Episode 189: The Return Of Caina Kardamnos

In this week's episode, I discuss why I decided to return to the character of Caina after twenty-nine novels.

This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE INFERNO as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE INFERNO for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code:

WINTERINFERNO

The coupon code is valid through March 14th, 2024.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 189 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 23rd, 2024 and today we are talking about the return of Caina Kardamnos. Before we get to our main topics, we will have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing projects. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Inferno, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Inferno for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERINFERNO and that is WINTERINFERNO. The coupon code is valid through March the 14th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums and weather, we've got one ready for you.

So now for a progress update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is out at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, since I have found that LitRPG books tend to do the best while they're in Kindle Unlimited. It is going a little better than expected, which is nice, and if you want to check out the book, you can read it at Amazon. My main writing project now is Ghost in the Veils, hence The Return of Caina Kardamnos title for this episode and I am 25,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 21.

I am also 31,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series and that should come out after Ghost in the Veils. I'm also 3,000 words into Cloak of Titans, the next Nadia book. So the order these will all come out in is Ghost in the Veils needs to come out first because it has recording slot scheduled for the middle of April. So it needs to be done and out by then. I will finish Wizard Thief after that and then Cloak of Titans.

In an audiobook news, the recording and proofing for Shield of Storms’ audiobook is done, and it's currently working its way through quality assurance on the various platforms, so hopefully it should be available on your audio platform of choice before much longer.

00:02:07 Reader Comments and Questions

Now, before we get to our main topic, let's have a few questions and comments from listeners and readers. Reader NK asks: Hi, I would like to know what LitRPG is. Haven't come across it before and also do we need to complete reading the Sevenfold Sword series before Sevenfold Sword Online to better enjoy this story? In answer your question NK, LitRPG is generally defined as a story that uses the conventions and structures of online role-playing games like MMORPGs. They can be either fantasy or science fiction or blend a bit of both. Typically in these stories, either the protagonist is magically zapped into a game world or is playing the game while trying to balance some sort of crisis in both the game and real life, which is the approach I took for Sevenfold Sword Online.

In answer to the second half of your question, Sevenfold Sword Online isn't actually connected to Sevenfold Sword. The premise is that it's 700 years in the future and that an evil corporation has built a hit virtual reality MMORPG using the books of a long dead author (i.e. me) as source material for the setting. In hindsight, I wish I had made the setting completely unconnected to anything else I had written, because it seems to confuse some readers, but too late now I suppose so, hopefully that will answer your question.

Now we have a question from reader Justin. For context for that question, I recently had to get a new desktop computer after my old one died and this is in fact the first podcast episode I am recording using the new computer. So if it sounds really weird, I blame the computer, or more accurately, I probably should blame Windows 11. But anyway, with that in mind, here is our question from Justin: Good luck to you with your new computer. I switched to laptops for my computing needs. The lower power draw and portability are handy when you're going off grid. I'm used to you working on three series at once. You put that up a notch. Is this to reduce burnout and possibly writer’s block? In answer to that question, the reason I got a desktop was because I do a lot of cover design and graphic design, which is not always the greatest on laptops because that needs a lot of processing power, a lot of RAM, and perhaps most importantly, a lot of storage.

In answer to the writing question, the only thing that's changed is I'm not doing a Ridmark and Andomhaim book every other month. I am going to keep writing Ridmark and books set in Andomhaim but I’ve been writing a Ridmark/Andomhaim book every other month pretty much since summer 2013, so I'd like to change it up a little bit and do more of other things. So while I am going to continue the Shield Wars series and I am going to write Shield of Darkness soon, I'm not going to start writing it until after Cloak of Titans is done, if you remember my order of projects from earlier in the show. I don't feel at risk of burnout or getting exasperated with writing. I just have been writing Ridmark and Andomhaim setting for so long that while I would like to continue writing that I would like to write more of other things as I go along.

00:05:08 Main Topic: The Return of Caina Kardamnos

Now to our main topic: the return of Caina Kardamnos. As I mentioned earlier on the show, I'm now 25,000 words into Ghost in the Veils, which puts me also at chapter six in the second book of the Ghost Armor Series, the immediate sequel to Ghost in the Serpent from late 2023. I have to admit that when I finished Ghost in the Sun in the Ghost Night series in 2021 (I believe that was), I thought I was done with Caina. The reason for that was I just didn't have any idea of what to where to go or what to do with the character after Ghost Night. Part of that, I admit, was that Caina had become powerful and influential and I am cynically suspicious of people like that and wasn't sure I could write someone like that as a protagonist. Though that was less a concern as I went on since writing Ridmark and Tyrcamber, and Dragontiarna and then Dragonskull and the Shield War gave me a good bit of practice.

So I finally had a good enough idea to return to Caina as a protagonist, and I think it was a confluence of four different ideas. The first idea was perhaps the most obvious one: what if Caina found out she had stepchildren? There are lots of potential story dynamics with stepchildren, but I thought the most interesting setup would be if Kylon had children he didn't know about and the mother Kalliope Agramemnos had kept them secret from him, except Kylon loves Caina and Kalliope is in awe of Caina. So Caina, out of necessity, becomes the linchpin holding this family together, since neither Kylon nor Kalliope can stand each other. There are a lot of potential character arcs and conflicts that can be generated in the inherent tension of that situation.

The second core idea came from medieval nobles. If you've read any histories of medieval Europe, one of the main themes of the Middle Ages is that men primarily wielded the political and military power. But some women, by sheer force of will, charisma, tenacity, and cunning came to wield great power themselves. There are in fact quite a few examples. Probably the most famous one nowadays would be Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was married to two different kings and the mother to two more or three (depending on how you count and if you include Henry II’s eldest son, Young Henry, as the actual king or not). She kept her son Richard on the throne of England during his captivity after the Third Crusade and she was one of the chief architects of his release. Had Eleanor lived longer, and her son John listened to more of her advice, probably King John's reign would have been more successful and he would not be remembered primarily in the United States as the cowardly Prince John from that one animated Disney movie with the anthropomorphic animals.

Perhaps the most successful example is Margaret Beaufort, who basically engineered her son Henry VII’s ascension to the English throne at the end of the Wars of the Roses, and then served as one of his primary advisors for the entirety of his reign. In fact, she even outlived Henry VII by a year and then lived long enough to advise her grandson Henry VIII for the first year after he became king.

A less successful example and contemporary with Margaret Beaufort, would be Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI and mother of his heir. Margaret of Anjou was one of the driving forces behind the Wars of the Roses but lost everything when her husband and son were killed and she died in poverty in France while her enemy Edward IV ruled in England. Blanche of Castile was her son Louis IX’s regent when he went on crusade. Countess Matilda of Tuscany helped force the settlement in the Investiture Controversy and the Holy Roman Emperor, the southern dukes of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Pope all wanted Matilda as their ally.

Perhaps the most striking example would be Sichelgaita of Lombardy, wife of the rapacious Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard. Guiscard started out as a penniless, landless knight and ended up conquering Sicily and a lot of Italy. He was known as greedy, cunning, and ruthless. His eventual tomb had the epitaph “Here lies Guiscard, the terror of the world.” It seems that Sichelgaita was in every way suited to be the wife of a freebooting warlord like her husband. Guiscard fought a lot of wars and Sichelgaita usually donned armor to battle alongside him. At the Battle of Durham in 1081 Guiscard’s troops started to break and run while fighting the soldiers of the Byzantine Empire. Sichelgaita rode after the fleeing troops, berating them for their cowardice, and evidently the prospect of her displeasure was so fearsome that Guiscard’s troops turned around and won the battle. It should also be known at this point in her life, Sichelgaita was in her forties and had borne Giscard eight children, so clearly a very resilient lady.

So now that Caina is powerful and influential maybe historical events like these can provide inspirations for plot lines. Caina would still occasionally put on a shadow cloak and go out and break into places because this is, after all, a fantasy novel.

The third idea was that someone must be in charge. I mentioned earlier that I had misgivings about writing protagonists with power and influence, but I've come to realize that is an incomplete view. The thing about power and influence is that someone is going to be in charge. It's just human nature. No matter how something is organized, someone must be in charge and bear the burden of leadership, and hopefully it will be someone with an eye on the greater good.

I've thought about this concept a lot in 2023. I know several people in 2023 who, after much agonizing, left some of the traditional helping professions like medicine and education not because of dislike of the admittedly stressful work, but because the leadership was so stupid and so malicious as to create an unsustainable work environment. Like a leader can be stupid and well-intentioned, and a leader can be malicious and clever and an organization can still function, but stupidity and malice together are unsustainable. Alas, the contemporary United States and United Kingdom have no shortage of malicious and stupid leadership, but that's beyond the scope of the podcast about writing.

So in the end, someone is going to be in charge, someone is going to have to wield power and influence. Hopefully it is someone who will act in the name of the greater good (I already did some of that with Caina in Ghost in the Council towards the second half of the Ghost Night series). That can make, in my opinion, for in a compelling protagonist.

Fourth and finally, fantasy creatures. Way back in the 2000s when I was originally trying to sell the first Caina novels, all the agents and publishers fulminated on how they didn't want to see any novels with traditional fantasy creatures like elves and orcs and dwarves and serpent men and so forth. So when I wrote the kind of books I wrote them without any of that, which continued when I moved into self-publishing, though I was always a little sore about that, even years later. Now I think I have a firm enough grasp on the setting that I can introduce some traditional fantasy creatures into the Caina books, hopefully in a way that makes sense within the context of Caina 's very well-established world.

So those four ideas came together for Ghost in the Serpent, and we shall hopefully see more of them in Ghost in the Veils.

So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. Our reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com and many of them now have transcripts (note: Episodes 144-189 currently have transcripts). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.