The Hardboiled Cat is Back! (Now With Fresh Covers)

It's been several years since Leo's books first debuted, and overall readers seemed to really enjoy the longhaired heavy as he navigated the treacherous underblly of New York's meaner streets. Both Marked Territory, and the second book Painted Cats have been my most popular sellers whenever I go to a convention, and I've had people ask when I'm going to write more stories for Leo.

And while other stuff has been a higher priority for me of late, I wanted to make an announcement this week... because my publisher got my books some fresh covers and I feel they really capture the feeling of what these books are actually supposed to feel like!

Seriously... LOOK at this art!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

A Fresh Journey To The Mean Streets of Leo's Books

Generally speaking the idea of gritty, gangland noir mysteries starring a big bruiser of a tomcat, and with all of the traditional character archetypes being replaced by other street beasts (the local ganglord is a huge, bloated rat, Leo's best friend Doc is a former pit fighting dog who got adopted out, the powerless client with no one left to turn to is a literal church mouse, and so on, and so forth) is a concept that's novel enough to get folks interested. I've had a lot of ways to describe it, ranging from the love child of The Maltese Falcon and Watership Down, to a far more hardcore story that might have been going on in a reimagined version of An American Tail, but the idea has always been the juxtaposition of a book series where we have all the noir beats, style, and feeling, but all of our characters are animals.

At the same time all the humans in NYC are referred to the way animals normally get talked about in mystery stories. They're present, but generally not an important part of the unfolding narrative.

Now, I have half a dozen other books I'd love to write for Leo, but I just haven't had the time to dedicate to them. However, seeing the new covers that came out does make me really wish I could start laying the foundation for some of these books.

Again, LOOK at how this turned out!

The reason I stopped working on novels in general was that it's just so damn hard to get people to buy them, or read them. They can take a year or more to create, and if there's no demand/earnings, I have to focus on other projects. I will be honest, though, part of the reason I feel like it was hard to make sales was the old covers just did not hit.

But while art is subjective, something that always bothered me was the covers showed the wrong kind of cat. Leo is a hefty Maine Coon, and his bottle brush tail and thick coat are mentioned repeatedly throughout the story (along with his size, as Leo is somewhere between 24 and 26 pounds on average). The original covers, though, showed a tabby who appeared to be relatively average size... and while you can't judge a book by its cover, that image is often what we have in our heads regardless of what the text tells us.

So, yeah... if you haven't picked up the books with their shiny fresh covers yet, consider doing so! And if you want to get more of Leo's stories then tell your family, tell your friends, and leave reviews to spread the word. Because if I get my royalty report at the end of the year, and I find out that each book sold a few thousand copies, you can guess what I'm suddenly going to find time and energy to start working on!

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If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

The Absurd Played Straight (Talking About My Favored Brand of Unusual Writing)

A lot of folks think that to write a funny story your manuscript needs to be full of jokes. They think of all the double entendres in many of Shakespeare's plays, for example, or of the laugh tracks you find in both audio and TV sitcoms, and believe that's the basis for what makes something funny.

I would offer an alternative to that, which may appeal to those who still want to tell a story that many would find silly on its face, but who don't want to be cracking wise in the text. And it is what I call The Absurd Played Straight.

And as you can see, I have some experience with it.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

In a Distant Future, Man's Best Friend Seeks Answers

If you're a regular reader, and you're a fan of my work, then you've probably seen the way I execute this particular style of writing. Whether it's in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, two hardboiled crime novels where the entire cast are made up of NYC street animals like stray dogs, cats, pigeons, and foxes, or you've come across my tabletop RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic where you take on the roles of plastic people in a plastic world fighting for their survival, you're already familiar with my take on The Absurd Played Straight.

However, perhaps the best way to explain how this style of humorous writing works is to point at one project that I think did it really, really well... a little game called Pugmire.

Seriously, check it out if you haven't!

Now, for those who have never come across this game before, Pugmire is a sci-fi RPG set in the far, far future. Humanity is long gone, but dogs, cats, and others have evolved (possibly through the help of laboratory experimentation) into bipedal creatures living in a medieval-esque civilization. Bits and pieces of ancient technology have been discovered, referred to as magic, and are used as potent tools. Humanity is a myth that has taken on a god-like position to many of the good dogs, who are adventuring throughout the world in search of treasure, and knowledge of the lost and distant past.

We, as the players, know the truth, but the characters we play do not. However, while this world is very silly from our perspective, the flip side of that coin is that it can still be used to tell very serious stories. Because while we can sit there and laugh at the puns, and the misunderstandings of these adventuring canines, we can still get wrapped up in the drama of their lives. Whether it's the stray who's lost their pack time and time again until they can't get close to anyone, or the adopted young noble trying to prove he truly belongs among the city's purebred elites, or just watching the big, drooly mongrel sacrifice themselves to save their friends from certain doom, it's possible to take a ridiculous set up, and still tug on one's heartstrings with it.

In fact, I'd argue that it's a little easier in some ways. If you have an absurd setup for a story, it lowers the audience's guard somewhat, and makes them even more susceptible to plot twists and impactful moments because they simply aren't expecting those things.

A Final Note on Defying Expectations

Throughout this entry I have referred to The Absurd Played Straight as a type of comedy writing, because that is the typical reaction we have to taking the absurd at face value. If you see a black, undulating horror from the void beyond time rear up out of a summoning circle, and it gets a pat on the head while being referred to affectionately as Icky by the occultist it snuck up on, that is a jarring mismatch between tone and expectation. The result is that, more often than not, we laugh. Juxtaposition like that is funny.

But funny is not all this kind of story has to be.

Like I said above, what may seem fun and silly on the surface (because many absurd concepts are very silly) can often get serious or poignant once you've gotten the audience to dive in with you. To return to my own work, you can tell a gritty, horrors-of-war story rife with trauma and post-traumatic stress using my Army Men RPG, if that's the route you want to go. And, to be clear, the idea of your plastic army men toys breaking down while thinking about the squad mates they've lost on the line is absurd... but it's an absurdity that hits on a tragic truth, and lets you tell a story that might be too real with flesh-and-blood characters in a "normal" war story. Similarly, I've had to tell multiple buyers that Marked Territory is not a children's book, despite the absurd premise. Because when it comes time to throw down, as happens in every good noir mystery, Leo fights like an alley cat... and alley cats leave crushed skulls and spilled guts in their wake. There's not a lot of violence in his books, but when it happens it's nasty, brutal, and visceral, which hits the reader much harder because they're not really expecting it while reading a story about a Maine Coon solving an animal mystery in the heart of New York City.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!