OF ENGAGEMENT is more likely), the Martian Congressional Republic, and the Outer Planets Alliance, which both the UN and the MCR regard as terrorists. Compounding this is the fact that people living on the asteroid belts develop physical changes from growing up in low gravity, making it impossible for them to visit Earth & Mars without dying, which drastically widens the divide between the three power blocs.

In this volatile situation comes a new element – someone discovers a long-abandoned alien base on one of Saturn’s moons, and that base houses a molecular-technology based bioweapon that was apparently targeted at Earth two billion years ago, but accidentally got stuck in Saturn’s orbit.

Mayhem ensues, as various factions try to either take control of the bioweapon, destroy it, or study it. Compounding the situation is the fact that the alien machines have their own agenda and mission – a mission that they are going to complete, two billion years be damned.

What follows is both an interesting thriller and an intriguing piece of speculative fiction. How would people react if an alien artifact was in fact discovered? THE EXPANSE explores this question, while leaving room for lots of gunfights, ship battles, interplanetary wars, and other traditional SF derring-do.

Frankly, the three books reminded me a lot of the MASS EFFECT series of computer games, and I mean that affectionately. A lot of the same tropes are there – the power armor and the weapons, the Cool Ship, the corrupt governments and corporations, the mysterious research projects, and the alien artifacts that have the potential to save mankind or destroy it. Either the writers did some things as a deliberate homage to MASS EFFECT, or they employed the same pool of science fiction tropes. Either way makes for an interesting story.

One final amusing note – a lot of SF written in the US tends to be quite political, since SF necessarily deals with the future, and numerous writers base dystopian settings of what would happen if their ideological opponents prevailed in the future. So a lot of readers on either side of the US’s political divide can get quite annoyed by science fiction. The authors rather elegantly handle this by including bogeymen from both the Red and Blue factions of US politics in the book. Corrupt corporations? Socialist governments? Atheists? Preachers? Terrorists? They’re all in there! The future of THE EXPANSE is rather like the present, but with fusion drives. Which is always the case – the future is always like the past, but with better technology. Machines change, but people do not.

All in all, these were fascinating and enjoyable books, and I hope there are more of them.

-JM

writers and denial

For those of you who are writers, this is an excellent post on indie publishing and the 5 stages of grief.

I should note that I was traditionally published twice, and didn’t terribly enjoy the experience either time, so once I discovered ebooks I was able to blast through those stages pretty quickly.

-JM

Boom! BookBub! Part Two!

To celebrate SOUL OF SWORDS and the completion of the DEMONSOULED series, I took out a BookBub ad for DEMONSOULED today, and it kicked the book up to #23 on the Kindle free list. Because of that, my website has gotten a ton of Google searches for “how many books in demonsouled” and “how many pages is demonsouled series”, so I thought I would answer those here.

DEMONSOULED has seven books, the first written in 2001, the last written in 2013. There are seven books total: DEMONSOULED, SOUL OF TYRANTS, SOUL OF SERPENTS, SOUL OF DRAGONS, SOUL OF SORCERY, SOUL OF SKULLS, and SOUL OF SWORDS, and a prequel novella called THE DRAGON’S SHADOW and a few prequel short stories.

Altogether the seven books and the prequel stories come to about 922,000 words, which is about 2,300 pages in print. DEMONSOULED is free on all major ebook platforms, and there are sample chapters for each of the books on my website.

-JM