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  • Episode 314: A Second Bonus Audiobook Short Story!

    Episode 314: A Second Bonus Audiobook Short Story!
    2026/08/03

    In this week's episode, I share the audio version of my short story SOULBLADES, as narrated by Brad Wills. I also provide updates on my current writing and publishing projects.

    If you want to listen to the complete short story collection, it is available here:

    https://www.audible.com/pd/Tales-of-the-Shield-Knight-Audiobook/B0D68C3S22

    This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Ghost in the Flames, Book #2 in The Ghosts series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

    FLAMES50

    The coupon code is valid through August 17, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered!
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    52 分
  • Episode 313: Worldbuilding Questions From Andomhaim

    Episode 313: Worldbuilding Questions From Andomhaim
    2026/07/27
    In this week's episode, I answer worldbuilding questions about my setting of Andomhaim, and discuss the future of THE GHOSTS series. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in The Ghosts series at my Payhip store: JULYGHOSTS The coupon code is valid through August 10, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 313 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July the 24th, 2026 and today we're answering world-building questions about Andomhaim, which is the setting of my Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, Dragonskull, Shield War, and Blades of Ruin series. We also have one bonus world-building question about the Caina series. Before we get into all that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in The Ghosts series at my Payhip store. That code is JULYGHOSTS. As always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through August the 10th, 2026, so if you need a new ebook for this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report I am done with the rough draft of Cloak of Frost. It was just slightly over 100,000 words. Now I am writing a bonus short story called Metal Soldiers, and [newsletter] subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Metal Soldiers when Cloak of Frost comes out, which if all goes well, should be sometime in August. So I think this is an excellent time, therefore, to subscribe to my new release newsletter. My secondary project is Blade of Visions, and I am 11,000 words into that. There's also a good deal of news about audiobooks. Dragon-Mage, as narrated by Leanne Woodward, is finished and is rolling out to the various stores right now. As of this recording, you can get it at my own Payhip store, Google Play, and Kobo (with more stores soon to follow). Recording on Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest is very nearly done, and I hope to have more news on that soon. Brad Wills is currently working on Blade of Thieves and Hollis McCarthy is recording Cloak of Worlds. So we should have a wide variety of audiobooks coming for you soon. 00:02:00 Questions about Caina Before we get to our main topic, we have a bonus question about Caina. When I said my next project was going to be Cloak of Frost, I got a couple of questions like this: Just wondering when/if there will be another Caina novel to look forward to? The answer is not right now, but maybe later. I am glad and appreciative that people want more Caina books. That said, I don't want more than three unfinished series at any one time, and I've got three right now with Blades of Ruin, Cloak Mage, and Half-Elven Thief. So I'm not starting anything new until one of the three is done. If you reach the end of Ghost in the Siege, which is the latest current Caina book, you know that the series was at a pretty significant stopping point. If I want to keep going, I need to think long and hard about how to do it right. I do have a couple of ideas, but I need to think about them some more. It's almost like we'd have to shift to a slightly different genre of fantasy than the Caina books have been previously. The tricky part is Caina has changed a great deal since Child of the Ghosts. The tricky part in that is that sequels in a long-running series need to be more of the same, but also something different. There have been 35 Caina novels. So I've done that quite a bit. But Caina has had some experiences that have very much changed her life. To use a rough comparison, it's like she became a justice on the US Supreme Court or the governor of one of the five largest US states in the sense that once you've had change in your life that significant, your life will never be the same afterwards. And without spoilers, Caina had a shift that big at the end of Ghost in the Siege. So more Caina is definitely a possibility, but I need to think about it some more and it definitely won't be before 2027 until I finish one of my three currently unfinished series. 00:03:35 Main Topic of the Week: Andomhaim Worldbuilding Questions Now onto our main topic, which is I had some world-building questions about Andomhaim from Frostborn come in lately. So I thought I would answer them here. Question #1: Why hasn't the Heptarchy invaded Andomhaim again? The answer is money, basically. Remember that the ultimate purpose of the Heptarchy is to provide an endless supply of sacrificial victims for the Seven Temples' altars so the seven urdmordar who rule the Heptarchy can endlessly feed. These seven urdmordar don't have much interest in the day-to-day governance, so their spiderling priestesses ...
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    17 分
  • Episode 312: Bonus Audiobook Short Story!

    Episode 312: Bonus Audiobook Short Story!
    2026/07/20

    In this week's episode, I share a bonus audiobook short story: GHOST ARIA, as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. I also provide an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects.

    This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Child of the Ghosts, Book #1 in The Ghosts series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:

    CAINAJULY

    The coupon code is valid through August 3, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered!
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    1 時間
  • Episode 311: File Management For Indie Authors

    Episode 311: File Management For Indie Authors
    2026/07/13
    In this week's episode, we share nine tips and tricks to help indie authors manage their files. Since I now have 174 novels, file management has become important! This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store: JULYSKULL The coupon code is valid through July 27, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 311 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 10th, 2026. Today we are discussing file management tips for indie authors. Before we get into that, we'll have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is JULYSKULL. As always, the coupon code and the links to the appropriate pages in my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through July the 27th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook for this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As I mentioned last week, Blade of Thieves is now out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, Bookshop.org, and my own Payhip store. It is selling well and people seem to be enjoying it, so thank you all for that. Now that Blade of Thieves is out, my next main project is Cloak of Frost, which will be the 15th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy series. As of this recording, I am 52,000 words into it. I'm thinking the rough draft will be about 100,000 words. So if all goes well, I hope to have the book out in August. My secondary project is Blade of Visions, the sequel to Blade of Thieves, and I am 4,000 words into that. Once Cloak of Frost is finished, Blade of Visions will become my new main project. In audiobook news, recording is done for Dragon-Mage, the sixth book in the Rivah series, and that will be excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward. I just have to proof/listen to that and then we can submit it to QA and then it should be showing up on the audiobook stories in a few weeks. Recording has started on Cloak of Worlds, which will be [recorded by] Hollis McCarthy, and Blade of Thieves, which will be [recorded by] Brad Wills. So look for more news and updates about that in the coming weeks. So that is where I'm at with current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:16 Main Topic of the Week: File Organization for Writers So let's move on to our main topic this week, file organization tips for writers. One of the inspirations for this episode was an episode of the sitcom Community, which is quite funny. In the episode, the college is making a movie based on a legal loophole because they have some archival footage of a suddenly popular actor. One of the characters, Jeff, becomes concerned that people aren't treating the movie as seriously as they would deserve. So he steals the laptop with the movie and sets out to edit it himself. However, Jeff doesn't know anything about editing a movie, so he watches a YouTube tutorial about how to edit videos. The first lesson is "Step 1: How to properly organize your files." Jeff rages that no, he just wants to learn how to edit movies. While realizing that proper file organization is vital in the age of digital video editing, maintaining a good file structure isn't quite as rigid for authors and writers as it would be for video editors. However, even though many people consider file structure to be old-fashioned or pointless in the age of Google Docs and AI, in my years working in IT, I found that people wasted many hours trying to find files unnecessarily. For example, I always flinch a little bit when I see someone whose desktop is just a wall of misplaced icons and thousands of documents stacked upon each other. I used to do tech support for someone who had the most amazing gift for the most unhelpful and un-useful file names, often with misspelled words. He would get very frustrated and angry that he couldn't find anything because he hadn't labeled files properly with good file names. Better file structures and file naming conventions would have saved them all that stress and time. It's not wise to have all your files stacked up on your desktop and hope for the best. As you grow as a writer, files suddenly become much more complicated than one single draft in a word processing file. There needs to be organization for audiobook files, cover art, marketing materials, research, and much more. Blade of Thieves was my 174th book. So if you think about it, that means I have 174 separate book files on my computer. Many of them have audiobooks. They all have cover art. The audiobooks have cover art, to say nothing of the hundreds of short stories I've written and all of ...
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    19 分
  • Episode 310: 5 Lessons Indie Authors Can Learn From Tradpub

    Episode 310: 5 Lessons Indie Authors Can Learn From Tradpub
    2026/07/06
    In this week's episode, we take a look at 5 lessons indie authors can learn from tradpub. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: JULYCROWN The coupon code is valid through July 20, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 310 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is July 2nd, 2026 and today we are discussing five lessons indie authors can learn from traditional publishing. Given how negative I've been about traditional publishing over the years, that may be a bit of a surprise, but we will find out more later. We will also have a Coupon of the Week and a progress update at my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, Book #9 of my Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is JULYCROWN. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July 20th, 2026, so if you need a new audiobook for your summer travels, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that Blade of Thieves is now done and published. Once this episode goes out, you should be able to get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, bookshop.org, and my own Payhip store. It's starting off strong, so thank you to everyone who is reading and enjoying it. Thank you for everyone being patient while I got to it. Now that Blade of Thieves is finished, my next main project will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage urban fantasy novel series. I'm currently 24,000 words into that. I think the rough draft will be about 100,000 words. If all goes well, I hope to have that out in August. My new secondary project is now Blade of Visions, which of course will be the direct sequel to Blade of Thieves. As of this recording, I am 1,000 words into it. In audiobook news, Leanne Woodward has started recording Dragon-Mage and Hollis McCarthy is currently recording Cloak of Worlds, which was the 13th book in the Cloak Mage series. In a few days after this, Brad Wills is going to start recording on Blade of Thieves. So we should have a bunch of new audiobooks coming up for you to listen to before too much longer, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:23 Main Topic of the Week: 5 Things Indie Authors Can Learn From TradPub Now onto our main topic this week, five lessons indie authors can learn from TradPub. Given how critical I have been and continue to be of traditional publishing on this blog and my podcast, this might come as a bit of a surprise and this should be in no way an endorsement for anyone to pursue traditional publishing. My blunt opinion is that if you are a new author starting out, you are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much better served going indie instead of traditionally publishing. You will retain ownership over your IP. You will potentially be able to make more money and you won't have to deal with the various problems endemic in traditional publishing. Occasionally I see on social media a newish author trying to get an agent or being excited that an agent responded to their query letter or whatever. I don't do this because arguing with strangers on the internet is a waste of time, but I want to tell them, "Don't do this. Go indie. You'll be much happier in the long run and you won't have to worry about your agents stealing all your money," of which there have been documented cases that have happened. Now with all those caveats aside, traditional publishing has lasted for a long time. There is a reason that traditional publishing has survived so many changes and continues in many different forms to this day. And while I wouldn't recommend that you pursue traditional publishing, there are things you can learn from it to enhance your career as an indie author. So today I'm going to talk about five things you can learn from TradPub as an indie author. #1: Your book doesn't exist in a vacuum. Many authors are resistant to their book being put into categories or being paired with similar books. I've frequently noticed that aspiring and first time authors are particularly resistant to the either idea of their book best fitting into a single category or being similar to another authors. It doesn't mean that your book isn't creative or unique, it's accepting the reality of bookselling. Even in the modern indie era, books are still very much classified by a ...
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    15 分
  • Episode 309: Seven Tips For Audiobook Profitability For Indie Authors

    Episode 309: Seven Tips For Audiobook Profitability For Indie Authors
    2026/06/29
    In this week's episode, we offer 7 tips indie authors can use to help their audiobooks turn a profit on production costs. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store: JUNENIGHT The coupon code is valid through July 13, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 309 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 26th, 2026 and today we are sharing seven tips for audiobook profitability for indie authors. Before we get to that, we will have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Night series at my Payhip store. That code is JUNENIGHT. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July the 13th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook series to read this summer, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I am pleased to report I am on the second editing pass of Blade of Thieves. I am about 13% of the way through that. And so if all goes well, I think the book will be out after the 4th of July weekend/second week in July, if all goes well. I have a few real life things to do that might slow that down, but I am very, very keen to finally have this book out after the 4th of July weekend. After Blade of Thieves is published, my next project will be Cloak of Frost, the 15th book in the Cloak Mage series. I am 17,000 words into that and I am hoping that will be out in August, if all goes well. I have no audiobooks currently in production, but that will change next month because Brad Wills will be recording Blade of Thieves once it's done. Hollis McCarthy will be recording Cloak of Worlds and Leanne Woodward will be recording Dragon-Mage. So we'll go from having no audiobooks being worked on to a bunch being worked on all at once. Funny how things tend to bunch up like that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:01:59 The Economics of Audiobook Production for Indie Authors [All money amounts mentioned are in USD.] Now today I want to talk about a very advanced level indie author topic, namely audiobook production and the economics of it. Recently there's been some controversy because ACX (which is Amazon's audiobook production platform) has been changing its royalty model and rolling out what they call synthetic voice, which is basically an AI generated voice. Some writers have been using it because it's a lot cheaper than a good human narrator, but the flip side is that not many people like listening to it and won't pay money for it. Admittedly, synthetic voice is not fundamentally a new technology. Text to speech has been around forever. Macs have had it since I believe 1984, back when 120 kilobytes of RAM was a lot. As a brief digression, I wish the term AI hadn't been bandied about so liberally. Before the public backlash began against generative AI and data centers, the term AI was trendy, so it got slapped on a lot of things that are actually wildly different than generative AI. I saw a post where someone was complaining about the locations in Starfield being AI generated, when in fact they're procedurally generated, which is something totally different. Anyway, synthetic voice is just a more advanced version of the text to speech technology that's been around since the early 1980s. The fear is that AI generated audiobooks will swamp the market and dominate most of ACX's payment model. Now, while that is a valid fear, I strongly suspect that it is not going to work out that way, given the hostility I have observed towards synthetic voices, especially in fiction. I think what'll happen is authors who use synthetic voice will save a lot of money by not paying a narrator, but then they won't actually make any money because no one will want to buy these machine voiced audiobooks. I have some basis for that because in the early 2020s, I experimented with making synthetic voice versions of my Silent Order science fiction series and putting them on YouTube. The overwhelming response was that people liked the story but hated the computer generated voice. It might be different for nonfiction. A romance novel with a synthetic voice would obviously be quite flat, but that wouldn't matter as much for a primer on tax law or agriculture or something similar. So there's a lot of uncertainty on whether or not audiobooks can still be profitable for indie authors. However, I suggest this is nothing new. Audiobooks have always been indie publishing on hard mode, partly because they're expensive to produce and partly because they're harder to sell than ebooks and ...
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    16 分
  • Episode 308: Advantages To Kindle Unlimited

    Episode 308: Advantages To Kindle Unlimited
    2026/06/22
    In episode 306, we looked at the advantages of taking your book wide to all retailers. In this week's episode, we'll look at the other side of the coin and examine eight advantages to placing your book in Kindle Unlimited. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: JUNEDOOM The coupon code is valid through July 7, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 308 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 19th, 2026 and today we are looking at the advantages of using Kindle Unlimited for your books. Two weeks ago, we had an episode about the advantages of going wide and distributing it away from Amazon, but there is another side of the coin and today we're going to look at it in the advantages of Kindle Unlimited. We also have an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects and Coupon of the Week. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That code is JUNEDOOM. As always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in these show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through July 7th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook for your travels this summer, we have got you covered. So now let's take a look at where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Thieves is done. It turned out to be just about as long as Blade of Wraiths. I'm also finished with Orcish Fury, which will be the bonus short story that newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of when Blade of Thieves comes out. I am now editing Blade of Thieves. The first two chapters are edited. I am not sure how many chapters I'll end up with because I've gotten into the habit of splitting up longer chapters into shorter chapters lately since readers seem to prefer that. I do think the book will probably be out after 4th of July weekend if all goes well, because it is a big book and I'm going to have to do a fair bit of editing and I do have a few more things to do in real life that might slow the process down. But if all goes well, the book should be out shortly after the 4th of July weekend. I am also 13,000 words into Cloak of Frost, which will be my next main project once Blade of Thieves is finally done. That will probably be available in August, if all goes well. In audiobook news, at the moment I have no audiobooks in active production, but that will change next month because Leanne Woodward will be recording Dragon-Mage. Hollis McCarthy will be recording Cloak of Worlds and Brad Wills will be recording Blade of Thieves once I finally get it done. So it's funny how things always seem to do a bunch up like that rather than having a more conveniently distributed fashion, but I suppose that's just the nature of life. In other audiobook news, I mentioned earlier that Cloak of Dragons is now available in Audible Plus for those of you who are Audible listeners who have a plan that includes that. Before too much longer, I'm going to start working on the audiobook version of Cloak Mage Omnibus Four, which will combine I believe Cloak of Embers, Cloak of Titans, and Cloak of Illusion into one audiobook bundle. I've done that before [in] the past [with] Cloak Mage books and it's worked pretty well, so we're going to do it with this one as well. I'm going to start working on that next week because I've got to make the cover and then it takes forever to upload all the audiobook files. Hopefully that will be out sometime in July, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:03:23 Main Topic of the Week: When and Why to Put Your Books in Kindle Unlimited (KU) Now let's move on to our main topic this week, when and why to put your books in Kindle Unlimited. You might remember that two weeks ago (with Episode 306, I believe) we discussed the advantages and benefits of taking your books wide and not exclusive to Amazon. However, there are reasons it might actually be a good decision to put your books in Kindle Unlimited. In this week's episode, we'll talk about why you might want to consider putting your book in Kindle Unlimited. First, we should discuss how Kindle Unlimited actually works, defining our terms, so to speak. Kindle Unlimited is Amazon's merchandising program for ebooks, essentially. To use the program, you agree that your ebook will be exclusive to Amazon for the next three months (and by default, it auto renews, but you can turn that off in the dashboard). The advantages to you for ...
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    16 分
  • Episode 307: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Fifth Course!

    Episode 307: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Fifth Course!
    2026/06/15

    In this week's special episode, I provide a writing update, and share audiobook samples from the fifth book in four of my different series.

    This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store:

    SILENTJUNE

    The coupon code is valid through June 29, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered!
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    24 分