Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Are you ready for a book release? If so, you're too late! Because the book is already out. But, as can be seen from the title, it's still not A Decaying World. And it has nothing to do with my Mortaevum Universe. It's just something that popped into my head one day, although I honestly can't remember the details anymore. And while it isn't a full-length novel, it should still keep you busy (and hopefully entertained) for a couple of hours, judging by my text-to-speech program, which I used like dozens of times until I was satisfied at last.

I also have another finished novella lying around, which once again takes place in my Mortaevum Universe. But that one needs more polishing, so I won't release it until sometime next month. Until then, I'll try to focus on A Decaying World again. Especially because I won a beta read that would otherwise have been quite pricy. No idea if it's going to be worth it, but I have to focus on the novel anyway. It's been lying around for far too long, after all. I'm not going to make any promises on when it will actually be released, though. Just that I will split the book after the first part, while also releasing a complete edition later on. And I'll try not to work on too many other projects in the meantime.

And with that out of the way, here's the link to Lifelines: A Terrifying Christmas Night ... which only has a subtitle because I noticed there are lots of Lifelines on Amazon. Damn them all! Anyway, I hope you have fun with it! And if you do, please leave a review on Amazon so others can find it too!

Mystery Thriller
Lifelines is a mystery thriller about a young woman who can see when other people will die, no matter if the cause is natural or not. It's a power she despised for many years, until it made her realize that no one's destiny is set in stone. From that moment on, she has tried to save as many people as possible, particularly those with suicidal thoughts.

Unfortunately, one of these cases puts her own life in danger, for reasons she cannot understand. And it seems like the whole world conspires against her that day, as none of the options to resolve that situation are easily accessible. Will she be able to change her destiny, nonetheless? Or will she finally pay the price for interfering with the natural order?

There's only one night to find out!

Thursday, December 1, 2016

After going through Grim Memoria multiple times, I've finally decided on a release date! While I could upload the book right now, I want to make sure that I haven't overlooked any errors, especially where missing letters are concerned. And I want to see if anyone else is interested in getting a review copy, as I've only received one reply so far. So I'll give it ten more days and will release the book around the 10th of December!

I also thought of including two short stories that are somewhat connected to the events of Grim Memoria. Then I realized I couldn't do that as both of them have already been published on other sites. And I'd really like to make use of KU for the time being. That's why everyone who signs up for my newsletter (or has already signed up) will get a free story when Grim Memoria comes out. It's nothing huge and also nothing new, but it seems to help other people getting newsletter subscribers, so I might as well give it a try.

Until then, don't forget the $20 Paypal Giveaway! You can earn additional points every day. And the more you get, the better your chances.

Fantas novel

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Hey guys, sorry for the absence, but there wasn't much to say about my writing projects. Which doesn't mean I stopped writing, but most of it had nothing to do with the my Jack de Nileth pen name. And while I'm trying to get back in the grove, the last year wasn't easy. And there are still days when I don't feel motivated to write anything. The summer heat doesn't help in that regard. Really wish I had some window shades...

But hey, I finally got rid of my student loan some weeks ago! Takes a bit of pressure off. Which doesn't mean I can focus 100% on my projects, as I have others running that need to be finished. The Way of Darkness should be one of them, but I don't feel like focusing on a serial for now. Which is why I started adapting another of my games: Grim Memoria. And man, the dialogue was awful. The written version should hopefully be an improvement. I'm about 20K words in but have no idea how much is left. Maybe another 20K, but I know my writing can get a bit excessive.

Afterwards, I'll finish some other projects and maybe then I can focus on getting the first Mortaevum book released. And then I'll see about the second half. Can't make any promises, though. I just hope my motivation doesn't take a nosedive again. Being depressed sucks.

I also made a cover for Grim Memoria, by the way. An artwork made specifically for the story would have been nicer, but this one has to do for now, even though it doesn't totally fit the character it's meant to portray.

Mortaevum

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Hello guys! After remodeling my blog and not posting anything for months, an update surely couldn't hurt. So here's one! Unfortunately, I cannot claim to have finished the revision of A Decaying World. Why? Because I haven't touched it in a month. Instead, I decided to work on other projects instead, some of which you can see in the sidebar now. All of these (except for Spam Up your Life) can be found on Kindle Unlimited ... which might not be worth it anymore. It's certainly better than selling nothing, but if the payment actually turns out to be $0.005/page, then it's simply a joke.

Sure, it means long form writers can potentially earn more (while everyone else gets peanuts), but that's assuming readers get through enough of the book. If they don't, you're also going to lose out. Having to get through 10% was a lot better in that regard. The payments might not have been sustainable, but Amazon should have come up with a better system. Like paying a flat rate for every borrow and then adding bonuses for a certain amount of pages or whatever. Would certainly be better than the stupid system they've got now.

Despite all that, I'll keep my serials exclusive to Amazon right now. Death Zone of Dheygar still needs a lot of stories before I can even think of creating a bundle anyway. The Way of Darkness might be easier in that regard, especially since I've changed my rhythm to allow for 3000-4000 words a day. No idea how long the second volume is going to be, though.

Horror SerialSerial HorrorDeath Zones of DheygarWay of Darkness

Sadly, I've already forgotten where the idea for Death Zones of Dheygar came from. Shouldn't have waited so long to post something about it. The Way of Darkness, on the other hand, has been inspired by a game I've played some time ago. It didn't have much in terms of plot, so all I took was the basic premise—a world consumed by darkness.

Since someone will surely claim I stole the protagonist's weapons from Wolverine: nope. Sure, they're almost identical, but I didn't even think of that. All I wanted was an unsual weapon, especially since most of my characters use swords.

So if you're interested in horror, why not check out Death Zones of Dheygar? And if you want more fantasy instead, The Way of Darkness will hopefully deliver! I'll try to focus on the latter now, with occasional glances at A Decaying World. So it might still take a while for the first book in the Mortaevum series to be released. But hey, it's my first actual book. One where I had to change a lot during the last two revisions. So having the release pushed back might not be such a bad thing.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

How long has it been since my last update? Two and a half months? Oh well. No point in writing any posts when I don't have much to say. You can get more updates on twitter, but still not all that many.

Anyway, what I have achieved since my last update? I've finished revising everything up to chapter 9, which means I got rid of a lot of useless exposition and hopefully tightened up the prose. It might have led to a few sudden scene transitions, but I'll see about that later on. Really need to get the revision done first.

If everything goes well, I could finish the remaining 44K words in the latter half of May. I don't expect that to happen, though. Why? Because of all the fighting going on at the end. Chapter 9 has been quite an ordeal in that regard, as it took me almost a week to get the ending done. I really wasn't happy with how the original turned out, so I had to rewrite basically the entire finale.

So yeah, I might be done in May, but more likely in June. But that's when I really need to finish this, as I also need to look over it once more (especially since I tend to omit words way too often) and hopefully get some input from beta readers. The first revision wasn't exactly fruitful in that regard. I don't think anyone read more than the first few chapters, with most never even giving any feedback.

And that's about it for now. Haven't really managed to write much else, as I'm also busy writing a lot of reviews. But I'll get to that when the revision is done. There's no need to finish the second half of the book just yet. Would be nice, of course, especially for anyone that hates cliffhangers. But I really want to get more stuff out there. Most likely on Kindle Unlimited, as it might be a better platform for short stories and novellas.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

While the second revision of the first half of A Decaying World will still take some time, I've decided to slightly redesign the Published eBooks-Page. Whereas earlier, every cover would link you to a different page, they now serve as anchor-links as I've put every summary and link on the same page.

The summaries themselves will surely be changed, as some of them aren't that good, but that can wait. Might also change the way everything's displayed later on, as I'm never really satisfied.

I've also created a new twitter-account for my writing, as my main account is mostly written in German, which might not be that interesting for those of you who can't understand it.

And I've removed the link to my Patreon-campaign, as I'm not writing nearly enough to justify having it. Maybe I'll get back to it later on.

That's about it, for now. I'll try to get the revision done in less time than before, but I can't promise anything.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015


Guess it couldn't hurt to post something once in a while. It's only been 21 days since the beginning of the year! Anyway, there won't be any new chapters for a while, as I'm trying to focus on the second revision of the first half of A Decaying World. What will this revision entail?
  • Everything written in first person will be changed to third person
  • I might give Drake's sword an actual name. Constantly calling it the shadow sword doesn't sound all that interesting.
  • The interlude between Chapter 4 and 5 has been removed
  • Chapter 10: Calm Before the Storm will almost be entirely rewritten and tightened up, as there's too much stuff happening that isn't really necessary
  • And I'm obviously trying to improve upon the writing wherever it seems necessary, like removing pointless adverbs and stuff.
I think that's about it. It could take me a month or two, if I don't keep slacking off. But I can't make any promises. Especially since I might start working on another project I've come up with some time ago. It's called Lifelines and might work well as a serial. But as with Loop, I'm not going to post it on my blog, at least not all of it. So don't expect too much new content in the coming weeks.
 
If everything goes well, I will release the first half of A Decaying World sometime this year. And maybe even the second, if I manage to finish it anytime soon. Which I'm not going to be able to do while working on the revision. 
 
I'm also trying to get Loop finished, as it's not that long of a story, which should make revising it a little bit easier. But that remains to be seen, as the Lifeline concept seems more intriguing at the moment.

So yeah, that's all for now. Till next time!

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Mortaevum

I've finally finished the first revision of A Decaying World, and although there's certainly more that could be changed (as I've seen by doing a second revision of the first three chapters) I don't see any point in going through all of it again without some input.

So I need some betareaders!
The book is 134k words long (spread over 13 chapters and some interludes) and includes graphic descriptions of violence and even torture. If that's not your cup of tea, then you'd better refrain from writing me. The book does contain humor and other light-hearted moments, though.

The book does not tell the entire story of A Decaying World, however, as it has grown much longer than expected. It does have a grand finale, though. As well as a cliffhanger that I could omit, but that'd be kinda boring.

~I am the Harbinger of Destruction and it is my fault that all of creation has perished~

A Decaying World tells the story of Drake, a young man who gets pulled into a cosmic game against his will. And it seems that he has already failed.
But the forces that have set everything into motion give him one more chance, and so the Wheel of Fate begins to turn once more.

Follow Drake on the first part of his journey through the realm of humans, through a vast desert, through ruins of an ancient civilization, until he will ultimately be confronted with a harrowing truth.

If you're interested, comment below or send me a message through the contact form.
I can send you the story in a word, pdf, or mobi file.

Thursday, July 17, 2014


After I spent a few more days on revising my horror stories (and creating a new cover for Carcerus, which some might have already noticed) I've finally gotten back to A Decaying World. Only took me two more days to finish Chapter 11, although I'm still going to do another pass with the text-to-speech feature of yWriter, since it can be really helpful in determining if the text actually sounds good.

When I'm done with that, I'll have about 24k words left to go through. It might be fast, might be slow, depends on how much I get stuck on the combat. That's what I really hated about chapter 11. So wish me luck!

I really want to get the novel to betareaders, so that I can determine if there are any big flaws that still need to be taken care of, which is also why I might begin writting another novella while it's being looked at.

Saturday, July 12, 2014


Since I'm still short on cash I decided to take a free proofreading offer a few days ago. Madeleine Faye offered her services to gather experience and took on my entire horror collection, even though she didn't need to do more than a single story.

I'm mostly content with what she did, as she showed me a lot of mistakes, gave me suggestions on how to improve certain passages, and also mentioned when the tone didn't seem to fit the story, like in a scene where I talked about kids even though children might have been more appropriate.

There's just a single problem: she overlooked quite a bit of obvious mistakes.
One sentence talked about interruption even though it should have been interrupting, another used a instead of an, one passage repeated the same word in three consecutive sentences, one sentence talked about while week instead of whole week and I even misspelled the name of a character in a passage that was bold and much bigger than the rest of the text.

She's still human and allowed to make mistakes, of course, but I would have been a bit disappointed if I had to pay for a proofreader who didn't get rid of most mistakes. It should have been obvious, though, since she went through the entire collection (30k words) in a single day.

So there's only one thing left to say: Madeleine, your feedback is good, but please take your time to get rid of as much errors as possible.


Thursday, June 19, 2014


In case anyone was wondering: no, I'm not dead and I haven't dropped my writing projects. But I'm mostly posting my activites on twitter, sometimes on facebook. There's just not enough to write regular postings about.

So, what did I do since my last posting? Well, I've written four more short stories...or maybe it's three. I'm not entirely sure if one of those had already been written back then. I've also revised the entire horror collection—it contains 30k words now—and sent it to a couple of betareaders.

I've also finished a 10K romance novelette. Still need betareaders for that, though. Only have one person who might be interested in reading it and I have to wait until the weekend to get any feedback on that. So if anyone's interested: just send me a message.

These sideprojects did slow the editing of A Decaying World down, but half of the books is already done and I've now finished 5K of the 8th chapter.
And if you're interested in what my revision has entailed until now:

  • Improved a lot of sentences and cut unnecessary ones.
  • Added better descriptions.
  • Fixed continuity errors.
  • Added some additonal foreshadowing.
  • Wrote an entirely new scene in chapter 2.
  • Split chapter 4 into two - "Remnants of the Marble City" and "Towards A Different Future"
  • Renamed the old 5th chapter into "Shadow Of A Bygone Era"
  • Merged the old 6th and 7th chapter, renamed it into "Signs Of Decay" and rewrote parts of it.
There might have been more. I'm not entirely sure. But one thing that I can say is that the story has only gotten longer, by about 10k words to be exact. Editing normally seems to involve cutting a lot, but I just don't see the need to cut so much. I'd rather improve upon my often lackluster descriptions.

I still need the feedback of betareaders in the end, but it's too early to look for some, since I have no idea when I will be done. You can still send me a message, but I'd rather send you a completely revised version than an unpolished one.

So yeah, that's about it for now. Maybe I'll publish a new short story in the future. But it's better if I don't post all of my shorter work for free.

A Decaying World

Wednesday, May 14, 2014


Hello guys, girls and whoever else has found their way onto my blog. I've finished another short story today (although it's more of a ritual than a story) but I will not post here. The same applies to all remaining short stories that will be included in my horror anthology. And yes, I know that the actual term would be collection, but I think anthology sounds better.

Anyway, with that done I will start editing A Decaying World tomorrow. I'm sure other writers would have advised me to let it rest for a month or so, but I simply can't wait that long. And I'm such a perfectionist that I will go over it multiple times anyway. Just have to find some beta-readers before the editing is done.
I did find someone for my short stories, though, and I'll have to read some other stories in exchange. But that won't take much of my time.

So yeah, I hope that I can release the book in the near future. I don't want to start the second part before the first is released. If anything I will write more short stories or begin working on the adaptation of my scifi-"movie" Loop.

Sunday, May 4, 2014


Since I finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde earlier today (after starting it about half a year ago) I wanted to write a small article about exposition. It might not be one of my strongest suits, but I'm just getting started and have a lot to learn, whereas Neal Stephenson should know better. I've never read any of his other novels, though, therefore I cannot say if all of them are like Reamde or not.

Neal Stephenson

Anyway, it's nice to have a certain amount of exposition in a story, since it gives readers a glimpse into how your world works, how it looks, how your characters became who they are and so on. My stories might be a little bit lacking in that regard, but that amount of exposition is still better than what Reamde threw at me.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014


A few days ago, I stumbled upon a free editing offer by Jim Rion on Reddit, and since real editing is quite expensive I decided to try it out. Since Mortaevum is too long and still in its draft phase I decided to send him a copy of Carcerus instead.

His feedback was quite interesting to look at. He added missing words, removed superfluous ones and told me when another word would have been more fitting. He also highlighted a few sections where the tone of the narration didn't fit into the overall picture.
One example would be that he replaced "connecting the dots" with "realized", since the first phrase seemed too casual.

Fixing the grammar and style is certainly a worthwile endeavor, but most people might be able to overlook these mistakes as long as they don't get out of hand. However, Jim also called attention to a few passages that weren't clear enough or made no sense, like the fact that it took a whole week for the protagonist to realize that he had nothing to drink. That's something I will have to look out for in my next stories, which is one of the reasons everyone should have at least a few beta-readers, especially if they can't afford a professional editor.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the results and would recommend Jim Rion to anyone. He did make a couple of mistakes, but they were negligible as I still knew what he was getting at. Even an editor is allowed ot make a few mistakes here and there.


I'm going to fix Carcerus after I'm done with the next Mortaevum chapter, which shouldn't take too long now. But I will not post the revised edition on this blog! It will be published in an anthology when I've got enough short stories to fill it with.


Wednesday, January 15, 2014


I might have been able to post another chapter of Mortaevum but I wasted a whole day working on the design of my blogs and yesterday I recovered a partial timeline of my universe that I created when Mortaevum was nothing but an rpg-maker series. Then I thought that I could try to update and translate it...which got somewhat excessive...

The timeline doesn't show every single event in the universe as I tried to keep it mostly spoiler-free, but it's suitable enough. However, no one apart from me or people who've played the games will really understand what some of the events written on it mean. But still, it might be of interest to some readers so here it is.

The timeline got "a bit big" so posting it as a mere picture is kinda pointless. Picasa didn't even want to upload it. 

So here's the timeline

And here's a preview

Vampire Chronicles rpg-maker

Thursday, December 26, 2013

The blog might not have too many visitors at the moment but if anyone has stumbled upon it and wants to read how Mortaevum continues: I'll have to dissapoint you for the moment. I haven't stopped working on it but I'm going on vacation tomorrow and won't be back till the third or fourth of january, so I won't have the time to upload new chapters or even write them as I won't be taking my laptop with me.

So I'll wish you a happy new year and would be grateful for anyone who spreads the word about Don't Play With Slenderman.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Just a short update: I've written the ending of Don't Play With Slenderman now so there's only the epilogue as well as editing left. That means I will not publish the rest of the story on this blog because what would be the point of buying it if you could read the nearly finalized version for free?

I still have to create a cover later on but it shouldn't be too hard as I have a little bit of experience after having worked with graphic programs for years while working on my rpg-maker games.

So yeah, that means the next time I post will be when I've uploaded the finished story. After that I'll begin to upload the first drafts of my real novel which is based ony my games and has a much deeper story. I hope you're looking forward to it...although seeing as the blog is very new there aren't that many visitors but that takes time.