Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 317
May 3, 2013
May 2, 2013
SOUL OF SWORDS progress update
It has taken me twelve years to get here, but tonight I am sitting down to write the climatic scene of the DEMONSOULED series.
-JM
Edmund Pevensie Got Ripped Off
I tried Turkish Delight for the first time this weekend.
Turkish Delight, of course, is most famous as the candy the White Witch uses to tempt Edmund Pevensie in CS Lewis’s classic THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE. I first heard of Turkish Delight when I read the Narnia books for the first time in 2004, but I never tried it until now.
I have to say…I was underwhelmed. Essentially it is a lump of viscous Jell-O powdered with sugar. Not bad…but not enough to tempt me to sell my soul to the icy Satan figure of another world. Edmund sold out his siblings for this? Granted, I know it was wartime Britain, with rationing and all. And it wasn’t really about the Turkish Delight, but Edmund’s willingness to keep malicious secrets and sell out of his family to this weird strange lady he met in the woods.
But still. He should have held out for cake. Or at least some pie!
-JM
UPDATE: A reader suggests that the Turkish Delight was actually a psychic mirror that let you taste whatever food you are most tempted to gorge yourself upon. In my case, that would be pepperoni bacon pizza with a french fry topping.
May 1, 2013
Soul of Sorcery – 3,000 copies
SOUL OF SORCERY passed a milestone in March when the book sold its 3,000th copy. To celebrate, let’s have some new cover art:
I had always wanted to do a fantasy novel based on, or at least inspired by, the Battle of Adrianople, and SOUL OF SORCERY drew at least some of its inspiration from that period in Roman history. (You can read more about the process here.) Of course, I also wanted to do a book that had woolly mammoths and griffins, and both of those wound up in SOUL OF SORCERY as well.
SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK BELOW!
SOUL OF SORCERY was inspired by the Battle of Adrianople, but it doesn’t match the history completely. Lord Richard, for instance, might be similar to the Roman Emperor Valens, but he’s nothing like Valens. Additionally, that period of Roman history has no equivalent figure to Mazael Cravenlock. Theodosius the Great ended the Gothic War and made peace with the Thervingi Goths, and he was nothing like Mazael.
One interesting thing about the character of Malaric was that I didn’t plan him – in the outline it said “Lucan hires mercenary captain (decide name later)” and that was that. But when I got to the scene where Lucan meets the “nameless mercenary captain”, his personality sort of just jumped off the page, along with his grudges – and Malaric had a lot of grudges. I like to outline my books thoroughly, but sometimes it’s good to improvise, too.
-JM
April 29, 2013
new cover art for SOUL OF DRAGONS
Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.
The DEMONSOULED series, when it’s finished, will have seven books, but I tend to think of it as two trilogies, since a lot of the major plotlines wrapped up in SOUL OF SERPENTS. SOUL OF DRAGONS was the book that got to kick off a lot of the new plotines in the remaining DEMONSOULED books.
So it was a lot of fun to write, since a lot of the big things in the later DEMONSOULED books (the Glamdaigyr, Lucan’s surreal, ruined black city, Arylkrad, Tymaen Highgate, and the rumors of barbarian nations stirring beyond the mountains) got their start in this book. I am pleased and grateful to have had the opportunity to continue the story.
-JM
April 28, 2013
vintage science fiction
It’s fun to read older science fiction and see its take on what the future would be like.
The novel I’m reading now, for instance, was published in 1985. In the book, humanity developed faster-than-light travel in 2013, and the characters are wondering what impact this will have on the 2016 presidential elections and are concerned about the reaction from the Soviet Union.
Heh. 2013 turned out a bit different than that.
Older science fiction seems to think the 21st century would be essentially the United Nations in space. In practice, the future is actually the Internet, really cool cell phones, and governmental dysfunction. No shiny space colonies for us, alas. Humanity is the same as it always has been, though now we have web pages.
On the plus side, my cell phone really is seriously cool.
-JM
Terms of Enlistment, by Marko Kloos
A while back, I linked to the self-publishing story of one Marko Kloos, who after an agent rejected self-published his military SF novel TERMS OF ENLISTMENT and had it take off in a big way. That doesn’t happen all that often, so curiosity demanded that I read the book.
I once heard a joke that every right-wing blogger thinks he has a military SF novel in him, and every left-winger blogger thinks she has an urban fantasy novel about lesbian sex vampires in her. Turns out, Marko Kloos actually did have a military SF novel in him, and a pretty good one, to boot.
The book takes place in a near-future where warp drive has been discovered and humanity has begun colonizing nearby planets. However, it’s not a shiny peaceful STAR TREK future. The world’s major governments have congealed into two competing blocs – the North American Commonwealth and the Sino-Russian Coalition. Rather than nuke each other to oblivion on Earth, the two major powers have agreed not to fight each other on Earth, and instead fight each other in extrasolar space while competing for habitable planets (it’s more like the European nations competing for colonies in the 19th century than the peaceful exploration of a unified humanity in STAR TREK). Meanwhile, the NAC itself seems to be a grimly socialist state, with most of the population gathered in major cities and subsisting off government support, as advances in technology and automation have eliminated most available jobs. Nobody is starving, but the NAC hardly seems like a pleasant place to live.
Our protagonist is one Andrew Grayson, an 18-year-old who has grown up in the tenement slums of Boston. Grayson joins the NAC military in hopes of getting ticket out of the slums, and perhaps (if he is lucky) leaving Earth and settling on some colony somewhere that’s not so crowded. Unfortunately for Grayson, he gets assigned to the NAC’s ground army, which spends its time smashing minor Earth nations that challenge the NAC and putting down riots in the major cities. However, Grayson’s girlfriend Halley gets assigned to the NAC’s space navy, so Grayson starts to plot to get himself transferred to the space navy and assigned to Halley’s ship…
…and in doing so, accidentally puts himself in the center of events that will change history.
The book was both interesting and an entertaining read. Grayson, with his miserable background and constant challenges from incompetent military officers and people trying to kill him, is a effective protagonist. He makes several questionable decisions throughout the book, but never veers into the territory of Heinlein Idealized Hero or a caricature of a psychotic veteran – he remains a young man trying to muddle through increasingly difficult situations. Also, the book’s setting of the NAC was interesting, with shades of BRAVE NEW WORLD, though in all candor it seems less like a dystopian future and simply more like a more extreme version of the contemporary United States.
I did think the character of Halley, Grayson’s girlfriend, did seem too idealized. During their separation, I kept waiting for Halley to write Grayson a “Dear John” letter (or email, I suppose), or for him to arrive on his girlfriend’s ship to find that she had shacked up with her commanding officer. It also seemed odd that the NAC military was fully gender-integrated, with gender-integrated housing and showers. I don’t know much about the military, but I suspect that rounding up a bunch of eighteen-year-olds, training them to the best physical condition of their lives, and then having them live and shower together is an invitation for all kinds of trouble. But, then, it is science fiction.
Anyway, I liked the book, and I hope there is a sequel.
-JM
April 27, 2013
DEMONSOULED, a review
No Reader Question Day this week, as I have Obligations that I must Meet. Fortunately, said Obligations involve eating doughnuts.
Here is a nice review of DEMONSOULED. Key quote:
This was a great read, but rather long. Considerably longer than I had anticipated to be honest, but well worth the time and a pleasure to do so for the most part. The story line was exciting and fast paced. The author, Jonathan Moeller has a very vivid imagination and writing style which paints a fabulously detailed and rich landscape. The story line itself was intricate, with a variety of details interwoven into the main story. Moeller also has a knack for describing fight and battle scenes that manages to balance just enough detail with the right pace to make them truly exciting and jump off the page at you. I did have a few pet peeves while reading the story that may or may not be shared by others.
One the reviewer’s pet peeves was the sheer number of characters in the book. I should note that in SOUL OF SKULLS I added a Glossary of Characters at the end of the book to help readers keep everyone straight, because the DEMONSOULED series does get rather more complicated the longer it goes on. SOUL OF SWORDS will also have the Glossary, as will the (eventual) omnibus editions.
-JM
April 25, 2013
SOUL OF SERPENTS – new cover art
Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.
I started writing SOUL OF SERPENTS in May of 2011, and it has a special place in my heart for several reasons. First, it was my return to the DEMONSOULED series after a gap of six years, after I had written SOUL OF TYRANTS in 2005 and given up on writing any new DEMONSOULED books.
Secondly, it was the very first book I wrote intending to self-publish it as an ebook from the beginning. Everything else before that, I wrote in hopes of selling to the nonsensical and byzantine meat-grinder that is the traditional publishing system. I don’t miss that even a little bit.
Third, this book made the rest of the DEMONSOULED series possible. I had intended to finish with SOUL OF SERPENTS. I would have my trilogy of fantasy novels, and then I could move on to writing more technical books, which at the time I thought sold better. But I added that final scene in the final chapter, and that was the hook that propelled the later books.
So needless to say, I’m grateful that over 7,800 of you have enjoyed SOUL OF SERPENTS so far. 
-JM
It’s Ubuntu Day!
Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail comes out today!
Since I’ve written two books about Ubuntu, needless to say I’ll be taking a good look at the new version. At some point this summer I’d like to update both books to new editions to cover any changes, and to add new chapters (a chapter on VNC in THE UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE, and on automated backups and Ubuntu One in THE UBUNTU DESKTOP BEGINNER’S GUIDE.)
-JM
