At a dull moment waiting for a wedding to start last night, as my wife caught up with friends, I realized that Jonathan Moeller’s book, The Tower of Endless Worlds, had been sitting on my computer waiting to be uploaded to my B&N Nook. I asked myself, “Can I download this to my Android phone and read it?” You see, I had just read about Mantano eReader for Android (free) and wanted to try it out. That combined with the promise of a great story fueled my curiosity…Mantano installed quickly and I was off to see if I could grab The Tower of Endless Worlds.

Sure enough, a quick visit to Smashwords.com where the free version (all legal) of the book resides had the copy sitting on my phone in moments. And, the evening became a lot more enjoyable, as I then proceeded to read the entire book through the wedding and reception and then after I arrived at home. Only Stephen King and S.M. Stirling’s books–certain books, like The Stand, Gunslinger series (King), Dies the Fire series (Stirling)–have inspired such focus.

Yes, yes, I know I should have been more “present,” but the attraction of an engaging tale supersedes all for an avid reader. It’s a bad habit. I shouldn’t have started a Jonathan Moeller book, whose Tower first installment had me remembering Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning, which I read so long ago, and then whose story was echoed weirdly by Stephen King’s Gunslinger series.

When I visited Moeller’s blog this morning, I saw his blog entry recounting the story of how the books came to be written and then published. What a powerful lesson for writers seeking to publish their writing to the masses:

I didn’t realize it at the time, but 2010 was the year that ebooks started to make their way into the mainstream, and I was in the right place at the right time with all these unpublished novels I could turn into ebooks. In April of 2011, I came across a post by thriller writer Lee Goldberg, describing his experiences self-publishing one of his books as an ebook. What caught my attention was that his book (THE WALK) had originally be published by Five Star, which had published DEMONSOULED back in 2005. Following Mr. Goldberg’s advice, I got the rights to DEMONSOULED back and turned it into an ebook in April of 2011.
Just as an experiment.
To see what would happen.
Fast forward to April of 2012, and I had sold just under 23,000 copies of 19 different ebook titles. I realized that a whole new paradigm for writing and reading had been created. No longer was it necessary to find a publisher to sell a printed book. Now, with ebooks, I could write as many books as I wanted. The readers, not the publishers, would be the final judge of quality.

I can’t imagine what an evening of frivolity I would have had at the wedding reception without Moeller’s story of warlocks and sacred blades to distract me. I’m just grateful the Moeller stayed true to his road, refusing to be waylaid by publisher’s lies, ensnared by those hoary cripples, until he, too could lift his slug-horn and let his message ring out in challenge.

In the meantime, check the stories out:

•  THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS, 
• A KNIGHT OF THE SACRED BLADE, 
• A WIZARD OF THE WHITE COUNCIL, and 
• THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS

All are now ready to be read on my Nook, a gift from my family for Father’s Day.

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