Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 95
January 22, 2022
Dragonlance, the 1st two trilogies
Occasionally people have compared my books (especially the MALISON and the DRAGONTIARNA series) to the DRAGONLANCE setting, which is interesting because I never actually read any DRAGONLANCE books before 2021.
I first tried reading a DRAGONLANCE book back in the mid-1990s. It was a book club omnibus edition of the first trilogy, and I got about a third of the way through it, developed an intense dislike for how non-linear and nonsensical the plot was, and I didn’t think about the setting again until I saw a DRAGONLANCE book on Bookbub in summer 2021, and decided to give it another try.
I was surprised by how much I liked it. It was my kind of thing – adventurers wandering around fighting monsters and dragons and wizards and stuff. I couldn’t figure why I had disliked it so much in the 1990s.
And then the penny dropped.
The book club omnibus edition I read in 1990s had a ton of misprints! Specifically, the chapters were all out of order. Like, in the first chapter, the characters were in the town of Solace, and then in the next chapter Raistlin and Caramon were in the caverns below the Temple of Takhisis. That takes place like three books apart! No wonder the book didn’t click with me in the 90s.
Anyway, the first DRAGONLANCE trilogy is a standard fantasy adventure. You can tell it was the authors’ first novel, and that it was based off a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. In fact, I believe it was basically written as a novel version of a DRAGONLANCE campaign module. The first book especially feels like it was set up with dice rolls and consultations with the charts in the Player’s Handbook. Tanis Half-Elven is a Fighter who is (rolls dice, consults Player’s Handbook) Conflicted About Leadership. Flint is a Fighter who is (rolls dice, consults Player’s Handbook) Always Grumpy. Sturm is a Paladin who is (rolls dice) Honor-Bound. Riverwind is a Ranger who is (rolls dice, consults Player’s Handbook) Distrustful Of Outsiders. Raistlin is a Mage who is (rolls dice) An Enormous Jerk. The biggest weakness of the first trilogy is that a lot of significant events take place off stage, and the reader only finds out about it when the characters discuss them at the start of the next chapter.
Despite that, the books get interesting, especially with the love triangle between Tanis, Laurana, and Kitiara (who in the illustrations always looks like an 80s pop star about to launch into a power ballad), and the toxic relationship between Raistlin and Caramon. The first trilogy reads like an epic Dungeons and Dragons campaign, which is fair assessment because I think the books actually started that way.
The second trilogy goes from Pretty Good to Very Good, since it focuses on Raistlin and Caramon. It also deals heavily with Kitiara, who seizes control of the forces of evil and makes some very ill-judged choices in allies. Raistlin becomes a genuinely tragic character, and Caramon has the most interesting arc in the second trilogy as he finally finds the inner strength to redefine his relationship with his brother.
So, if you’re looking for something to read as you wait for CLOAK OF IRON and DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES, the DRAGONLANCE trilogies will serve you well. 
-JM
January 21, 2022
CLOAK OF IRON, another brief excerpt
It’s Friday! Let’s close out the week with another brief excerpt from CLOAK OF IRON.
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She didn’t change her stance, didn’t do anything threatening, but Neil knew that for a second, until she recovered from her surprise, Nadia was considering him as a target.
Most people, he knew, had a hard time working themselves up to violence. Neil didn’t, but that wasn’t true of most people, even veteran soldiers. Violence was a bit like acceleration, and it took most people some effort to go from zero to sixty.
Nadia MacCormac, he suspected, idled at around twenty miles an hour.
Maybe thirty.
###
And be sure to sign up for my new-release newsletter, and you’ll get a free ebook copy of the short story PROPHECY OF THE HIGH QUEEN when CLOAK OF IRON comes out.
-JM
January 20, 2022
CLOAK OF IRON – short excerpt!
Editing is underway for CLOAK OF IRON. Let’s have a short spoiler-free excerpt!
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“I’m fine, really. I just have a massive headache and some leftover rage. You know how sometimes mental magic causes random emotions?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I’m just pissed.”
Tyth frowned. “Drunk?”
“No, no.” I had spent enough time with Nora Chandler to know that “pissed” was British slang for drunk. “American pissed, not British pissed.”
“That makes more sense.”
-JM
January 19, 2022
CLOAK OF IRON rough draft done & cover image!
I am pleased to report that the rough draft of CLOAK OF IRON is done! At 108,000 words, it is officially the longest Nadia book.
I’m not sure how many chapters it will be since I have to split up some of them and rearrange them, but the book is on track to be out sometime in February.
I have also written PROPHECY OF THE HIGH QUEEN, a short story that will be from Tarlia’s perspective.
I wanted to write a story from Tarlia’s perspective because readers email to ask from time to time whether or not Tarlia is a good guy or a bad guy, a protagonist or a villain.
And the answer is, of course, both.
Tarlia rules a brutal authoritarian regime and doesn’t tolerate dissent. Anyone on Earth of sufficient power and wealth needs to be on board with her plans, or they’re going to be in trouble. She has ordered cities nuked to stop invaders, isn’t above assassinating nobles and authority figures when she decides they’ve crossed a line, and she maintains her control through a vast web of official and unofficial influence and power. In lieu of prisons, she has Punishment Day videos, where criminals are flogged or executed to set an example to the rest of the population. Generations of humans have been trained to revere her, to the point that saying something bad about the High Queen and the Elves in public is liable to inspire a beating, and in the unlikely result the mob got arrested for it, the jury would acquit them…and all without someone in authority telling them to do it.
On the other hand, there hasn’t been a war between human nations, a genocide, or a famine in centuries. Even the absolutely poorest people in the world live the lifestyle of a 1950s middle-class American or thereabouts. And while Tarlia is an authoritarian, she’s not a totalitarian. So long as you color within the lines (and the lines are basically “don’t commit crimes and don’t badmouth the Elves”), you’re left alone to prosper. Normal people, so long as they fulfill their military service obligation and don’t badmouth the Elves, are left in peace. You have to be really rich and powerful to draw the High Queen’s scrutiny. And compared to someone like Morvilind, Tarlia is very merciful. The only thing she can’t forgive is betrayal.
And there are things in the Shadowlands, worse than the Archons, and creatures from other worlds that would conquer Earth and annihilate humanity if given the opportunity. Tarlia views humans and Elves both as her subjects, deserving of her protection. If not for Tarlia, probably Earth would have been conquered and humans destroyed centuries ago.
So I suppose Tarlia is like everyone else – some good and some bad mixed together, but since she’s so powerful, it plays out on a much larger scale.
And since editing is underway, let’s share the cover image for the book!
-JM
January 18, 2022
The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 104: Creating Distinct Characters
In this week’s episode, we look at tips and tricks for creating distinctive characters.
As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.
-JM
January 17, 2022
GHOST IN THE INFERNO now in audio!
January 15, 2022
100k words of CLOAK OF IRON
Passed the 100k word mark of CLOAK OF IRON!
CLOAK OF IRON will be the longest Nadia book to date, and the first one that was over 100,000 words. I think it will end up around 110,000 words but we’ll see.
-JM
January 12, 2022
10k words of CLOAK OF IRON!
I am pleased to report that I wrote 10,000 words of CLOAK OF IRON yesterday!
In 2021 I had eight 10k word days, and in 2020 I had twenty-two.
Hopefully this will not be my only 10k word day of 2022.
-JM
January 11, 2022
The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 103: Eight Writing Goals For 2022
Happy New Year! In the first episode of 2022, I discuss my eight writing goals for 2022. I also talk a bit about ad spending and series metadata.
As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.
-JM
January 10, 2022
The 127th Book
DRAGONSKULL: SHIELD OF THE KNIGHT Is my 127th self-published novel.
I have to admit this number is amusing to me for a very esoteric reason.
See, in TCP/IP (which is the underlying communication protocol of the Internet), specifically IP version 4, every computer is supposed to have a unique IP address. (This is simplifying it down quite a bit, but we’ll go ahead.) You’ve probably seen these a bunch of times – 192.168.1.1, 10.10.0.15, and so forth. Every time you’ve tried to get your iPad, laptop, or Xbox to connect to the wireless and you run into troubles, you’ve probably had to look up an IP address.
However, every computer also gives itself a local address, and the local address for the computer is always 127.0.0.1. In TCP/IP, 127.0.0.1 always means “localhost”, which refers to the local computer you are currently using. When diagnosing networking problems on a computer or a server, one of the first things to do is to make sure that the TCP/IP components are actually working, since some viruses tend to wreck the TCP/IP stack. A quick and easy way to do this is have the computer send traffic to itself at 127.0.0.1
So in the 2000s and the 2010s, I spent a LOT of time typing “ping 127.0.0.1” into computer terminals.
Which means I find it personally amusing to have finally reached book 127, but this is such an obscure joke that whenever I try to explain it to someone they tune out halfway through.
-JM
