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.

Don't Wait Till You Feel Like Writing (Or You Never Will)

For a lot of people out there, writing is something they do when the stars are right, the muse whispers, or the spirit takes them. Writing is an exercise done for fun, or when their imagination runs hot, and they go until they run out of fuel in the tank before they set it down, walk away, and wait for yet another creative cosmic alignment to occur.

And for some people, that's all well and good. However, if you want to be a writer professionally (or even if you want to improve yourself as someone who does this for a hobby) then you're going to have to learn to write all the time rather than just when you feel like it.

This is one of those hills to die on. I've got a tent staked out, and s'mores ready.

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!

A Return to My Favorite Metaphor

Folks who've been to this blog before are aware that my favorite metaphor is to compare writing to exercise. Because both of these activities take discipline and commitment to succeed, and more often than not folks tend to think that natural talent and inborn ability is responsible for way more than it actually is.

6-month novel on average. Why you ask?

If you've ever been to the gym at the beginning of the year, then you've likely seen it completely full of people who are trying to make good on their resolutions. But after a week, two weeks, and certainly by mid-February, most of them have peeled off and stopped coming. And sometimes you'll see a few of those beginning-of-the-year folks come back a time or two throughout the year to try to start again, but it's very rare for them to actually maintain their routine and get closer to the goals they want.

However, if you've ever been a weightlifter, then you know that dedication, nutrition, and proper form makes a lot more difference in the long run than someone who was naturally blessed with a strong physique and a big frame who didn't properly utilize them. If you took two people, one of whom was naturally strong and hefty, and one who was on the smaller end, but the former works out a few times a year and the latter has a dedicated fitness routine they hit every day, then at the end of the year you're going to see exactly how much of a difference this kind of dedication makes.

Now, compare this to two writers.

The first writer might be naturally gifted. Maybe they have a particular flair for a certain genre, or they have really interesting characters, concepts, ideas, etc. But the second writer puts something out every day. Maybe it's just a little addition to their story. Maybe it's that they storyboard things. Maybe they work on their novel, and make progress or get it done. And at the end of that year, the person who has been working hard, studying, and practicing is going to show a lot more progress than the person who just did it whenever they felt like it, or when the spirit took them.

And that gap is just going to get wider the longer this goes on.

It's important to remember that this isn't just for professional authors, either. This isn't some kind of, "Professionals dedicate themselves to the craft, and amateurs just fuck about whenever they feel about it," kind of statement. Because whether you want to write bestselling novels, or you're just putting together short stories for your own enjoyment, the practice and routine are what matters. Just like it doesn't matter if you're lifting weights because you want to be an influencer or a competitor, or because you just want your body to be fit and strong in your day-to-day life, you're doing the same work.

So take a moment, and ask yourself if you want to truly dedicate your efforts to becoming a better writer. How much time, energy, and effort do you want to put in? Because the most important skill you can develop is being able to go to the gym when you're tired, when you're not motivated, when you'd rather be anywhere else, but you put in your reps anyway... because that's what it takes to get better.

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!

What Kind of Additional Merch Would You Like To See In The Future?

Did you know that, most of the time, buying a ticket to see a band perform live in-concert actually puts less money in that band's pockets than buying a tee shirt or CD? And we're not talking a bigger percentage, either... we're talking total earnings. That $25 tee shirt you bought at the venue actually made your band more money, overall, than the tickets that cost you at least three times that much to purchase.

While there's a lot of math and behind-the-scenes explanations for this, the important lesson to take away from this statement is that buying merch directly from performers and creators you like is one of the best ways to support them.

Which is why I wanted to stop in and ask folks today... would you be interested in seeing me put out some merch for The Literary Mercenary?

I've got some plans in the works...

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 Couple of Potential Ideas...

On the surface, this might seem like a bit of a weird direction to go in. After all, I'm an author, and all my books and gaming materials are already merch. And while you should absolutely check out my Amazon author page, as well as the nearly 200 tabletop RPG games and supplements under my name on Drive Thru RPG, the idea behind this week's post is all about expanding the options I can both bring with me to conventions, but also making sure there's more stuff available in general for folks who are fans of what I'm doing.

The advantages of having additional merch is that it provides more options for fans, and it represents an additional stream of earnings to help keep the wolf from my door. It also provides a wider range of costs so that different folks with different levels of disposable income can still get something when they come across me in the wild. The difficulty, of course, is production costs for getting new merch made, and the fact that you usually have to order a minimum number of things up-front. So if they don't sell, you're stuck with a lot of stuff you bought, but can't turn a profit with.

So, I had a few thoughts I'd like to lay out. And I can basically break them into two, very broad categories...

#1: Literary Mercenary Merch

The first category is broad strokes stuff for fellow writers out there. Stuff that likely uses some of my logos, as well some... shall we say choice phrases I've decided to identify with over the years? Some of my thoughts so far include:

- Stickers (surprisingly not something I've done yet, though I feel I should)

- Notebooks (I do love myself a handy dandy notebook, and something pocket-sized is always useful)

- Patches (I did this once before, and they were middlingly popular... just not quite enough to restock)

- Bandannas (for those who prefer a piratey look, or who just want something cool to hold back their hair)

These are just a couple of thoughts I had to get me started... but if there's another item you'd like to see, let me know in the comments down below!

#2: "Army Men" Merch

And you should grab a copy if you haven't yet!

For those who aren't familiar with it, my tabletop RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic has been out for a couple of years now. And while there are plenty of additional supplements for it like the mission module Assault on Outpost 13, or the medals system introduced in Army Men: Medals of Honor, those are all digital things, and I sort of want to provide something physical for people to buy to go with their game. A couple of ideas I've had thus far include:

- "Standard Issue" Faction Dice (color-coordinated to your faction, complete with an Altoids tin-sized carrying case)

- Faction/Unit Patches: Something to identify players who favor one nation over another. An expansion might be patches for particular units or regiments in the game setting

- Dog Tags: Another simple, color-coded way for you to let everyone know which faction you fight for

Given that I have copies of my game book out on the table when I go to an event, I figured adding another few options for players to check out would be worth adding into the mix... but what do you all think?

Again, if one of these sounds good to you (or if you think something should be added into the mix) let me know in the comments down below!

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.

Overwhelming Your Reader With Too Many Characters (Don't Do This)

Have you ever been to a holiday gathering for a significant other, or maybe gotten dragged to a big meet-up by a friend of yours? If so, then you probably remember how you were immediately thrust into an environment where there was one person you know and were familiar with, and you spent the rest of the event in a blur trying to build a map of who was who? You might have remembered that Jim, the big guy with the receding hair and the dad-stashe, was your friend's work-husband. Maybe you managed to remember the woman with the red hair was named Jessica, and she was your friend's ex from high school. But beyond that... well, it's mostly a blur. Even worse, you spent so much time trying to learn everyone's name, and to figure out what their relationships were, that you completely missed the evening's conversations, and anything that was happening throughout the night.

That feeling of exhausted discombobulation is the same feeling readers get when they're immediately shoved into a book that has a massive cast, and you're throwing names and descriptions at them faster than they can handle.

Who the hell were you again?

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!

Frogs and Boiling Water

You've likely heard the old saying about how you can't just drop frogs into boiling water. If you do that, they'll just jump right out again. However, if you put them in lukewarm water, and then ratchet up the heat a little at a time then they'll just stay in the water while you cook them. While we aren't looking to harm our readers, this is generally the method you should use to introduce them to both your world, and to the characters who populate it.

So, there was a thing called the Fast Food Wars, and, ugh... well, it's complicated...

There are generally two methods you can do for this. The first is to have a long story so that you can introduce your cast of important characters over time. This is probably the most common strategy used for those writing a novel series. The second strategy is to have a flash-introduction for the whole cast all at once, but not to linger on them. Then, one-by-one, we find reasons for our readers to spend time with them, and to fill in their details so they gain depth and personality.

Consider a book series with a massive cast of characters, like A Song of Ice and Fire. Even if we just include the main cast, there's more than 20 some-odd characters we spend a lot of time with, and at least a dozen of them become point-of-view characters throughout the story. However, we're introducted to this cast over several very large books... and more importantly, the audience is often told about characters before they meet them, so that when they actually show up the audience has at least heard of them before. And as new members are added to the cast, and new events happen, we get to add more and more names to the roster without confusing the audience.

Of course, it also helps that they seem to get pruned every couple of chapters as well.

Prime examples of the latter strategy, though, tend to be mystery stories and cop/private eye dramas. For example, consider a story like Murder on The Orient Express. The cast is rather large, and we get them in a rather rapid succession... but we aren't slammed with all of them all at once. We, instead, get smaller touches of conversation, as well as interviews with Monsieur Poirot. In this way we can introduce a number of characters in a controlled environment so that our audience can "meet" them all, but they're also there to be examined and learned, as we're looking for details about their lives and possible involvement in the unfolding murder. You'll see similar setups with the Benoit Blanc films Knives Out and Glass Onion, as well, which allows us to easily juggle a dozen characters or more with relatively little stress.

The key in both situations is being able to breathe in between bites. If each new character is a new dish, it's important to give your audience time to take a bite, chew it, analyze it, swallow, and maybe take a drink of water to cleanse their palate before you give them a new one to taste. Space out how often you introduce your cast, and just as with your plot or world building, don't just jam a funnel into your reader's mouths and pour until the bottle is empty.

No one will enjoy that experience, and it's likely to lead to readers putting your book down and walking away before they ever get close to the dessert course.

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!