So My Novels Have Been Unpublished (For Now)

I've been sitting on this update for a little while because I've been waiting for all the particulars to shake out. However, since things seem to have (mostly) settled down I wanted to take some time this week to bring my readers up to date on what is happening with my novels, and what's happening with my career as a fiction writer. Also, if you're inclined to check out some of my work that you might have missed and which is still very much available, I'll have links to that at the end.

Okay. Deep breath. Let's dive in!

 

There's a lot to unpack here...

 

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!

All Right, What The Hell Is Going On Here?

As regular readers (and anyone that's seen me at a convention) know, in addition to all the RPG writing I do, I also have half a dozen books on the market. Short story collections and novels are always available at my table... however, three of my novels are currently off the market, and it's not looking like they're going to be back for a little while. 

How did this happen? Well let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

It was the year 2020 when I was first published by Eric Flint's Ring of Fire. That publisher put out three of my novels, Marked Territory, Painted Cats, and Old Soldiers. And that was overall a positive experience, and I was looking forward to being a part of that house... sadly, it only lasted a few years before we lost Eric Flint, and the company came apart afterward. Fortunately for me some of the folks who's been a part of that publishing house reached out to me, and helped me get my books picked up and republished.

This is the start of the rollercoaster, so follow the timeline with me!

- 2023: My books are republished by Untreed Reads.

- 2024: Untreed Reads (and the parent company Top of The World Publishing) are acquired by Histria Books.

- 2026: Histria decides to start cutting authors out of their catalog, returning rights en masse.

So in the past 6 years my novels have showed up under 3 different publishers, they've been given at least 2 different covers each, and I've had to contact half a dozen different individuals just to get author copies to bring to conventions... and what's worst of all is that I've made something like $50 from these books in sales thanks to the constant publishing, unlisting, relisting, and needing to direct readers to completely different catalogs to find my titles.

The pressure is climbing, let me tell you.

Now, this saga does have a happy ending (fingers crossed) which is part of why I'm writing this update. All three of my titles have been picked up by Misti Media, which has put out titles like (I Just) Died in Your Arms: Crime Fiction Inspired By One-Hit Wonders as well as its sequel Lunatic Fringe: More Crime Fiction Inspired By One-Hit Wonders. And while it seems that Leo and Pollux will be in good company with titles like that, sadly, these things take time. By which I mean to say, my titles likely won't be back in circulation until sometime this fall at the earliest, or just in time for Christmas if things get in the way of that timeline.

I Do Have Plenty of Other Fiction Out There, However

While I very much want all of my books back on the market, I do have other fiction on offer... and if you haven't checked out these titles, I'd recommend you give them a gander. It should keep you busy between now and this Autumn, and if you haven't given these a look, I'd appreciate a boost to my numbers!

- Crier's Knife: My dagger-and-witchcraft fantasy novel, we follow Dirk Crier as he is sent forth from his mountain home to find his wayward cousin and bring him back... but also to make sure those who harmed him learn why the people around Ben Morgh say only a dead man crosses a Crier.

- The Rejects: A short story collection of mine, this book contains all the stories I've written that were always bridesmaids, but never brides. From trolls that eat child molesters, to angels in Los Angeles, to serial killers stalking the personal ads, there's a little bit of everything in here.

- Tales From The Moot: A tie-in collection for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I was one of the main drivers behind this anthology. I wrote the introductory fiction, as well as the Silver Fang story Late Bloomer, and many of the other tales were contributed by talented people I tapped to help make the project a reality.

If you're in the market for fresh fiction, but you don't have any money to spare, then I'd highly recommend checking out The A.L.I.C.E. Files. This is an ongoing audio drama podcast by myself and Alice Liddell as we bring our stories (and others) to life, while weaving a narrative about the mysterious, dimensional-exploring organization known as the Carroll Institute. And if you enjoy audio dramas and RPG fiction, I highly recommend heading over to The Azukail Games YouTube channel and checking out the 50+ audio stories I've contributed there as well!

Lastly, if you want some more free fiction (both fan stories and original tales), then I highly recommend checking out my contributions in the Vocal communities Fiction and Futurism! There's probably two dozen stories on there that are completely open for readers, and every read puts a penny in my pocket, so if you read something you like make sure you share it around on your own socials to help fellow fiction enthusiasts find it!

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

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

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

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!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

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 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.

Let's Talk About Crime (In Your Story, Of Course)

I'd like to start this week's post off with something of a lore drop. While I've been a professional writer for going on the past 12 years of my life, my degree is actually in criminal justice. For those who are wondering why, my logic was that I wanted to write crime thrillers, and if I was going to do that I should have at least some idea of how the criminal justice system worked... and since I had to get a degree in something, I might as well double dip my research, right?

While I have released some unusual noir mysteries in the form of my hardboiled cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats, most of my work has been outside the realm of straight crime stories since I graduated. However, I have dusted off my degree for more than a few editorial critiques, and this week I wanted to talk about crime in our stories.

Because a lot of the time people get this very wrong.

Seriously guys... it pays to do your research here.

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!

Corpus Delecti (Body of The Crime)

All right, let's begin at the beginning here. If you are going to write a story where a crime constitutes an important part of your plot, regardless of whether it's a private detective story, a cop drama, or just a novel about an average Joe getting in over his head, you first need to know and understand what crimes are being committed. You don't need to be able to cite case law, but it is a good idea to look up what constitutes a crime in the place where your story is being set, and what the circumstances are when it comes to your plot.

And make sure that you understand a protagonist isn't immune to prosecution... that will break people's suspension of disbelief.

Malice aforethought you say? Interesting...

Just as an example, if your protagonist comes home to find his wife cheating on him with another man, and that man grabs a knife off the bedside table before charging at the protagonist, then your lead could absolutely pull a gun off his hip and shoot the guy dead while making some kind of claim for self-defense. This will still be an extremely messy situation, and there may be legal pressures put on him, but meeting deadly force with deadly force (particularly if the state has castle doctrine, where a resident has no duty to retreat from their own home) means you could portray this as a situation where he has no legal consequences for this act once all the facts come out and the police wrap up their investigation.

However, say that when he came home and caught his wife with her lover, said lover didn't try to escalate anything. He put his hands up, said he didn't want any trouble, he had no idea she was married, he'll just go. Your protagonist doesn't have that legal cover in this situation, and gunning the guy down would likely be manslaughter at best. But if it turns out he knew his wife was cheating on him, and he came home unexpectedly to catch them? That could be read as murder, because it required planning, which could be read as malice aforethought (typically a major element of a murder charge).

This is the main way a lot of folks end up messing up crime in their stories; they don't actually know the name of a crime, or what the parameters are that define that crime. And you could argue that some of that will be up to lawyers and courts in the story, as average folks might not much care about the difference between manslaughter and murder, or understand the differences between degrees of a felony when it comes to theft, dealing controlled substances, arson, etc. You, as the author, should have a working idea of what defines these crimes, though, because characters who should know need to sound authoritative on the subject.

Because if your protagonist is just a regular schmuck who gets caught up in a criminal conspiracy, no, they don't necessarily know what's happening. But if they're a lawyer, a cop (current or former), or even a gangster, they should have some idea if what they're doing/getting involved with is illegal, and exactly how illegal it happens to be.

What's The Point?

Understanding the crimes in your story is the first part of the battle... the next part, though, is that you have to actually fit those crimes into your story in a way that makes sense. After all, people don't just go around committing serious felonies just for the hell of it. So you need to understand why they're doing something before you just throw crimes into your book to escalate things and add drama.

Oh yes, those are crime boxes. Full of crime, they are!

Let's take a situation that happens in a lot of thrillers... someone witnessed a cop kill someone. Their life wasn't in danger, there was no mistaken intent, the officer just executed someone. Maybe the cop then tossed the body in the woods and tried to hide it, or maybe they called in a report, planting evidence on the corpse that would support a fabricated story, but there's a witness that saw them just gun somebody down in cold blood. Now, the question you have to answer as the author, is why? Why did that cop kill this person?

There's a slew of reasons to that question! Off the top of my head you might find:

- The cop is a serial killer, hiding behind their badge to protect themselves.

- It was personal, and the victim wronged the cop in the past.

- It was business. The cop is on the take, and did this on behalf of his criminal bosses.

- It was business. The cop extorts people, and he's sending a message to others.

- The cop had a vendetta. He knows (or thinks) the suspect was guilty of a crime he couldn't prove.

These are just a sample of motivations, but the point here is that the crime by itself is just one side of the coin... the other part is how that crime fits into your narrative. The crime is an element, but you need to use it to cast shadows on the rest of your plot to create the proper atmosphere for the rest of your story.

For instance, if the cop is a serial killer, does this become a game of cat and mouse as the witness tries to get people to believe them, while the cop is trying to silence them... perhaps permanently? If the cop was acting as an enforcer for a syndicate, is his action merely a stepping stone in the investigation, breaking open a wider case of corruption where the protagonist takes on the mob? If it's personal, is the witness someone who knows the cop? Is this a secret they now share, and it begins to poison their relationship as the killer gets more and more nervous, while the witness begins to worry his friend will kill him to keep the secret?

The specifics of the crime haven't changed... but the dramatic element it represents is different in each story suggestion. And while it might be true that just starting with a crime is a good way to begin storyboarding your book, it's rarely a good enough place to just begin your first draft... especially if what you're writing is a mystery. And for that reason, I would suggest folks take this blog entry, and combine it with the advice I gave in When Writing A Mystery, Start At The Middle of The Onion.

Putting these two things together really helps you figure out just what is happening in your plot. And once you know that, all you have left to do is to figure out how your protagonist interacts with these events, and watch the dominos start to fall!

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

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

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!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

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!

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!

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- 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!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

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.

When Writing A Mystery, Start At The Middle of The Onion

I will fully admit, I am not a famous mystery writer. However, between my sci fi thriller Old Soldiers, and my hardboiled cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats, I've done my share of plotting and planning when it comes to webs of red string. And one thing that I've learned throughout my career as a writer is that while the audience (and your protagonist) starts from the outer layers of a mystery and works their way in, what you need to do as the creator is start in the heart of the thing, and build your way out.

It makes everything significantly easier, trust me!

And you do a lot less crying, overall.

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!

The Seed of Your Mystery

So, you want to write a mystery. Maybe you're writing a traditional private detective novel, a police procedural, or even a spy thriller, but you want the plot to take its share of twists and turns before the reader gets to the end of the story. The problem you're facing is that when you think about your mystery, you end up getting bogged down in misdirections, until you're chasing your own tail.

Here's what you do. Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and go all the way back to the beginning. What is the central event of your plot? What is at the heart of the mystery you're writing that your protagonist is going to uncover? Once you know that, you've found the center of your onion.

And from there, we spiral outward.

For example, did a missing person end up getting killed in a back alley scuffle behind a bar? Is a highly-placed official in the intelligence service actually a double agent for the enemy? Is the client's husband cheating on her?

The answers to these questions might seem simple, but the center of most mysteries usually are. And once you know where the center of your onion is, you can then start adding the extra layers around it.

So let's take the classic story of a private detective whose client wants him to find out if her husband is cheating on her. As such, the central part of the mystery that you know, as the author, is yes, the husband is actually cheating on his wife. But that isn't all that interesting, as far as plots go, nor is it much of a mystery. So we start building layers around it.

Return to the affair. The husband has, of course, been trying to hide the fact that he's cheating on his wife (hence why she had to hire a private eye to follow him around). But is there something unique about the husband, or the person he's cheating with? For example, does the husband have an important government position where he deals with sensitive intelligence? Or does the person he's cheating on his wife with have such a position? Or was there another complication entirely?

For the second layer, let's say the husband had a relatively normal life and a normal job as a business manager. He started cheating on his wife with a new intern at his office. It seems like a perfectly normal affair, as such things go. But the intern was actually a plant by the FBI under a false identity who was there to examine the business's money laundering for organized crime.

Now when our detective starts looking into the husband, and into the intern, suddenly he becomes a person-of-interest to both parties. The mob wants to know why he's keeping tabs on a guy who helps run one of their fronts, and the FBI is wondering who this guy is that's trying to run down specifics on their agent, worrying that he could compromise her position. Especially if it turns out the affair is part of her cover story, and the agent is trying to use that to get more sensitive information for her own investigation?

The plots go deep.

Every layer you add from initial seed of the mystery builds your onion up that much more. And once you have added what you think are an appropriate number of layers, you can then start mapping your protagonist's (and your audience's) path through them.

For example, does your detective start with the husband, gathering information on him? Does he dig into the business, and talk with some of the other people who work there? Or does he just start tailing the husband, hoping to catch him in the act, and that's how he catches sight of the "intern" he's seeing off-the-clock, while also getting noticed by the mafia goons who act as the husband's personal security? After refusing to be warned off, does he deal with harder pushback, resulting in alley brawls, or even a shoot out? And if that happens, do the feds step in to do their part to warn him off, explaining that he needs to tell his client nothing, or to lie and say her husband isn't having an affair (as that kind of chaos could jeopardize the current case they're building)? And if he ignores the warnings of both the cops and the criminals, does he keep pushing until he gets kidnapped or black bagged? And in the end, does the detective's friction cause the mob to slip up, tipping their hand, and getting them caught?

A complicated scenario, absolutely... but at the core of the mystery the answer to the question is, yes, the client's husband was absolutely having an affair. That turned out, though, to be the smallest part of the mystery.

But if you started at the outside and tried to work in, it would be a lot harder to construct the onion as things might not match up so neatly. So begin in the center, and work your way out organically... it will make your job a great deal easier at the end of the day.

Support The Literary Mercenary

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

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- 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!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

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!