Please Stop Giving Authors 1 More Thing To Do (We Need Help, Not Homework)

Do you remember when you were a small child, and you first read the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie? The short version is that the book describes a situation that seems simple at first, but which spirals out of control due to one unexpected step after another. If you give the mouse a cookie, he'll want some milk to go with it. If you give him some milk, he's going to want a comfortable place to sit and enjoy the snack. And so on, and so on, and so on.

This is, unfortunately, what a lot of creators receive as feedback when we try to reach out to the public. Because instead of just helping us in the ways we ask for (watch a video, read an article, buy a book, like and share, etc.) what we get instead are homework assignments. "You should consider posting on this social media site!" or "You should write a book for this other genre," as well as the infamous, "Hey, come to this event, you'll be a hit there!"

We're already operating as maximum capacity... please just do the things we ask you to do, instead of giving us even more assignments to complete which are never as one-and-done as you think they are.

Please... don't go down this road.

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!

Ask If You're Helping, Or Dictating

I've talked about this topic before, but it has come up more and more frequently in the world we're currently living in where everyone has less disposable income, and where creators are operating on thinner budgets than ever before. Because I scroll through my social media every day and see fellow authors, game designers, YouTubers, etc. asking for folks to please support them and their projects, but rather than actually listening to what the creators are asking for, and following instructions, people want to make suggestions, and offer their own input.

Without unnecessarily criticizing anyone, I want to offer a simple test that more people out there should use regarding their behavior. In short, are you taking actions to help the creator, or are you simply suggesting (or demanding) that the creator takes even more actions than they already are?

Because if you want to help, you need to be the one performing the actions.

Because it matters whose boots are on the ground, here.

As an example, if you want to help a creator, here are things you can (and should) do:

 

- Subscribe to their social media accounts

- Consume their content

- Buy their merch (books, supplements, tee shirts, etc.)

- Share their content (repost on your own social media pages)

- Become a patron (support their Patreon, Kickstarter, or tip them on Ko-Fi)

- Leave ratings and reviews

In all of these situations it is you, the audience member, who is taking action. Whether you're subscribing to a creator on social media, leaving comments on their posts or videos, reading their articles, or just putting cash in their tip jar, you are an active participant. Whether big or small, those actions add up, and those are what actually help creators pay their bills so they can keep making things.

If your entire plan is to put the onus on the creator to do even more than they're already doing, you are not being helpful. You are, and I say this with all the compassion and gentleness I can, making things worse.

Helping is an action, and helping takes effort. If all you're doing is sitting on the sidelines and shouting for someone to run harder, throw better, or to just go faster, you're not helping; you're just catcalling from the stands.

As A Caveat, Ask If You Are Providing An Opportunity

There is one other category that is important to mention, and which I feel should be kept in mind. Because if you are providing a legitimate opportunity to a creator, then you are working with them to make something happen, instead of just expecting them to do more work than they're already doing.

So what's the difference between just yelling from the sidelines and providing an opportunity? Well, let me give you a few examples.

- Just telling someone, "You should collab with other creators," is not helpful. Saying, "Hey, I run a channel where I interview authors, RPG writers, and other folks, would you like to be a guest on my show?" is helpful.

- Telling someone, "You should just post on Discord!" is not helpful. Telling someone, "Hey, I have this really popular Discord, and my community would love your stuff. If you want to join, we'd love to boost your signal over there," is helpful.

- Telling someone, "You should vend at conventions!" is not helpful. Telling someone, "I attend X convention, and it's been really good for me. I'd be happy to split a table with you, or see if we could get you invited as a guest of honor," is extremely helpful.

At the end of the day, you need to be providing something concrete that is an actual resource for a creator to use for it to be an opportunity. Giving them access to your community, helping them attend an event they could not otherwise afford, or even giving them a job opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have, could all be very valuable.

Just make sure you aren't trying to give them yet another homework assignment.

Lastly, for an example of how quickly this whole If You Give A Mouse A Cookie situation can get away from you, check out this video I made a little while ago about the realities of actually attending conventions as a vendor.

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 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.

Authors Could Write So Much More If We Weren't Always Promoting

One of the most common things people say when they look at my body of work is, "Wow... you write a lot of stuff!" And they're not wrong. I run two blogs, I have an archive on vocal.media that I'm regularly expanding, I write between 1 and 2 TTRPG supplements every month, I put out 1 video per week for the Azukail Games YouTube channel, I've got half a dozen novels to my name, and in between those things I write short stories that wind up on channels like Altered State Adventures or A Vox in The Void.

However, do you know what I spend the majority of my day doing so I can put a roof over my head, and keep food on my table? Promotion.

And I hate it. But this is the reality that so many people don't realize about being a writer... a majority of what you do in a day isn't actually writing.

It's the part of the job no one wants to talk about...

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!

Getting Back Up On The Soap Box

This topic has been on my mind recently because for some reason I was having trouble sharing anything of mine on Facebook for the past week. I could post just fine to my personal and author pages, but anything else the site was basically blocking me from sharing, claiming that I was posting too often. So I basically haven't been doing much on Facebook for a week or so... and I was doing nothing on at least a few of those days.

Now, on an average day, I'll post in between 30 and 50 Facebook groups. Sometimes it's more, and sometimes it's less, but that's an average spread. Not only that, but in addition to FB I need to make posts on Reddit, Blue Sky. Tumblr, and several other places... and this takes hours of my day. By having FB no longer something I could use, I freed up probably 1-2 hours... especially because the site requires you to stagger out your posts throughout the day.

And what did I lose in visibility? It's hard to say, but generally speaking FB isn't worth much to me. A few dozen blog reads here, maybe 15 views on a video there... I can't remember the last time I actually sold something based on a FB post.

And what did I do with the time I got back? Well, it allowed me to focus on other tasks that I could then clear off my desk. The total amount of time I spend using that site was probably the equivalent energy and time it takes me to write a blog post just like this.

So what if I spent an entire day just writing instead of posting on half a dozen social media sites to promote my work... what could I get done then?

Glad you asked. Because on days where the Internet has gone down and I can't post, I basically finish all of my usual writing tasks by lunchtime. At that point I'll often record some scripts to get ahead on my audio dramas, I'll start a short story I didn't otherwise have time for, or push ahead into the next RPG supplement that I didn't have the energy for with a day full of promotional posts.

Because it's not just the time that promoting your work takes. It also sucks up energy, focus, and creative juice that you then don't have to work on other things. Just like how going to a day job can suck out your desire to write, promoting the things all day can leave your battery empty, and your soul exhausted.

So Why The Hell Do I Do It?

I probably made promotion sound like a constant uphill grind with little to no chance of reward that leaves you feeling empty and exhausted, wondering why you even bother. Unfortunately, that's just how promotion works when you don't have a fat stack of cash to buy ads, or a slick PR team to handle the job for you.

However, I write things professionally... which means I have to at least try to reach my customers. And though my way is often barred by the capriciousness of search terms and shadow banning, and every social media platform is decaying at an accelerated rate, I have to do what I can to try to reach folks.

Because like I've said before, it does not matter how much stuff I write. I have over a hundred videos on YouTube, over 300 articles in my Vocal archive, nearly 200 TTRPG supplements available on DTRPG, half a dozen books for sale... but if no one reads them, watches, them, or buys them, I don't make any money.

Authors don't get paid for what we produce. We get paid for what we sell... period.

Let's say that I kept writing novels, TTRPG supplements, and making audio dramas for the rest of my life. If no one actually reads them, listens to them, or buys them, then I make no money. No ad revenue from online traffic, and no royalties from sales. Conversely, say that I stopped writing tomorrow, but for some reason my hardboiled cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats became a huge phenomenon. They sell tens of thousands of copies a year, and two seasons of a smash animated TV show are commissioned based on these books. If that happened, I could kick my feet up, cash my checks, and do whatever the hell I wanted.

That's why I (and so many other creators) have to spend so much time promoting, and why you see us making post after post about our work... because we don't have enough readers, subscribers, and supporters for us to not do that.

Trust me, we would love to not spend half our work day trying to tell everyone out there about the things we've made... but that's not an option.

Unless, of course, you help us spread the word! Because while I've said this before if I had 1,000 fans (or, hell, even 500 of them) who actively spread the word every time a new release of mine dropped, I could basically just make a post or two on my professional pages, or send out a newsletter, and just let my audience spread the word on my behalf.

So please... if you want the writers you follow to be able to create more and promote less, take a few moments to subscribe, comment, and share the things we make... it really is a massive help, and it weights the odds of finally making the algorithm work in our favor for once.

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.

If A Tree Falls In A Forest (The Reason Authors Are Always Promoting Their Books)

We've all heard the question, "If a tree falls in a forest, and there's no one around to see it or hear it, did it actually fall?" Now, from a raw physics perspective, of course we know it fell. You just told us it did. Even if there aren't human beings nearby to perceive the tree falling, that doesn't change the fact that it fell. Philosophically, though, the question is asking us whether something that happens with no one there to perceive it truly occurred. Or, taken another way, does it matter if the thing happened if no one ever knows about it?

This is what creators are dealing with, and it's important for folks to understand this. Because we can write all the novels, make all the videos, record all the audiodramas, and so on that we want... but if no one sees them or hears them, we may as well have done nothing at all.

So... are you watching? Are you listening?

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!

NIMFYP (Not In My "For You Page")

Academically I think we all know why authors are constantly trying to promote our work. Simply put, if we don't do it then no one else is going to do it for us. Because if we had a PR team willing to do all the marketing on our behalf? Hoo boy, I can promise you there wouldn't be a peep from probably 90% of authors out there.

We want to write books (or short stories, or make audio dramas, etc.). We don't want to be making promo posts any more than you all want to be seeeing them.

However, we need to do those things, because if we don't then you're never going to find out about our books. Whether it's making posts on social media, writing blog entries about our process, or even making mini commercials or audio teasers for the books that show up on YouTube, we have to do everything we can to try to get eyes on our work, and to get people talking about it.

But as Alice The Author pointed out recently on her channel in A Plea To Bookstagrammers, people just keep barking at us to shut up... even if they actually like the things we make, and especially if they tell us they "respect our hustle" but are sick of hearing from us.

This is, in my opinion, the digital equivalent of the old NIMBY problem... Not In My Back Yard.

NIMBY is the disconnect between someone saying they want something to exist, but not wanting that thing to exist anywhere near them. They want low-cost housing for poor and disenfranchised people, but they want it somewhere else so they don't have to look at it. They want prisons to keep dangerous people locked up, but they wouldn't want one anywhere near their town. They want expanded highway systems, or job training centers, or data hubs, or whatever else it is they believe is going to be a social good... but they don't want it in their back yard where they'd have to look at it, and where it might affect them, personally.

This is how someone can say, "Authors work hard, and we should support them so they can keep writing books!" and, "I'm just so sick of nothing but promotional and marketing posts from creators!" in the same breath. Because they mean both things sincerely... but the disconnect is they want other people to support those authors. They want other people to see those promotional posts, and to give their money to these writers. They just want to float in an online space where they don't have to see yet more ads trying to get them to buy this, read that, watch this, and so on, and so forth.

And you know what? That's a fair desire. Seriously, it is. The Internet is so jammed full of advertising (both obvious and concealed), that it's easy to feel fatigued when you scroll through a group or your For You Page, and you just see more and more of the same.

However, if you are someone who wants authors to survive (whether it's authors in general, or just a handful whose work you actually like), put your money where your mouth is, or stop saying that you support us in theory, as long as you don't have to actually do anything.

Put another way, we need your praxis, not your theory.

Thoughts And Prayers Don't Do Squat (Take Direct Action)

A disclaimer for this section. If you are already actively supporting creators in the ways you are able to, whether that's buying books, writing reviews, following them on social media, sharing their posts, watching their videos, listening to their podcasts, or whatever else, you can sit down.

This message is for all the people in the back who didn't hear me the last time I put this out there. And there are a lot of people who don't like hearing this, but you need to internalize this if you're going to actually help creators at all. Are you listening? Good, because this is important.

If you are not taking specific actions to help creators, you are doing nothing. If you are proclaiming that you support them as creators, but then actively attempt to avoid doing anything helpful, you might actually be doing less than nothing.

And no matter how many people you think are helping, it's probably about 10% of that number, as I pointed out in Your Audience Support Is Like A Reverse Iceberg.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that you have to do everything in your power to support every creator out there simply because they are a creator. What I am saying is that you need to be aware of how your actions do (or in many cases don't) help the authors you care about, and whose work you want to see more of.

For example, are you buying merch from creators, or giving them money directly so they can keep making stuff? Are you following them on social media, interacting with their posts, and actually reading the articles or listening to the podcasts and videos they make? Are you sharing their stuff on your own social media channels, or spreading the word in groups you're part of because you want to help boost the signal? Are you leaving ratings and reviews?

Or are you just sitting back and wishing them success?

Because while I don't wish to malign anyone's spiritual practices, I believe the most important attitude you could adopt is to be the change you want to see in a creator's world. Don't wait for a random fan to come along and discover their work... be the fan who tells your friends and family about the stuff they make. Be the person who leaves the comments on a creator's video that gases them up, and tells them how much you like what they're doing. Be that person who shares their work in another group so when they find their own creations out in the wild it makes their heart swell.

Don't just sit around waiting for someone else to help... be the first one to offer your hand. Because if enough people pull together, you can suck someone out of the clutches of the algorithm, and raise them up so they can finally take a deep breath, and throw themselves into their work with gusto!

If we all did that for the creators whose work we love, it would be a lot easier for them to survive, thrive, and in the end give us more of the art we want!

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.

The Cynical Reality of Self-Promotion in The Age of The Internet

Apologies in advance for this week's topic. I usually try to bounce back and forth between Craft and Business, but this is something that's been digging its way under my skin for a while, and I felt a need to just get it out before the frustration builds any higher.

If you are going to be a professional author (or really a creator of any type), you're going to end up doing the majority of your own promotion. You're the one who makes your social media posts, who shares links to your content, who makes videos and blogs talking about your book, who sets up interviews, etc. And because there are so many of us out there all trying to get a little bit of attention, it's understandable that a lot of groups, pages, forums, etc., want to set ground rules for when and how someone promotes their own work.

The problem you'll run into (and that it feels like I get clocked by at least once a week) is that no one out there seems to have an intuitive definition of what, exactly, self-promotion is. Instead they treat it like the infamous definition of pornography... they can't tell you what it is, but they can call it when they see it.

And that doesn't help anyone... but there is more to it than there seems to be on the surface.

Words mean things... but do they matter?

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!

Why Is This So Damn Difficult?

To begin with, I don't want to get into the particular schedules or requirements different parts of the Internet have regarding how often creators can promote, what kind of promotion they're allowed to do, etc. That is a different topic for a different day, and honestly not one I really want to weigh-in on. If you manage a FB group, a Twitter page, a forum, a Discord, etc., it is entirely up to you how often you allow self-promotion, or even if you allow it at all.

However, before we ever touch on that topic, it's important that we all come to a functional definition of what self-promotion actually is, because it feels like a lot of folks just use it as a catch-all for, "Stuff I don't want to see."

And that isn't a definition that helps anyone.

Since I brought the topic up, I think I have a fairly simple definition of self-promotion that we can all agree on. In short, self-promotion is when someone promotes their own work. It doesn't matter if it's a free-to-read article, a blog entry, a YouTube video, a podcast, or a link to the sales page for your book; if you made it, then it's self-promotion when you talk about it.

I don't think there's a lot of folks out there who would argue with me on this topic, as it seems pretty cut-and-dry. If you're trying to get eyes on your own work, or work that you had a hand in helping create if it was a team effort, that should be considered self-promotion. I would even concede that you could stretch the definition slightly to include affiliate links to other projects, because those are directly meant to help you earn a commission, even if you're boosting the signal for something you didn't work on, which would make it "promotion" without the "self" part.

However, here's a short list of other stuff I've seen struck down as "self-promotion" that doesn't fit that definition:

- Sharing the work of someone you know.

- Sharing too many articles/videos from the same creator in a row even if you don't know them.

- Sharing the work of someone who was published by a company you were also published by in the past.

The list gets more ridiculous after this point, but I think that most of us would agree that sharing content made by your friends is not, by definition, self-promotion. Sharing content made by strangers isn't self-promotion either, especially if you stand nothing to gain from doing it. And if you use the argument that any time you share a publisher with someone then you're essentially promoting yourself by boosting their signal, you may not know just how small and inbred the independent and third-party publishing community actually is. If we followed that logic, none of us would be allowed to talk about anything, because there's probably no more than 3-4 degrees of separation between a lot of us.

At End of The Day, Though, It Doesn't Really Matter

I don't think there is some legion of moderators and page managers out there who are looking over all of the posts creators make with a magnifying glass, trying to find out when we violated the rules just so they have justification to bust us. Nor do I think this is a simple case of people not knowing what basic words mean, or who need to have a nuanced discussion on the challenges and difficulties that come with surviving as a creator. I don't even think the problem is people just interchangeably using "promotion" and "self-promotion" when it comes down to it.

Does all of that happen? Sure. All of these options imply something kind of ridiculous, though; that human beings ever operate on rules when they are given discretion and authority to just do whatever the hell they want with minimal-to-no consequences.

There is no 5D chess... you're just depending on other people's good mood.

Think about that time a cop pulled you over. Maybe you were speeding, but you told a joke that got him to laugh, so he let you go with a warning and told you to have a nice day. Maybe you weren't speeding, but you reminded him of his ex that he was still mad at, so he wrote you a ticket and threatened to do more if you said anything other than, "Yes, sir," or "No, sir," when he asked you a question. Think about that friend of yours who managed the local restaurant who always gave you the "friends and family" discount when you ate there, or the boss at the gas station who said that if he didn't see the food go missing, then he was going to write it down as properly thrown out. Or on the other end of the coin, think about that I.T. guy who decided he didn't like you, and so he always "lost" any reports you made to him, or dropped your calls when he went to "transfer" you to someone else.

The unfortunate truth about self-promotion online, or even just helping signal-boost other creators, is that you are entirely dependent on people, and their whims. No matter what the rules are, people who like you are going to bend or ignore them to help you out, and people who don't like you are going to do the same in the other direction.

I say this because I have been in the game for a while, and this is the reality you're dealing with when it comes to self-promotion in online spaces. Are there going to be some spaces where moderators, page managers, etc., will look at your behavior and make a reasoned choice about whether your posts are allowed by the rules set forth in the group? Sure. I'd even venture to say that roughly half the places you try to promote your work will have that kind of attitude. The other half? Well, best-case scenario is that your work catches the eye of the folks who run the place, and they decide they're going to help you boost your signal. Worst-case scenario, they slam the door in your face and ban you because... well, just because.

Should you follow the rules when it comes to self-promotion? Yes, because much like blatantly violating the speed limit, it's going to draw attention, and get you pulled over for cause. But just as with the highway patrol, keep in mind that following the rules and minding your own business is also no guarantee that you're going to be able to get ahead if someone decides you, "look suspicious," or, "they don't want you doing what you're doing in this neighborhood."

And I say this not to rag on people who manage social media pages, or to try to paint moderators with a broad brush. I say it because as someone who tries to follow the rules as they're laid out, it is much less frustrating when you understand that those rules are a paper shield. You should follow them if you expect to be a good member of an online space... but at the end of the day, those rules don't have any weight to them, and you can't appeal to those rules. All you can do is appeal to people, and hope that you end up making more friends than enemies.

If You'd Like To Help, It Would Be Appreciated

Now, after saying all of that, I think I've made it fairly clear just what a challenge it is to get anywhere as a creator who has to do a majority of their own promotion. That said, if you wanted to help me out, please consider some of the following options:

Things That Cost Money
- Buy a Book From My Amazon Author Page

- Buy an RPG Supplement

- Become a Patreon patron
- Buy me a Ko-Fi

Things That Are Free
- Subscribe to my Daily Motion Channel
- Subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel
- Browse through my Vocal archive (I get roughly 1 cent per every 3 reads)
- Subscribe to my social media channels (found at the bottom of the blog)

Thanks in advance!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

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!