Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 338

Jonathan Moeller vs. the dragon

I spent this weekend finishing the rough draft of GHOST IN THE STONE and beginning the rough draft of THE DRAGON’S SHADOW, but I slipped in a little time to play Skyrim, and I killed my second dragon.

And a glorious battle it was! We fought on the mountains overlooking Riverwood, and the dragon swooped like a bird-of-prey, unleashing flame and talon, while I shot arrow after arrow skyward, interspersed with volleys of magical lightning. But in the end I was victorious, and I hurled the dragon to earth, and it smote its ruin upon the mountainside.

Then I returned to the valley, and was promptly killed by a bear.

Those bears of Skyrim! Forget the dragons. If a dozen of the bears got together, they could conquer Skyrim in a week.

-JM

Ghost in the Stone – rough draft finished

The rough draft of GHOST IN THE STONE is done! 96,400 words in 27 chapters.

I’ll start editing it as soon as I finish the rough draft of THE DRAGON’S SHADOW, which shouldn’t be more than 25,000 words or so.

-JM

Reader Question Day #40: Jonathan Moeller vs Fantasy World Maps

For both THE GHOSTS and the DEMONSOULED books, one of the most common reader questions is a request for maps in the books.

This is a perfectly valid request, since both THE GHOSTS and DEMONSOULED have large and elaborate settings. In fact, in my most recent book, SOUL OF SORCERY, one group of characters (the Tervingi) undertake a journey of thousands of miles in search of a new homeland. So I can definitely see how a map would be helpful. (The Tervingi would certainly have thought so!)

I’ve played with the idea of doing a map every so often, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. I have two major reasons for this, and four minor ones.

The first major reason is that (for me, at least – other writers may feel differently) a world map would be a creative straitjacket. The problem with creating a huge and elaborate world map is that it gets hard to add things to that map as necessary, because you’ve already established the world. You are, as it were, locked in. That makes it all the harder to think up new ideas for future books in the setting.

The best examples of this are the Malrags and the Tervingi in the DEMONSOULED books. The Malrags first appear in the third book, which I wrote in 2011, and the Tervingi in the fifth book, which I wrote this year. Both the Malrags and the Tervingi have proven to be pretty popular with the readers of the DEMONSOULED books. Yet I wrote the first DEMONSOULED book in 2001, and the second in 2005, and back then I had absolutely no conception of either the Malrags or the Tervingi. Had I created a systematic world map for DEMONSOULED back in 2001, the idea for the Tervingi and the Malrags might never have come to me, because I was locked into the map.

The second major reason is that time spent creating a map would be time not spent writing new material. The thing about being a self-published writer is that there are lots of writing-related things that are important and productive, but not as important as new writing. There are lots of tasks like that – updating your website, improving your covers, updating the bibliography and links in your books, and so forth – but none of them are as important as writing new material.

When it comes down to it, I have about two hours a day I am free to write, and I would rather spending more time writing new DEMONSOULED books than writing about the DEMONSOULED books – and that also applies to drawing maps.

Those are the big two reasons.

The first of the smaller reasons is that I simply don’t draw very well. I’ve tried sketching at various times throughout my life, but I’ve never managed to be more than mediocre. I suppose with enough practice I could get better, but again – that two hours a day.

The second reason is that fantasy maps occasionally bug me with geological and ecological impossibilities. Rivers shouldn’t flow in that direction, mountain ranges very rarely present in straight lines, and in many fantasy maps, there are vast stretches of land that should be barren desert because there’s no way for moisture to get to them. Or a lack of detail – if the US appeared on a fantasy map, it would be a big blob labeled “THE OLIGARCHATE OF AMERICA” with a stylized drawing of Washington DC, some trees in the east, and some mountains in the west. The US is much more complex than that.

Third, Amazon charges extra for larger ebook files (about $0.07 a megabyte), and maps can get pretty big. So the smaller the ebook file, the better.

Finally, the level of detail required would be prohibitive – do I do every village and castle and hill? Plus, there’s that straitjacket thing again – if I leave big sections of the map blank, it looks like a cop-out when I fill them out later.

Some of these problems might be solved by adequate software. Like, if I found a good mapping program that permitted commercial use, I might be able to do a map. But for now, I think it’s a better use of my time to write more, rather than make a map.

-JM

Thursdays of Sword & Sorceress 27 – the Deborah J. Ross interview

This week’s interview is with Deborah J. Ross.

1.) Tell us about yourself.

I began publishing professionally in 1982 as Deborah Wheeler with JAYDIUM and NORTHLIGHT, and short stories in ASIMOV’S, F & SF, REALMS OF FANTASY, STAR WARS: TALES FROM JABBA’S PALACE, and almost all the SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies. Now under my birth name, Ross, I am continuing the “Darkover” series of the late Marion Zimmer Bradley; I’ve done some anthology editing and am a member of Book View Café. Two of my stories (“Mother Africa” and “The Price of Silence”) have earned Honorable Mention in THE YEAR’S BEST SF. In between writing, I’ve lived in France, worked as a medical assistant to a cardiologist, revived an elementary school library, and studied kung fu san soo, Hebrew, and yoga.

2.) Why do you write?

I wrote and illustrated my first book when I was in 4th grade and haven’t stopped since. For so long, it’s been my secret pleasure, the thing I have fought for time to do. Writing nourishes me as it teaches me to see life — and myself — through different eyes.

3.) Sword & Sorceress is known for sword & sorcery centered around a strong female character. Is there any particular trick to writing strong female characters?

Well, the most important thing is to not make them men in drag. Women can be physically strong, and skillful as well — witness the recent Olympics in London — but too often, strength defined by fighting prowess or muscular power is a “male” definition. Interesting women characters have other kinds strength as well — determination, intelligence, strength of spirit, emotional courage, compassion.

4.) What would you say makes sword & sorcery different than other kinds of fantasy?

For me, it’s just plain fun. Really, what can you say about dragons and sorcery and bashing people with swords? But that’s only the raw material. It’s an opportunity to take those cultural tropes of conflict and turn them inside out.

5.) How do you think ebooks and the Internet will change the way we read & write?

I don’t think writing will change; the first and only essential word processor is the writer’s mind, after all. People will always want to read or hear or see stories, whether chanted by a bard or experienced in virtual reality. It’s only the technology that changes. Oral storytelling didn’t disappear with the invention of writing, and written stories won’t disappear, either. Ebooks are a wonderful development because they offer portability and ease of access (and studies indicate people are actually reading more). We’re in a shake-down transitional period with regard to quality control and internet marketing, but I’m sure the current chaos will settle out eventually. There will always be a place for printed books, so I’m actually quite optimistic about the future of all kinds of publishing.

6.) Tell us about your Sword & Sorceress story.

I’d been developing a nomadic horse people for my fantasy trilogy, THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD (forthcoming from DAW) and thinking about the ways women are strong in these cultures, and also the kind of stories these people would tell. Their “great deeds” tales might be about battles, but most likely overcoming natural dangers — hunting, bad weather, or terrible predators. I put that together with the amazing toughness and resourcefulness of Pre-Columbian (pre-horse-culture) Native Americans, stuck in endangered parallel worlds, and turned the whole world shades of green. Why these disparate and very strange things came to me, I have no idea. I’m like the Wizard of Oz, “I don’t know how it works.”

7.) Can you share an excerpt from your Sword & Sorceress story?

Here’s the bison hunt:

The bull was closing fast, his head lowered, the tips of his sweeping horns aimed at the hunters. [Moon]drew the bow to its maximum tautness and held it, waiting for a target. From behind her, the others loosed a volley of arrows. One landed short and the others bounced off harmlessly. No arrow could pierce that thick hide or that massive skull.

Closer . . . Moon calmed herself as her arm muscles trembled under the strain. If he turns but a little . . .

“Aiee! Run!” Hawk yelled.

Moon heard their scattered flight, the cries of her sister, “Moon! Come on!”

The ground beneath her feet quivered like a drum. His hooves tore into the sod, throwing up clods and dust. Still she waited. At the last moment, when the bull was but a breath away from her, he swung his head to one side. One golden eye caught her in its gaze.

She loosed her arrow.

The arrow plunged deep into the bison’s eye socket. He let out a fearsome cry. The reek of his blood shrilled in the air.

Moon scrambled out of the bison’s path. Propelled by the momentum of his charge, he hurtled into the very place she had been standing and fell to his knees. Swiftly she drew another arrow and notched it to the bowstring.

Before she could take aim, the bull heaved himself to his feet. The shaft of her first arrow had broken off, leaving a bloody wound. He slung his head around, fixing her with his one good eye. In its molten-gold depths, she read terrible pain but also an unmistakable challenge. She lowered the tip of her arrow, fractionally releasing the tension on her bow. In that moment, the bull whirled away. She did not think an animal that size could move so nimbly. Trailing drops of crimson, the bull galloped away.

Moon watched him go. Her heart clenched. To kill one of the bison was an act of courage, of daring, and also of necessity, an act that allowed her people to survive the frozen darkness of the Ice Raven. But to wound such a noble creature, to let it suffer . . .

In shame, she hung her head.

“Moon!” Rushing up, Dew threw her arms around her sister. “I thought you’d be killed!”

Someone else said, “What a shot! We will sing of it to our grandsons!”

“We will do no such thing.” Moon unstrung her bow and slung it across her back. Blinking back tears, she averted her face so that none of the others could see. Theirs was the glory of the hunt, the herd now galloping away. “Go!” she cried. “The hunt calls you!”

8.) Recommend one other book or short story you have written that we should read.

If “A Hunter of the Celadon Plains” appeals to you, you might also enjoy the trilogy I mentioned, THE SEVEN-PETALED SHIELD, but I’m still in revisions and don’t have a publication date yet. My second published novel, NORTHLIGHT, is a bit like Darkover in that it’s technically science fiction but has the flavor of fantasy, with horses and knife fighting and a very gutsy but fallible heroine. It’s out of print, but readily available and in ebook format, too.

9.) Recommend one non-fiction book that you haven’t written.

A little while ago, I delved into Raphael Patai’s THE HEBREW GODDESS. It’s an anthropological study of the matriarchal, goddess-centered roots of Judaism (and therefore, all the Abrahamic religions) and how these archetypes evolved and became incorporated into a monotheistic tradition. What a treasure trove of story ideas and insights, quite apart from the theological implications. I give you permission to skip the scholarly stuff and get to the good parts.

###

Thanks, Deborah, for the interview.

Check out our interviews with past S&S contributors – , , , Sword & Sorceress 25, and Sword & Sorceress 26.

And the novel featuring my Sword & Sorceress character, spy and assassin Caina Amalas, is now available for free in all ebook formats: Child of the Ghosts.

the reductionist ethos of the Kindle Fire

Let’s talk about shiny toys. Specifically, the new Kindle Fire HD. I read a lot of tech news, so when the original Kindle Fire came out and the new Fire HD arrived, I was amused by the reaction of many tech reviewers. In particular, how they seemed offended that the Kindle Fire was not an iPad.

This review by David Pogue is a good example:

Well, let’s see now. The Fire HD has no camera on the back, no GPS navigation, no speech recognition, no to-do list or notes app. It trails the iPad in thickness, screen size, screen sharpness, Web speed, software polish and app availability. It can only dream of the iPad’s universe of accessories, cases and docks.

All this is true. The Kindle Fire is a substantially simpler device than the iPad, and it can do less stuff. But that’s not significant, because it overlooks a key point.

Namely, that tablets are first and foremost consumption devices. The vast majority of tablet users don’t use their devices for work or content creation, but the passive consumption of media – web pages, videos, games, and so forth.

More specifically, people who buy a tablet use it for five things:

-Recreational web browsing.

-Watching videos.

-Playing games.

-Checking email/Facebook/social networking.

-Light ebook reading.

The iPad can do a lot more than all that. If you get a Bluetooth keyboard dock for it, you can practically use it as a full-fledged PC device. You can do spreadsheets on it, you can VPN into your office, you can hook it up to a projector and do presentations, you can take pictures and videos and edit them, all kinds of things.

But!

I’d wager that a significant majority of the people who buy an iPad actually use it for recreational web browsing, watching videos, playing games, email/social networking, and occasional ebooks. Practically speaking, if you want to get an iPad dock and use it for work, you’re really better off getting a lower-end laptop for around $300 and $400. It will do everything the iPad can and more. But if you just want to sit on the couch at night and browse the web (as the majority of tablet users do) why spend $499 on a device to do that? Especially when you can do the same thing for under $199.

This was the excellent idea behind the original Kindle Fire. Amazon took the core functionality of a tablet – media consumption – and pared it down to a $199 device. Sure, you could do some extra tablet-y type things with it, but the main focus was media consumption. The original Fire only got middling reviews at best in the tech press, but Amazon sold millions of the things anyway. More technical reviewers care about features like Bluetooth and GPS, but the average tablet user didn’t want an iPad killer. The average tablet wanted a cheap device for media consumption.

The Kindle Fire HD as a refinement of this underlying concept. It’s still a bare-bones tablet designed primarily for media consumption. This time Amazon added a few additional features – Bluetooth, more storage, a Skype client, better speakers – but it’s still basically a device designed for passive media consumption and casual web browsing. The iPad can do more – but most home users who buy iPads wind up using them for passive media consumption and casual web browsing. Some do wind up using their iPads essentially as laptops, but most do not.

So Amazon’s idea has been to refine the tablet down to its essential nature – media consumption – first in the Fire and then in the Fire HD. I predict that while iPads will remain popular with more technically-minded (and wealthier) users, the Fire line will continue to do just fine.

-JM

free Torchlight 2 soundtrack

Runic Games has made the soundtrack for Torchlight 2 available for free.

-JM

Ghost in the Stone progress update

23 chapters down, 4 to go. I’m at 85,000 words right now, and I think another 12,000 to 20,000 words should polish off the rough draft.

If all goes well, the rough draft should be done by the end of the month. Then on to THE DRAGON’S SHADOW!

-JM

THE HIGH DEMON – 1,000 copies and a new THE THIRD SOUL novella

I’m pleased to report that my novella THE HIGH DEMON has passed over 1,000 copies sold. Actually, it’s over 1,100 – August was a good month! (This also means that the previous two novellas in the series, THE ASSASSINS and THE BLOOD SHAMAN, also sold over 1,000 copies each.)

Because of this, I’m going to do another THE THIRD SOUL novella before the end of 2012. (The working title is THE BURNING CHILD, but that might change.) Watch this space for additional updates!

-JM

ebook sales for August 2012

4,608

The Lord was good to me in August, for that is quite a lot of books. It’s also the most books I’ve ever sold in a single month. Thank you, everyone!

The big boost came from SOUL OF SORCERY, which did 349 copies in its first 13 days, and GHOST DAGGER, which did 91 copies in its first 9 days or so. GHOST DAGGER did well enough that I’m going to continue doing short novellas after I finished a full-length book – it’s a good mental reset for me, and keeps things going in the different series.

So, once again, thank you all. For historical reference, here is the record of my book sales since I started this in April 2011. Someday I’ll have to turn this into a pretty graph of some kind.

April 2011: 22

May 2011: 105

June 2011: 236

July 2011: 366

August 2011: 489

September 2011: 1335

October 2011: 1607

November 2011: 2142

December 2011: 2340

January 2012: 3261

February 2012: 3750

March 2012: 3644

April 2012: 3521

May 2012: 3886

June 2012: 3580

July 2012: 4153

August 2012: 4608

-JM

Reader Question Day #39 – criticisms of THE GHOSTS and the cosmology of DEMONSOULED

NRachel322 writes with some questions and comments about THE GHOSTS. Spoiler warning!

Questions below:

In Ghost in the Flames, why didn’t Caina work with Ephaeron? She hated mages, and he hates spies, but I think they would have put aside their differences to fight Kalastus.

The problem was that Ephaeron believed that the Ghosts were behind everything that had happened in Rasadda, as part of a plot to discredit the Magisterium. So anything that Caina said he would discount as part of the plot.

Additionally, Ephaeron hates the Ghosts, and Caina really hates the magi. Sometimes mortal enemies manage to put aside their differences to face a common foe…but sometimes they do not. In fact, frequently they do not.

In Ghost Dagger there is a serious typo. In chapter two Caina says she hopes Ark will find his missing wife someday, but Ark finds her in Ghost in the Blood, two books earlier.

That’s because GHOST DAGGER takes place after GHOST IN THE FLAMES but before GHOST IN THE BLOOD. Caina doesn’t meet Tanya (Ark’s wife) for the first time until halfway through GHOST IN THE BLOOD.

And why does Caina want children so badly? Both I and lots of other women don’t need children to make them fulfilled and happy.

This is true. That said, a very large percentage of women do, in fact, want children. Even in the United States or the UK, countries where childbirth is frequently a choice and not a method of providing for one’s old age (until Social Security runs out of money, anyway), women frequently want children. So it’s not at all unrealistic that Caina would want children.

Additionally, she was a born of a noblewoman of the Nighmarian Empire, and in the Empire it is commonly understood that noblewomen will marry and have children. Caina never questioned that assumption, and if she had questioned it, would have decided that she still wanted children. The fact that the life she wants is very different than the life she has drives a good deal of her inner conflict and motivations.

Seraph316 asks:

This is probably the wrong place to put this but I don’t know how else to contact you. I just started the book and so far so good, but I would like to know more about the series before going any deeper. From your site I was able to gather much information about the demonsouled world, all except it’s cosmology. I love mythology, and I always like to know the setup behind a fantasy world before I get into it. What is the cosmological setup behind the demonsouled world? It’s Gods, it’s creation myth, and the like.

Basically, the cosmology of the DEMONSOULED books is fairly loose. The humans have their own gods, as do the Elderborn. However, there’s some crossover – groups of humans worship the Elderborn gods (specifically, the humans of the Old Kingdoms south of Mastaria in SOUL OF TYRANTS). Additionally, not all the worshipers of a group of gods agree on how to worship those gods or even if they exist at all. The western and eastern groups of the San-keth (the serpent people) have very sharp disagreements on the nature of their god. (This will be a major plot point in the sixth book, SOUL OF SKULLS.)

I left it loose on purpose for two reasons. First, it reflects the diversity of real-world religion. Like, 90% of Christians will agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but will disagree on what that means and what to do about it. Second, it provides an excellent driver of the plot. A group of people who worship the same set of gods but disagree on the nature of those gods provides a fertile field for conflict, which is ripe to be used in a story.

Danny asks:

I like to write myself but always run into the same problem I start by doing a brief outline of what happens in the book. like a couple lines per chapter but then when I try to expand on it I seem to have trouble getting beyond 6 pages or so per chapter. I try to add descriptions and details etc to make it bigger but then always seem to get stuck. Do you do it similar or do you just write a chapter and then go onto the next and put in all the details as you go? What is the easiest and best way to do it? Thanks for any help you can give.

I do outline all my books thoroughly before I begin writing. I find this is helpful, since it provides a roadmap of where I want to go with the book. It prevents the sort of writers’ block that occurs when you get halfway through the book and don’t know where to go next.

As for getting bogged down on the details, I have found that action, not description or details, needs to drive the plot. Like, a classic mistake is starting out a book with a detailed description of the weather, or a description of what the main character looks like or is wearing (better by far to start out a book with dramatic action of some sort, like someone walks into the room and shoots a gun). A book needs to be built around actions that the protagonist or protagonists take to resolve their dilemma, whatever that may be.

In my case, the actions come first, and then the details. When I outline a book, I’ll note that in Chapter 12 “Mazael fights these people in this place”, or “Molly does this.” Then when I actually write the chapter, I will flesh it out. If in Chapter 12 Mazael is supposed to fight a dozen Malrags in a ruined castle, I can flesh it out with additional detail – one of the Malrags is a shaman, the castle’s walls are covered with lichen and it smells like mildew, the swordfight starts in the courtyard and ends upon the ramparts – that kind of thing.

I wouldn’t worry about the chapters being too short. People sometimes wonder how long a book should be, or how long a chapter should be, and the answer is always “as long as it needs to be.” It shouldn’t be any longer than that, though. Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said that key to effective public speaking was to “be sincere, be brief, be seated”, and I think that applies to writing as well.

-JM