Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 359

$1.99 Dark Fantasy, an anthology

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My anthology of short stories, "Driven and Other Stories", is now available for $1.99. Eleven short stories, most of them urban fantasy, with a few other sorts thrown into the mix. Perfect Christmas reading for when you want to escape your relatives for a bit.

A collection of dark fantasy stories, set in both our world and others.

A FBI agent investigates a mysterious eco-friendly car, and finds that it runs on something more dangerous than gasoline.

An obsessed gamer sets out to beat a computer game, only to find something worse than the princess waiting in the final castle.

An immortal visits Chicago, on the trail of an ancient enemy.

A politician makes a dark pact, but finds the price is more than he can possibly afford.

These tales and many more await in DRIVEN AND OTHER STORIES.

Child of the Ghosts – the (extremely unofficial) soundtrack

I listen to a lot of music as I write, and as I do, various songs tend to get associated with specific characters. Here, then, are the songs from my collection that I associate with the characters and events of "Child of the Ghosts."

This song would be Caina Amalas's first theme – I think of it as "Caina Does Something Clever." It's one of the combat themes from "Heroes of Might and Magic IV." I listened to this over and over while writing the fight scenes for the first Caina story, "Black Ghost, Red Ghost", back in 2007. It captures Caina's more violent scenes perfectly – kinetic, yet very precise:

This next song would be Caina Amalas's second theme. It's "Damp Barachan Nights", from the soundtrack for the "Age of Conan" MMORPG. Calm and placid on the outside – but dark things stirring beneath. An excellent description of Caina:

This song represents Caina's life with her family in Arretia, before she meets Maglarion. It's the "Human Nobility" theme from "Dragon Age: Origins":

This next song comes from an old computer game, "Lords of Magic", (released in 1997), and it is Maglarion's theme. It is utterly perfect for Maglarion. The driving drumbeat represents Maglarion's unyielding will and drive, and the cold, groaning melody excellently portrays the all-devouring nihilistic hubris at Maglarion's core:

This next song represents Theodosia, the prima donna of the Grand Imperial Opera who teaches Caina the arts of disguise. It comes from "Heroes of Might and Magic II", yet another computer game from the 90s, and rather perfectly captures Theodosia:

This next track comes from another 90s computer game (can you tell what I spend most of the 90s doing?), "Planescape: Torment." This is the theme for when Caina disguises herself as Countess Marianna Nereide, an ingenuous noblewoman of the Empire:

Caina's brief affair with Lord Alastair Corus is represented by the "Romance Theme" from "Mass Effect":

And the song for Caina's final confrontation with Maglarion, the ghostsilver spear, and the great bloodcrystal is "1000 Ships of the Underworld", from the "Invincible" album by Two Steps From Hell:

Finally, I think the main theme from "Dragon Age 2″ (composed by Inon Zur) would make an excellent overall theme for the book – it's simultaneously a bit grim and haunting, but with a strong heroic theme to it:

So those are some of the songs I listened to while writing "Child of the Ghosts" – a book that, I should point out, is free if you're interested in reading it.

-JM

Computer Repair, Epic Fantasy Style

What do I do all day? Pretty much this:

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Heed my words, and hearken well to them, for I am the technomancer. The daemons of Linux are mine to command, and I have the words of Command Line power to bind Mac OS X, and the innermost secrets of Windows have yielded themselves up to me. And lo, many come from far and wide to hear my counsel, for their computers are recalcitrant beasts, and they cannot remember how connect to the wireless, or yea, even to unpin Internet Explorer from the Start Menu.

And one day, in the frozen heart of winter, a young man did come to my tower, bearing a laptop.

"Alas!" spake the young man. "My laptop has fallen to evil fortune! For a wicked virus has seized its faculties, and overthrown its reason. Now I am bombarded by advertisements for both Viagra and discounted Ugg boots, and regularly does the evil virus beseech for the secret number of my credit card!"

"How did such a calamity befall you?" I spake.

"I know not, wise technomancer," said the young man.

I gave him a look magisterial in its sternness.

"Perhaps," spake the young man, "I may, in a passing moment of folly, downloaded a pirated clip of Monday Night Football. For surely I say unto you, I do enjoy my Monday Night Football. Also, cable in my neighborhood costs $85, which is like total BS."

"It may be that your folly has undone you," I spake. "Yet I shall do what I can."

And I did take up my USB flash drive of Eightfold Gigabytes, and waged war against the virus. Yet my efforts availed me not. For the virus ringed itself round with cunning protections, and it was invisible to the eyes of Microsoft Security Essentials, and did baffle the installation of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and shielded itself from the keen talons of AVG.

Then the virus manifested itself, and spake tauntingly unto me.

"Fool!" spake the virus. "Think you to destroy me, mortal man? For I cannot be deleted! Erase my executable, and shall only be reborn, stronger than before! Buy Ugg boots now! Discounted Ugg boots, amazing bargains!"

"Speak not so haughtily, braggart software," I spake. "For I have undone many a virus in the long years ere you crossed my path. And if need be, I shall unleash the cleansing fire of the FORMAT command, and renew the computer from scratch."

Yet the virus only laughed. "Do that, and this fool's data shall be lost! And you will have to reinstall Windows, a process both laborious and tedious. Discount V1Agr@! Be a stallion for her! Discount V1Agr@!

I answered not, for I knew the virus spake truth. Yet if brute force would not serve as my sword, then cunning perhaps would do. Therefore I powered off the laptop, and removed the hard drive, and connected it via USB cable to my Mac Mini. Then I summoned the powerful daemon Sophos Antivirus For Mac.

"I summon you," I spake, "and bind you with this task. Seek out the virus upon this hard drive, and destroy it!"

"Scanning now," spake Sophos Antivirus For Mac.

But the virus's protections warded off the powers of Sophos, and it stood unharmed. But Sophos, though it failed, did give me the location of the virus's files and registry keys, the secret repositories and reservoirs of its immortal life. Protected its files were, guarded from the flames of deletion, but I plugged the hard drive into a Ubuntu system, which heeded not the file protection of a Windows computer.

Quickly I conjured forth a shell script to unleash the cleansing fire of deletion upon the virus's files.

"Think you these petty tricks can overcome me?" spake the virus. "Fool! I am invincible! Your computer has been infected with 11453 viruses! Pay $89.99 to remove them now!"

"We shall see," spake I, striking the ENTER key and unleashing the shell script. "Foul virus, you are undone!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" spake the virus, but it was too late, for Ubuntu had bypassed its defenses, and the virus was cast into the outer darkness of the Recycle Bin, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched and the directories are not indexed for local search.

Victorious, I returned the cleansed laptop to the young man and received my free.

"Awesome!" spake the young man. "Now I can watch pirated Monday Night Football clips again."

"As a dog returns to its vomit," I spake, "so too a fool to his folly."

"You have a dog? Where? I like dogs!" spake the young man.

Verily, I shall spend some of my fee on a stiff drink.

-JM

The Hobbit

A trailer:

-JM

Soul of Dragons – rough draft done!

Today I finished the rough draft of "Soul of Dragons", the fourth book in the "Demonsouled" series. It weighed in at 119,000 words, just slightly shorter than the final draft of "Soul of Serpents". I started on October 25th, which means that over the last 53 days, I've averaged about 2200 words a day. Not bad!

Over the next couple weeks, I plan to take care of a few minor projects. Then it's on to editing, revising, and proofing "Soul of Dragons." If everything goes well, I should have the book ready by the middle to the end of February.

-JM

Child of the Ghosts – a review

Mihir Wanchoo of Fantasy Book Critic reviews "Child of the Ghosts" here.

Key quote:

The story is a fast paced thriller in the guise of a fantasy book and was a particularly good read. The story can be viewed as an episode wherein Cania, the rest of the character cast and the world is introduced and there's definitely more to be explored. Certain things are brushed aside hopefully to be explained in the sequel books. Check out Child of the Ghosts if you are in the mood for some action packed, thrilling fantasy in the vein of James Clemens & Jim Butcher.

You can get "Child of the Ghosts", for free, in all major ebook formats right here.

-JM

Reader Question Day #5 – concerning self-publishing

Manwe writes:

I mean, when you self publish, can't your work easily fall into obscurity?

Oh, totally. But if you traditionally publish, you work can easily fall into obscurity as well. And if you have a book fail as a traditionally published writer, it's much, much harder to recover. When "Demonsouled" was published in 2005, it didn't sell very well, and I never did get another book contract. That's why you see traditionally published writers obsessing over the first few weeks of book sales – if the book doesn't make a splash, immediately, it goes off the shelf, and then goes out of print in short order.

But with electronic self-publishing, if a book fails to sell, so what? It's still available for sale. You go and write another one and another one, and if people like those, they'll go back and read your other books…which are still on sale. Because with ebooks, you don't have to worry about your books going out of print. It's a lot easier to get a snowball effect going with ebooks than with print books.

And, in a larger view, every writer (and every person, for that matter) is destined for obscurity. Christopher Hitchens died today. Today he is a famous writer, well-known and respected. In fifty years, only a few people will still be reading his work. In a hundred years, all his relatives and friends will have died, and the only people who will know his name will be a few historians studying, say, the war in Iraq or the atheism fad of the first decade of the 21st century, in much the same way that only historians know the name of Horace Greeley today (bonus points if you know who he is without having to Wikipedia him).

And in a thousand years…will anyone remember Christopher Hitchens? Or any of us? Obscurity is the fate of all human affairs, in the end. At least until the blast of the Last Trumpet when all books shall be opened and all debts settled.

So I don't worry about obscurity, since there's nothing I can really do about it, save for writing more. And I was going to do that anyway. (I don't worry about going bald for the same reason though, alas, there's even less I can do about that. Except using my book royalties to buy a hat.)

If you are writing something you wish to see last, would self published ebooks really be the route to go?

It depends on what you mean by "last." If you mean "endure the test of time", well, that's out of our hands. If you mean "not go out of print", then self-published ebooks would definitely be the way to go.

AND to which group do you belong to Jonathan? The 'show me the money crowd' or the 'storytellers club'? Or is it a bit of both?

A bit of both. I like writing, and I like telling stories. However, I also like money, and a combination of my age and current personal circumstances mean I shouldn't be sending large chunks of time on something that doesn't pay (my creditors, sadly, do not accept prayers and well wishes as legal tender). For me, electronic self-publishing was the best option. Over a thousand people have read the three "Demonsouled" books now, and I know that because over a thousand people have bought the third book. I've also made much, much more money writing this year (both fiction and nonfiction) than I have ever before. And absolutely none of that would have happened if I hadn't self-published the books – there was no publisher on earth that would take a chance on reprinting an obscure book that had gone out of print in 2007.

So, to sum up, electronic self-publishing was the best choice for my books. Whether its the best choice for you or not depends on your personal circumstances and objectives. (Though I will say that all my writing is online nowadays, and I hardly ever do cold submissions anymore. For traditional publishing, I prefer to work with editors I already know and trust, like Elisabeth Waters of "Sword & Sorceress.")

Joshua writes:

I will say this: Your books are the most enjoyable I have the pleasure of reading in years. For me I would love to see you go back to the world that you have built with Demonsouled series. Is there a chance you will bring more stories to us from that world?

Thank you for the kind words about the Demonsouled books – I'm glad you liked them.

And in fact, a new Demonsouled book will be coming very soon – "Soul of Dragons". I am four chapters away from finishing the rough draft, and I hope to have the final version of the book ready in February.

That's Reader Question Day for this week. If you have a question, leave it in the comments or send an email to jmcontact at jonathanmoeller.com, and I'll answer it next week.

-JM

Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I'm currently reading "Princess of Mars", by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

What's interesting about reading vintage science fiction is how the conception of the future has changed in the last 100 years. In "Princess of Mars", the various races of Martians have a variety of high technology – hovercraft, terraforming, powerful medicine, and so forth. Yet we 21st century humans have computing machines vastly more powerful than anything the Martians possess. We literally have computers of the scale and power that Captain Kirk regularly tricked into self-destructing on "Star Trek."

Of course, Captain Kirk's technological adversaries ruled over dystopian alien worlds.  21st century computers merely want to sell us Ugg boots and discount pharmaceuticals via spam messages.

-JM

100,000 words

Actually, 105,000 words. That is how many words of "Soul of Dragons" I've written since October 25th. If I'm diligent and keep my eye on the ball and life doesn't interfere (as life is wont to do), I should manage to finish the rough draft by Christmas.

-JM