Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 314

Ghost in the Flames – 7,000 copies

Some fun news today – GHOST IN THE FLAMES has sold its 7,000th copy, just in time for its two-year anniversary in August. The Lord has been good to me lo these last two years!

Interestingly enough, this was the first novel in THE GHOSTS series I wrote. Later I decided that the story needed to start earlier, so I wrote CHILD OF THE GHOSTS. But before that I tried to sell GHOST IN THE FLAMES to a publisher for years, and finally gave up to try writing CHILD OF THE GHOSTS instead. But by the time I finished writing CHILD OF THE GHOSTS around the end of 2010, I had started hearing about these newfangled modern contraptions called “ebooks”…and, well, here we are.

So thank you, to all 7,000 of you.

-JM

SOUL OF SWORDS, the first week

SOUL OF SWORDS had a strong first week. Like, 200+ copies strong. Thanks, everyone!

I am impressed that many people have finished the book already, because it is a big book. Not as big as some, but still not short. Still, that is the nature of the writing business. A writer can take two months to write a book, but a determined reader can blast through it in two days.

-JM

when will I begin GHOST IN THE ASHES?

Now that SOUL OF SWORDS is out, quite a few people have asked when I will begin GHOST IN THE ASHES, the next book in THE GHOSTS series.

Actually, I have some good news on that front.

SOUL OF SWORDS came out on June 1st, but I finished it about a week before Memorial Day. I decided to hold off on releasing it until June because it’s not a terribly good idea to release a new book either on or around a major holiday, as people are traveling or visiting family and not too interested in books.

So while waiting for June 1st, I decided to put the time to good use by starting the rough draft of GHOST IN THE ASHES. I’m on chapter 17 of 25, with about 57,000 words written, and I suspect the rough draft will be around 85,000 to 90,000 words long. If all goes well, we’ll see the book out in July.

-JM

Caina vs. Mazael – who would win in a fight?

This is a common reader question, and like all good questions, the answer is “it depends.”

Specifically, it would depend on the circumstances. If Caina and Mazael were dropped in a small room together by an evil wizard (or a malicious author) and told to fight to the death, Mazael would win handily. Mazael has Demonsouled strength and speed and healing abilities, and while Caina is in excellent physical condition and unusually clever, she is in all other respects a physically normal twenty-one year old (by the time of GHOST IN THE FORGE) woman. In some circumstances, brute force prevails.

But if Mazael and Caina had a larger battlefield – say, Castle Cravenlock or the Vineyard, then they are more evenly matched. Mazael is an excellent tactician, but so is Caina, and she’s very good at tactical improvisation. Additionally, the longer Caina observes Mazael, the greater her odds against him. If she observes his strengths and weaknesses long enough, she has a better chance over devising a strategy to kill him. But if Mazael can catch her right away, before she can observe him at any length, he can kill her.

In a city the size of Barellion or Malarae, the odds definitely favor Caina. She is adept at disguise, and Mazael is not. Mazael is a knight, which means his skill set favors battlefield tactics and personal combat, not standing unseen in a crowd. Caina could easily gain the time she needs to observe Mazael, gauge his strengths and weaknesses, gather allies, and prepare a trap capable of defeating him.

So, the answer is that in a straight-up fight, Mazael wins. But the longer she has to prepare, the more likely it is that Caina wins.

-JM

SOUL OF SWORDS and numbers

Due to SOUL OF SWORDS, some disreputable rogue named Jonathan Moeller is (currently) the #93 fantasy author on Amazon US. Thanks everyone!

Browsing that list, it was interesting to see how many of the top-ranked fantasy novels actually seem to be romance novels with a fantasy trapping. Not that I have anything against romance novels, mind, but it seems clear that if I want to see more of the kind of books I really like, I’m just going to have to buckle down and write them myself.

-JM

DEMONSOULED – the complete word count of the series

Now that the DEMONSOULED series is complete with SOUL OF SWORDS, I decided to amuse myself by calculating the total word count of the books. Word count is one of those things that writers care about, as writers are often paid by the word, but it generally doesn’t interest most readers. (You can tell whether or not someone is a writer by asking how long a book is – a writer will say “about 100,000 words”, while someone who reads a lot but doesn’t write will simply cite the page count. Or, in the modern era, the number of Kindle locations.)

So how many words long is the DEMONSOULED series? Let’s find out!

Demonsouled: 110,000

Soul of Tyrants: 117,000

Soul of Serpents: 123,000

Soul of Dragons: 114,000 words

Soul of Sorcery : 138,000 words

Soul of Skulls: 142,000 words

Soul of Swords: 148,000 words

The Dragon’s Shadow & short stories: 30,000 words

So a grand total of 922,000 words in 12 years. That comes to approximately 2,363 book pages, more or less, if my math is right.

Of course, I didn’t do anything with DEMONSOULED from 2005 to 2011, so of those 922,000 words, I wrote 695,000 of them in the last two years or so. I have been busy!

-JM

Soul of Swords now available!

Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.

Well, it’s taken twelve years, but I am pleased to report that SOUL OF SWORDS, the final volume in the DEMONSOULED series, is now ready!

It’s available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon Canada, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. It should show up on iBooks within the next few weeks, and I’ll have an announcement here when it does.

SOUL OF SWORDS also available in trade paperback here, with an ISBN-13 of 978-1489552266 if you want to order from a local bookseller.

Click here to read the first chapter of SOUL OF SWORDS.

Thanks, everyone! I never thought I would have the chance to finish the DEMONSOULED series, but here we are at last.

-JM

the glamour of print books

I’ve finally figured out how to do CreateSpace efficiently, so both the ebook and the trade paperback editions of SOUL OF SWORDS will come out simultaneously sometime in the next few days.

There’s something quite enjoyable about holding one’s own book in one’s own hand. I’d forgotten that feeling – the last time I had a novel traditionally published was in 2008, and holding a Kindle displaying your ebook isn’t quite the same as holding a physical book that you, personally, have written. There’s a feeling of…satisfaction, let us say, that you are holding this book that you have written.

Holding one of my physical books, I can see why so many writers remain so desperate to be traditionally published. Of “seeing my book on the shelf”, of holding the book, of being “good enough” to be published, and all the other things starry-eyed writers talk about when discussing traditional publication.  It’s really quite a powerful feeling.

Of course, I have come to believe that is a myth – the odds of traditional publication are vanishingly small, and if you do sign with a traditional publisher, you have an excellent chance of getting thoroughly screwed via the black sorcery of contract law. For 99.7% of the writers and the potential writers reading this, self-publishing is the better choice. That’s not my opinion or my feelings on the matter, that’s just math. And math, unlike feelings, does not lie.

Additionally, ebooks sell way, way better than print books. My bestselling novel has sold 9,000 copies so far, and if the print version ever sells a tenth of that, I shall be amazed.

Nevertheless…holding one’s own book really is a nice feeling.

But thanks to CreateSpace, you can have that feeling of holding your book, also while selling the book around the world, without signing away your rights until the heat death of the multiverse. And all it takes is a web browser, Microsoft Word, and a willingness to learn and do the work. (And $25 for expanded distribution, of course.  )

-JM

sign up for my newsletter and get free stuff!

The release of SOUL OF SWORDS is imminent, so you’ll want to sign up for my new release newsletter.

Newsletter subscribers will get a little bonus when SOUL OF SWORDS comes out.

The process is simple – you just enter your email address, and you’ll get a confirmation email. Click on a link in the confirmation email, and you’ll be signed up for my newsletter. Don’t worry about spam from my mailing list – the only time I use it is to send announcements of new releases.

-JM

A nice review of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS…

…can be found here.

-JM