Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 343

In praise of computer role-playing games

Recently, someone asked me what 5 movies I would take with me if I were stranded on a desert island.

“Well,” I said, “THE LORD OF THE RINGS, BATMAN BEGINS, THE DARK KNIGHT, INCEPTION, um…”

I sort of stalled out after that. The thing is, film as a medium really doesn’t do it for me. I’ve seen exactly three movies this year: BRAVE, THE AVENGERS, and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. Part of that is because I simply do not enjoy the theater-going experience – watching a movie accompanied by the bratty children of strangers is not terribly fun. Another part of it is that I enjoy other mediums more. I have seen three movies this year, but I’ve read forty-eight books.

And I like computer games much more than movies. But it has to be a specific kind of computer game. Specifically, a game that either tells a story, allows you to participate in a story, or lets you create your own story.

And of those games…wow! I can think of more than five to take with me to that hypothetical desert island. DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS, THE ELDER SCROLLS III: MORROWIND, the BALDUR’S GATE series, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT (oh, that was a classic), MOUNT AND BLADE, BETRAYAL AT KRONDOR, and a dozen others.

See, mindless games, like “Angry Birds” or whatever don’t do it for me. The game has to tell a story. Computer role-playing games like BALDUR’S GATE or DRAGON AGE are particularly good at that. And the technology for doing so has improved a great deal over time. BALDUR’S GATE has a compelling story, and almost perfectly recreates the experience of tabletop D&D gaming, but has some technological rough edges since it came out in 1998. A game like DRAGON AGE, by contrast, continues to tell a compelling story, but offers a technologically smoother (and less pixellated) experience.

I think a computer RPG, properly done, can deliver a kind of storytelling experience superior to a movie, since it can achieve an level of player investment that is harder to get from a movie viewer.

So if I’m stranded on a desert island, I might not be able to think of five movies to take with me, but I definitely can think of five computer games.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – the blurb

Cover image © Chris Doyle | Dreamstime.com

I started editing and revising SOUL OF SORCERY today, so I think it’s time the book has a blurb:

MAZAEL CRAVENLOCK has defeated the Malrags, and returned to the Grim Marches in triumph. Yet with no new enemies to conquer, his Demonsouled blood threatens to blaze out of control. When a deadly new foe attacks, will Mazael rally the Grim Marches to victory?

Or will he listen to the whispers in his blood and kill everyone who stands in his way?

RIOTHAMUS is the apprentice of the Guardian, the arcane defender of the barbarian Tervingi nation. Driven from their homes by the Malrag hordes, the Tervingi must find a new homeland. Will Riothamus help lead the Tervingi to safety?

Or will the Tervingi nation be destroyed to the last man, woman, and child?

LUCAN MANDRAGON has returned from the spirit world, his magic and his will stronger than ever. His purpose is now clear, and a great mission lies before him, a quest to rid the world of a terrible evil.

The utter destruction of the Demonsouled.

-JM

GHOST DAGGER – the rough draft finished

I finished the rough draft of GHOST DAGGER today – 22,500 words in 7 days.

I usually write books in the 100,000 word range, so it’s kind of a treat to finish an entire story in a week. After edits, GHOST DAGGER will settle in the 21,000 word range or so, and I will put it out a few weeks after SOUL OF SORCERY comes out.

Speaking of SOUL OF SORCERY, I will start editing it tomorrow. I had originally planned to start the edits on August 6th, after I had finished some business in Real Life, but my Real Life business took care of itself, so there’s no reason not to start tomorrow.

-JM

Reader Question Day #32 – the next GHOSTS book and the history of Caina’s Empire

A number of topics this week for Reader Question Day!

First, Manwe asks concerning GHOST DAGGER (the short stand-alone GHOSTS novella I am currently writing):

1). Length-I know it is a novella, but some are alot shorter than others, what are you aiming for page wise?

I ‘m currently on Chapter 7 of 10, and I’m at 13,200 words. So I think it will end up being about 18,000 to 20,000 words. Not terribly long, but not a short story, either.

2.) Price-I don’t mean to be petty here, your books are dirt cheap as is, I’m just curious.

I’m planning to price GHOST DAGGER at $1.99. Granted, pricing is kind of a fluid thing – if the move to add sales taxes to ebook prices gets legislative traction, I might have to raise prices. But for now, I’m planning to put up GHOST DAGGER for $1.99.

The idea for the novella is that since I have a lot of different series ongoing (DEMONSOULED, THE GHOSTS, THE THIRD SOUL) is that GHOST DAGGER will tide GHOSTS readers over until I start writing GHOST IN THE STONE, the next Caina book, sometime around the end of this year (more on that below).

Marsheila Rockwell asks:

But did you LIKE [THE DARK KNIGHT RISES]?

Yes. Yes, I did. I strongly suspect Bane was a metaphor for Vladimir Lenin, so it was fun to watch Batman punch metaphorical Lenin in the face.

Vicky asks:

I was just wondering when Ghost in the Stone will be coming out? I just finished Ghost in the Storm (which I loved!) and at the end of the ebook it said Ghost in the Stone will be coming out later this year, but I was wondering when.

I am planning to start writing GHOST IN THE STONE before the end of the year. Ideally, it would be nice if I could finish writing it before the end of the year, but a lot of stuff in Real Life has come up and I don’t know how it will all resolve.

Basically, this is my writing plan for the rest of 2012:

-Finish SOUL OF SORCERY.

-Finish GHOST DAGGER.

-Finish the UBUNTU DESKTOP BEGINNER’S GUIDE and the WINDOWS 8 BEGINNER’S GUIDE.

-Start writing GHOST IN THE STONE.

So it probably looks like I will start writing GHOST IN THE STONE in November, since I want to get the Ubuntu and Windows 8 books out, if possible, by the end of October (since Windows 8 and the new version of Ubuntu both come out in October, but doing both a Ubuntu book and a Windows 8 book might be overly optimistic). Because I’m starting GHOST IN THE STONE later than I had hoped, that’s why I’m writing GHOST DAGGER right now – a novella for GHOSTS readers until I can get to GHOST IN THE STONE.

I have to ask, I’m pretty sure that the Maatish society they talk about in the series is in reference to Ancient Egypt (because of their worship of cats, their pictographical hieroglyphic writing, and the pyramids talked about in Ghost in the Flame). Did you take influence from other ancient cultures/societies to create Caina’s world, or did you do actual research and make them as accurate as you could to the ancient cultures/societies/empire(s) and then just give them new names? Because the Empire reminds me of the Roman Empire, but I don’t know the history around those times very well.

Good observation! Maatish society is based on ancient Egypt. Given how obsessed the ancient Egyptians were with death (the mummies, the pyramids, the elaborate rituals of burial and the afterlife), I thought it would be interesting to have a fantasy version of ancient Egypt built upon necromancy.

In the backstory, the Saddai (the people who built the pyramids in GHOST IN THE FLAMES) were originally slaves in the Kingdom of the Rising Sun, the Maatish empire. After the Maatish kingdom collapsed, the Saddai migrated north, into the land that would become Caina’s Empire, and founded a kingdom for themselves. So though they never practiced necromancy, they were culturally influenced by the Maatish – the pyramids and so forth, and even the Saddaic language is a corrupted version of the Maatish language.

Caina’s Empire is essentially what the Western Roman Empire would have been if it had survived to the Renaissance. So there are Legions and such, but it’s more technologically and economically developed than the old Roman Empire ever managed.

When it comes to creating cultures in fantasy books, I generally just pick the details from history I find interesting (ancient Egypt and the Maatish, for instance) and go with them.

-JM

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition

This is very cool – the 1998 classic computer RPG Baldur’s Gate is getting remade as an Enhanced Edition to work on modern hardware (and there’s even going to be iOS and Android edition). It will also include a great deal of new content, in the forms of quests and new characters, and have the capability to expand the game further with new DLC modules.

I’m looking forward to it. Not that I have time for computer games these days, but I think I’ll give it a spin.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – the cover art

Cover image © Chris Doyle | Dreamstime.com

Twenty-three ebooks, and this is the first time I’ve bought cover art – I simply could not find a public domain photo or classical artwork that satisfied me. But I think this image was well worth the investment.

(If the layout looks skewed here, it’s because it’s only a screenshot of the actual cover, which is 1.5 MB.)

Anyway, if all goes well, I hope to start editing SOUL OF SORCERY on August 6th, and have the book available in September.

-JM

Caina Amalas will return in GHOST DAGGER

Before I start revising SOUL OF SORCERY, I need a mental refresher (142,000 words in 48 days is a bit of cognitive effort, let me tell you), so first I’m going to write a short 20,000 word novella in THE GHOSTS setting. Called GHOST DAGGER, it will be set between GHOST IN THE FLAMES and GHOST IN THE BLOOD, and will come out a few weeks after SOUL OF SORCERY – late October, most likely.

Why do this? Four reasons.

First, I had a cool idea for a Caina story that wouldn’t work as either a novel or a short story, so I wanted to write it.

Second, like I said, I want to give SOUL OF SORCERY a chance to cool off before I start editing it, and a few days spent writing GHOST DAGGER would fit the bill nicely.

Third, I have several different series in progress (DEMONSOULED, THE GHOSTS, and THE THIRD SOUL) and I thought it might be a good idea to put out a novella in a different series after I finish a book, to tide people over until the next book in the series.

Fourth, I used to love writing novellas – when I was much younger, it was my favorite format. Eventually, I stopped, because in old-style publishing there wasn’t much of a market for novellas.

So this is a fun experiment. Meanwhile, I’m already 2,500 words into the rough draft of GHOST DAGGER, and it shouldn’t take too long too finish. Then it’s on to the edits of SOUL OF SORCERY!

-JM

Kobo Writing Life

Kobo announced their self-publishing portal this week, so I had someone ask if I’ll be putting my books on Kobo.

Actually, all my books are already on Kobo, via Smashwords.My Kobo sales haven’t been terribly impressive – a grand total of 68 books in 2012. So I haven’t paid very much attention to Kobo before now.

That said, I did upload THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS books through Kobo Writing Life, and the interface is slick and easy to use. The reporting is also excellent. So I’m going to upload all future books via Kobo Writing Life instead of through Smashwords. If Kobo continues to expand, this will prove to be a good idea. Also, there’s currently no good way to sell ebooks in Canada and Australia, save for Kobo and iTunes.

So as of today, all of my book pages here have a Kobo link on them – if you want to buy a book via Kobo, the link is there.

-JM

The Ubuntu Beginner’s Guide and thoughts on ebook pricing

I uploaded the fourth edition of my popular (it’s been as high as #3,300 on the Kindle store, it is frequently #1 in the Linux category, and it’s the first hit for “ubuntu” on Amazon’s search engine) Ubuntu Beginner’s Guide today, and it should be available shortly. For the fourth edition, I added a section on using key-based authentication for SSH clients and servers, instructions for altering the Unity environment in Ubuntu 12.04, and made sure everything was up to date for the latest version of Ubuntu.

I hemmed and hawed over it for much longer than I would care to admit, but I decided to try selling the book at $2.99 instead of $0.99. I came to this decision for three reasons. First, I think there is enough information in the book to justify a price of $2.99 (it’s up to 42,000 words now, and the first edition had only about 34,000), and most competing Ubuntu books that discuss server configuration cost at a minimum $16, and often quite more. Second, updating the book to reflect changes in Ubuntu is a lot of work, and I don’t want to abandon the book.

The final reason ties into this – it will be more economical for me to maintain the book at $2.99 instead of $0.99. In June, I sold 680 copies the book. To make an equivalent amount of money at $2.99, I would only need to sell 117 copies.

Granted, it might not be possible to sell that many copies at $2.99, but we’ll see. I think I will keep the price there for a month and see if the results are desirable or not.

-JM

SOUL OF SORCERY – the rough draft is done!

142,700 words, written over 48 days, from June 3rd to July 21st.

I think editing will cut down about 15,000 of those or so, but it’s still the longest DEMONSOULED book I’ve written yet. And with this book, I’ve written over a half a million words in the DEMONSOULED universe. (Actually, it might be closer to 550,000 words – someday we’ll have a heck of an omnibus edition!)

A late September release for the book is looking more and more likely, if all goes well.

-JM