Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 355

Reader Question Day 13: of writing and philosophy

It's Saturday, which means it's time for Reader Question Day!

Note that mild spoilers for THE GHOSTS series follow.

Danny asks:

I just finished the third book in the demonsouled series and it was brilliant. Raymond e feist has always been my favourite writer but are definetely giving him a run for his money. How do you manage to portray these things as if you are there I always struggle with that when trying to write myself?

Thanks for the kind words about SOUL OF SERPENTS!

As for the writing, I suppose it just boils down to lots and lots of practice – I've been writing (or at least attempting to write) since 1998 or so. Hopefully, all that practice has paid off. I'd like to think I'm better at it after fourteen years.

I think life experience is part of it, too. I'm older than I was in 1998, and I've had a ton of stuff happen to me in the last fourteen years, some good, some bad, and some of it downright weird. So it gets easier to write as you get older, because you've had more practice with it, and you've had a bit more stuff happen to you.

Manwe asks:

Do you intentionally write any theological/philosophical themes or ideas into your work? Or is it just happenstance?

Sometimes. The villain in GHOST IN THE FLAMES was based on this particularly unpleasant militant atheist blogger I came across. Not that I have anything against atheists, but there's a difference between "I find no empirical basis for the existence of God and therefore I cannot definitively commit myself to His existence, thank you very much" and "I want to take a crap in a nativity scene", and this blogger embraced the "crap in a nativity scene" philosophy with a bit too much gusto. At about the same time, I'd just read a book where yet another cliched Sinister Priest from Central Casting was the villain. The book was so dreadfully trite and predictable that I thought "screw it, let's do the exact opposite with GHOST IN THE FLAMES."

Other times it happens by accident. I'm not a particularly deep thinker, mind. When I write a book, I tend not to think "this book needs more theological/philosophical themes." What I actually think is that  "this book needs MORE EXPLOSIONS! And dragons! With lasers strapped to their heads!"

Are there any mythologies out there that have a strong influence on any of your works?

Not really. I usually get more influence from history than from mythology per se. I do think Egyptian mythology is fascinating in a dystopian sort of way, and someday I'd like to write a novel about someone who escapes from the Egyptian afterlife. (Along the lines of Glen Cook's excellent "Instrumentalities of the Night" series and Norse mythology.)

That said, I do tend to loot our modern 21st century mythologies for book ideas. I suspect a lot of what 21st-century Westerners regard as a rational and enlightened worldview is in fact as mythical as Ra sailing his solar barge over the deserts of Egypt. For instance, the magi in THE GHOSTS series tend to be hardcore rationalists – they never speak of themselves as "practicing sorcery", but as "studying the arcane sciences", and they want to see the Empire ruled by an educated elite – namely, themselves. Like the old Soviet nomenklatura, but with more sorcery. The idea for that came from the sort of opinion article one finds every so often where an economist or a sociologist or a biologist argues that what society really needs is to be ruled by more economists or sociologists or biologists, or at least people who will do exactly what economists or sociologists or biologists tell them to do.

Kallinikos asks:

When are you going to start writing Ghost in the Storm!?!?

Thirty seconds after I hit the "Publish" button for this post.

-JM

the next book

My current writing project is done! So now on to the next book.

I'm going to write a book about a woman.

Specifically, a woman of about twenty. Short and lean, with black hair and blue eyes. She's pretty enough, and seems little different than any other young woman of station and wealth.

Yet anyone who spends enough time around her starts to notice…oddities. Like how very cold those blue eyes are. The servants are used to being ignored, to fading into the background, yet she sees them. She sees almost everything.

She smiles brightly, and laughs at the jokes of her elders. Yet sometimes she says…other things. She'll glance at a man's hand, and know his occupation by the pattern of the calluses on his palm. Or she'll look at his boots, and the dust upon his laces will tell her upon what streets he has trodden.

And sometimes, very rarely, she'll lift her hand to cover a laugh, and a glint of metal will show in her sleeve. As if she had knives strapped to her forearm.

But such glimpses come but rarely. Because the mind behind those cold blue eyes is always turning, like the gears of an endless clock. Or a razor forever sharpening itself against a stone. Pain and loss forged that mind into a weapon, and by her cunning she has defeated adversaries of terrible power, and thrown down ancient horrors out of legend.

She goes by the name Anna Callenius, daughter of Basil Callenius of the Imperial Collegium of Jewelers. In other cities she has called herself Countess Marianna of House Nereide, a noble house proud in lineage but poor in wealth.

But her true name is Caina Amalas, and she is a nightfighter of the Ghosts.

And now the storm has come for her.

-JM

Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I've decided to start a newsletter. I don't plan to put one out very often – only to announce new books and special giveaways or promotions. So if you sign up for it, you don't need to worry about getting spammed into oblivion.

If you want to sign up, you can do so here.

Follow Homer Simpson's example, and sign up!

-JM

Reader Question Day 12 – Caina's romances, Linux books, and real-life inspirations

It's Saturday, so it's time for Reader Question Day.

Jacqueline writes:

When is SOUL OF SORCERY coming out?

Hopefully, fall 2012. So this year yet. If all goes well.

nboard9 writes:

When do you find time to write? Or is writing your full-time job?

Writing is not my full-time job. My real job is doing IT stuff. I do writing on the side.

As for finding time to write…well, I don't have a TV. You can waste an astonishing amount of time with TV. And there's not much that's enjoyable on TV, either. So ignoring TV frees up a lot of time. I suppose that takes me out of the pop culture mainstream, but I can live with that. Of course, I have other obligations I can't skimp on, so I don't sleep a lot, either. At least during the week. On Saturdays I tend to crash and sleep.

Anyway, my point is that writing is work, and if you want to do it seriously, you need to carve out the time to do it. And if you have to give up TV to do it, well, there's nothing good on TV anyway.

It's strange that you write both fantasy and computer books. Why do you write computer books?

Because I can, and they sell well.

More concretely, I started writing about computers by accident. Back in 2008 I happened to write about a problem I was having with Ubuntu Linux on my blog, and the next day I was astonished to see that the post had gotten 60 hits off Google searches for the same problem. So I started to blog more seriously about technology problems, and with Google Adsense I managed to turn it into a profitable sideline. So when ebooks came along, it seemed only natural to write short computer ebooks.

Angelina writes:

I also thought that Halfdan and Ark were fab, but wanted Ark and Caina to get together. Does Caina ever find romance?

Not quite yet. In another few weeks, I'm planning to start work on GHOST IN THE STORM, and we'll see what happens then.

Manwe writes:

Characters like Mazael, Caina, Lucan, did any of these characters have any real life inspirations behind them? For example, Tolkien character Aragorn was in part inspired by the real life poet/adventurer Roy Campbell. Do any of your characters have anything like that? Or even if they have no real life inspirations behind them, what about literary, film, etc inspirations?

Not really. At least not the main characters.

The idea for Mazael came from the doctrine of original sin. The idea for his name came from a high school music class, from Johnann Maelzl, who invented the metronome. I thought his name was so distinctive I wrote it down and eventually modified it for DEMONSOULED.

The idea for Caina came from sheer stubbornness on my part. Back in 2007 when SWORD & SORCERESS XXII opened for submissions, I carefully wrote a story and sent it in. It came back with a rejection letter saying that while the story was good, it didn't have the right tone for the anthology. At that point there was still a week left in the submission period, so in three days I wrote and edited a story with exactly the opposite tone as the first, and sent it in. I wanted the story's main character to have a name that sounded both feminine and hard, so I picked Caina's name by thinking of Cain & Abel, and adding an "a" to the end of Cain's name. Amusingly, I later learned that Dante had named one of his circles of hell "Caina."

Lucan came about almost by accident. In the background for DEMONSOULED, I decided that Lord Richard Mandragon would have two sons – one warrior, and one wizard. Lucan had only a small part in DEMONSOULED, but he was much more prominent in SOUL OF TYRANTS. Then there was a six year gap between SOUL OF TYRANTS and SOUL OF SERPENTS, and I read a bunch of Michael Moorcock's Elric stories, and found them entertaining yet morally repulsive – and I saw a lot of resemblance to Lucan. So Lucan in SOUL OF SERPENTS and SOUL OF DRAGONS has a strong Moorcockian influence on his character – or, at least, my interpretation of Moorcock's Elric books.

Occasionally, I'll base the physical description of a minor villain off someone I knew.

(MINOR SPOILER ALERT!)

Gaith Kalborn in SOUL OF DRAGONS, for instance, looks suspiciously like a manager I had as a teenager, a manager who got arrested for massive embezzlement. (Honestly, I can't remember the man's name, but I remember exactly what he looked like – sort of like an even angrier version of Tony Soprano, and how he constantly reeked of excessive cologne.) Agria Palaegus in GHOST IN THE BLOOD resembles a woman I knew who left her husband of twenty years due to "boredom" (she finished college and he did not), only to hook up with a college-educated man who cleaned out her bank account and disappeared. (I met both these people at my first job as a teenager, which in retrospect was a highly screwed-up place to work.)

Of course, the physical descriptions are vague enough that I don't get sued – stocky and blue-eyed could apply to a lot of people. But sometimes I'll have specific people in mind when I describe minor villains.

And that's Reader Question Day for this week! Write in with your questions, and I'll answer them next week.

-JM

Soul of Sorcery – a preview

SOUL OF DRAGONS has been out for just over two weeks, but already I've gotten questions about the next book in the DEMONSOULED series, SOUL OF SORCERY. Which is, of course, very cool. But already people are asking when it will come out. And what will it be about?

I'm hoping to start writing SOUL OF SORCERY sometime this summer. I have two other projects to finish first – THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER'S GUIDE, and GHOST IN THE STORM, the fourth book in THE GHOSTS series. The Linux book is going very well and I should be done in the first half of March, and after that's done, I will immediately start GHOST IN THE STORM (the book is already outlined). Once GHOST IN THE STORM is done, I'll get cracking on SOUL OF SORCERY. So I'll start the book in summer, and hopefully it should be done by late fall.

As for what it will be about…well…

There are mild spoilers from SOUL OF SERPENTS and SOUL OF DRAGONS ahead, so read on at your own risk.

As you'll recall, Ultorin's attack in SOUL OF SERPENTS wiped out most of the population of the eastern Grim Marches. The eastern Grim Marches are near the Great Mountains, and throughout the DEMONSOULED series, the barbarian nations east of the mountains have been mentioned in passing. And now Malrag hordes are rampaging through the lands east of the mountains (Ultorin, Malavost, and Corvad were not the only ones who thought a private Malrag army was a spiffy idea), and the barbarian nations are losing. Badly. They're desperate to get away, to find a place of safety. Someplace away from the Malrag hordes.

There are all these recently depopulated lands in the Grim Marches, ripe for the claiming.

And a cult among the barbarians worships the Old Demon as a god.

If all goes well, you'll be able to find out what happens in fall 2012.

-JM

SOUL OF DRAGONS – the first two weeks

SOUL OF DRAGONS, the fourth book in the DEMONSOULED series, has now been out for two weeks, and I'm pleased to report that in those two weeks, it has sold 224 copies. That is a very strong start for the book.

Thanks, everyone!

Tune in tomorrow, and we'll talk a little bit about the upcoming fifth book in the DEMONSOULED series – SOUL OF SORCERY. In the meantime, if you want to check out SOUL OF DRAGONS, you can get it at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

-JM

Ghost in the Flames – 1,000 copies

This past week GHOST IN THE FLAMES, the second book in THE GHOSTS series, reached the milestone of 1,000 copies sold.

Thank you, everyone! Since GHOST IN THE FLAMES got rejected around thirty-five or forty times, this is especially sweet.

And, of course, if you want to help GHOST IN THE FLAMES get to 2,000 copies sold, you know where to go:

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Smashwords, Amazon.co.uk.

-JM

Reader Question Day 11 – Of Romance And Book Schedules

Manwe asks:

Now that the fourth Demonsouled book is out, do you imagine it will be months or years before the next?

Months. Before 2013. I hope.

Here's my writing plan for the rest of 2012.

I had planned to start writing GHOST IN THE STORM, the fourth book in THE GHOSTS, this month. However, due to some financial pressure I've started writing THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER'S GUIDE. My computer books are usually strong sellers, and I am really going to need the money a couple months down the road. Fortunately, they're fairly short (it shouldn't be longer than 40,000 words), and I should have THE LINUX COMMAND LINE BEGINNER'S GUIDE wrapped up by March.

Then I'm going to start GHOST IN THE STORM. That should be done by mid-to-late summer.

So if all goes well, I should start SOUL OF SORCERY, the fifth DEMONSOULED book, in late summer, and have it wrapped up before 2013.

If all goes well. Life has a way of flinging curveballs. But if everything works, that's the plan.

Chris asks about THE GHOSTS:

Hi, I'm a huge fan of the series and find them very interesting. I appreciate the fact that the series is based on a strong, complicated heroine. I do have one question though. Throughout the series Caina encounters men that could one day be more to her than just brothers/fathers/friends. Is there any chance we will see Caina finally find someone she loves and accepts her for who she is?

Thanks for the kind words about THE GHOSTS books!

I'm…actually kind of surprised at how often people ask about Caina's love life, or the lack thereof. But I shouldn't be. People like romance. Even if they say they don't.

But, to answer the question, at some point Caina will have a romantic entanglement. But to tell more would be a spoiler. Though to get a hint, read THE GHOSTS story in SWORD & SORCERESS XVI.

Kallinikos asks:

Android or iOS?

I prefer Android. It's usually more customizable and configurable than iOS. Plus, Android devices usually have removable batteries, which Apple devices never do.

James asks:

Did you see the Game of Thrones series on HBO?

I did not. I might see it when it comes out on DVD. But to be honest it's not very likely, since I do not care for gratuitous nudity, and I'm sure HBO has a guy who's job is to make sure every episode has at least three nude scenes.

That said, I'm curious what will happen in a few years when the TV show catches up to the book series, which will probably never be completed. It would not surprise me if HBO has a ghostwriter provision in its contract to let them hire a writer.

However, the soundtrack from the series is first rate.

-JM

And Now For Some Important Advice Concerning John Carter Of Mars

Do not, under any circumstances, come between John Carter of Mars and the woman he loves. Because John Carter of Mars will destroy your civilization.

When the Martian Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for John Carter of Mars.

Also, if you are the immortal tyrant of Mars, ruling with an iron fist over uncountable millions, attended by legions of invincible soldiers who regard your every whim as divine law, commanding a vast fleet of terrible Martian aircraft, and residing in an impregnable fortress from whom no man has ever escaped, do not attempt to kidnap the beloved wife of John Carter of Mars. Trust me on this – it will not end well. For you, anyway.

Because John Carter of Mars does not sleep. He waits.

(Why yes – I have been reading THE MARTIAN TRILOGY by Edgar Rice Burroughs.)

-JM

Soul of Dragons is out now

SOUL OF DRAGONS, the fourth book in the DEMONSOULED series, is now available. You can get it at Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Download it now for your Kindle or your Nook.

(SOUL OF DRAGONS should be available on iTunes in a few weeks.)

Haven't made up your mind? You can read the first chapter from SOUL OF DRAGONS right here.

And if you haven't read the DEMONSOULED series yet, you can get the first book for free here – it's available for Kindles, Nooks, and iPads.

What, you ask, is SOUL OF DRAGONS about? Here's the official book description.

MAZAEL CRAVENLOCK stands victorious over all his foes, and wishes nothing more than to live quietly in peace, overseeing his lands. Yet a relic of the ancient world, a thing of black sorcery, has been unearthed, a weapon that threatens to turn the Grim Marches to a realm of corpses.

And Mazael's sins might return to devour him…

ROMARIA GREENSHIELD has mastered herself at last, the human and Elderborn halves of her soul in harmony. Free from her past, she travels north to start a new life in the Grim Marches.

But now she faces a hunter that even she might not have the skill to overcome…

LUCAN MANDRAGON is trapped in the netherworld between life and death, imprisoned by his own folly. Haunted by visions of his mistakes, tormented by memories of his past, Lucan finds himself the prey of a spirit both mighty and corrupt.

And the price to escape might consume all he has left…

CORVAD burns with the blood and power of the Demonsouled. He will take up the sword of the Destroyer, and throw down the realms of men.

And once he claims the ancient relic for himself, all the world shall be his…

MOLLY has lost everything she holds dear, and has no reason left to live.

There is only one cure for her loss, one vengeance she can take for her pain.

The death of Mazael Cravenlock.

-JM