Podcast
The Pulp Writer Show
Hosted by Jonathan Moeller · EN
Hosted by Jonathan Moeller (author of the FROSTBORN and SEVENFOLD SWORD fantasy series and the SILENT ORDER scifi series), the Pulp Writer Show discusses how to write, format, publish, and sell your novel.
Sometimes there are jokes.
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Episode 225: November Writing Challenge, Part I
Nov 4, 202400:19:48Tap to summarizeIn this week's episode we take a look at a November Writing Challenge and offer tips for new writers to develop a sustainable writing habit. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 225 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 1st 2024 and today we are discussing part one of our November Writing Challenge. Before we get into that, we will talk about my current writing projects- we’ll see where I'm at with that and do Question of the Week (because we did have time for Question of the Week this week). First up, writing progress. I am 85,000 words into Cloak of Illusion, and I am hoping to finish the rough draft next week, if all goes well. I think we'll end up about in the neighborhood of 100,000 words for the rough draft (with possibly 5,000 words either way, see how it goes). I'm also 17,000 words into Orc Hoard. That will be the 4th Rivah Half-Elven book, and I'm hoping to have that out in December before the end of the calendar year. In audiobook news, production on Shield of Conquest is done. It's all paid for and ready, and it's just working its way through processing on various platforms, so it should be available soon. And you get it on my Payhip store right now, if you don't want to wait for the other platforms. Audio for Cloak of Spears is almost done. I should have a file to proof soon, which is very exciting. And then Hollis McCarthy, who did Cloak of Spears, is also going to be working on Ghost in the Tombs and that should be out before too much longer and also Shield of Conquest was excellently narrated by Brad Wills. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:30 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: do you keep a record of the books you have read? Obviously Goodreads is a giant website designed to do just that, but there are other methods, obviously. This question was inspired by one of those other methods. I was at a Barnes and Noble the other day and was bemused by the giant wall of reading journals that you can use to keep track of the books you have read. This elicited quite a few responses, this Question of the Week. They tend to fall into one of two camps, as we shall soon see. Joaquim says: No. No time, at least not for the physical books, even an app supporting barcodes was not successful and was later discontinued. For ebooks it’s different because all your books are available on a list in Kindle/Digital Editions/Calibre (depending on their type). Justin says: No, it would look like bragging. I am a speed reader and don't watch TV. Reading is my primary mode of leisure. JD says: I have never even considered making a reading log. Surely that would be time better used for reading. AM says: I use a dot grid journal to make my own reading log and enjoy customizing what I track and adding some artistic embellishments. It's just a fun offline project for me and it made me self-conscious of what I read when I tracked on Goodreads. Adeline says: not keeping track at all. Doing that at the rate I go through books would just be a loss of a lot of time which could be spent reading. Barbara says: No, I don't keep any record of the books I read. I've been a voracious reader since I figured out what the alphabet was for back in first grade, used to get in trouble in class for reading ahead. I read fiction and nonfiction, although not equally. I have favorite authors, some of whose books I reread regularly. My digital library contains over 2,000 books, most of which I've read and while I think I don't read all that fast, in reality I read something over 700 words per minute. What's worse, I retain most of what I read, but if someone wants to keep track of what he or she reads, that doesn’t bother me at all. Different strokes for different folks, as the song says. Jesse says: If I pick one up I have already read and don't immediately recognize it within a paragraph or two, it is probably time for a reread. Roger says: I buy a book before I read it, so my record is either on my bookshelves or on the Kindle. Kim says: I used to note in each paper version when I read/reread the books. Since ebooks, I keep a spreadsheet of book title and series, author, date read, major characters, reading order, my own personal ranking. Helps me keep track of authors, their series, crossovers, same-universe stories, and when the next books are coming out. I track all of that. Brandy says: It's impossible for me to do so. I reread whole series each time the new book comes out (yes, from the beginning). I’ll often proofread, read for review, read for pleasure, reference, and beta. I'm also a foreign language and capture reader for translation of books. It was recommended therapy to help with linear retention after seizures and was always my main hobby. Jenny says: I use Goodreads but wish there was a better alternative. Tracy says: I just use Goodreads. Becca says: Since I started reading so much on Kindle, I've been letting it keep track of which books I've read. Me by myself, never kept track except in grade school when we had reading achievements. So it looks like the common options were either nothing or Goodreads, but one other person did what I did, which is I've kept a spreadsheet of every book I've read since 2010, since it felt like I was reading less than I used to, and I wanted to keep track of it quantifiably, since hard data is better than feelings. So I think in the last 14 years, the most books I've read in a single year is around 110 and the lowest would be a little over 40, though I think this year I will probably end up around somewhere around 75. My spreadsheets are not as detailed as Kim's. I just keep track of the day I started, the day I finished the title, the author’s name, the genre, and whether or not it is an ebook or a paperback book. 00:05:12 Main Topic: Week 1 of November Writing Challenge So on to our main topic of the week: week one of our November Writing Challenge. What do I mean by that? I talked a little bit about it last week, but what I mean is that I do get lots of questions about how to start writing or questions about whether or not National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo is worth doing. The difficulty of that is NaNoWriMo the organization is currently experiencing troubles. They've had some problems with some of their volunteers and this year they had a big blow up where they endorsed artificial intelligence in writing in a way that offended most of their user base and as I mentioned last week, I'm wondering whether that sort of shock therapy of writing 50,000 words in 30 days is the best approach for everybody. I mean, for some people it's a good thing. I usually write more than 50,000 words every month, but that's my job. But for someone else who’s starting out, that kind of shock approach might be a bit like yo-yo dieting. We talked about that last week, how it's better to lose 1 pound a month and have it stay off than it is to lose 5 pounds a month only for you to change habits and then gain 10 pounds back. I wonder for some people National Novel Writing Month might be the equivalent of that sort of yo-yo crash diet where you make this massive effort and that burns you out and you give up on it again. If it feels like you're missing out when others are working on a bigger writing challenge this month and you want to start writing but feel overwhelmed, how about a smaller, more manageable writing challenge for the absolute beginner? That is what our November Writing Challenge will be-maybe 300 words a day or some other small number of your choosing, whether 300 or 500 or 1,000 or some other number. The key should be that the key is that it should be something small and something that you can realistically manage daily based on your current schedule and responsibilities and health and so forth. The inspiration for this idea was, as you may know, for the last year I've had a transcriptionist working on my podcast, which has been very helpful because that's something I would never have had the time to do myself. She too wants to write a novel and has started writing one and has experienced challenges trying to start one. She often says she has felt overwhelmed at the idea of starting one, and so let's follow along with her progress this month as well. So let's start. #1: What do you need to begin? Number one is a common question, technology/equipment. Someone once came to be concerned that they couldn't start writing because they didn't have software that “real” writers used only to be surprised that I used Microsoft Word and have been using Microsoft Word pretty consistently for the last 10 years. However, you don't even need to use Scrivener, Microsoft Word, or some other fancy software. I wrote Ghost in the Storm and Soul of Serpents and a couple of other books entirely using LibreOffice on Ubuntu Linux, which is of course free. That was back in like 2012/2013/2014 and back then I was more enamored of writing on, you know, small 10 inch screen laptops that I would install Ubuntu on and then enjoy the portability of them, that I could write anywhere using these very small laptops. That, however, was 10 years ago, and both the writer in question (me) and my eyes are 10 years older. These days I prefer to write on the biggest screen possible whenever possible, and my preferred laptop has a 17 inch screen which is less portable but definitely easier on the eyes. But the point is you don't need to spend a lot of money on software. You can write in Word on a cheap Windows 11 laptop. You can write on LibreOffice, which is and remains 100%...
Transcribe →Episode 224: Sourcing Ad Graphics
Oct 28, 202400:15:39Tap to summarizeIn this week's episode, we take a look at the best methods for finding ad graphics for book advertising. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 224 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 25th, 2024 and today we are discussing the best methods for sourcing images for ad graphics. We'll also have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Let's go right to that. I am currently 61,000 words into Cloak of Illusion and am hoping to have that out before the end of November, since 61,000 words puts me about halfway through the rough draft, I think. I'm also 14,000 words into Orc Hoard, which will be the 4th Rivah book, and if all goes well, the final book I publish in 2024. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Conquest. That will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills, and it's also underway for Cloak of Spears and Ghost in the Tombs, which will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. I think probably Cloak of Spears will come out first, but we will see how things play out for the rest of the month. So that's it. That is the update on my current writing project. Next month and next week, I want to do a new podcast series for the month of November that I’m going to call Moeller Writing Tips Month as sort of a gentler alternative to National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) for a couple of reasons. The NaNoWriMo organization has had a number of problems over the years, especially recently, so I don't feel comfortable endorsing it anymore. I've also begun to wonder if NaNoWriMo is a bit like a shock diet. If you talk to doctors and other medical experts about weight loss, they say the best way is always to make small, sustainable changes that you can keep up with over time. It's better to lose like a pound a month and keep it off than it is to lose like, 5 or 10 pounds a month in a shock crash diet only to gain it all back once you go back to your own old habits because that kind of a weighty yoyoing is very hard on the body. I wonder if National Novel Writing Month, where you write 50,000 words in a month is like that for a lot of people; it’s sort of a crash diet. For someone like me, Ghost in the Tombs was my 156th novel. I typically can write a rough draft or novel in a month if I don't have anything else come up. So for me, that's normal, but for most people who don't have that kind of experience, I wonder if National Novel Writing Month would be the sort of writing equivalent of those crash diets that might leave you worse off than you were to begin with. So with that in mind, next month I'll start a podcast series discussing gentler ways one can ease into the regular habit of writing. More discussion on that topic next week and next month. 00:02:45 Main Topic: Sourcing Ad Graphics Now onto our main topic for the week, sourcing ad graphics. Before we get into that, a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer and none of what I'm about to say is actual legal advice. You obtain actual legal advice by hiring a lawyer who is qualified to practice in your jurisdiction. It is very important (to continue the disclaimer) to be on firm footing with the copyright of your ad image. If you don't own the image or the right license to use it, you're infringing on someone's copyright and they can respond either legally or through the places where your book is sold. This is less of a problem with ad images than is with book covers, but it still can happen. With that in mind, some of the free stock images sites have restrictions on commercial use or modification of the images. It's a good idea to read the licenses carefully. Some of these sites have often not gotten the appropriate clearances from the models in the pictures, so be cautious of using images with identifiable faces from those types of sites. If you're not familiar with the legal term, a model release is when a model or someone in a stock photograph appears in the stock photograph. They sign a release that gives the rights for their likeness to be used for the commercial image and not all free stock image sites do that. Good stock image sites like Shutterstock or iStock Photo or Dreamstime will clearly state on the image page whether or not a model release has been included. If a model release has not been included, you can't use it for commercial purposes, and though it is not terribly likely, you can open yourself up to legal liability that way. In that vein, be also cautious about Creative Commons sites, since copyrighted work frequently ends up on those sites. This is also true of the free stock image sites, where sometimes people will pirate images and post them there. Also, many Creative Commons photos are restricted from commercial use, modification, and/or the artists require attribution. Tread carefully and make sure you understand the conditions of using images with any of the various Creative Commons licenses. And before we get into further details, it's also important to understand the difference between creating book covers and creating ad images. The number one thing to remember about ad images is that ads are ephemeral, and they should change often because you often get diminishing returns for using the same ad graphics. Ads can be tailored for different audiences. Ads can be tailored for different platforms. In fact, you kind of have to tailor ads for different platforms because, for example, Bookbub and Facebook, the two ad platforms where indie authors are most likely to use ad graphics, have very different requirements for images. People are more tolerant of AI images in ads than in book covers, but AI is very polarizing, and if you use an ad image that is easily and immediately identifiable as AI, you will probably get some pushback for that. So with all that in mind, let's first look at some free places to get images for ads and then some paid options. The number one free option is public domain images from the US government pages. It is the law of the land in the United States that images produced by the US government or federal employees in the course of their duties (with some exceptions) are in the public domain. Some of these are great as using as backgrounds or components of an ad. For example, are you a sci-fi author in need of a planet you can put behind a spaceship? You're in luck; NASA has plenty of those images and you can find them quite easily. However, sometimes U.S. government websites use stock images or government created images that have some types of restrictions. For example, NASA forbids use of images of current astronauts for commercial purposes for any reason and has some pretty strong feelings about people using their images to create NFTs. You do not want to go through life getting sued by the federal government, so you probably want to avoid that. Sources that are easiest to be confident in, images that are explicitly included in public domain collections on U.S. government websites such as the Library of Congress free to use and reuse sets website or NASA's Images Hub (this page also includes some guidance on NASA specific researchers) and the National Gallery of Art Open Access Images page. All of these have ample supplies of images that are in the public domain, and you can look over them for images you can use for ads or components of ads. Another free option is other public domain collections. Some libraries and some museums have created public domain image collections or let you filter for public domain images on their site. Very large institutions tend to be cautious about using this type of copyright language and their staff generally have training on what is or is not public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has a public domain filter on their search page and The Met museum in New York has an Open Access filter in their search page where you can look for images in the public domain. The third free option and one that I have done myself a lot is take your own photos and use your own photographs for backgrounds components in an ad, etcetera. Since you're the creator, you hold the copyright. I have done this in a lot of the books I have published in 2024 and the ad images I created in 2024. A fair bit of them have my own photos because I took some trips to some fairly scenic parts of the country this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that, so while I was there, I took lots of pictures with an eye towards using them in ad images and book covers because as you get more practice with graphic design, your projects tend to have more layers to them. You often come across things and think well, this wouldn't be a good image by itself but would be a great background or great foreground and I can use pieces of it to assemble a better picture. So I've done that a fair bit and since I own the rights to all the photographs, I am one hundred percent in the clear. Now let's move on to a few free or low-cost options and one that might be a bit controversial. In fact, it is controversial: AI generated images. The pros of this are that the US government has consistently ruled so far (this might change after the election, but it might not) is that AI images cannot be copyrighted in any capacity. This means you can quickly make eye-catching art that matches your specifications instead of hunting for stock art. The con is that many people will assume that the book is AI generated if they see an AI generated ad image and many people strongly dislike AI art in general, or object to AI art on principle, viewing it as a form of theft. For myself, I've decided that my personal ethical line on this (barring changes in circumstances or laws) is that I will not sell anything that was created by AI. If I am selling anything or giving away a free ebook, it is 100% written by me and the cover was ei...
Transcribe →Episode 223: Five Writing Lessons From The Nintendo Switch
Oct 21, 202400:16:09Tap to summarizeIn this week's episode, we consider how the Nintendo Switch does the simple things well, and examine how writers can likewise do the simple things well to write excellent books. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 223 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 18th, 2024 and today we are discussing five lessons for writers from the Nintendo Switch, of all things. Don't worry, the analogy will make sense later in the show. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I am pleased to report that Ghost in the Tombs is completely done and is currently publishing on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. The links are already live on some of those stores. This episode should go out on the same day as my newsletter, so by the time this episode goes out, the book should be available at all ebook stores. If you are subscribed to my newsletter, you will also get a free ebook copy of the short story Ghost Tablet. So that is one of the many excellent reasons it is a good idea to subscribe to my newsletter. You can find the details how to do that on my website right at the top. My next main project now that Ghost in the Tombs is out will be Cloak of Illusion, the 12th Cloak Mage book. I am 31,000 words into that. I'm hoping to have that out before the end of November, if all goes well. After that, I am 11,000 words into Orc Hoard and hopefully that will be out in December, if all goes well. As I mentioned earlier, the audiobook of Shield of Darkness is out, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at Audible, Apple, Google Play, and all the usual audiobook stores. We are also working on Shield of Conquest right now, and that is being recorded as we speak. Hollis McCarthy is also recording Cloak of Spears and that should hopefully be out before the end of the year, if all goes well. This week, we're not doing Question of the Week because all my time was going to finishing Ghost in the Tombs, but we will be doing another Question of the Week next week, so watch for that on my website and social media. 00:01:54 Main Topic: 5 Lessons Writers Can Learn from the Switch Now let's go to our main topic for the week, five lessons that writers can learn from the Nintendo Switch. So what can writers learn from the Nintendo Switch? A common complaint I sometimes see among newer writers is that all the stories have been told already, and that there are no truly original stories. Why try writing a mystery novel? Haven't they all been told? Why try writing a romance novel? How many different ways are there for a woman to meet a man and fall in love? Why attempt to write an epic fantasy when there's already Lord of the Rings and Mistborn and Shannara? Haven't all the stories already been told? That is a fair question, but it misunderstands the nature of stories. It's as profound a misunderstanding as saying that just because you've eaten one cheeseburger in your life, there is no need to ever have another or saying that since Pizza Hut makes pizzas, there is no need for anyone else to ever open a pizza restaurant or even to sell frozen pizzas. To dispel this misapprehension, let us turn to the Nintendo Switch. It is not unfair to say that the Switch is one of the most popular game consoles in the world and is likely Nintendo’s second best-selling device of all time. The Switch is also significantly less powerful than its chief competitors, the various Xbox and PlayStation models offered by Microsoft and Sony. For that matter, the Switch has only received moderate updates in the seven years it has been on the market. Its internal components are basically those of a decent smartphone from 2017, yet despite that, the Switch has significantly outsold both the Xbox and the PlayStation over the last seven years. It was a remarkable reversal of fortune for Nintendo. The Switch's predecessor, the Wii U, did so badly that the CEO of Nintendo at the time took a 50% pay cut to help avoid layoffs. One thinks American CEOs could stand to learn from this example, but that's a different topic. So to go from that to the best-selling console of the last seven years is quite a swing of fate’s pendulum. So let us then ask the obvious question: why did the Switch do better than its competitors, especially when it was so relatively underpowered compared to them in terms of hardware? The answer is simple. The Switch did the basics, but it did the basics exceptionally well and doing the basic simple things exceptionally well is often much harder than people imagine. The Switch doesn't have a lot of the more advanced features from the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation ecosystems, but it doesn't really need them. The Switch is easily portable. It has a strong library of first-party titles. The loading speed isn't great, but it's adequate. It has Switch Online for all the old Nintendo classics. You can play it handheld or docked. It's popular enough that developers want to bring their games to the console whenever possible, including some that some that were very technically difficult, like Skyrim or The Witcher 3. All that sounds simple, but it's much harder to do than it sounds, and the basics done well are always a good thing, regardless of the field. In fact, that is traditionally part of Nintendo's design philosophy. Nintendo has a thing they call “withered technology” (another translation from the Japanese would be “lateral thinking with seasoned technology”), which means rather than trying to use cutting edge technology, they use tried and true older technology and think about developing unique experiences with it. In other words, they used well established basic technology to build the Switch (which wasn't exactly cutting edge even in 2017) and then just tried to use that established technology well. So how does this apply to storytelling and writing? This is, after all, a writing podcast and not a video game podcast (even if I do talk about video games a fair bit). The same approach taken to writing can work out quite well. Don't try to be excessively fancy or flashy. Focus on the simple things and do them as well as you can, and that will probably work out better than trying to be flashy or creative in a way that only ends up being off putting to the reader. So when it comes to writing fiction, what are the simple things that you can do well? What is the “lateral thinking with seasoned technology” you can employ with writing a novel? I think there are five lessons we can take here. #1: Understand the genre you are writing in and try to hit the appropriate tropes for that genre. A lot of writers when they are first starting out try to do too much, like a fantasy author tries to write a 12 volume epic fantasy series as their first writing attempt, or someone tries to fuse a bunch of genres and write a book that is simultaneously romance, a magical realism coming of age story, and somehow also a memoir. If you can't clearly state the genre of your book, you're going to have a hard time selling it. You might also have a hard time even finishing it. What do I mean by the appropriate tropes for the genre? That's just a way of saying that the storytelling conventions that readers come to expect in specific genres. For example, in a happily ever after clean romance, the readers will expect no explicit scenes and that the heroine and the love interest will end up together by the end of the book. Romance tends to have a lot of very specific subgenres, but the rule holds for many other genres as well. Epic fantasy readers typically expect a quest, some journeying, and a band of arguing adventures. Mystery readers expect a mystery with an actual solution at the end. Thriller readers look forward to some well executed fight scenes in a secret government building. Some writers dislike the idea of writing to genre tropes but think of it this way: If you go to an Italian restaurant and order spaghetti carbonara, but the waiter instead brings out a steak burrito bowl with a side of French toast sticks and maple syrup, you're going to be disappointed. Are there people who would enjoy a lunch of a burrito bowl and French toast sticks? Almost certainly, but you ordered spaghetti carbonara. The vast majority of people who go to an Italian restaurant are going to expect Italian food. The same thing applies to genres. If you buy a mystery book, you will expect a mystery novel and not an experimental cross genre thing. If you dislike writing to genre tropes, remember that readers only dislike tropes written to genre conventions if it's done badly, but if you do it well, they appreciate it and that could be one of the simple things that you focus on doing well. #2: A protagonist with relatable problems. Another important basic in genre fiction is the protagonist with problems that the reader can find compelling. There's an endless tedious discussion about whether or not the protagonist should be likable or not, and frankly, it often degenerates into the standard Internet discussion about gender politics, whether or not a female protagonist has to be likable when a male one does not. But in my opinion, that discussion completely misses the point. What makes a character relatable, or more accurately sympathetic to the reader, is the character experiencing a conflict or some sort of emotional pain that allows the reader to sympathize with them. Whether their character is likable is less important than sympathy. Let's take two examples from recent television, specifically Disney properties. The characters of Syril Karn and Dedra Meero from the Star Wars show Andor are unlikable but sympathetic characters, while Jennifer Walters from She Hulk is both unlikable and unsympathetic. The di...
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