Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 328
January 12, 2013
SOUL OF SKULLS is now available!
Cover image copyright Nejron | Dreamstime.com
I am very, very pleased to report that SOUL OF SKULLS, the sixth book in the DEMONSOULED series, is now available!
If the first chapter is to your liking, you can get the book at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords, with iTunes availability coming in a few weeks.
Thank you all – the only reason to do a sixth book in the DEMONSOULED series, of course, is because so many of you read and enjoyed the first five books.
-JM
January 10, 2013
Sign up for my newsletter! Right now!
Seriously. Why, you ask? Well, the release of SOUL OF SKULLS is imminent, and newsletter subscribers are going to get a little bonus unavailable to anyone else. So if you want that little bonus, subscribe to my newsletter before it is too late.
To subscribe, follow this link and fill out the form. After that, you’ll get a confirmation email with a link. Click on the link in the email, and you’ll be added to my mailing list.
-JM
January 9, 2013
the first chapter of SOUL OF SKULLS
Cover image copyright Nejron | Dreamstime.com
Read the first chapter of SOUL OF SKULLS right here.
The book is coming soon!
-JM
January 7, 2013
SOUL OF SKULLS – the table of contents
Here is the Table of Contents for SOUL OF SKULLS:
Chapter 1 – A Village of the Dead
Chapter 2 – Serpents of Bone
Chapter 3 – Awakening
Chapter 4 – Armies of the Dead
Chapter 5 – The Pact
Chapter 6 – Reavers
Chapter 7 – To Live Again
Chapter 8 – The Grand Master
Chapter 9 – Lies and Shadows
Chapter 10 – Dripping Blades
Chapter 11 – Before the Storm
Chapter 12 – Masks
Chapter 13 – Cross Purposes
Chapter 14 – The Staff of the Guardian
Chapter 15 – On Bladed Wings
Chapter 16 – The Siege of Tumblestone
Chapter 17 – The Compass
Chapter 18 – Last Stand
Chapter 19 – Ascension
Chapter 20 – The Corrupted Knights
Chapter 21 – Rage
Chapter 22 – Make The World Clean
Chapter 23 – Embrace The Serpent
Chapter 24 – Sanctuary
Chapter 25 – The Golden Knight
Chapter 26 – The True Prince
Chapter 27 – A Crushing Victory
Chapter 28 – The Summoning
Chapter 29 – The Battle of the Riversteel
Chapter 30 – A Second Pact
Chapter 31 – Unmasked
Chapter 32 – The Siege of Barellion
Chapter 33 – Last Stand
Chapter 34 – A Quarrel of Princes
Chapter 35 – Mazael’s Choice
Chapter 36 – Coronation
Chapter 37 – The Lady and the Knight
Chapter 38 – Regeneration
Epilogue
Glossary of Characters
Glossary of Locations
Perceptive readers will note that sometimes I reuse chapter titles from book to book. I do this deliberately as a callback to previous events in the series – SOUL OF SERPENTS had a chapter titled “The Lady and the Knight”, and SOUL OF SORCERY has a chapter titled “The Pact”, for example.
More to come soon!
-JM
January 6, 2013
a seventh excerpt from SOUL OF SKULLS
One more excerpt from SOUL OF SKULLS. The rest of the book after this point is one big spoiler, so this is the final excerpt I’ll post. Later this week I’ll post the first chapter to the book.
“When you lost your damned boat and found your way here,” said Mazael, “did you drink a too much seawater? Because you must be mad if you think I will pray to your wretched serpent god.”
Molly snickered, and the Aegonar’s face went red with fury.
“Then you will both perish!” said the Aegonar, lifting his broadsword, “and we will keep the woman as our thrall.”
“Unlikely,” said Mazael. He reached for his sword, his Demonsouled rage boiling up, and remembered Riothamus’s cautions. “I will give you one chance. Run away and…”
“Kill them!” roared the Aegonar.
Oh, well.
Mazael yanked Lion from its sheath and kicked his spurs into his mount.
-JM
January 5, 2013
Reader Question Day #50 – the new series
A few people have asked what I intend to do for my next series after DEMONSOULED is finished. This seems like an excellent topic for the first Reader Question Day of the new year!
I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do for the new series. It will be sword-and-sorcery/epic fantasy series, and so far I’ve cautiously titled it FROSTBORN. (This might change, though.) I haven’t set anything in stone yet, but here are some things I want to include in the series:
-The main character will be male, since when I want to write a book with a female protagonist, I have THE GHOSTS and Caina Amalas.
-The books will be shorter, around 60,000 words each. So the books will be more episodic, but connected by an overall plot arc. I’m thinking several shorter books, and then a few DEMONSOULED-sized ones to wrap up the series at the end.
-I want the world for the series to be connected to the real world in some way. Basically, I’m thinking about going with a “humans go through portal to magical world” plotline.
-I would like the books also to have real religions in them in some way, since I’m tired of Crystal Dragon Jesus. Real religions are more interesting than fake ones. And if humans go through a portal to a magical world, they’ll bring their religion with them. Christian missionaries evangelizing the orcish tribes would make for a fascinating plotline.
-I’d like the books to have the epic feel of a really well-run RPG campaign. If you’ve ever done a really good tabletop RPG (or one of the better computer ones, like BALDUR’S GATE or DRAGON AGE ORIGINS), you know what I mean. A long, immersive story, with characters you get to know and like and remember for years after (like Minsc the ranger or Morrigan the witch), and then a satisfying, appropriately epic conclusion.
-Finally, I would also like to plan the series a bit better. I wrote DEMONSOULED in 2001, SOUL OF TYRANTS in 2005, and then gave up on the series for six years. I had planned to write a sequel to SOUL OF TYRANTS at some point, but since I never got the book published, I completely forgot what I intended to do. So when I started SOUL OF SERPENTS in 2011, I had to improvise quite a bit.
THE GHOSTS were much the same way. I wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES in 2008, and then GHOST IN THE BLOOD in 2009. When I couldn’t sell those, I wrote CHILD OF THE GHOSTS as a prequel in 2010. So when I continued that series with GHOST IN THE STORM and GHOST IN THE STONE in 2012, I had to do a bit more improvising.
The point is that I’ve learned a lot of lessons about writing since starting DEMONSOULED in 2001, and I would like to apply those lessons to the new series.
So those are the things I would like to do in a new series. I won’t start on it in earnest until I finish SOUL OF SWORDS (the final DEMONSOULED book) and whatever the seventh GHOSTS book turns out to be…but I am going to start working on it in 2013.
-JM
January 4, 2013
SOUL OF SKULLS – the book description
For fans of Robert E. Howard, David Gemmell, Robert Jordan, and Raymond E. Feist, the DEMONSOULED saga now continues in a sixth volume.
MAZAEL CRAVENLOCK is now the liege lord of the Grim Marches, fighting to defend his lands from the numberless hordes of undead. Yet old enemies plot his demise, and a cunning assassin lurks in the shadows, preparing a deadly trap.
HUGH CHALSAIN is the youngest son of the Prince of Barellion. When invaders from the sea conquer his land, Hugh must fight to save his home…or perish upon the blades of his foes.
MALARIC is the bastard son of the Prince of Barellion, despised and outcast. But with the stolen power of Mazael’s Demonsouled son, Malaric has the strength to claim what is his…and exact a horrible vengeance upon anyone who ever crossed him.
LUCAN MANDRAGON has returned from the dead, wielding dark magic beyond measure. Now nothing can stop him from fulfilling his righteous mission.
The utter destruction of the Demonsouled.
Coming soon!
-JM
January 3, 2013
prototype
My efforts to teach myself CreateSpace have borne fruit.
I have a bit more work to do on the project yet…but watch this space for additional news.
-JM
The Defiler of Tombs
William King has written a sequel, THE DEFILER OF TOMBS, to his excellent THE STEALER OF FLESH.
Watch for a review in the next few months!
-JM
THE END OF EARTH & SKY, by Tom Simon
THE END OF EARTH AND SKY, by Tom Simon (writer of the excellent LORD TALON’S REVENGE), is the first volume in his THE EYE OF THE MAKER series. The book centers around the adventures of one Calin Lowford, a twenty-year-old man who has failed at every trade he has tried, and (to put it bluntly) has generally been life’s whipping boy. To keep him out of trouble, his father apprentices him to the local eccentric wizard Rijeth. But when a mysterious message from the Gods arrives, no one is willing to answer it – save for Calin and his cantankerous master.
Trouble ensues.
I enjoyed the sheer amount of depth and complexity in END’S worldbuilding, which is just as well, since this is the first of planned eight volumes. Both the world and the book’s magic system are very well planned out. This is a world with a good deal of depth and complexity, much like Middle-earth.
Calin is also an interesting protagonist, partly in the vein of “boy becomes wizard” and partly a bumbler who is at least partly responsible for his own misfortunes. What’s especially intriguing is that END is a frame story – every chapter is prefaced with an excerpt from a book condemning Calin’s later monstrous crimes. Given that is remarkably at odds with the hapless, self-pitying figure of Calin in most of the book, I look forward to seeing how this develops in future volumes. I also enjoyed the other characters, from cranky Rijeth to the dark queen Teshren to the somewhat deluded atheist Raeder Lowford. As with LORD TALON’S REVENGE, this is a book that does not shy away from the peculiar foibles of humanity, but nonetheless likes this.
I enjoyed the book and recommend it, with the one caveat that it is obviously the first volume of eight, and therefore it is premature to form a complete opinion on the story.
-JM
