Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 350

two down…

…and two more to go.

-JM

Let’s Get Digital, by David Gaughran – free on Amazon

Let’s Get Digital, David Gaughran’s primer on electronic self-publishing, has gone briefly free on Amazon.

I read it back in August, and it was extremely helpful – it’s no coincidence that I only started seeing 4-digit monthly book sales after I read this book.

So if you’re interested in electronic self-publishing, but don’t know where to start, Gaughran’s book is an excellent introduction to the topic, and I recommend it completely.

-JM

Reader Question Day #22 ADDENDUM – further thoughts on Dragon Age Origins

Apropos of our recent discussion on Dragon Age Origins, someone asked what choices I made in my playthrough of the game. Well, here they are – though note that of course this contains massive spoilers for Dragon Age Origins and its DLC if you haven’t played them.

After trying the various origin stories, I settled on the female elf mage with the default name and appearance. This caught my fancy because of the dramatic potential the character arc offered. After all, it’s not surprising that a human or dwarven noble would rise to lead Ferelden against the Blight – it’s what he (or she) was trained and born to do. But in the world of Dragon Age, an elf and a mage is doubly outcast, and the female elf mage looks like a harmless slip of a girl. Yet by the end of the game, this harmless slip of a girl would have defeated demons in their own realm, dared the darkness of the Deep Roads and returned to crown a dwarven king, thrown down a high dragon, rallied ancient enemies to stand united against the Blight, defeated Loghain Mac Tir in single combat, and plunged a sword into the skull of an archdemon.

That was what caught my attention – what kind of experiences would it take to transform a timid elven apprentice mage into the feared and respected Warden-Commander of Ferelden?

(This is partly what I mean by agency – a computer RPG needs to offer both an illusion of control and a sense of ownership in the player characters.)

So what key choices did this female mage make during the game?

-She tried to help Jowan escape from the Circle, since I decided that she would believe him falsely accused of blood magic.

-She refused to kill either Isolde or Connor, and instead saved the mages of the Circle solely so they could send her into the Fade to battle the demon that had control of Connor.

-She talked Zathrien into repenting and freed the werewolves from their curse.

(Needless to say, I put a lot of skill points into Coercion.)

-She destroyed the Anvil of the Void because she thought it evil.

-She crowned Bhelen king of the dwarves becuase she thought the dwarven caste system stupid.

-She fell in love with Alistair.

-She killed Loghain at the Landsmeet and made Alistair king, and managed to continue her relationship with Alistair while marrying him to Anora. (Again, Coercion.)

-She accepted Morrigan’s offer, and had Alistair impregnate Morrigan. This was mostly because I wanted to play “Awakening” with the same character, rather than a new one.

Anyway, I think those were all the major choices I made during the game. At some point I may replay it and make different choices to see what happens, but that probably won’t be for a while. I have books to write first, y’see.

-JM

ebook sales for April 2012

3,521 copies.

This is down from my all-time post-holiday high in February. However, it’s only down 229 from the post-holiday February high of 3,750. And in April of 2011, I sold a grand total of 22 books.

So, believe you me, I extremely grateful to everyone who bought a book, in this month and in all previous months. And if all goes well, I should have new books coming in June (more on that later).

In the meantime, for historical reference, here are my monthly book sales going back to April of 2011:

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

-JM

Reader Question Day #22 – all about Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2

Manwe writes:

[BioWare canceled the planned Exalted March expansion to Dragon Age 2.] What do you make of all this? Think this was a good move on their part? Or not?

I suppose it came down a raw question of economics. If they figured that the expansion wouldn’t sell enough to justify the expense, then they would certainly pull the plug. And if the basic concept of Dragon Age 2 was flawed, then an expansion back wouldn’t fix it. And I do think the basic concept was flawed. RPG games like “Dragon Age” that give the player an illusion of agency (or control over the story) need to walk a careful line to keep that sense of agency in the player.

Dragon Age Origins did that pretty well. Granted, no matter what the player did, the archdemon died at the end. But the circumstances of that ending could be wildly different depending on player choices throughout the game, up to and including having the player’s character die at the end. You could play Dragon Age Origins a bit like Gandalf, rallying the nations to face the terrible darkness. Or you could play somewhat like the way Cesare Borgia would have fought the archdemon – building a massive alliance by cutthroat diplomacy (and the occasional judicious murder), and then ruthlessly sacrificing Alistair or Loghain to kill the archdemon – and then taking all the credit as the Hero of Ferelden.

Anyway, I don’t think Dragon Age 2 was as successful as instilling that illusion of agency. (More on that below.)

Are you sad to see the expansion canceled? (Were you even hoping for one?)

Actually, I didn’t even know there was an expansion coming. I’m not surprised to see it canceled, though, since Dragon Age 2 didn’t do as well as Dragon Age Origins.

Last but not least, I asked you back last year to tell me your thoughts on DA2 back when you finished it. Well I’m not sure if you have finished it or not, but you may have played it enough to have had it make an impression of you. So, what are your thoughts on DA2? Do you like it? How about in comparison to DA1? You know that kind of stuff. I do remember you saying something about going from epic battle against evil to social justice not being the best of choices!

I never did get around to finishing it – I’ve been crazy busy the last year and a half, and I got to the end of the quest where the crazy blood mage murders Hawke’s mother.

Dragon Age 2 was a perfectly fine game. The story was good. The combat was fun and streamlined. The characters were compelling. The leveling and skill system was coherent. The voice acting, as usual in a Bioware game, was excellent. The game would have made an excellent novel.

That said, I think it had three problems.

The first, mentioned above, was the agency thing. The game felt less like you had control over the choices and more like you were an actor in somebody else’s script. This is of course true for any game, but in an RPG genre, that illusion of agency is important.

The second and third are interconnected. The game lacked a compelling antagonist. In Dragon Age Origins, you had to fight the all-devouring Blight and the hordes of darkspawn, led by the archdemon, once a god of radiant beauty, now a twisted and deformed nightmare spreading its agony through the world. In Dragon Age 2, the villain was…

…social injustice, namely the way the templars brutalize the mages.

This might have worked in a novel, but not in a game. It’s especially tricky because neither the mages nor the templars are particularly likeable. Most of the templars are indeed cruel and paranoid as the mages claim…but most of the mages are indeed the psychotic blood mages the templars claim, and a mage who goes bad can inflict an appalling amount of harm. They kind of deserve each other. The game makes you pick one side or another (though that doesn’t effect the ending – again, the illusion of agency vanishes), which isn’t terribly compelling. (A third choice, one that lets you stay neutral, or wipe out both sides, would have helped.)

The third problem, related to this, was that the game got preachy. The mages obviously represented a variety of oppressed minorities, and I suspect the developers intended the players to sympathize more with them. And there is nothing so boring, or so tedious, as a work of fiction that intends to Make A Point, Teach A Moral, or convert the reader to the author/game developer’s social and political point of view. Storytelling in any medium is an illusion, a magician’s trick – and having a story subvert itself in the service of a moral is a bit like a magician interrupting a trick to offer a twenty minute harangue on the capital gains tax or whatever.

All that said, I do intend to finish the game. Someday. In some magical future wonderland where I have free time.

The future of the series: given DA2, the asunder stuff, etc do you think the series will remain true to it’s high fantasy roots (it was after all supposed to be the spiritual successor of the old D&D games like Baldurs Gate), or do you think bioware will take it down an even darker, bleaker path in future installments? I personally don’t know, maybe with the outcry over the ME3 ending, and bioware rediscovering what made their old games so loved, they will backtrack a little.

I dunno. Bioware is owned by EA now, and EA isn’t exactly known for its devotion to artistic integrity and high-quality storytelling. I think the computer game development is increasingly like the book publishing world – you can find better quality and more vibrant storytelling in independently developed games, rather than in the moribund game publishers.

That said…seeing as how your the master of the ebook and it’s tools: I have a kindle, the basic kind, if I ever were to upgrade it, which should I go with? I don’t believe I need all the extra features of the Fire, though it would be nice to have an ebook reader in color. Is the Kindle Fire even worth it? And while I like Amazon better than B&N, the NookColor looks pretty nice, but not sure if that is better than a kindle.

It depends. An eInk reader is a lot easier on the eyeballs than even the nicest LCD screen. I suspect LCDs will catch up to eInk eventually, but they’re not quite there yet. So if you get a color ereader, you’re essentially getting a basic tablet.

The Kindle Fire gets panned a lot in the press, but everyone I personally know who has one is quite happy with it. (Though anecdote is not the singular form of data.) Granted, it is a very basic tablet – no Bluetooth or microSD slot or GPS or any of the other bells and whistles that come with higher-end tablets. That says, it does everything 90% of tablet users will ever need, and if you’re in that 90%, go for it. The Nook Color/Tablet are both basically color ereaders with some extra functionality attached, while the Fire is more of a basic tablet (Amazon’s app store is way better than Barnes & Noble’s).

The one basic problem with both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Color/Tablet is that it locks you into the respective ecosystems of Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (Amazon’s ecosystem is a lot better, but if you just want a color ereader, go for the Nook Color/Tablet. If you want a basic tablet, get the Fire). If I were to spring for a 7 inch tablet, I’d probably get a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-7-Inch-Wi-Fi/dp/B007P4VOWC

It’s $250, but you can install both the Kindle and Nook apps on it, giving you access to both ecosystems.

Kallinikos writes:

Why do the Legions in GHOST IN THE STORM have 600 men in each cohort, when real Roman legions usually had 480 men to a cohort?

Because Caina’s Empire, the Empire of Nighmar, in GHOST IN THE STORM, borrows some aspects from ancient Rome, but only some. (The Empire of Nighmar, unlike Rome, was never a republic.) In the Nighmarian Empire, the Legions have 6,000 men, divided into ten cohorts of 600 men each. Each cohort is divided into six centuries, led by a centurion, and each cohort is commanded by a tribune. The Legion overall is commanded by a Lord Commander. The centurions have different degrees of rank and privilege, with the first centurion of a cohort having more authority than the second, third, and fourth and so forth. The first centurion of the first cohort is the highest ranked centurion in the Legion, commonly called the first spear centurion, which is the rank Ark held when he was in the Legions.

Caina doesn’t interact much with the Legions in THE GHOSTS books, largely because she is a woman and therefore it would be difficult to infiltrate the Legions (who are primarily loyal to the Emperor anyway) to any useful degree. Ark, however, is a veteran of the Legions, which is a major plot point in GHOST IN THE STORM.

Deedee writes:

Does Caina have romance in Ghost in the Storm?

Read and find out!

-JM

Amazon, ebooks, and Gutenberg

Here is an interesting post expanding on something I’ve thought for a while. Namely, that ebooks and low-cost ereaders are as big a revolution in literacy and the written word as Gutenberg and his printing press once were.

It’s remarkable how the production and distribution of books has become democratized (for lack of a better word). It used to take a team of experts and specialists to produce a book that people would actually buy. You needed an expensive printing press and people to do the layout of the book and to operate the press. You needed warehouses to store the books, trucks to ship the books places, and stores which would sell your books.

Now, for my most recent book, GHOST IN THE STORM, I wrote on a computer running Ubuntu 11.10, a free operating system. I used LibreOffice, a free office suite, to do the actual writing and editing. I turned it into an ebook file using Sigil, another free program, and converted it into the different ebook formats using Calibre, still another free application. I did the cover using the GIMP (a free image editing program) and public domain artwork (thanks, Arthur Rackham!). I then uploaded the file to the various ebook sites.

In this entire process, my expenses were:

-The computer I was using to write, a $270 netbook.

-My Internet connection, $60 a month.

-The sales percentage taken by the ebook vendors.

-My free time (which I would have wasted playing computer games anyway).

And since it came out in April 23rd, GHOST IN THE STORM has sold 125 copies in 10 days. By the end of the month, it will most probably have covered my expenses (which, I should point out, are expenses I would have had even if I had not written the book).

Long term (regardless of my personal profit), I think this is a good thing for society. It will mean an increase in literacy, a return in reading as a form of recreation, and easier exchange of information and ideas.

-JM

GHOST IN THE STORM is out now

GHOST IN THE STORM, the fourth book in THE GHOSTS series, is now available for your Kindle and Nook. You can get it at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

(It should be available in iBooks in a few weeks.)

You can read the first chapter of GHOST IN THE STORM right here.

And if you haven’t started THE GHOSTS series yet, the first book in the series, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, is available for free in all ebook formats here.

And what is GHOST IN THE STORM about, you ask? Read on to find out:

CAINA AMALAS is a Ghost nightfighter, one of the Emperor’s elite spies and assassins. And though she remains anonymous, already legends grow around her. Whispers speak of the Ghost nightfighter who stopped the fire of the gods from consuming Rasadda, who defeated sorcerers of terrible power, who liberated slaves and threw down cruel lords.

Yet now the storm is coming to claim her…

ARK spent five long years hunting for his missing wife and son. Now, at long last, he has found them again. When the storm comes, he will do anything to save them.

No matter what the cost to himself…

KYLON is a stormdancer of New Kyre, master of the sword, wielder of the sorcery of air and water. The youngest man ever to claim the title of stormdancer, he will fight for the honor of his city and his sister.

Even if he is doomed to fail…

REZIR SHAHAN is an Emir of Istarinmul, a man of cruelty and power, a tyrant who rules over his slaves with a rod of iron. For too long the commoners of the Empire have defied their rightful masters.

When the storm comes, he will teach them to wear a slave’s collar…

ANDROMACHE is one of the nine archons of New Kyre, her lineage ancient, her authority vast. For the honor of her city, she will bring the storm of war to the Empire.

And when she does, her true master will reward her with dark power beyond imagining.

-JM

SOUL OF SERPENTS – a one year retrospective

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2011 – 2012 has been one of the most eventful years of my life. One of the reasons is that on May 1, 2011, I began writing SOUL OF SORCERY.

My reasons for doing so were varied. I had written the first book in the series, DEMONSOULED, in 2001, and a sequel, SOUL OF TYRANTS, in 2005. DEMONSOULED was published in 2005, but did not sell very well, which mean there was no demand for SOUL OF TYRANTS. I always regretted never having the chance to continue the story.

Another regret influenced me. I had never been entirely happy with how I handled Romaria Greenshield in DEMONSOULED’s ending, and I wanted to rectify that. But I couldn’t do that without writing another book.And DEMONSOULED had been out of print for five years. The books were dead and forgotten.

Then at last these regrets met opportunity.

In April of 2011, I started experimenting with self-publishing ebooks. At first, I thought I’d only be able to sell short technical books as ebooks – things like my UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE and WINDOWS COMMAND LINE BEGINNER’S GUIDE. But I put up DEMONSOULED and SOUL OF TYRANTS to see what would happen. But by themselves they were incomplete. I wanted a fantasy trilogy, so I could say offhandedly that I had written a trilogy of fantasy books.

So on May 1, 2011, I started writing the third book, SOUL OF SORCERY.

I remember well how strange it felt, to return to this world and those characters after a six-year absence. How different the (real) world had been, and how different I had been, in 2005. No Kindles, Nooks, iPhones or iPads back then, and in 2005 I lived in a different state and had a different job.

It was also a pleasurable experience – six years of additional practice had simply made me a better writer, and I could write much more quickly and easily than I could in 2005. And I had missed this world, and enjoyed the chance to return to it at last and continue the story.

I finished in August, and self-published the book on August 21, 2011. I didn’t expect anything to come of it. But! I now had my trilogy of fantasy books. I had heard writers garnered good results by making the first book of a long series free. So I did just that at the end of September.

Eight months later, SOUL OF SERPENTS has sold about 3500 copies, and it will (probably) reach 4000 sometime in May or June, if current trends continued. At the end of 2011, I wrote a fourth book, SOUL OF DRAGONS, and it is nearing 2000 copies sold since it came out in February. After I finish my current side project, I will start working on the fifth book, SOUL OF SORCERY, at the start of June.

As Vizzini would say, inconceivable!

And I remember sitting down to start writing SOUL OF SORCERY late on the night of May 1, 2011, having no idea that any of this would happen.

I guess there is nothing to say but this: thank you, everyone.

-JM

Reader Question Day #21 – Mount & Blade & Tea

Manwe asks:

Regarding the [medieval romances] do you like the genre? And have you read any of the medieval sagas? I have a deep affinity for them.

Back in college, I actually did my senior thesis on La Chanson de Roland. Of course, that’s technically a chanson de geste, but the character of Roland turned up in the later Romances as part of the Matter of France. I’ve read Mallory and several of the different permutations of the Arthurian legend. What’s interesting is that Count Roland actually existed (Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard mention the “Count Hruolandus of the Breton March”) and Arthur probably did not, but Arthur is vastly more famous than Roland, at least in the English-speaking world.

Of course, Charlemagne gets a cool rock opera written about him.

I just picked up The Belgariad series (by Eddings) after I heard good things about it. Any thoughts on the series?

The Belgariad and the Malloreon are entertaining, but not deep. Eddings writes very clear, readable prose (which, take it from me, is a lot harder to do than it looks), but his books tend to be very light and breezy. So I thought they were an entertaining read, but not a profound one. They definitely lack the current trend of angsty nihilism, so that is a point in their favor.

Garnet asks:

Is [GHOST IN THE STORM] available at iTunes yet for iBook?

Not yet. For some reason, Apple has been increasingly slow to accept ebooks from Smashwords – I suspect Apple is trying to force people into using iBooks Author. Which is disappointing, because I sell a lot of books off iTunes, but not enough to justify the cost of buying a Mac just to use iBooks Author.

However, iBooks runs off EPUB files, and if you’re comfortable sideloading books onto your iPad/iPhone (it’s pretty easy) you can get the EPUB of GHOST IN THE STORM off Smashwords.



Kallinikos asks:

If you could pick just one computer game, what would it be?

Mount & Blade: Warband. You can conquer a medieval world via overwhelming economic superiority. Which reminds me of a book I just read – THE DRAGON’S PATH by Daniel Abraham, an epic fantasy about an orphaned refugee. After her home is destroyed, instead of taking up sword and going on a quest, she…starts a bank. It works rather well.

rose asks:

Coffee or tea?

Tea, definitely. Back in 2011, I emergency-taught a section of Modern World History with exactly six days to prepare. The only way I got through that was by drinking cup after cup of black tea.

-JM

I am Kylon

I am Kylon of House Kardamnos, a stormdancer of New Kyre.

I have held a sword every day since the age of five. I know the art of the blade as well as I know my own hands.  It is in battle that I feel the most alive, that I am at peace with myself.

For I have doubts.

I know the sorcery of wind and wave. The sorcery of wind gives me the speed of a hurricane, and the sorcery of water gives my limbs the strength of a raging river. No normal man can stand against me and live.

But when the fighting is over, my doubts return.

My sister says that her plan will succeed, that we will win honor and power unlike any other in the history of the Kyracian people. Yet I fear her plan will lead not to victory, but to ruin and disaster.

But for love of her I will follow, and I will fight.

Even if it means my own death.

Click here to read an excerpt from GHOST IN THE STORM.

Buy at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.