The Literary Mercenary

If you crack open a comic book, or switch on a superhero film, one of the first things you notice is that having superpowers looks awesome ....

Boiled down to the finest possible description, a novel is nothing more than a series of actions characters take, which we follow. In this w...

Inclusion is one of those things that is becoming something of a buzzword in today's author circles. Everyone seems to be falling over e...

I'd like to start this entry off with a bit of good news. I recently put out my first novel! Crier's Knife is a sword and sorcery t...

First things first, I wanted to share a spooky little side project I've been working on for a bit. I've recently put together 50 Two...

Harry Potter. Neo. Aladdin. Anakin Skywalker. All of these characters, and a thousand others besides, have the dubious honor of being the ch...

In case you've never been to The Literary Mercenary's sister blog Improved Initiative , I'm a big fan of roleplaying games. The ...

How many times have you sat down to write a story about something really popular, but you can't think of a way to make your story differ...

France. Germany. The United States. North Korea. Iraq. Chances are good that, as soon as you read the names of these countries, an image spr...

Brevity is the soul of wit, as someone far more famous than me once said. Unfortunately, a lot of us seem to believe that our books are so s...

How many times have you been reading a fantasy or sci-fi novel, and found your interest ebbing away as the author goes on for page after pag...

If you're trying to write a modern fantasy story, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. After all, what do you let in, and what do you keep ...