The Pulp Writer Show

Jonathan Moeller
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  • BOOKS
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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.

  1. 3H AGO

    Episode 298: STARFIELD - A Personal FAQ

    In this week's episode, I answer questions I receive whenever I mention that STARFIELD is my favorite game of the 2020s. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Orc Paladin, Book #3 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: HECTOR50 The coupon code is valid through April 20th, 2026.

    18 min

  2. APR 6

    Episode 297: Audiobook Sampler Platter, the Second Course!

    In this week's episode, I share samples from four of my previously published audiobooks, and provide an update on my writing progress. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Cloak Games series at my Payhip store: CLOAKBOOK25 The coupon code is valid through April 13, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this spring, we've got you covered!

    20 min

  3. MAR 30

    Episode 296: Eight Ebook Formatting Errors Readers Hate And How To Fix Them

    In this week's episode, we take a look at eight common ebook formatting errors and how to correct them. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Ghost Exile: Omnibus One at my Payhip store: EXILE25 The coupon code is valid through April 6, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 296 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 27th, 2026 and today we are looking at eight ebook formatting problems that readers hate and how to fix them. Before we get into our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on 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 25% off the ebook of Ghost Exile: Omnibus One at my Payhip store. That coupon code is EXILE25. And as always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes. This coupon code will be valid through April 6th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook as we leave winter and head into spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am currently 97,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, and I'm hoping to get to the 100,000 word mark by the end of today. You will note that if you read the first three books in the series, this will make it longer than the first three by good bit, which is part of the reason why it's taking so long. I was hoping to have it published by now, to be honest, but between the length and the variety of things I've had to do in real life before I can get to writing have slowed me down a bit. I have made progress and I am hoping to finish the rough draft before the 31st, if all goes well. Then it will be time to write a tie-in short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free when Blade of Wraiths is published, and then on to editing. So I'm hoping to have the book out in the second half of April, if all goes well and the creek doesn't rise, so to speak. I'm also 12,000 words into Dragon Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. I'm hoping that will be out in May because that will become the main project once Blade of Wraiths is finished. In audiobook news, as I mentioned before, recording of Blade of Storms (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is complete. I think as of right now, you can get it at my Payhip store, Google Play, and Kobo. Audible, Amazon, Apple, and a few of the other major stores should hopefully be coming along before too much longer. Recording is done on Wizard Assassin, which you may recall is the fifth book in the Rivah series, and that is narrated by Leanne Woodward. We just have to proof that, and then it'll be time to submit it for processing at the stores. So hopefully you'll be able to get your hands on that before too much longer. I believe next week, Hollis McCarthy will start recording on Cloak of Illusion, the 12th book in the Cloak Mage series. Since a few people have asked about this, I thought I'd mentioned here there will be a Cloak Mage: Omnibus Four in audio that will combine Cloak of Embers, Cloak of Titans, and Cloak of Illusion. I will probably start working on that one month after Cloak of Illusion comes out in audio. So that will probably be along sometime this summer, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. We've got good things coming up for you soon. 00:03:18 Main Topic: ebook Formatting That Readers Hate Now let's move on to our main topic this week, and it's something I have quite a bit of experience with, I have to say, is ebook formatting that readers hate. Today, we're going to talk about issues with ebook formatting, a topic that people have very strong opinions about. I am going to talk about eight issues in particular and then discuss how we can fix or prevent or best of all, avoid them. First of all, what do we mean by ebook formatting? Formatting is the term to describe the layout, text, and images of the book. Back in the print book days, this was a complicated but fairly fixed thing. In the very old days, you would have to lay it out the books manually. A few decades ago, they had programs like QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign where you could use these software applications to prepare finished files for sending to the printer to be printed as books. But nowadays, in an age where books are electronic files read on dozens of possible devices and apps, it's much more difficult to predict every possible thing that can go wrong with formatting. For example, with a print book in the old days, you would set the layout, and that is the way the layout would look. Every single book (ideally) printed would look the same. But in the modern age, if you have an ebook, it could be read on a Kindle, a Kindle Color, the Kindle app on the phone, a Barnes and Noble Nook, a Google tablet, on Apple iBooks on an iPod, on Apple iBooks on an iPhone, on the Kindle app on an iPhone. There are literally dozens of different potential combinations where an ebook file could be read and therefore dozens of different potential complications that can arise for ebook formatting. If there are formatting problems, readers will not be able to understand or even physically be able to read the text at worst, and more likely will be deeply annoyed by the issues that feel like road bumps such as extra line breaks and will express their displeasure in reviews. There are also an abundance of ebooks out there that are hastily converted from PDF or Word docs that make for an extremely difficult reading experience. Many of the problems we're going to talk about today arise from when that happens, including the first several. So with that in mind, here are eight ebook formatting errors to avoid and how to deal with them. #1: Illustrations, charts, and maps. Some of the most common issues are that these aren't legible in grayscale (like an e-ink reader, like the Kindle or the various Kobo devices) or have too small fonts or a poor quality or low resolution. This is a very common problem, and it's kind of a problem across all ebooks. Like for example, think of the map of Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's a very complicated map with a lot of different names on it. Now imagine trying to read that map on a six inch black and white Kindle screen. You probably aren't going to be able to do it very well. People using dark mode are most likely going to have problems with seeing images in the same way. So if you have an image heavy book, it's a good idea to test that. So how to fix this? What I've done myself, because I write a lot of fantasy novels and fantasy novels traditionally need maps, is I will put the full color maps on my website and then in the author's note at the beginning, say a map of Owyllain or a map of Andomhaim is available at the author's website on this link. I had a few people ask if I could put the maps in the books and the nearest thing I've done is including the maps with some of the direct sales of my Payhip store. I think the system works very well because those map pages are consistently some of the most visited pages on my website. And to be honest, it would be a lot easier to look at the map on, for example, your tablet or your computer instead of on your phone when you're trying to use the e-reader application. And even if you are looking at the map on my website on your phone, you can pinch zoom in the browser in the way you probably can't in the ebook reader. So that is the quick and easy solution for it. For more image intensive books like textbooks, for example, you just have to take great care and make sure they use large, high resolution images that aren't going to get pixelated. It may be a good idea to set up a website that has these images that the readers can refer to. This would be a bit of extra expense and work, obviously, but it would go a long way to making your readers happy, like I have done with the maps on my website. #2: Paragraphs that aren't indented or unneeded spaces between indented paragraphs. This is one of the biggest pet peeves that people have when reading ebooks. Indented paragraphs are important and if they're properly indented, then space isn't needed between the paragraphs and this will look odd to readers. This was in fact a problem I did have the first couple of years of my ebook publishing career because I used Sigil for my primary ebook formatting and that is the default way Sigil renders ebooks. In time, I started to switch to using Vellum for ebook formatting and that solved the problem. So what I did at that point was I just went through all my entire library, reformatted the ebooks in Vellum, and then re-uploaded them to the various ebook store platforms and that took care of the problem. And that's what I've been doing ever since. I've been using Vellum for ebook formatting since at least 2018 at this point, I think. So how to fix? The easiest way to fix this is to spend a little money on a tool like a Vellum or Atticus or a similar program that does ebook formatting for you because that will make sure your paragraphs are indented properly and then you can spot check as well to make sure that the table of contents is working and the chapters are working and that the paragraphs are being indented properly. #3: Our third issue is hard to read fonts. Some people enjoy fonts that are very stylized, but let's be honest, most readers don't. It's also an accessibility issue if the serifs or the flourishes are too elaborate. How to fix? Honestly, the easiest way is to not use custom fonts for your book unless you have a really, really, really and I emphasize really good reason to do so because part of the appeal of ebooks and ereaders is that you can adjust the font size

    19 min

  4. MAR 23

    Episode 295: Five Bookbub Tips For Indie Authors

    In this week's episode, I share five tips for getting the most out of Bookbub Ads. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Wizard-Thief, Book #2 in the Half-Elven series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: THIEF50 The coupon code is valid through March 30, 2026. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 295 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 19th, 2026, and today we're looking at five tips for setting up BookBub ads for indie authors. We will also take a look at my current writing projects and do 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 Wizard-Thief, Book Two in the Half-Elven Thief series (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That code is THIEF50. As always, you'll be able to see the coupon code and link to the Payhip store in my show notes. This coupon code will be valid until March 30th, 2026 so if you need a new audiobook this winter, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Progress has not been as fast on Blade of Wraiths as I would have liked just because I've had so much stuff in real life that has taken priority lately. I'm still at 73,000 words, which puts me on Chapter 12 of 21 in my outline, so I'm over halfway through the rough draft. As has often been the case recently, the final draft will have more chapters than the rough draft because I tend to write longer chapters but the readers prefer shorter chapters, so I will split the longer chapters into shorter chapters. The final draft will probably have around 30, maybe 35 chapters, depending on how I split things up. But based on my outline, I am over the halfway point, so that is a good feeling. I am also 8,000 words into Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book of the Half-Elven Thief series with Rivah. I'm hoping I can get, despite delays, I'm hoping I can get Blade of Wraiths out in April and Dragon-Mage out in May, but we will see how the rest of this month goes. In audiobook news, Blade of Storms has finished recording (by Brad Wills), and it's a great audiobook. I'm looking forward to sharing it with you all. Currently, as of this recording, it is on Payhip, Google Play, and Kobo, but it should be showing up on the other audiobook stores before too much longer. Since Coupon of the Week was for Wizard-Thief, it's a good time to mention that Leanne Woodward is currently recording the fifth book in the series as an audiobook, Wizard-Assassin. We hope to have that out sometime in April, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:33 Main Topic of the Week: BookBub Ads For Indie Authors Now let's move on to our main topic this week, five tips for setting up BookBub ads for indie authors. Lately, I have been doing a lot more with BookBub ads than I have in the past because as I've mentioned before on the show, Facebook ads have declined in effectiveness and quality a great deal because there's so much AI slop on the platform and because Meta insists on putting the AI slop into the targeting of the ads, which makes them much, much less effective. Despite all the testing I've done since I stopped using Facebook ads in October, I have not gotten good results. I stopped using Facebook ads most of the time in October. I still occasionally do boosted posts for things like book announcements and maybe audiobook announcements, but the traditional targeted ad campaigns have become so much less effective with the Advantage Plus targeting that Meta uses. The idea behind that is that it bases the targeting off the ad off the text you put in the ad as opposed to letting you manually select targets. In theory, this sounds good. In practice, the targeting is just not good and doesn't work. So I've mostly stopped using Facebook ads and have switched more efforts to BookBub ads and Amazon ads, which is why we are talking about this now. So to start off, what are BookBub ads? BookBub is a book newsletter service that people sign up to receive in their email inbox. They can pick which categories they receive in the newsletter, such as romance, fantasy, science fiction, nonfiction, and so forth. The newsletter itself focuses on book deals or new releases and the bottom of each one has a small ad space that people can make a bid to be featured on. Unlike Facebook ads, for example, you're directly reaching an audience that wants ads about discounted books and are eager to learn about new releases and good deals, but let's be honest, mostly good deals. BookBub ads are a separate entity from BookBub Featured Deals. Anyone can make regular BookBub ads without being accepted like you have to for a Featured Deal. I'm not going to talk about the process of getting a Featured Deal in this episode, although I have been able to get them several times. Many people feel like BookBub ads aren't as effective as they once were, but I found that a good creative, the right targeting, and the right price can really make a big difference in how well an ad campaign does. For example, January when I set up this episode was the last month I had complete data for and for January, my four BookBub campaigns averaged a 2.89% click-through rate (with the highest one actually having a 4.2% click-through rate). For reference, BookBub has said that they consider 1.5 to 2% to be a good click-through rates on their platform. So with that in mind, here are a few things I've learned from my time doing BookBub ads. #1: Try Amazon ads first. I would recommend getting familiar with Amazon ads first before starting to use BookBub ads. Amazon ads are more forgiving. It's harder to overspend on them, and sometimes it feels like it's hard to get Amazon ads to spend at all. Amazon ads will give you important data on similar books and authors (often called comps) that you can use to build your BookBub ad campaigns when you do start them. It's also easier to get clicks on Amazon ads than BookBub ads. I recommend using both your Amazon ad and "Also Bought" data to make a list of at least 10 authors to use to target your BookBub ads, although you will probably not use all 10 in the same ad campaign. When you're choosing authors to target in your BookBub ads, you should also limit by genre as well, since many of your comp authors will write in multiple genres. Using myself as an example, I write fantasy, science fiction, and nonfiction books. Limiting by genre alone for your ads is too broad of a target, but the combination of similar authors and the right genre should narrow it down enough. BookBub currently provides a little too broad or too narrow feature on the page to help you find the right balance. #2: Get your pricing right. It must be a good deal. Your book needs to be on sale. The BookBub audience are first and foremost deal seekers. The most successful campaigns will feature either free or $0.99 books, but anything under $2.99 is the right price range. Do not advertise regular price books through BookBub ads, especially if the price is something like $9.99 or even above, even if the price at $9.99 is actually a good discount, like it's a cookbook or a technical manual, which tend to be more expensive. BookBub readers aren't very likely to be excited about that. This audience may even be annoyed to see books at those higher prices, even if it is a new release or a discount over the normal price. If your book is regular price but it is available in Kindle Unlimited, it's probably best to leave out the price information in your ad and focus exclusively on putting the Kindle Unlimited logo or language prominently in the creative. Obviously you want to limit your ads for this exclusively to Amazon. Many BookBub subscribers have Kindle Unlimited subscriptions so for those readers, that is even more of a draw to them as a discount would be since they can read the book at no additional cost to them since they already paid for their Kindle Unlimited subscription that month. #3: Try one ebook site for each campaign. Run your first campaign focusing on just one ebook site instead of running all of them at once in a campaign. For most people, that means picking Amazon or their home country's biggest ebook site. Limiting each campaign to just one ebook site will show you what platforms are the most effective for your ads and let you focus on how the clicks impact actual sales. #4: Don't go crazy on your bids. It doesn't make sense to make aggressive bids until you feel like you have your comps dialed in. Ignore the suggested amounts that BookBub provides and start small. Again, limiting to just one ebook site for each campaign is also a way to limit how much of the campaign budget gets spent, although it may still spend the full amount, especially if you've chosen Amazon. #5: Keep your campaigns short. People get tired of seeing the same ads, so it doesn't make sense to run a campaign for months on end. Limit each campaign to a bit less than a week. For myself, it's usually about four days that I'll run a BookBub ad and you'll generally see the best results on the first two days, usually the best results on the second day, and then diminishing returns but still decent on days three and four, and after that, it kind of flatlines. So I've found that generally, at least for my books, four days is about the best. Now we're going to talk about a slightly different topic, creating the creative for the image, which is the biggest part of the BookBub ad. First up, what do we mean by a creative? BookBub uses the term creative to describe the image that the readers will see as the ad. It's 300 by 250 pixels, so space is at a premium. Why is this important? In fact, it is very important because the creative is all that people see in the

    15 min

  5. MAR 16

    Episode 294: Winter 2025/2026 Movie Review Roundup

    In this week's episode, I look back at the movies and streaming shows I watched over winter 2025/2026 Instead of Coupon of the Week, you can get SILENT ORDER: OMNIBUS ONE for free at my Payhip store at this link until March 31st: https://payhip.com/b/lhCyU TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 294 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March the 13th, 2026 and today we are looking at my movie and streaming TV show reviews for Winter 2025 and 2026. We'll also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Before we get into all that, let's start off with Coupon of the Week. Actually, we are not going to have Coupon of the Week this week because originally I scheduled a Coupon of the Week for Silent Order: Omnibus One to get you 25% off it. However, I was able to get a BookBub Featured Deal to give away Silent Order: Omnibus One for free on the 17th. So instead, the episode description will just have a link to where you can get Silent Order Omnibus One for free at my Payhip store. Next week, regular Coupon of the Week will return. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am about 51,000 words into Blade of Wraiths. I had hoped to be a little further at the end of this week, but there was quite a bit of real life stuff to do this week that took up a lot of time. I didn't make quite as much progress as I had hoped, but I did make some progress, so that's good. I'm still hoping to have the book out in April if all goes well, but we will see. I'm also 5,000 words into Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series (six of nine planned). That hopefully will be out in May if all goes well. In audiobook news, the main recording on Blade of Storms (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is finished. Just have some proofing to do yet and then get through processing. Then hopefully the audiobook should be available on all platforms by next month. Recording is also underway for Wizard-Assassin, the fifth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:00 Main Topic: Movie/TV Show Review Roundup Now let's move on to our main topic this week, my movie roundup. Spring is near, so it's time for my Winter 2025/ 2026 Movie Review Roundup. I admit this is a bit shorter than my usual movie roundups because for a couple of months I didn't see anything I really felt like writing about. Not in a bad way or depressed sort of way, but I just didn't see anything I felt interested enough to write about, whether good or bad. The new year brought new movies to watch and now we have enough for a Movie Review Roundup. As always, the movies and shows are in order from my least favorite to my most favorite. The reviews are based on nothing objective, but only my own thoughts and opinions. First up is Operation Fortune, which came out in 2023. This is a Guy Richie action comedy with Jason Statham in the lead, which probably describes all you need to know about it. Like if you say the phrase "Guy Richie Action Comedy with Jason Statham in the Lead", this would be the movie that popped into your head. Statham plays Orson Fortune, an elite special forces operative. When a mysterious device is stolen by terrorists, the UK government sends Fortune to retrieve it. Fortune teams up with a group of specialists and then sets out to punch bad guys and save the day. Some good action sequences, some funny bits, and Hugh Grant was hilarious as the evil arms broker billionaire, but definitely a paint by number action movie. Enjoyable to watch, but nothing deep. Overall Grade: C Next up is Legend, which came out in 1985. This is a very weird movie told as sort of an '80s style dark fairy tale. The premise is that the Lord of Darkness wants to destroy all light (as lords of darkness are wont to do). But to do that, he needs to kill a pair of unicorns. He sends his goblin minions to do the deed. Meanwhile, Princess Lili is in love with Jack, a forest child who lives in harmony with various elves and dwarves and other natural creatures. When the goblins kill one of the unicorns and take the other back to Darkness's subterranean fortress, Jack and Lili have to team up to rescue the last unicorn and defeat Darkness. The creature work and all the puppets and suchlike look amazing. Poor Tim Curry delivered an excellent performance under that mountain of prosthetics he had to wear as Darkness. That said, I don't think Tom Cruise had quite learned how to act yet, and I'm afraid he kind of stood around with a blank expression most of the time. So I'd say Legend is an interesting fantasy classic, but definitely very niche. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Anaconda, which came out in 2025. This is a very meta, bonkers, and yet nonetheless entertaining comedy movie. It kind of went off the rails while shouting "WHEEEEEE" the entire time. College friends Doug, Griff, Claire, and Kenny are entering middle age and are all dissatisfied with how their lives have turned out. Doug wanted to be a director, but instead makes wedding videos. Griff is a struggling actor. Claire is a divorced lawyer and Kenny is a "Buffalo drunk (he only drinks beer and wine and just some, but not all of the hard liquors). When Griff acquires the rights to make the next movie in the Anaconda series, the four friends jump at the chance to make it as an indie film. Scraping together their savings, they set off for the Amazon to film their snake movie. However, they find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between illegal gold miners and the Brazilian government and there is an actual giant anaconda that is hunting both the gold miners and idealistic American filmmakers. This was very meta since the characters were making a movie in the Anaconda series…in a movie in the Anaconda series. Despite that, it was very funny and I enjoyed it, though it might be a bit too tongue in cheek for some viewers. Comedy, alas, is ever subjective. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Fackham Hall, which came out in 2025. Sometimes a movie is funny but dumb. Sometimes a movie is dumb but still funny, and sometimes a movie is just plain dumb. However, I'm pleased to report that Fackham Hall is the best of the three: funny, but dumb. It's a goofy but affectionate parody of Downton Abbey and the kind of movie that isn't afraid to make jokes simply for the sake of jokes. Interestingly, halfway through the movie takes the right hand turn and becomes a parody of an Agatha Christie novel. It was pretty funny in the vein of the Naked Gun or Airplane movies, though a few of the jokes might be too raunchy for some viewers. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Wrecking Crew, which came out in 2026. I would say this was one part buddy cop comedy, one part noir mystery, and one part John Wick style violence. When private investigator Walter Hale is killed by a hit and run in Hawaii, both his sons (by different mothers) conclude that it was murder. Straight laced James (played by Dave Bautista) is a Navy SEAL with a stable family life, while Maverick cop Johnny (played by Jason Momoa) is frequently drunk and on the outs and on the outs with his girlfriend. Nevertheless, both half-brothers independently realize that shady corporate interests killed their father and set out to find his killers. They must also deal with their complicated feelings with their father and overcome their deep seated resentment of each other. This was a pretty fun action movie, though the violence level is definitely John Wick level and might put off some viewers. Honestly, it made me wonder if there's a "Hawaiian Noir" mystery genre, the way that "Nordic Noir" novels were popular for a while. Overall Grade: B Next up is The Running Man, which came out in 2025. This is both very dark and very funny, and I think it was actually better than the original movie from the 1980s. It explores the same concept. Future America is a dystopia ruled by the Network megacorp and Glen Powell's character needs to get medicine for his daughter, but he can't afford it, so he tries out for the Network's cruel reality shows and lands a spot on the biggest one of all, The Running Man, where contestants have to stay alive and hidden for 30 days while they're hunted by mercenaries and the general public gets rewarded for informing on them. This definitely had strong Idiocracy vibes as well and the satire of contemporary American culture was very cutting and probably quite accurate. I do think this movie deserved better than to flop at the box office like it did, but perhaps it will have a long life on streaming. Overall Grade: B Next up is A Few Good Men, which came out in 1992. This is a high quality legal thriller carried by Tom Cruise's and Jack Nicholson's performances. Today, Tom Cruise is largely famous for extreme stunts like driving a motorcycle cycle off a cliff (it did make for a good movie) and various personal eccentricities, but both he and Nicholson really can act and their scenes together are great. Sometime between this and Legend (which we talked about earlier), Cruise really figured out how to act on screen. Anyway, when a Marine is killed during a hazing ritual, Lieutenant Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise), is called in to investigate, aided by Lieutenant Commander Galloway (played by Demi Moore). Colonel Jessup (who was played by Nicholson), the commander of the Marines in question, wants to cover up what really happened, and Kaffee and Galloway set out to prove that the Marines charged with murder were in fact following orders when the hazing ritual went wrong. Of course, the movie hinges around Kaffee's and Jessup's final confrontation in the courtroom. I have a theory that all genres are in fact variants of fantasy. Like romance is the fantasy of

    15 min

  6. MAR 9

    Episode 293: Interconnected Series, Pros & Cons

    In this week we look at the advantages and disadvantages of writing interconnected series. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, Book #3 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: ELVES50 The coupon code is valid through March 16, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 293 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 6th, 2026. Today we are looking at interconnected series/whether they're a good idea or a bad idea for a writer to pursue. We also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on 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: Blade of the Elves, Book #3 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is ELVES50. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes. The coupon code is valid through March the 16th, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook as we head into spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. Cloak of Summoning is done and it is out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Bookshop.org, Smashwords, and my own Payhip store. It has done quite well and actually got to number one in its category on Amazon US as of this recording, which is all the more impressive because on March 5th, the day my newsletter went out, Amazon US was down for a significant chunk of the afternoon. Despite that, that doesn't seem to have slowed down Cloak of Summoning any, and it is still going strong. So thank you all very much for that. And as I said, you can now get the book at all the ebook stores. Now that Cloak of Summoning is out and published, my main project is Blade of Wraiths, the fourth book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I'm currently 28,000 words into it. So I'm hoping if all goes well and nothing comes up, I can have that out sometime in April. My secondary project is Dragon-Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Half-Elven Thief series and I am 1,000 words into that. That will take over as my main project once Blade of Wraiths is done, and hopefully that will be out in May, if all goes well and nothing crazy happens. In audiobook news, Cloak of Titans, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy, is now available at almost all the audiobook stores, including Audible, Apple, Amazon, Google Play, Kobo, and the other major ones. So you can get that and listen to it at your audiobook store of choice. Brad Wills is currently recording Blade of Storms, which was the third book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, and he is about halfway through recording that. So hopefully we should have that out in April sometime, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. With that, let's move on to our main topic. 00:02:51 Main Topic of the Week: Interconnected Series Our main topic is today we're going to talk about whether interconnected series are a good thing or a bad thing. First of all, what are interconnected series? Interconnected series have different standalone stories, but share at least some characters and locations from previous series. Many of the ideas and themes carry over as well, but not always. Romance writers use interconnected series. A couple or couples featured in previous series make an appearance in a new place or with a new group of people. Author Abby Jimenez has characters in her romances occupy the same social orbit in Minnesota across multiple series (and of course, they all share a love of the author's real life Minnesota bakery, Nadia Cakes). There's something of a joke among romance writers that your series can be as long as you want it to be, just make sure that the heroine has a large number of single/unattached sisters so that after the heroine has their happily ever after, you can go one by one down through the sisters and make sure they find their love interests and that they too can have their happily ever afters and extend the series for as long as you want. One example of a non-romance interconnected series from books I've written would be Sevenfold Sword, which is a direct follow up to Frostborn. The new series involves Ridmark, Calliande, and the other characters from the Frostborn series, but they are in a new location with new allies, new adventures, and new adversaries. A reader could (and has) read the Sevenfold series without having read Frostborn, but Frostborn fans get more time with characters they like and there are nods to the previous series. I fully intended Sevenfold Sword to be a standalone series, but what I found is that people tend to start Sevenfold Sword and then go back and start Frostborn and read all of Frostborn and then proceed on to Sevenfold Sword. So in that sense, the interconnected series was successful because that led to sales of Frostborn that might not have happened otherwise. So with all that in mind and that introduction, here are four reasons interconnected series can help you as a writer. #1: Readers are already invested. Readers have already spent a substantial amount of time with these characters and places. They have formed a bond with them across the entire previous series and are excited to spend more time with them and find out more about them. Even a brief appearance from returning characters feels exciting to readers. A very recent example of this from pop culture is how the TV show The Paper used a character from the US version of The Office. Because audiences are familiar with the character of Oscar in Accounting (who is the only returning character thus far), they are interested in seeing what he's doing and why he's in Toledo instead of Scranton. Also, his reaction to seeing a documentary crew at work again is exactly what you expect that it would be and is a great moment of humor that perfectly fits the character's personality. The show does mention some small things from the previous series, like a quote from Michael Scott, but it's certainly not a classic spinoff and is very much its own creation, reflecting how both office culture and humor have changed a great deal in the over 20 years since the US Office first began airing. #2: You already are invested as the writer, if you are the one writing the interconnected series. Writers as well as readers can get invested in a set of characters in the world building in a certain series and they're excited to continue. This is especially true if you haven't yet concluded the character's external and internal conflict arcs, because I have found after 171 books that it is generally easier to write a character that has an ongoing conflict instead of one that has all of his or her conflicts resolved. It's also a bit easier to write in a series over the long term because in a certain sense it's less work because you don't have to create everything from scratch. Cloak of Summoning was the 14th Cloak Mage book, but counting Cloak Games, it is the 26th overall book with Nadia as the main protagonist. By now, I'm very familiar with how Nadia thinks and acts and what she would do in any given situation and the rules of her world and setting are very well established. And so in some sense that makes it easier to write because I don't have to create everything from scratch again in terms of the worldbuilding. It's also in some ways easier to generate the sort of enthusiastic energy to write the book because people are very frequently asking when the next Nadia book is going to come out. So that is heartening for morale, so to speak, as one is writing the book, the knowledge that people are actively waiting to read it once it is finally published. #3: You can use ideas you weren't able to in the previous series or expand on existing characters. It's often said that there are more ideas than time for a writer. Interconnected series lets you use some of the ideas that didn't make sense to use in a previous series and lets you build on the world you have already created. It's exciting to watch characters grow and see how familiar places evolve as time has passed. For example, my Blades of Ruin series returns to the world of Sevenfold Sword in the Kingdom of Owyllain, but a century has passed and the humans from the previous series have died of old age. How did the culture of Owyllain evolve and change in that length of time? How did changes in the monarchy create new problems and enable new enemies and how else did the world change? For example, Sevenfold Sword did not have goblins when I wrote it, but in the century since, the goblins that appeared in the Dragontiarna series have migrated to Owyllain and set up their own new kingdom on the borders. This also is something I explicitly did in Cloak of Summoning. In one of the previous books, I mentioned that $34 million was stolen from one of the organizations aligned with the protagonist, so that is the major plot hook for this book, trying to figure out who stole that money and why. In addition, I'm able to expand on several ideas from the previous books, such as the Forerunner, Grayhold, and some of the other characters and expand on them and use them in the book in a way I wasn't really able to in previous books. So being able to do that as a writer is very enjoyable. #4: A series is often easier to market. New series are famously much harder to market than a continuation or interconnected series. It's easier to hook people when there is some amount of familiarity involved. After all, after 171 books, I've started a few new series from scratch and it is definitely harder to

    20 min

  7. MAR 2

    Episode 292: The Four Thomases Of The English Reformation (with one bonus Thomas!)

    In this week's episode, I take a historical digression to look at the four major Thomases of the English Reformation - Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas Cranmer. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store: QUEST25 The coupon code is valid through March 9 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 292 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 27th, 2026. Today we are taking a digression into history by looking at the four Thomases of the English Reformation (with one bonus Thomas). We'll also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing and publishing projects. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is QUEST25 and as always, the links to the store and the coupon code will be available in the show notes of this episode. This coupon code is valid through March 9th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I am very nearly done with Cloak of Summoning. As of this recording, I am 35% of the way through the final editing pass. This episode should be coming out on, let's see, March the 2nd. I'm hoping Cloak of Summoning will be available a few days (hopefully like one or two days) after this episode goes live, but we'll see how things go. In any event, it should be out in very early March, which is not far away at this point. I'm also 14,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, the fourth book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. Hopefully that will be out in April, if all goes well. That's my secondary project right now, but once it gets promoted to primary project once Cloak of Summoning is available, my new secondary project will be Dragon Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. I'm looking forward to that since it is going to bring to an end a lot of ongoing plot threads. So it should be quite a fun book to write and hopefully to read. That should hopefully be out in May or possibly June, depending on how things go. In audiobook news, Cloak of Titans, the audiobook narrated by Hollis McCarthy, should be available in more audiobook stores than it was this time last week, though it's still not on Amazon, Audible, or Apple. Brad Wills is working on recording Blade of Storms and I think the first six chapters are done. Hopefully we should have those audiobooks available to you before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:18 Main Topic: The Four Thomases of the English Reformation Now without further ado, let's get to our main topic and it's time for another of my favorite topics overall, a digression into obscure points of history. I've mentioned before that Wolf Hall (both the TV show and the book) is a lot easier to understand if you are at least passingly familiar with the key figures of the English Reformation, which happened during the reign of King Henry VIII. But who were these key figures? I had a history professor who said that to understand the English Reformation, you need to know about the four Thomases of the English Reformation: Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and Thomas Cranmer, since each one of them altered events in a major way. Fun fact: only one of the four died from natural causes and right before he was about to go on trial for treason, which would have likely ended with his execution. The English Reformation was a tumultuous time and the Tudor court was not a place for the faint of heart or the morally scrupulous. So let's talk about the four Thomases and one bonus Thomas today. But first to understand them, we should look at three background trends that converged and boiled over during their lifetimes. #1: Henry VIII needs an heir. King Henry VIII was quite famously married six times and executed two of his wives in his quest for a male heir. To the modern era, this sounds odd and chauvinistic, but one of the errors of studying history is assuming that the residents of the past had any interest in 21st century standards of behavior. By the standards of Henry's time, having a male heir to assume the kingdom after his death was absolutely vital. In fact, an argument could be made that Henry was attempting to act responsibly by going to such lengths to father a male heir, though naturally he went about it in a spectacularly destructive and self-absorbed way. Remember, Henry's father, Henry VII, came to the throne after a 30-year civil war, and there were noble families that thought they had a better claim to the throne than Tudors and would be happy to exercise it. A good comparison is that the lack of a male heir for Henry VIII was as serious a crisis as a disputed presidential election in 21st century America would be. You can see evidence for this in Henry's famous jousting accident in 1536. For a few hours, people were certain that he was dead or was about to die, and this incident caused a brief constitutional crisis. If Henry died, who would rule? His daughter, Mary, who he had just declared a bastard? His young daughter Elizabeth from Anne Boleyn? His bastard son, Henry FitzRoy? A regent? One of the old families who thought they had a claim to the throne? Now, these are the sort of questions that tend to get decided by civil wars, which nobody wanted. So Henry needed a male heir and it weighed on him as a personal failure that he had been unable to produce one, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons he concluded that several of his marriages had been cursed by God and needed to be annulled. Though, of course, one of Henry's defining traits was that his self-absorption was such that nothing was ever his fault, but a failing of those around him. #2: The Reformation is here. At the same time Henry was beginning to have his difficulties, the Protestant Reformation exploded across Europe. The reasons for the Reformation were manifold. There was a growing feeling across all levels of society that the church was corrupt and more concerned about money than tending to Christ's flock, a feeling not helped by the fact that several of the 15th and 16th century popes were essentially Renaissance princelings more interested in luxury, money, and expanding the power of the papal states than in anything spiritual. Many bishops, archbishops, abbots, and other high prelates acted the same way. The situation the early 16th century church found itself in was similar to American higher education today. Many modern professors and administrators go about their jobs quietly, competently, and diligently, but if you want to find examples of corruption, folly, and egregious waste in American higher education, you don't have to try very hard. Reformers could easily find manifold examples of clerical and papal corruption to reinforce their arguments. Additionally, nationalism was beginning to develop as a concept, as was the idea of the nation state. People in England, Scotland, Germany, and other countries began to wonder why they were paying tithes to the church that went to build beautiful buildings in Rome and support the lavish lifestyle of the papal court when that money might be better spent at home. For that matter, the anti-clericalism of the Reformation was not new and had time to mature. At the end of the 14th century, Lollardy was a proto-Protestant movement in England that challenged clerical power. In the early 15th century, the Hussite wars in Bohemia following the teachings of Jan Hus were a preview of the greater Reformation to come. Papal authority had been severely damaged by the Great Schism at the end of the 14th and the start of the 15th century when two competing popes (later expanded to three) all tried to excommunicate each other and claim control of the church. In the aftermath, Renaissance Humanists had begun suggesting that only the Bible was the proper source and guide for Christianity, and that papal authority and many of the church's practices were merely human traditions that had been added later and were not ordained by God. A lot of the arguments of the Reformation had their earliest form from the writers of the 15th century. Essentially, the central argument of the Reformation was that the believer's personal relationship with God is the important part of Christianity and doesn't need to be mediated through ordained priests in the official sacraments of the church, though such things were still important. Of course, all the various reformers disagreed with each other about just how important and what the nature of that relationship was, how many sacraments there should be, and what the precise relationship between the individual, the church, and the state should be (and that argument got entangled with many other issues like nationalism), but that was a central crux of the Reformation. So all these competing pressures have been building up, and when Martin Luther posted his statements for debate on church reform in October of 1517, it was the equivalent of lighting a match in a barn that had been stuffed full of sawdust and was suffering from a natural gas leak. #3: The printing press. So why did Luther's action kick off the Reformation as we know it and not the other proto-Protestant movements we mentioned? I think the big part of that is the printing pass, perhaps the biggest part. The printing press did not exist during the early proto-Protestant movements, which meant it was a lot harder for the ideas of reform to spread quickly. The Lollards in particular wanted to translate the Bible into English instead of Latin, but the Bible is a big book and that is a lot of copying to do by

    28 min

  8. FEB 23

    Episode 291: Generative AI Overhype, William Miller, and the Great Disappointment

    In this week's episode, we take a look at hysteria over AI, and compare it to past religious movements like William Miller's Great Disappointment. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Elven Thief, Book #1 in the Half-Elven Thief series, (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store: RIVAH50 The coupon code is valid through March 2, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 291 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 28th, 2026, and today we're looking at AI hysteria and whether or not AI gives any actual benefits to people. We also have Coupon of the Week, progress updates on my current writing projects, and also Question the Week, where we talk to people about AI. But first, let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Half-Elven Thief (as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is RIVAH50. This coupon code will be valid through March 2, 2026. So if you need a new audiobook as we exit winter and come into spring, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Cloak of Summoning is done. It turned out to be just about as long as Cloak of Worlds, maybe a thousand words shorter. I am about 20% through the first round of editing, and I am hopeful that that book will be out sometime in March, probably the first week of March if all go as well. I've also written a short story called Dragon Claw that newsletter subscribers will get for free in ebook format when Cloak of Summoning comes out, which as I said will hopefully be in early March. I'm also 11,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, the fourth book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, and that will be my main project once Cloak of Summoning is published. In audiobook news, the audiobook of Blade of Shadows (as narrated by Brad Wills) is now out at almost all the stores, so you can get it at Audible, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, and the other main stores. Cloak of Titans (as narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is done and is currently rolling out to the stores. I think as of right now, you can get it at Google Play, Kobo, and my own Payhip store, but it should be showing up on Audible and the other main stores before too much longer. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:01:56 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. For the first Question of the Week of 2026 and this week's question: have you personally derived any benefits or experienced any negatives from the rise of generative AI? And this question was inspired by the topic of this week's post, obviously enough since we're talking about AI. I should note that this is a contentious topic with divergent opinions, and so I asked people to remain civil in the comments and they definitely were, so thank you for everyone for that. Now let's have some opinions on AI before I tell you how AI has positively and mostly negatively affected my life. Joachim says: I have not used AI for private purposes. My Con: My Chromebook might be obsolete rather sooner than later. In my company, we use an AI, which is helpful. It has all the knowledge articles, so you can ask, how do I do this or that? The company's Con: laptop prices are going up. Eddie says: My Cons are much the same as yours. My Pros are using it to create images for tabletop games to help players visualize monsters and NPCs. I have found it effective in turning voice to text meeting notes into meeting minutes and actions. Jesse says: Software engineer here. I have found it helpful when I'm working on something in a language I'm not as familiar with the syntax. As a "how I might do this" learning tool, it's not bad. As a "do this for me/vibe code" thing, no thanks…too much trust. John says: Yes and no. I was in an AI startup that stopped paying me and my team for two months then let us go. We're currently suing them for back pay, but the tech worked and is still working. I also work in ad tech. Devs are trying to get more productive using AI tools. It's hit and miss as far as I can tell, but using traditional machine learning and data science to optimize marketing has worked for decades and still works, but that's not what people consider to be AI nowadays. Also drove across the country last August and used ChatGPT to plan my trip, and that works splendidly. I think John might win here for largest negative in his comment though, to be fair, that's more for business reasons than for AI itself, though I, for his sake, I'm pleased he was able to use ChatGPT to plan his drive across the country and ChatGPT didn't send him driving off a cliff someplace. Jenny says: I'm so over everyone trying to push this "solution" on me. It's like protein enhanced foods. Stop trying to put protein and AI into everything. Just put it where it makes sense or let me choose it. My negative experiences far outweigh anything helpful. Jimmy says: I have quit using Google search. It never tried to find the answer that I asked for. It just returned what it felt like. Its answers usually matched the paid ads it led the list with. Rob says: Okay for meeting notes and rough drafting for job applications, et cetera. Other than that, seems to have limited use for me personally and is a nuisance on my phone, internet browser, et cetera. And finally, Randy says: my biggest Con is that the AI answers that pop up when I'm trying to search range between inaccurate and dangerously wrong. I suspect many people don't realize they aren't reading actual data when they see them. So thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on that. For myself, I've mostly experienced negative things with AI and a few positive things though to be honest, both the positive and negative things were relatively minor in the greater scheme of things. So I shall list off the Pros and Cons of my experiences with generative AI. I should mention that none of my books, short stories, for sale audiobooks, or book covers contain any AI elements. If it says Jonathan Moeller on the cover and it's not on YouTube, then it is 100% human made. Now, the Pros and Cons. The Pros: Power Director 365, the video editing program I use for YouTube, has an "animated by AI" feature so I've used it to animate some of my book covers for use of Facebook ads with middling results at best. I used Google's Voice AI stuff to create AI voice versions of the Silent Order books and then put them on YouTube because I wanted to understand the technology. I'm not planning to ever do actual audiobook versions of Silent Order since they wouldn't make back any money, so I wasn't screwing a narrator out of work and the voices involved were licensed by Google, so there was no copyright infringement the way there is with companies like Anthropic. That said, I suspect this is less generative AI and simply a more advanced text to speech technology, which has been around forever. I mean, you could do text to speech back on the earliest versions of the Macintosh. I mean, ideally, I would like text to speech to just be a button in your ereader app of choice for accessibility reasons, and then you can purchase the audiobook if the text to speech was too bland. Overall, a lot of people listen to the AI versions on YouTube, but the listeners mostly complained about the synthetic voice and would've preferred a real narrator, unsurprisingly. Now onto the Cons. Facebook ads went from very effective to middling at best on a good day, thanks to their Advantage Plus AI. I am constantly bombarded by AI generated scam emails of several different varieties. I deleted twelve before I recorded this. The price of Microsoft Office went up, the price for RAM and GPUs went up due to data center hoarding them all. The price for electricity has gone up. Windows 11 and Microsoft Office's performance has gone down quite a bit due to forced AI integration. In fact, I got so annoyed at Windows 11, I switched to writing on a Mac Mini, which I suppose was a positive because I like the Mac Mini, but still. Google Search and all Google products in general are much less useful because of AI and the quality of information on the internet (already low) has gone down quite a bit due to the prevalence of AI slop. Admittedly, neither these Pros or Cons are majorly serious to me personally (with the possible exception of electricity prices going up), but the Cons definitely outweigh the Pros. I can confidently say I have derived no real benefit from generative AI, and I suspect a lot of other people could say the same, if they're honest. 00:07:27 Main Topic of the Week: William Miller, The Great Disappointment, and AI Now onto our related main topic this week, AI hysteria, William Miller, and The Great Disappointment. This past week there were numerous articles from and interviews with various AI bros saying that within 12 to 18 months, AI will replace white collar work and humanity must simply adjust. When I read these articles, I wasn't reminded of the Singularity, of AI, of Skynet and the Terminator, or anything technological. Instead, I thought of a preacher named William Miller who died about 190 years ago. William Miller came out of the Second Great Awakening, which was one of the waves of religious vitality and furor that grip America every so often. Miller almost died in combat as an officer in the War of 1812, and saw one of his men killed in front of him, which understandably left a lasting impression. His experiences led him to an examination of mortality that resulted in a fervent Baptist conversion. He also became convinced that he could calculate the date of Christ's return from the Bible and decided t

    14 min
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Jonathan Moeller
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    299
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Jonathan Moeller
  • Show Website
    The Pulp Writer Show

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