In this week’s episode, I take a look back at DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE. I also answer reader questions and talk more about Magic The Gathering. At the end of the show, we share a sample of the upcoming audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills.
You can get 25% of the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE at my Payhip store with this coupon code:
SQUIREAUDIO
https://payhip.com/b/QX1Ti
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 151 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March the 24th, 2023 and today we’re going to look back on the writing of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, the first book in my Dragonskull series. We’ll also talk a bit more about Magic: The Gathering yet again and answer quite a few reader questions.
Before we get into all of that, let’s have some updates on my current writing projects. First off, I am very pleased to report that Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock is out and is now available at all stores. Get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my web store at Payhip. Initial responses have been good. It’s been selling quite briskly, so I would like to thank you all for buying that and reading it. The next Dragonskull book will be Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, which I am pleased to report in almost 140 books, is the first time I ever used doom in a book title. That will probably be out in June or July/sometime in the summer, and then after that we will have the final book of the series. I have not decided what the title of that one will be yet.
Now that Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock is out, next up my main project will be Cloak of Dragonfire. As of this recording, I am 18,000 words into it, which puts me on chapter three of probably 21, though I have a feeling some of these chapters are going to get long and split up when I edit them. I hope to have that out in May. I hoped to have that out in April, but it wasn’t until March 23rd that I was finally able to make that my main project so I’m pretty sure Cloak of Dragonfire is going to be out in May if all goes well. Recording is done on the audiobook of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, which prompted the topic of this podcast episode. We’ll talk about that more in a little bit and that is already available in my Payhip store and it should be turning up on all the other audiobook stores pretty shortly. So that is where I’m at with current writing and audio book projects.
00:02:06 Reader Comments/Questions
Now let’s have some questions and comments from readers. Our first comment is from James, who writes to say: love your Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, and Dragontiarna series. Awesome. The new LitRPG book really brings in a new generation. They’re going to want to read the source material for it. Please keep it going. Loved it. Great concept. Thanks, James. I’m glad you liked that book. Not as many people read the LitRPG book Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation as I might have wished. But those who did read it seemed to have enjoyed it quite a bit, and the sequel Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is currently one of my side projects and I’m hoping I can get that out before the end of 2023.
Our next question is from Charles who asks: I have a question. I know some authors put names of fans in their books. Do you do that? I do not at this time, since I’m always careful about writing about real people, because you never want to make them look bad or, you know, give the name of someone in real life to like an insane superpowered serial killer or something like that. That said, I’ve written and talked before about how I don’t have a Patreon, but if something seriously changes in the self-publishing landscape like Google Books goes out of business, that kind of thing, I might start one. And if I do start a Patreon, one of the things I would do is also put the names of patrons into books as sort of a reward as you know, like side characters, but I don’t have a Patreon at the moment and no plans to start one unless something drastic changes, so that’s not something I do at the moment.
Our next question is from LW who asks, have you considered continuing the saga of the Shield Knight and the Keeper and freeing the Heptarchy nation from the seven priestesses? Ridmark and Calliande are not that old yet. That’s a possibility. Once Dragonskull is done, there’s going to be two more books and that series is going to be done and I haven’t fully decided what I’m going to do. Actually, I should say I haven’t decided at all what I’m going to do after that is done. I know I’m going to write another epic fantasy series and it will probably be set in the Frostborn/Sevenfold Sword/Dragontiarna/Dragonskull universe because I’ve put so much work into it at this point, but I haven’t decided who the main characters would be or where in that setting it would be set, that kind of stuff. So we will see what happens.
Derek writes to ask: how long is the wait for the next Dragonskull book? Hopefully this summer, if everything goes really well, it should be in June 2023, though, depending on how things go the next couple of months it might slip to July, but I’m hoping for June if everything goes well. Our next question is from CL who asks about word processors and he says: I’m about to get a tablet and try writing a book. Is there a good app you’d recommend? Honestly, every book I’ve ever written has either been written in Microsoft Word on a PC, Microsoft Word on a Mac, or LibreOffice on a PC that’s either running uh, Windows or Ubuntu. So I have never written a book on a tablet unless you count the Microsoft Surface tablet. But I’ve always written using that as essentially a laptop with the keyboard cover. That said, I do know people who have written their books in Pages on an iPad and in Google Docs on Android. Microsoft does have pretty good mobile versions of Office now that you can install on both Android and iPad. So if you want, you can use a tablet with either like Pages on iPad or Google Docs on Android or one of the Microsoft Office apps and you can write it on a tablet that way.
In fact, there have been people who have written entire books on their phones as they take like, you know, a 90 minute commute on the train to New York or London or something like that every day and they just, you know, sat there with their phones and thumb typed out an entire novel. So good for them that they can do that. For myself, I’ve always, if I was going to write on a tablet I would need a Bluetooth keyboard. At that point, you’re basically turning your tablet into a laptop, so why not just get a laptop? You get a pretty decent cheap laptop that can run word processing software for $300- $400, and then you can do everything you need on the fairly cheap laptop, which is less expensive than a tablet and you can actually do more with a laptop that you can with the tablet in most circumstances. So that comes down to personal taste, but those are the options available for writing on a tablet if you want to do that.
Our next comment is from Scott, who says concerning the chapter titles and this is in response to a comment I made saying that one of my favorite parts of outlining my book and finalizing the publishing process was finalizing the names of the chapter titles since they’re like, you know, Chapter One, something goes wrong. Scott says: I often hold against the author when the Table of Contents is merely a list of numbers. What possible use is it to the reader to just have numbered chapters? As a reader, I use the Contents to return to chapters I may need to review or to clarify for better understanding. The titles need to be distinct rather than recognized, but not so obvious as to provide spoilers. I would expect that the writer who works from a fixed outline would find it very helpful in editing and revising. If it was good enough for H.G. Wells and so many classical authors, it should be good enough for the rest. Good ideas and practices aren’t old fashioned. I agree with Scott here. Back in the bad old days before self-publishing, agents and editors often had very specific submission guidelines, and one of those guidelines was that they would often reject any manuscript that came into them with chapter titles. So when self-publishing came along, I very much enjoyed being able to pick chapter title for books. Like in Child of the Ghosts, Ghosts in the Flames, Ghost in the Blood, I originally wrote those with an eye towards trying to get them traditionally published (or just published as it was back then, before self-publishing) and so they didn’t have chapter titles. So when I self published them, I took great enjoyment in picking out the chapter titles for the various chapters. So that is what I have to say about that. I enjoy chapter titles.
We have a very complicated, but a good question from Wayne who writes in to ask: I know this is a lot to ask, but I have most of your books, including the short story anthologies. The following are books that I do not have and before buying them, I want to make sure that they are not hidden away in one of your six short story anthologies that I have purchased. The Final Waystone, Ghost Shadow, Ghost Candle, The Traitor’s Tale, The Bone Quest books One through Six, the Sworn Knight books One through Five, Silver Drive, Iron Image, Dragon Pearl, Wraith Wolf, Mask Gaze, False Flag, Rail Gun, and the Otherworld Series books, 10 and 1. Are those no longer available? I plan on reading your books in order that in the order that you have listed to include the short stories and want to ensure they have all that available. First of all, Scott, thanks for reading all those books. I’m glad you enjoyed them.
And then in answer to your questions, the Final Waystone isn’t in a collection yet. Once I published that in 2023, when I do at the end of 2023, the short story bundle for 2023, which I’ve gotten in the habit of doing. It will be in that one. I don’t believe Ghost Shadow or Ghost Candle are in any of the anthologies yet. The Traitor’s Tale was never in any of the anthologies because it’s very spoiler heavy since it spoils a character who comes in Frostborn Book 7, so ever since that I’ve tried to shy away from that. That’s one of the difficulties of writing a long series where you include a short story with every book is that by the time you get to, like Book 12 or Book 7, it’s difficult to write short stories that don’t include spoilers. So that’s why The Traitor’s Tale was never in any of the anthologies.
The Bone Quests got repackaged into a short novel called Frostborn: The Skull Quest, and if you sign up for my newsletter, that’s one of the three free books you get as a reward for signing up for my newsletter. The book is also available for $2.99 USD on all the ebooks stores. The Sworn Knight series is about Mazael, and I believe that all five Mazael short stories are in a bundle called The Sworn Knight, which is also available for sale on all ebook platforms. I really need to update the cover for one of these days, but I’ll get around to it eventually. Silver Drive, Iron Image, False Flag, and Mask Gaze aren’t in any of the short story collections. And finally, other worlds, Otherworlds-all those short stories, I took them off sale, bundled them together in the Otherworlds anthology of short stories I wrote back in like the 2000s and early 2010s before self-publishing came along and that is the only place that is available now. So I hope that answer clarifies things. And I understand the confusion. Back last month when I finalized my taxes, I took some time to calculate how many short stories that I had actually published, and so I figured out that since I’ve been self-publishing, I have written and published 106 short stories, which is a lot to keep track of. So that’s the reason I started doing those anthology bundles and have an anthology series now so that it’s easier to get them all in one place.
(Timestamp for Ghost in the Sun Spoiler in Reader Question: 00:11:35-00:12:47)
Our next question I should mention has spoilers for Ghosts in the Sun, so if you haven’t read Ghost in the Sun, which is the last Caina novel I’ve written so far, you’d want to skip ahead like 2 minutes in the show or so. So here is the spoiler question for Ghost in the Sun from Godfrey who asks: I’ve just finished Ghost in the Sun, which I believe is the last book in the truly epic series. However, once I missed it, Rania Scorneus is still alive at the end, which I’m slightly confused about as she was another antagonist of Caina. So I’m wondering what happened to her. Cheers from Philham UK (sorry if I mispronounced the town, I’ve never been to the UK or Philham in particular). In answer to your question, what happened was Rania had decided, to use the popular phrase, just kind of nope out of things for a while.
While because of the specific alchemy process she discovered at the end of Ghost in the Lore, she is functionally immortal until someone personally kills her, and everyone thinks she’s dead at the moment. So what she decided to do was to spend the next several decades studying and working on her sorcery skills. And then by the time everyone who knows about her is dead of old age and she’s completely forgotten, she’s gonna start building her power base again without any hindrance. I am planning to write another Caina book this year once Dragonskull is done, so this may or may not be a plot point when we get there, but we’ll see. So that’s it for questions and comments this week. Thanks to everyone who sent in a question. And if you want a question answered on the show, just leave a comment on my Facebook page, your website and we might address it on the show.
00:12:58 Magic The Gathering Arena
Next up, let’s talk a little bit about my new favorite hobby, Magic The Gathering Arena. Whenever I talk about Magic The Gathering Arena, some of the comments are invariably critical about Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, which is fair, because the company has done some pretty sketchy stuff throughout its history. But there’s one thing that I do appreciate about Magic the Gathering that I think the game captures quite well: the randomness of fortune, the whims of chance, if you prefer. The randomness of the game it is, in my opinion, a good metaphor for the randomness of life. An anecdote may illustrate the point. If you’re unfamiliar with the rules, in a standard Magic the Gathering match, both players start with 20 life points and whoever knocked down to zero life points first loses the game. Recently I was playing a match and I had three life left and my opponent had 18. I thought about conceding the match and getting on with the day, but I promised myself that I would clean up the kitchen after this match, so I decided to procrastinate a bit more until I officially lost the game. Yet the next card I drew completely changed the vector of the game and I ended up winning with 33 life and inflicting enough damage on my opponent to take his life score down to -22 in the final attack. So I went from, to put it in terms of a simple score, I went from being behind by 15 to winning by 55 and now I suppose this demonstrates the value of three different things in life.
#1: Hanging on in the face of adversity. #2 Random chance is just that, random and today’s misfortune might turn to tomorrow’s good luck. Medieval people sometimes portrayed fortune as a wheel endlessly turning from good luck to the bad. #3: Good luck or bad, you still have to try your hardest, because if I had not played that game changing card at exactly the right time, and with exactly the right creature, I still would have lost the game. Once again this has gotten to be a weirdly philosophical discussion for a game about battling space wizards.
00:14:54 Reflections in Writing Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire
Now let’s continue on to our main topic of this week (15 minutes into the show): reflections back on writing Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, which was the first book in the Dragonskull series. What prompted me to talk about this was that recording on Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is done, and if all goes well, it should be available at all audiobook stores in a few weeks, and it’s up in my Payhip store right now. The 7th book in the Dragonskull series, as I said before, it just came out and it’s been two years since I wrote Sword of the Squire. Since I had to listen to the entire audiobook before approving it (this is best practice and it can come back to bite you if you don’t), it was interesting to reflect back on writing the book. Sword of the Squire always does well for me. When I calculate my ad results at the end of the month, it always performs amazingly well on Amazon ads. The rule of thumb is that for an Amazon ad to be profitable for an ebook and you need one sale for every 68 clicks on the ad and Sword of the Squire regularly runs one sale for every one click, sometimes even a little less, which is astonishing if you know anything about Amazon ads.
Without false modesty or false bragging, I think one of Sword of the Squire strengths is that it’s the first book in a new series but I don’t do lot of, shall we say, authorial throat clearing before the plot actually starts moving. When you start the first book of a new series, especially a fantasy or science fiction series, the overwhelming temptation is to do a lot of world building in the first half of the book, which can have an unfortunate tendency to evolve into info dumping. It’s better to get the plot moving first and then only drop in new information as necessary to move the story forward. This makes for a more enjoyable read, and it also helps hold the reader’s attention, since there’s an element of mystery. I think Sword of the Squire benefits that the main protagonist, Gareth Arban, is 17 years old when the story begins.
Maybe one of the reasons many fantasy novels start out with teenage protagonists is that it’s immensely helpful for world building because as the protagonist learns about the world, you can introduce the reader to the same information in organic and usually seamless way. Gareth’s not a bad kid and he’s not stupid, but might like many adolescents, his world view is entirely centered around himself and his own experiences. Growing out of this helps propel his character arc forward. It’s also helpful for the world building and for revealing information about the world in the plot, since the beginning of the story, he wants to 1: become a knight, then 2: marry Iseult Toraemus and isn’t terribly interested in anything that doesn’t help with that. But external events start to force him to realize that there’s a bigger world outside of his own problems. The cover helps too, and I made the cover myself. I would say as a cover designer I wouldn’t say I’m great, merely on the bottom half of adequate but the cover works for what I need it to do. A few people asked where the images came from. The sword I generated in Daz Studio and the castle in the sky are stock images I got off dreamstime.com. The forest is a picture I actually took myself. It’s a view from the front door of my doctor’s office, which is surprisingly scenic, and I snapped a couple of pictures of that forest knowing I would use them for something someday. I then assembled everything in Photoshop. I want to say, most importantly of all, that I am very grateful to all of you who read and enjoyed the book, and I am very grateful that the 7th book of the Dragonskull series did so well when it came out this week and I am very much looking forward to writing the final two Dragonskull books soon. Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire should be up on Audible, Apple, Amazon, Google Play, and Kobo and all the other major audio book stores soon in a few weeks.
If you don’t want to wait and you want to get it right now, you can buy the audiobook direct from my Payhip store and use this coupon at checkout for a 25% discount and that is SQUIREAUDIO. Again, that’s SQUIREAUDIO and I’ll include that coupon code and the link in the show notes. I’m also going to include the official sample for the audiobook that will be up on the stores at the end of this podcast, so you can listen to it for yourself and then hopefully enjoy it so much that you go out and immediately buy the audiobook. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and helpful. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice (whether Apple, Google, Spotify, or wherever). It really does help. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
