Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 79

What will CLOAK OF MASKS be about?

I am now 43,000 words into CLOAK OF MASKS, which puts me on Chapter 8 of 21.

What will the book be about?

Let’s have a look at the Inciting Incident of the plot!

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Lydia Valborg’s number appeared on the phone’s screen.

I hadn’t talked to her for over a year. She was my brother Russell’s former girlfriend – pretty, a bit arrogant, but mostly good-natured, and quite naïve. But she had been forced to wise up in a hurry when her former computer science teacher Paul Rampton had tried to frame her for murder.

So why was Lydia calling me now?

This couldn’t be good.

I accepted the call and lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Mrs. MacCormac?” It was Lydia’s voice, calm but with a hint of fear.

“Yeah. What’s going on, Lydia?”

“I’m in trouble,” she said. “I think someone is following me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Get to a public place, somewhere with a lot of people, stay there, and call the police.”

“I am in a public place,” said Lydia. “A table at the food court at the Ducal Mall in Brookfield. And I don’t think the police can help me.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Because the guy who’s following me,” said Lydia. “I think I saw him two years ago. You know? When I went on…that little trip to that creepy mall place.”

I have to admit that my first reaction was surprise that Lydia was smart enough not to talk about the Shadow Waypoint in public and over the phone.

But like I said, she had been forced to wise up in a hurry.

My second reaction was alarm. The Shadow Waypoint was a neutral market and resting place in the Shadowlands, with the neutrality enforced by a mysterious creature called the Intermediary. Singularity had an outpost there, but the High Queen couldn’t do anything about it, because even with all her power she couldn’t oppose the Intermediary on his (or possibly hers, no one knew for sure) home ground. Lydia had been taken there during that mess with Rampton.

And if she saw someone from the Singularity outpost following her around the mall…

-JM

CLOAK OF MASKS underway!

Now that DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS is out, it’s time to start on CLOAK OF MASKS.

I am pleased to report that I am 38,000 words into the book, which puts me on Chapter 7 of 20, or possibly 21.

If all goes well, CLOAK OF MASKS will be out in November.

-JM

DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS now on all stores!

I am very, very, very pleased to report that DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS is finally available on all stores!

I want to say that the book had setbacks, but that’s not true. Writing the book went just fine. Instead, I had many events that took precedence over writing the book. These included deck repair, porch repair, learning to use a chain saw, a funeral, a lot of painting, a squirrel chewing a tunnel into my front porch, traveling across five US states (and the big ones, not the little ones in the northeast), clearing away a lot of brush, a squirrel chewing a tunnel into my front porch for a second time, changing medications, and a bunch of other stuff.

Thankfully, after all that, you can get the book at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Payhip.

-JM

Can you explain this to me?!?

Today, we’re going to take a look at how to effectively deliver the emotion context of dialogue in fiction.

Recently, I happened to glance at a German phrase of the day calendar. The phrase of the day was “Kannst du mir das erklären?” which translated to English, means “Can you explain this to me?”

Which, naturally enough, got me thinking about dialogue in fiction.

A common problem with text messages and emails, especially text messages, is that sometimes things get taken entirely the wrong way. You could write “please fix this problem” and simply mean it as a request to fix the problem when convenient, only for the recipient to become offended, thinking that you meant it sarcastically, or as an accusation of incompetence, or as an imperious command.

In that vein, “Can you explain this to me?” is one of those sentences that requires additional context to convey its full meaning, like:

“I keep seeing ERROR 47 when I try to mail merge. I am unfamiliar with the new software. Can you explain this to me?”

Or:

“You really messed this up! What on earth where you thinking? Can you explain this to me?”

Clarity and concision is important in business writing. I’ve mentioned before that one of the strength of Ulysses S Grant as a general during the US Civil War was his ability to write clear orders that conveyed exactly what he wanted to happen without room for misinterpretation. Hopefully most of us have less high-stakes jobs than commanding one side of a major industrial power’s civil war, but nevertheless learning to write in such a way that you convey your intent without accidentally offending your recipient is a valuable skill.

However, in fiction writing, specifically dialogue, we have tools for conveying the emotion of a statement.

Here is our first example:

“Can you explain this to me?” said Caina.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. Much of the time when writing a novel, you want to keep the story moving along and not get bogged down. However, sometimes you want to convey more emotion than “said” presents. For example, this:

“Can you explain this to me?” spat Caina angrily.

Or:

“Can you explain this to me?” sighed Caina. 

Or:

“Can you explain this to me?” sobbed Caina.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these. They get the job done. But the potential problem is one of repetition. If every bit of dialogue has “Caina said, Caina said”, or you constantly use more emotional language like “spat Caina angrily, growled Caina furiously, snarled Caina imperiously,” that can also create a repetition that will annoy the reader.

That said, it’s possible to convey emotional state in dialogue without using dialogue tags.

This requires understanding one particularly irritating quirk of human behavior: the actual meaning of a sentence is often entirely unrelated to the literal words that are actually being spoken. Or, as it’s more commonly known, subtext. Subtext in Real Life communication can cause all sorts of problems. Rather than simply stating what they intend to communicate, people will often say something else entirely. One of the most common examples is passive-aggressiveness, where a compliment is intended to be taken as an insult and so forth.

Subtext, and the many failures thereof, is one of those things that ensures therapists will never run short of business.

But that’s Real Life. We’re talking about fiction. One of the ways to convey emotion with dialogue in fiction is to let the surrounding description and action convey the emotion of the spoken words.

Let’s say that you want the reader to know that the character is angry. You could write something like this:

“Can you explain this to me?” spat Caina angrily. 

Or you could do it with a bit more flair like this:

Caina slammed the dagger into the table, the blade quivering a hair’s breadth from his fingers. Before he could respond, she dropped the empty vial next to the dagger, glaring into his eyes all the while. “Can you explain this to me?”

Even that is still directly aggressive. Caina could be subtler in expressing her anger.

Caina tapped the map with a finger. “It would take a least a hour to get from the docks to the Imperial Citadel. Yet you were there waiting when I arrived. Even though I remember telling you to watch for the ship.” She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Can you explain this to me?”

You could also use it as a simple request for information.

Caina looked at the half-assembled mechanism filling most of the locksmith’s work table. “Can you explain this to me?”

The same situation, with a bit of tweaking, can also express emotion.

Caina sighed, looked at the half-assembled mechanism filling most of the locksmith’s work table, and shook her head. “Can you explain this to me?”

The same sentence can also convey sadness:

Caina dropped into the chair, her hands going over her face. After a moment, she looked up, her eyes bloodshot with tears. “Can you explain this to me?”

So as we have seen, one simple bit of dialogue “can you explain this to me?” can have many different meanings depending on the context. The writer’s job is to shape that context appropriate so the dialogue delivers the right emotion.

-JM

bestselling September books and ad results

Let’s see my bestselling books of the month, and take a look at some ad results.

September was a very weak month, as I haven’t published any new fantasy books since July, but here are my ten bestselling books for this month.

What’s interesting is that thought most of my top 10 books are ones I published in 2022, stuff I didn’t publish this year accounted for over 80% of the month’s revenue. That is one of the advantages of having a big backlist like I do. If you run ads to it, the older books can serve as cushions when you have a couple of unproductive months in a row and can’t put out anything new for a while.

Speaking of ads, let’s see how my Facebook ones performed:

FROSTBORN: For every $1 I spent, I got back $2.81.

THE GHOSTS: For every $1 I spent, I got back $3.26.

CLOAK GAMES: For every $1 I spent, I got back $3.92.

SILENT ORDER: For every $1, I got back $2.98.

Reasonably good, though I’ve done better, but it could be much worse. None of the ads lost money!

Amazon ads were more mixed. Remember, for an Amazon ad to work, it needs to get at least 1 sale for every 6-8 clicks.

DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE: For every $1 spent, I got back $3.91, with one sale for every 1.44 clicks.

CLOAK OF DRAGONS: For every $1 spent, I got back $1.76, with one sale for every 3.33 clicks.

AVENGING FIRE: For every $1 spent, I got back $1.31, with one sale for ever 2.2 clicks.

I will probably stop the AVENGING FIRE ads, see if I can tighten up the CLOAK OF DRAGONS ones (it might be time for a cover refresh), and continue with the ads for DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE.

-JM

updated DRAGONSKULL map

An updated map for Andomhaim to accompany DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS.

Eagle-eyed readers can probably work out where FURY OF THE BARBARIANS will be set based on where exactly the map was updated.

-JM

The last week of September

Here’s what I’m doing this week, if all goes well.

-Final edits on DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS, followed shortly thereafter by publishing the book.

-CLOAK OF MASKS takes over as main project. I am 10,000 words into it, which puts me towards the end of Chapter 2.

-SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND becomes the secondary project. I’m about 5,500 words into the book.

I also need to readjust some ads, since a few of them have gotten quite out of date.

-JM

DRAGONSKULL and other updates

I am hoping that this week will be the final push on (finally!) finishing DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS.  Hoping to have that out the first week in October.

Once FURY OF THE BARBARIANS is out, my main focus will be on CLOAK OF MASKS. I am pleased to report that I hit the 10,000 word mark for CLOAK OF MASKS this morning. Definitely hoping to have that out before the end of 2022.

-JM

DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS Table of Contents

I am at last far enough along in the process to share what will probably be the final Table of Contents for DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS.

I also take great enjoyment in making the TOC because back in the Bad Old Days of traditional publishing, literary agents always used to have snippy little paragraphs in their submission guidelines saying how they would automatically reject any book with chapter titles.

Well, DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS will be my 134th book, and all one hundred and thirty-four of them have chapter tiles.

-JM

DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS, a short excerpt

Still chipping away at edits on DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS – unless something goes wrong, I should finish the first round of editing today. Still should be on track to have the book out in the first week of October.

Meanwhile, let’s enjoy this short excerpt!

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“I’m a knight and a smith,” said Crake. “Give me hot iron to pound or a foe’s skull to smash, it doesn’t matter which. God and the saints! I’ll take a good honest fight over all these mysteries and questions and…”

Even as the final word left Crake’s mouth, Gareth felt Stormshield jolt in its scabbard. He yanked the soulblade free, and the weapon burst into white flames.

Creatures of dark magic were nearby.

“Oh, I should have kept my mouth shut,” said Crake.

“Been telling you that for years,” said Gareth.

-JM