The Literary Mercenary

So My Novels Have Been Unpublished (For Now)

2026-08-06T16:53:24.624-07:00

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.

Why You Need To Let Your Book Cool (It's Not The Story... It's You!)

2026-07-30T16:34:36.576-07:00

Most of us have the experience of going nose-blind to something. If you're a cat owner, it might be your furry companion's litterbox. If you have (or were) a teenage boy, it's the fact that their room has that particular funk in it that only handling your laundry and doing some deep cleaning will fix. In short, when you spend all day, every day hip deep in something, you grow desensitized to it. It's only by leaving to go run errands, or to take a weekend trip, that you realize exactly how bad the smell is, making you wonder if something happened while you were gone.

This is why it's important for you to take a break between writing a story, and editing it. It's not for the book... it's for you. Because if you go back in desensitized to all the flaws, you aren't going to be able to clean it up the way it deserves.

And trust me... you want all those smells out of your story.

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my 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! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

You Need To Be Fresh Before You Edit

We've all been at that point where we cross the finish line on a story, panting and exhausted. We've been in this world for so long, and we're tired of it. We don't want to think about it anymore, we just want it to be done. And for your first draft, that is perfectly acceptable. However, to return to one of my favorite metaphors, this is why you take breaks between sets at the gym.

Yes, I'm going somewhere with this.

When you lift weights, you need to maintain good form in order for the exercise to put the strain on the right places, and to not hurt yourself. However, when you get tired, your form starts to slip. This means you start compensating with other muscles, and sometimes you just push through to get the right number of reps instead of focusing on the quality of those reps. This is one reason you're supposed to rest between sets; it gives your body time to recuperate, and to come back at it with the proper energy.

If you don't take time to rest when it comes to editing, then you're not going to be going in with good form. You're just going to be performing the action (physically reading the words on the page) without actually getting the intended result (analyzing your story to see where improvements need to be made). Because just reading your story again won't make it better... that's just going through the motions because, well, that's the next step.

That's the point of hitting save, and then not looking at your story again for a little while. A week, at least. Two weeks is better. Because this gives your brain time to rest and recuperate. It's even better if you can work on something totally different as a palate cleanser. Even if it's just something small like doing some outlining, it makes a difference. Because then you can come back to the job of improving your story with a refreshed mind, and a sharpened wit.

And you'll be able to actually smell the bad parts once you've been out of the house for a while, so to speak.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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 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 A.L.I.C.E. Files Crosses A New Threshold (As We Get Closer To Our Season 1 Finale)

2026-07-25T17:48:36.710-07:00

It's been 5 months and some change since the trailer debuted on The A.L.I.C.E. Files, and we've been fighting the algorithm every step of the way. Since the series started we've explored the Cthulhu Mythos, the world of Exalted, stories of Old Testament angels in modern-day Los Angeles, tales of Victorian horror, and more! And in addition to that, we also have announcements from the Carroll Institute's staff, and an independent rendition of the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

However, we recently crossed a rather important threshold that I wanted to tell folks about... and to ask those willing to listen to give us a hand up so we can blow past the next limit by the time we wrap up season 1!

Maybe two hands up... we're a lot further away than we'd like to be.

1,000 Hours... Or 25% Of The Way To The Finish Line!

For those who haven't checked out the channel yet, The A.L.I.C.E. Files is an audio drama series with two separate but concurrent stories going on. The first story involves a young woman recruited by the Carroll Institute as a witness cataloger, and the job for the new "Alice" is to review the reports brought back by the Institute's agents from the other side of the rabbit hole... the colloquial name for the machine that opens rifts to other dimensions. The second track of stories are the reports themselves, where we see dramatized tales from these other dimensions, watching/listening to them right alongside Alice.

And we recently crossed the 1,000 hours benchmark!

Celebrate!

On the one hand, that's sort of a big deal. We've been recording, editing, and releasing stuff pretty regularly, and trying to get as many folks onboard for it as possible, so it's nice to get into that 4-digit range. On the other hand, though, YouTube's rules don't allow us to monetize any part of the channel until we have 3,000 watched hours, and 500 subscribers. We won't get a cut of the advertising revenue until we have 4,000 watched hours, and 1,000 subscribers.

We're currently at just over 1,000 watched hours, and we have 332 subscribers. Which isn't bad... but hoo boy do we have a long way to go from here!

So What's Happening Between Now And The Season Finale?

At time of writing, we're 11 chapters into Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with 1 more to go, we're 9 episodes into Alice's experience in the Carroll Institute, and we have a couple of small asides and announcements from Director Harrington as he breaks the 4th wall to keep the audience updated on what's going on.

Such as his update on the real Alice's basement flooding during the 4th of July storms that tore across the Midwest.

So, that comes out to 24 videos, and a total of roughly 6 hours of content for folks who want to sit down and listen to everything. But there's more on the schedule, and I wanted to lay it out for folks who are interested.

Despite the flooding, Alice managed to get the final chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland recorded, and it should be out August 8. We have two more "regular" episodes of Alice at the Institute (one that is a cross over with the SCP Foundation, and one that delves into the grim darkness of the far future), which will go up on August 1 and August 15 respectively. And once those three videos are up, we'll have the season finale which ties everything together, and sets Alice up for the events of Season 2.

To sum up, that's a month or so of solid releases from where we are now, and an outline of what we'd like to do going forward... but we won't be able to get there without all of you!

Which is why if you'd like to see the channel grow, please consider doing the following to help us out:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch the episodes we have up (many of which have clues for the sharp-eyed who enjoy playing ARGs)

- Like and comment on the episodes you like (and to leave your theories about what's happening)

- Share the episodes around on your social media pages so we can drag some more folks into our orbit

If we could get 668 people to subscribe to the channel, that would get us over the subscriber requirement. If all of those new folks watched all of our videos, that would put us well over the 4,000 watched hour requirement as well! Hell, even if all the new folks just watched the Carroll Institute playlist, that would put us only a few hundred hours away from the goal.

On the one hand, this would take a lot of eyeballs and a lot of people to get done... but on the other hand, it's theoretically possible that we could get all of this done by the end of August, and then we could stride into season 2 with the ability to turn this show into a genuine income stream... and it won't cost our listeners a single dime!

So please, if you haven't checked out the channel, we could really use your support. And if you have 1, 2, or maybe even 668 friends (in person or online) we would really appreciate you putting in a good word for us.

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.

You Should Know Your Story's Theme Before You Start Writing

2026-07-16T17:16:11.288-07:00

A lot of authors tend to disregard the more academic parts of writing because it just seems like a bunch of airy, empty talk. You're focused on the characters, the plot, the emotions, and getting down in the trenches to really make your story pop. However, while we can debate all day about symbolic meaning in a work (sometimes it's a subtle reference to the hidden depths of sadness in a character, and sometimes the curtains are just fucking blue), one thing that is worth thinking about is your story's theme.

Because it's going to show up whether you intend it or not... so you should think about it ahead of time.

And it will help. Especially when figuring out where you're going with this story.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Which Idea Recurs Throughout Your Story?

First and foremost, we need a singular definition of what a theme actually is. The definition that I'm going to be using for this is, "An idea that recurs in, or pervades, a work of art or literature."

And for folks who need an example, I'll share one of my own here.

Crier's Knife is my dagger-and-witchcraft fantasy novel about Dirk Crier going casting for his cousin when something goes wrong. This eventually leads him to a town to the far north that hides a dark and dangerous secret that Dirk simply has to deal with. Mechanically, it's a fairly simple story with a flat arc protagonist who has been given a goal he needs to achieve.

So what are the themes of this book? Things that recur time and again, or which could be used to categorize some of the plot?

One theme is that power must be used responsibly. We see this in the contrast between the Criers, and the cult that Dirk runs into in the northlands. The Criers are stewards of their area, and they only use as much of their talents as is necessary to protect themselves and others. The cult, on the other hand, seeks power and control, which brings them into conflict as they seek to grow, and to take more territory as they attempt to become a new empire. We also see it in how Dirk personally chooses to use his own abilities, favoring restraint because he understands that due to the nature of his gift, once it's been unleashed, he can't take it back. One could also argue about the nature of duty, family, and loyalty as themes throughout the book, as well, though they're less front-and-center than the question of power, restraint, and responsibility.

Now, with all of that said, I'll be the first to admit those were not my intentional themes when I sat down to write this story. I was very much focused on the worldbuilding, the characterization, the plot, and making sure the flow had a classic sword and sorcery feel. However, the themes I mentioned are still very much present in the story, whether or not I intended them to be there.

In that way, theme is kind of like genre. You can deliberately choose your genre or theme, and include it in the work as part of your scaffolding when you're getting it on the page, or you can locate it afterward in the editorial phase. However, themes are going to be present in your story, so it's best to sit down and think about this aspect when you start... because while happy accidents sometimes happen, you generally get more out of deliberate effort than you do out of lucky happenstance.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

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

2026-07-08T18:56:19.570-07:00

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.

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.

Foreshadowing: The Magic Trick Of Your Novel

2026-07-01T21:05:53.694-07:00

If you've ever been to a magic show, you understand foreshadowing. It's when the magician starts by telling you a story, bringing up subtle music, and signaling for the stage lights to change. It's when the choreography kicks in, and the setup for the trick becomes a whole show. It is all of that flash, the lore, the mystery, and the lead up that makes the trick really land for the audience. Because the magician could just walk out, and perform an act of sleight-of-hand too fast for the viewer's eyes to follow... but it won't be the same without all the smoke and mirrors.

So when you write your book, consider your setup, and the dance you're doing with your readers to set their expectations for when you reach the crescendo of your story... because it will affect how hard your big reveal lands when you pull back the curtain!

Even a simple card trick needs a bit of theater to it.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

The Prestige, And Your Plot

For those who have seen the film The Prestige, you've heard the explanation in the introduction about how a great magic trick exists in three parts; The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. The Pledge is where the magician shows you a perfectly normal thing, like a bird, a coin, or a metal ring, letting you see that it is completely normal. The Turn is when something seemingly impossible happens; the bird disappears, the solid metal rings connect with one another, or a particular card vanishes from the deck. Last is the Prestige, which is where the magician reveals the final trick; they find your card, the assistant that seemed to be in pieces is whole again, and so on.

Planting the seeds of foreshadowing can be thought of in the same way.

Magic often happens in the margins.

The Pledge is when you initially start planting your seeds in the story. Maybe you're looking to show your hero is going to fall, and become a villain in a future arc, so you show them having an emotional outburst, talking about a secret, or something that shows they have the capacity to be terrible or brutal. The Turn is when we see the foreshadowing begin to manifest in a material way. A concrete step down the path toward the payoff. There may be several Turns in your foreshadowing. The Prestige is when the final reveal happens, and the foreshadowing is completely paid off.

Consider one of the more obvious pieces of foreshadowing from pop culture; the fall of Anakin Skywalker. We see him as a child, being told by the overarching villain that he looks forward to seeing what will come from Anakin in the future. We see him grow, train as a jedi, and become a warrior, a general, and a hero. But we also catch glimpses of the terrible violence inside of him, the darkness, the hate, and the fear. We see him make a deal with the devil as he turns to Palpatine. In the end we see him fight Obi-Wan, lose, and nearly die, before he is resurrected as the cybernetic Darth Vader, and the foreshadowing of that arc is paid in full.

Alternatively, you could take an even bigger view of the setting for another foreshadowing; the idea of bringing Balance To The Force. The Pledge is when we are told Anakin will do this. The Turn is that when he falls to the Dark Side, he seems to have proven the prophecy false. Then after Luke's story, we see that it was through Anakin's bloodline (if not through his person) that balance was found. Prophetic plots are often a good source of foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing isn't just for clever navel-gazing novels, you know.

And if you're someone who wonders why foreshadowing is even necessary in a book, well, consider books that suffer from Scooby-Doo Syndrome.

Even if you've never seen me use this phrase before, you know what I'm talking about. If you watch classic episodes of the Scooby-Doo cartoon, many times it turns out the person behind the mask is a character we've never seen in the episode, haven't heard mentioned, and there's no way we could have deduced who person was going to be under the sheet, the clown makeup, or whatever costume they were wearing. There were no clues for the audience to follow, and there was no foreshadowing about who the person was... so when it came time for the big reveal it was impossible to predict, because it felt like the writers just randomly pulled someone out of their back pocket as the villain.

That is what happens when a story lacks foreshadowing. Resolutions can feel jarring, character actions can seem like they came out of nowhere, and it can feel like the story just took abrupt twists and turns with no warning or explanation. Foreshadowing can be subtle, or it can be decidedly unsubtle, whichever suits your story. For an example of the latter, if you watch the film Automaton Transfusion one of our leads says of the jerk he deals with at school, "I'd just like to ram a chainsaw in his face," which happens by the end of the third act.

Just remember that good foreshadowing is like a good magic trick. It engages, it captivates, and the timing is everything.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

Writers Can't Take Breaks (Because The Wheels Don't Stop)

2026-06-25T11:27:19.366-07:00

I do a lot of complaining, both on my platforms, and on my socials. Because sometimes it's important to open the vents, and let some pressure out so the engine can keep working. However, time and time again I find myself getting well-meaning comments from folks out there about how I should take a break. Go on vacation. Just set everything down and breathe for a little bit. I need to stop working so hard, and all this stress can't be good for me.

And while the diagnosis about what I (and so many of my fellow creators) am dealing with is accurate, the suggested course of treatment is a death sentence. Because we need to rest, relax, and stop pumping every bit of energy we have into this struggle, yes... but the only way to do that is if something breaks out way, and we can be successful.

Because we live inside a machine that eats money, and if we can't feed it, it will kill us. I am not being hyperbolic here... that is literally the stakes most of us are playing for.

And the machine is hungrier with every passing day.

No Days Off For Good Behavior

So, this is where I want to discuss the problem of how people in the audience don't usually understand how creators make money. This is a topic that needs to be understood by folks who wonder why it is authors, artists, YouTubers, etc. are working themselves to the point of burnout every day.

We don't do this because we like to. We do it because it's a necessity. We would love to stop, but like sharks, if we stop then we die.

Hey, have you heard about my Patreon?

I know a lot of folks are academically aware of this, but creative professionals generally don't make money the way other folks do. Because most people either earn an hourly wage, or they make a salary, meaning that you are compensated for the amount of time you work. Creators, though, don't have that. We get paid either based on the project (meaning that we get a check in-hand once the work is complete and we turn it in), or we get paid based on the amount of activity our work generates.

An example of the former was that when I accepted a writing assignment for the project Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage, I was paid 6 cents per word when I turned in my portion of the book. And it didn't matter if I wrote those assignments in 1 day, or 30 days, I was paid the same amount of money for it. And with projects like my article Henchmen And Goons, I earn money based on how many people actually read the article; if no one reads it, I don't make anything. And while I earn 30% of the sales for any of my 100 Kinfolk supplements, if no one actually buys them, I don't make any money off of them.

All of that is to say that when it comes to our earnings as creators, the amount of work we put in is often wildly disproportionate to the amount of money we make. Because we could put weeks, or months of work into a project, but if no one reads it, watches it, or buys it, then that was all shoveled into a hole to disappear forever with no return on that investment. And we might put only a few hours into something, but if it explodes for no reason that we can put our fingers on, it doesn't matter, because we still get paid.

I had that with my video essay The Problem With Pentex, which is still the most-watched thing on the Azukail Games YouTube channel.

And if you are lucky as a creator, and something you made goes viral, you can afford to take a few days off. If you get really lucky, you might even be able to lower your overall output, because when more people are watching your videos, buying your books, or reading your articles, you have a steady stream of money flowing into your bank account, which allows you to relax a bit.

But if you don't have that, then you're just spending entire days earning no money. That's stressful as hell, I can tell you from first-hand experience.

The thing to keep in mind here is that if you're a creator who already has a loyal fan base, or has popular material out there that pulls in regular sales, you're already not stressed. You're probably even saving a little money for a rainy day. The creators you see who are pulling 10+ hour days, and releasing content on a ridiculous scale and schedule, taking no time for themselves, and not leaving the house? The problem those creators have is that they aren't making enough money to cover their bills, and to buy them the security they need to take a break, or let their foot off the gas a little bit. We aren't addicted to working... we aren't being paid enough to stop.

And if you want them to be able to afford the rest that you acknowledge they need, then you (and all the other folks who want them to rest) are the only people who can make that happen.

Care And Feeding Of Your Creators

I've said this so many times that my soap box is starting to get serious wear and tear, but I'm going to say it again because there's folks out there who don't seem to have gotten the message yet. Authors (and other creators) don't make money because of how hard we work. We make money because of the amount of support our audience gives us. Period, flat out, that's the way the machine works.

It does no matter how much we write, or what kinds of projects we make... if no one buys our books, reads our articles, etc., then it's all for nothing. And it is people like you, the audience who actually make up the numbers we receive which determines our earnings at the end of the day.

So if you want that creator you love to be able to buy food, pay their bills, and rest, ask yourself what you're doing to make that happen... because your efforts are what matter!

And if you don't know what you can do to help a creator, well, consider all of the following steps.

If You Have Money To Spend

- Buy their books/merch

- Send them a tip on Ko-Fi

- Become a Patreon patron

If You Don't Have Money To Spend

- Subscribe to all their socials (bigger subscriber numbers make the algorithm support a creator)

- Comment on and share the posts they make (this also makes others likely to see them)

- Consume their free content (watch YT videos, read blogs, etc., with ad block off to get them paid)

It might not sound like a lot, but creators generally don't have huge needs. As long as they're making enough money to pay the rent, keep the power on, and maybe go out for tacos every now and again, they will keep making stuff... but it takes a dedicated group of at least 50-100 folks just helping boost their signal and regularly consuming their content to actually make the wheels turn.

And yes, that takes some effort on your part as a fan. You need to visit creator's pages, make sure you leave comments, upvote them, and help spread the signal... but we literally cannot do it on our own. We are basically trees, rooted to the spot. We're trying to make the tastiest-looking seeds possible, but we need you to act as the wind the scatters them, or the animals that consume them to spread them out far and wide.

Because unless you do, we're probably going to wither and die. Maybe literally (especially for those of us who have medical debt to pay off), or maybe figuratively... but if your favorite creator has to stop creating because they're forced to work a minimum wage job that leaves them no time to make videos, write books, or do anything else... what's the functional difference from where you're sitting?

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.

You Don't Have To Write A Novel (There Are Other Kinds Of Books)

2026-06-18T17:35:39.781-07:00

Writing a novel is a very particular skill set, and it combines a lot of different disciplines into a single piece of storytelling. You have to be able to create characters that get people invested, you need to set the scene, describe what's happening, and you need to be able to build a world, write a history, and construct a plot that isn't going to fall apart as your readers try to walk over it.

However, just because you want to be an author, that doesn't mean you have to be a novelist. Not every story needs to be a novel, and not every book needs to have a story. I say this to remind people there are all kinds of ways to write books, and you need to be honest with your own skills, as well as with your desires as a writer.

Don't fight yourself to create one thing when you might be happier creating something else entirely.

Seriously... there are ALL sorts of books out there!

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

You Can Make Whatever You Want

I have met a lot of writers over the course of my life. Some of them were novelists through and through... others, though, struggled to fit into that mold. They might have had a story in them, but it just wasn't a story that needed 90,000 words to tell. Others really loved to build worlds, but they didn't really have a plot that ran through the setting and its history. Some people loved to build characters, but they just didn't much care for constructing an entire setting all around them, or figuring out plots for those characters to get involved in.

That doesn't mean these people can't write books. It just means they might not be particularly good novelists.

As an example, consider the above video. Titled The Greatest Fantasy Game Never Made - The Venture of Vermis, it's by YouTuber Dogma, and discusses the books Vermis I and Vermis II, which are art books by the creator Plastiboo. Styled like video game guides for the old 32-bit era, these books discuss two dark fantasy video games, what one finds in them, and the paths that should be taken... but these games never existed. The books exist as relics of something that never was, making them highly suggestive of an experience one could have had, and providing a glimpse into a story and world, but without actually providing a through line, a plot, or even characters in the ways we're used to thinking about them.

That is what I mean when I say that not every author has to be a novelist. And even if you are a novelist, that doesn't mean that novels are the only things you're allowed to write.

So take a moment and ask what kinds of projects really make you happy, creatively. What do you like to write? Do you like to create characters? Do you like to make vast, complicated worlds? Do you create pantheons and mythologies? Do you like to write flash fiction, short stories, or even novellas? Do you enjoy writing scripts for stage, screen, or audio?

There is nothing that says you have to write novels to be a real writer. More to the point, though, if you try to force yourself into writing the One True Book style, you'll close your eyes to other potentials. And, perhaps most importantly, novels are not the only kinds of books that people will read, buy, or make analysis videos about either!

As an example, one of the best selling things I've ever written is 100 NPCs You Might Meet At The Tavern, which at time of writing has gone platinum on Drive Thru RPG. The most seen thing I've ever written is the Warhammer 40K short story The Final Lamentation, which was adapted for audio by A Vox in The Void, and has over a quarter million views. And one of the more unique projects I've taken on has been the audio drama series The A.L.I.C.E. Files, which requires a very different approach from any of the novels I've written over the years.

So, if you find yourself struggling to write a novel, take a moment and ask if that's actually the book you want to be writing. Or, as might be the case, would you rather be working on something else? Because it doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you're enjoying that thing you're making.

And once the book is done, well, you can sell anything with a good marketing strategy, and a little creativity. But that is another story for another 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)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

Sponsorships Allow Art To Be Made (And We Need Your Help To Get One!)

2026-06-10T20:54:07.298-07:00

Do you know why the melodramatic, over-the-top dramas were called soap operas? Because these series (which began as radio dramas, but which eventually made their way to television) were focusing on the housewife demographic, and these shows were sponsored by soap companies. The idea behind it was that the audience would be at home during the day folding laundry and doing chores, and when they heard a certain type of soap sponsored their favorite show they would be more likely to buy that brand because they associated their enjoyment of the program with the soap that helps make it possible.

This is all old hat to us in 2026, because sponsorship deals have become the order of the day in the era of YouTube and Spotify. However, the fact is that writers and creators need that kind of backing in order to keep making their art while also paying their bills... and not everyone can get sponsorship.

However, that's a goal I currently has as co-creator of the audio drama channel The A.L.I.C.E. Files, so I wanted to talk about how you could help us (and any other creators you like, really) start getting offers from sponsors!

After all, you can't write if you can't eat and pay your bills.

The Difference Between Affiliates, Sponsors, and Crowdsourcing

So, there's a lot of terms that get thrown around when discussing how creators get paid, and they can often be confusing if you're a reader or a listener, and not someone who's operating on the business side of the equation when it comes to creating shows, series, and so on. As such, I wanted to break down the differences so that readers understand what the terms mean going forward, and to be sure everyone is on the same page.

- Affiliate: If someone is an affiliate, they don't actually make any money up-front; rather they get a commission based on their sales. As an example, I'm an affiliate for Dubby energy drinks. So if someone clicks this link to go to their sales page, and then makes a purchase (using my code LITERARYMERCENARY for 10% off), then I receive a commission for that sale. For those who are curious, I do use this powdered supplement, and I can highly recommend them for folks who want something that's a lot cheaper than the canned stuff. And because I'm an affiliate, I can put that link in blogs, in videos, etc., and I get paid for sales... but if no one buys anything, then I don't make any money. These deals are easy to get, and basically anyone can sign up for them. I made a video about them a while back, for those who want a deeper dive: Affiliate Earnings, What They Are, And Why You Need Them.

- Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing, or crowdfunding, is when you get your audience (or just random people who get hooked by your pitch) to give you money to help you cover expenses. This covers platforms like Kickstarter (for projects that need one, big push to get made) or like Patreon (for people who pay a subscription fee every month to help keep your work afloat). While this option is very useful for novelists, and for people looking to complete an entire season of a show all at once, this is a direct contribution from the audience to the creator, helping to fund a creative endeavor. Incidentally, check out the Literary Mercenary Patreon page if you want to help this blog keep going!

- Paid Sponsorship: When folks talk about sponsorship, this is typically the kind of sponsorship they're referring to. In this arrangement a company will go to the artist, and cut them a check to essentially put a plug for their product in an episode of a show, to review them on stream, or something similar. This is pretty much the same way that Firestone, Blue Coal, and other companies paid radio shows like The Shadow, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and others to have commercials for their products in the middle of an episode. Sometimes there's just the straight cash payment to the creator, and sometimes there might also be bonus earnings for each member or their audience who goes through a link, creating a hybrid between a paid sponsorship and an affiliate deal.

There, now that we're all on the same page as to what I'm talking about, what certain words mean, and how creators earn money, I want to talk a bit about how creators land these opportunities. Because, surprise, it's actually up to all of you whether or not creators can get sponsored when all is said and done!

Yep, It's All About Audience Participation

Let me get back on my old soapbox. Regular readers already know this one, but if you're new around this neck of the Internet, I'm going to explain something very simple. No matter how complicated the algorithms, no matter how much slop is out there, or how simple or complicated a project is, at the end of the day it is the audience that determines whether or not an artist of any stripe makes money. If you participate, and support a creator, then they will get noticed by folks with deeper pockets. And if you don't... well, then they're going to be that tree that fell in the forest that nobody saw or heard.

And some trees are harder to take down than others...

I say that because it's true, and I'm going to use YouTube as an example here. It doesn't matter how many videos you make, or how hard you work... until your channel has 1,000 subscribers, and 4,000 watch hours (or roughly 11 hours and change a day for an entire YEAR), you don't make money from it. And you have to hit those numbers in a single 365-day period of time if you want YouTube to actually share ad revenue with you.

At its core, the site doesn't allow you to make money off your videos unless you A) have an audience of a certain size, and B) a certain amount of eyes on the content that you've made... and getting sponsors is just an extension of this mentality!

Now, nothing is set in stone regarding the following figures. However, when it comes to paid sponsorships, the larger the audience you have, and the more attention your work gets, the better a deal you're going to get. Generally speaking, you shouldn't expect to get approached for a paid sponsorship until your channel has at least 10,000 subscribers (though some product reviewers may be approached if they have an active and loyal following that's smaller). However, all sponsorships are not created equal, and the more subscribers and followers you have, the more generous these deals are going to be.

Why? Well, it's pretty simple. Sponsors are paying for direct access to your community, and the bigger that community is, the more the partnership is going to be worth. That part, at least, is pretty cut and dry.

But I said this is all up to you, and I meant it. So let's take a hypothetical situation.

Let's say, for whatever reason, The A.L.I.C.E. Files becomes wildly popular over the next weekend. We're going to be talking to folks at the Chicago Steampunk Exposition, and the theme is Alice in Wonderland this year, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. We soar past the numbers we need for both subscribers and views as people watch the series, share it with their friends, and subscribe in record numbers for us. Not just the 1,000 subs we need for the basic monetization, but we scoot over the 10,000 subscriber line by the time we get back home and unpack after the long weekend.

If we kept seeing growth like that, even if it was slower and steadier, it would only be a matter of time until we had someone approach us with a sponsorship deal. Maybe it would be Raid: Shadow Legends (groan all you want, they're just an easy example), because they have an entire Alice in Wonderland set of characters, and they want to make the most out of that synergy. Maybe we even get approached by Raycon, and we can tell people how good their headphones are for privately listening to our terrifying tales, or how the clear sound is perfect for editing episodes without constantly interrupting work to recharge them. Regardless, the point is that sponsors will look at the size and fervor of your audience, but also at what kind of pitch they could make to them, and if they're a good fit. After all, you don't want to pitch a product that is antithetical to the needs and wants of a target audience.

The most frustrating part about all of this, though, is that we as creators have no control over this aspect of the business. All we can do is tell the best story possible, and use the tools we have available to try to engage with our audience, and hope that we can cut through all the algorithms, signal throttling, and the waves of slop to reach people who are interested in what we're trying to do.

So, on that note, check out The A.L.I.C.E. Files playlist, or watch the trailer, and see if you'd like to join the crusade to get us the numbers we need to at least get monetized, even if we never make it big enough to catch the eye of a paid sponsor.

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.

Trouble With Timelines in Your Tales (Storytelling Advice)

2026-06-04T17:08:31.944-07:00

Time is one of those aspects we either pay a lot of attention to, or ignore almost completely when it comes to our books. However, the concept of a timeline is extremely important when it comes to our stories making sense, and all the pieces fitting together. For that reason it's a good idea to make sure that the order of events adds up, and that you present this order to your audience in a way they can easily follow.

Because if your readers can't follow your timeline, they aren't going to be able to make sense of your story.

Things can get complicated if you're not careful.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

"When" Is An Important Question (That Needs A Simple Answer)

From high fantasy settings to investigative procedural novels, the question of when something happened is going to vary in importance to the plot. For instance, when did the Dark Lord forge their great macguffin? Whether it was 500 years ago or 10,000 years ago likely isn't going to matter, as long as the time in question is mostly gone from living memory. How long has our protagonist been married to her husband? Long enough for their marriage to get stale, and for the plot of the edgy romance novel to come into play.

However, that's a mechanical issue for you as the author. You need to know when certain events happened... but then you need to be able to turn around and explain to your readers exactly how this timeline is constructed so they don't get lost.

So how did this happen, exactly?

The major advantage you have is that books are (usually, anyway) told in chronological order. So as long as your story begins at the beginning of the book, and ends at the end of the book, you already have a functional method in place. However, you still need to check your timeline to be sure that what you're telling your readers makes sense... and in this case, that your events are consistent.

There are few things more frustrating than having a timeline that doesn't add up, or which confuses your readers. For example, if a book opens in July, and the next chapter is full of snow, your readers might rightly ask how many months did the chapters skip? But if the narrative continues like it's only been a few days, that is going to be a problem... especially if this isn't part of the plot, like a sci fi atmospheric disturbance, or some kind of weather control supervillain.

And this applies to all parts of your book. Whether you're stating that it's now Friday in chapter 4 when chapter 3 ended on Monday night, or you state it's been three weeks since your protagonist was shot, or you had a full moon in chapter 5, and you need to know when the next full moon is going to occur, those are things you need to keep track of, and stay consistent with. Because if you have an error in those things, at least some readers are going to notice... and the more obvious the error, the more confused they're going to be by what's happening.

I say all of that to offer this advice... treat time the way you do size in a narrative. By which I mean that if you don't need to give specifics, don't. You will save yourself so much time and energy by letting things remain vague when you don't need to be specific.

If the audience doesn't need to know the exact height of a character, don't mention it. If they don't need to know how many miles away a city was, don't list it. And if they don't need to know what day of the week, or even what month of the year it is, don't bring it up. Because any time you drop something specific, that is now something you have to keep track of, and you have to keep it consistent with your audience. It's one more moving part that can gum up the works... so don't make more work for yourself than you have to.

Lastly, if you do tend to keep things vague in your descriptions, then your audience will notice when you get specific, and pay even more attention to those facts. So if you want them to be putting a mystery together, or building an event timeline as they read, that's one way to highlight that pertinent information for them.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

Can You Spot The Clues In "The A.L.I.C.E. Files"? (What Are Your Theories?)

2026-05-29T13:17:12.130-07:00

As most regular readers know, for the past several months I've been working with Alice Liddell on a new YouTube channel that we launched called The A.L.I.C.E. Files. While I give more details in older posts like The A.L.I.C.E. Files Is Launching Soon (A Sci Fi Reimagining of Alice in Wonderland on YouTube), the general gist is that it's an ongoing audio drama with two separate stories going on. The first are the files themselves, which are narrated pieces of stand-alone fiction taken from the archives of the mysterious Carroll Institute, and which can be enjoyed on their own like any other fiction anthology. The other story, though, follows "Alice" and her position within the Carroll Institute as she meets her coworkers, learns things about this bizarre place she now works at, and realizes she is in the center of a far bigger web than she ever anticipated.

However, with the 7th episode Hearts and Tarts dropping, we're putting a little more gas into the show, and revving up the mystery elements with some actual clues in the videos and scripts themselves for viewers to really sink their teeth into so you can all delve deeper into the story as it unfolds, while coming up with your own theories about what's going on in this truly bizarre place!

And the deeper you go, the more there is to explore!

Is This A Budding ARG?

An ARG, or Alternate Reality Game, is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a jumping off point, and which employs transmedia technologies to tell its story. That all sounds pretty technical, but if you've ever been over to the YouTube channel Game Theory, you've come across several examples of this. Suffice to say, this is a fancy term for when creators set up a mystery for people watching their show, reading their book, playing their game, etc. to solve that extends beyond the actual piece of media itself. It's when you end up playing a video game, finding a clue that makes no sense in the game itself, but then you follow that clue to a private YouTube channel, it gives you a video, and in the video there are other clues for you to follow, deepening the mystery as it stretches across platforms.

Full disclosure, we aren't going quite that big with The A.L.I.C.E. Files (at this point, anyway). However, there have been subtle clues going back to the trailer about some of what's been building in the background... it's in Hearts and Tarts, though, that we decided to open the door and really invite people to put their theorizing caps on, though.

Without giving anything away, I wanted to invite folks who enjoy these kinds of games to at the very least check out this episode, but it will make more sense if you go back to the beginning of the series and start with The A.L.I.C.E. Files Trailer, working your way forward. Though the one clue I will give you is that the files Alice has witnessed so far are not clues, in and of themselves. However, the information mentioned in the dossiers and write-ups that she mentioned may contain some references, Easter eggs, and possible starting points for building your own theories.

So, if this is the kind of thing you enjoy digging into, consider sharing what you think is a clue, and what you think they all mean, in the comment sections of our videos! We're hoping to get our community invested in figuring out exactly what's happening, and what is waiting for Alice in her uncertain future... especially now that she's had contact with [REDACTED]!

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.

Avoid Putting Asides In Your Stories (Without Careful Consideration, At Least)

2026-05-21T16:51:10.859-07:00

It can sometimes be difficult to get information directly to the audience. After all, you can show them an entire scene, describe everything perfectly, and insinuate the threads you want them to weave together, but there will still be some folks who just don't get it. A common device used in stage productions, and even in some TV shows, is the Aside; those times when a character will speak directly to the audience, usually voicing unspoken thoughts that aren't heard by the rest of the characters onstage or in the scene with them.

While asides are a viable tool, it's important to ask yourself if it's the right tool to bring across the proper feeling for your story. Because like a lot of other things adapted from more visual mediums, it can often backfire when you try to use it in text.

Sometimes you don't need to swing a hammer, you know?

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Should You Set Asides To The Side?

We've all read fiction where we have the protagonist (or at least the point of view character) talking directly to us. Sometimes it's direct 4th wall breaking, like we see in Deadpool or She Hulk comic books, but other times it's just reading the direct thoughts of the protagonist in the form of an inner monologue. And while this is an established way of doing things, it's worth asking if this is the way you want your book to read.

It's all about the tone, here...

The main reason this is worth asking yourself is because asides have a tendency of cutting through tension, and giving you a method to tell your audience what's happening in your character's own words, rather than trying to show it through descriptions and actual dialogue. And while that can be expedient, it can also make it more difficult to take a story seriously, or to build proper tension.

For this reason it's important to consider what the benefits of an aside are in your story, what the drawbacks are, and how naturally an aside slips into your narration.

For instance, if you're writing a story from a first-person perspective, then asides will feel pretty natural even if they don't take the form of dialogue. On the other hand, having asides in third-person requires a third-person omniscient perspective, or for the asides to come from the narrator, as who else would have the ability to see into the minds of the cast in order to deliver these asides to the reader?

The key question you need to ask is how do you want to limit your readers' access to information, or present them with particular perspectives? Because if you are getting asides from the POV character, but no one else, you're still limited to their perspective, which can allow you to keep certain facts behind the curtain, so to speak, until they're presented in prose or dialogue. If you are able to present asides from different characters as the narrator, this can be used to enhance dread or tragedy as the reader sees the big picture, but also knows that the characters don't. And asides can also be used to tell jokes, turning the tool itself into a form of comedy.

This last is actually one of the most common uses for asides in books, and it's for that reason it isn't always advisable to use them. Because it can sometimes be difficult to deliver an aside without it feeling like a joke. Even if you have a literal Greek chorus that's intoning doom and tragedy, making an aside that straight-faced can also feel like a joke... and if that's not your intent, it can be a serious problem.

So, to reiterate the thrust of today's post, asides are a perfectly functional tool. So is a 12-pound sledgehammer. And in a task requiring that tool, and its lack of subtlety, it's absolutely the right choice for the job. If it isn't, though, then it's probably a better idea to use a tool with more finesse in order to get the job done.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

How Much Content Do You Need To Make A Living?

2026-05-13T18:38:40.381-07:00

The Internet is full of seemingly contradictory advice regarding exactly how much stuff you need to write before you'll accumulate an archive large enough to make a living. So whether you're trying for that 20-books-to-easy-street, or you're trying to peg exactly how big your audience has to be in order for you to make a living, I want to take a moment to throw a particularly large bucket of water right in your face.

Because the answer is very simple... you have to make as much as it takes.

It is, unfortunately, the answer no one wants to hear.

No Man Knows The Day (And Only Liars Say They Do)

There's a reference to the end of days in the Bible that tells readers no man knows when that time draws nigh. Anyone who claims they know is either a liar, or a charlatan. This is something all the folks panicking on rapture-tok should have kept in mind, but it's also worth remembering for when it comes to making a living as a writer, artist, or professional creator of any stripe.

Because there is no guarantee. Your success could come with your next release, or the one after that, or the one after that. It might not come until you've been rotting in the grave for 20 years, and people rediscover your work. It might never come at all. There's no way to know.

Buy from living authors. In case you had doubts for some reason.

Now, as I've said before on this blog, the more swings you take, the more likely you are to be successful. The more books you write, the more videos you make, the more articles you compose, the better and better your chances are of finding an audience. That is not what's in dispute here. What is in dispute, though, are people who claim they have a system, that they can tell you exactly what you need to do to be successful, and that they know exactly how much stuff you need to make in order for you to get paid.

And that's a lie for two reasons.

The first, and most obvious, is that not every author is going to create the same kind of work. Everyone is writing their own books in their own style, and just because one author managed to finally start cashing checks when they released their 5th, or 10th, or 20th book, that's no guarantee that someone else is going to achieve the same feat.

The second reason, though, is that the environment has likely shifted between when one author managed a particular feat, and them giving this advice. The world is constantly changing, and what worked yesterday isn't going to work today, and by tomorrow it will actively harm you. It's the same reason you can't use the same social media strategy today that you would have used 5 years ago, why email newsletters haven't been a viable strategy for a decade, and why you can't just write another book and trust your publisher to handle the rest... the world has moved on since then.

These promises have taken all sorts of forms over the years. When I started off this blog, it was that you needed 400 posts before you had enough regular traffic to generate ad revenue. And guess what? The entire ad structure of the Internet shifted so badly that making money from ads became impossible. I've seen folks swear by the 20 novels formula, saying that if you get 20 books out on the market that will give you enough penetration that you'll build a following. Alice Liddell, who runs the YouTube channel Alice The Author, has over 30 books on the market, and she's scraping by just as hard as I am, if not harder some months. There are people who swear that once you hit 10,000 followers on Instagram it's all easy street from there, or that if you can build your YouTube archive to 100 videos and 5,000 subscribers or more that you'll be able to start coasting.

We need to recognize all these promises for what they are... piss in the wind.

Just like how crash diets and bro science swear up and down that if you do this cleanse, or adopt that workout routine that you're guaranteed to hit your goals, you should be extremely suspicious of anyone promising that once you release a certain number of projects that you'll be able to kick up your feet and relax.

Because as of right now I have half a dozen books on the market. I have over 200 roleplaying game supplements, including the full RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic. I've made over a hundred videos for YouTube over the past several years. I've put out over 300 articles in my Vocal.Media archive, and thousands of posts on my two blogs. It's a rather impressive amount of work, in my opinion, but when it comes to coin of the realm, it's all just barely enough to scrape by on rent in government housing. With a roommate.

If You Want Us To Succeed, We Need Your Help

I've said this a dozen times or more before, but it's worth repeating. You, as the creator, cannot force your own success. You can write dozens of books, produce massive series of stories, or put together several long-running podcasts... but if no one watches them, reads them, or buys them, then you won't earn anything for them.

The only thing that gets authors paid is audience effort and interaction. Period. Because if 10,000 people all went out today and bought my cat noir books Marked Territory and Painted Cats, that would give me a bigger payday than I've had in 15 years. I would be able to rest, relax, and slow down for the first time in a decade. And if 25,000 people all decided to go and check out The A.L.I.C.E. Files and watch the episodes we have up so far? That would monetize the channel with a finger snap, and get money rolling in to help with expansions.

If people decided to keep buying my books and RPG supplements, and watching my videos even if I stopped making things tomorrow, I would still get paid for that consumption. And if I keep making things at a fever pace until I drop dead, but no one reads it, watches it, or buys copies, then I'm never going to get paid.

It doesn't matter how much you make... it matters what people interact with. No audience, no money. But for most of us it's a lot easier to focus on writing X number of books, or making Y number of videos, than it is to actually try to expand our audience. But if you want money, you don't need more books; you need people to read the ones you've already written while you work on the sequels.

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.

If We Don't Need To Know It, Don't Put It On The Page

2026-05-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

In addition to being an author, I run a lot of tabletop roleplaying games. These games combine storytelling and math, allowing players to explore a realm through their characters, and to weave their own narrative as things progress. And whether they're playing knights and wizards, or vampires lurking in the shadows of the modern day, these kinds of games are great for really getting people immersed in a story.

However, when you're the Game Master (the person crafting the plot lines, making all the extra characters that inhabit the world, running the world itself, and so on), you generally acknowledge that the players are only going to see about 40% of what you put together. Maybe 70%, if they're really curious. And it is so tempting to find some way to shoehorn in all that lore you worked on that supports the world, the characters, and the plots... but you need to resist that urge.

If something isn't important to the narrative, don't let it eat up table time. And if you're an author, do not dedicate word count to things people do not need to know... all you're going to do is weigh down your story, and potentially bore your audience enough that they'll close the book and walk away.

There's so much to know... and a lot of it is for you, not the readers.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Backstory Is Necessary... For The Author

I've talked at length on this blog about the necessity of research, proper world building, and understanding character motivation, the law, and more. However, most of that is for you, the author. Because writing a book is like an ice berg... most of it remains out of sight, deep below the surface of the story. While it's important for holding up the framework, it isn't the sort of thing your readers need to know.

Until it is.

After all, didn't you wonder why they called it Skull Island?

Consider for a moment a private detective protagonist. You, as the author, know his full history. You know he was born in farm country, and that he signed up for the marines to get away from that tiny patch. You know he was dishonorably discharged for punching a superior when he was a military police officer, and that he couldn't get a job in civilian law enforcement after that. He was a prize fighter for a while, and then he hung out his shingle as a PI.

Now, you might want to find a way to shoehorn all of that into conversation through the book. You might also want to talk about his extended family, their lives, and even lay out the history and genealogy of his family tree and ancestors to show your readers that you did the work... but until that becomes somehow relevant to the story you're telling, you need to keep all of that stuff behind the curtain where it belongs.

And this is where an earlier post I made, Lore Drops Instead of Lore Dumps, becomes relevant.

Because the purpose of a lore drop is to give a small chunk of relevant information to the audience, either in a subtle way, or in a direct way, to help enhance your story without bogging it down with unnecessary details. For example, your PI might have a client come to him. He doesn't trust cops, but he knows a guy who recommended the detective. Harry White? Yeah, we did a tour of the sandbox together. Client relaxes, knowing that he's talking to a fellow jarhead who's here to help him out. Alternatively, our PI is expecting a call from a contact, but instead his brother calls from back home. He's gossiping about the kids, his wife, the current crop, and can't get to the point, and our detective can feel his old accent trying to claw its way back up his throat. Then he has to cut the call off when another number dials him. This gives us a glimpse into the detective's life, and can provide a kind of tension breaker before we get back into the case.

Before you bring a piece of backstory onto the page, whether it's a historical event that happened in the setting, where your protagonist learned to shoot, or the details of a holiday celebration where everyone wears leather masks made from the preserved, peeled faces of their elders who have passed on, ask yourself if this adds to your story, and serves a purpose in the narrative. Because if this information isn't necessary to provide context to your readers, and it won't reveal something important, then you probably need to leave it under the water.

And that can hurt trying to hold yourself back from explaining everything that you spent all this time working on. But if the audience doesn't need to know, all you're doing is gumming up the works. And if your audience does need to know, you need to find a way to convey that knowledge as smoothly as possible. For more on how to do that, though, check out my older posts How To Avoid The Dreaded Exposition Dump, as well as 3 Ways To Avoid Info Dumping In Your Story.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

Killing The Myth: Making Good Art Does Not Automatically Mean Monetary Success

2026-04-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

There is a pervasive myth in the world. The myth is that if you are an artist, be it a writer, a videographer, a graphic artist, or anything else, and if you work hard, develop your skill, and create good art that you will be successful. An overwhelming majority of people out there believe that there is some cosmic force that ensures hard work will be rewarded, and that quality art will be found by an audience who loves it. These people also believe that if your work has not found an audience, or if you are still on the struggle as a creator, that the fault must be yours. You aren't working hard enough, or maybe you aren't making good art, and that's why you haven't been rewarded yet.

To reiterate, this is a myth, and it is bullshit. More than that, though, it allows people to abdicate their own power when it comes to helping artists whose work they like actually succeed. Because it isn't some mystical money fairy that decides who succeeds and who fails... it's you, the audience, who literally decides our fate.

People don't like hearing this, but it's imperative this myth dies.

Let's Talk About "Fear and Hunger"

I'm going to guess that most people reading this blog post have never heard of the video game Fear and Hunger. It's an indie horror game made using RPG Maker, and it is a bleak, punishing, horrific experience that draws on some of the grimmest and darkest fantasy stories to create something utterly unique. It has built a cult following, and while it isn't for everyone, it has broken containment and there are a lot of people who are aware of it now.

Just stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

The video linked above by Super Eyepatch Wolf is primarily about the second game in the series, however, in this video we see a chart that clearly highlights the first game's rise in popularity (or notoriety, if you prefer) around 2:09. As the host points out, the game languished in relative obscurity for nearly five years after its initial release. And then, thanks to word of mouth growing through a variety of gaming YouTubers, as well as regular people on forums discussing games, Fear and Hunger started getting attention. A lot of attention. It breached containment, growing a huge following for an indie game, and now it's reached the point that it's well known in general circles where people play survival horror video games.

And I bring this up to illustrate a point. Nothing fundamental changed about the game between its release, and its meteoric rise. It was the same piece of art that it was from then, until it got discovered. Literally the only thing that changed was people who had megaphones started talking about it, and bringing attention to the game.

This is the truth of being a creator in a nutshell.

Because this video game didn't change in the five years since it was released; people just found out about it, and they were finally able to experience this art they otherwise would never have found. And if those YouTubers didn't make videos about it? If there weren't reviewers out there talking about their experiences? Then the game would have remained undiscovered, and the creator might not have been able to make a second game, or the third game I'm hearing rumors about.

The book, the game, the video, the art does not matter if people don't find out about it, and interact with it. And something having the nebulous quality of good doesn't matter. If you paint an absolute masterpiece, that doesn't magically cause an art gallery to call you, or a rich collector to show up at your door like a TV psychic. Success isn't just waiting in the wings for a deserving artist to make something the cosmos deems good art. Not only that, but you can make good art for years, but for reasons utterly outside of your control no one will find out about it, it will never sell, and you won't make a single dollar off of the work you put in.

No magical force is coming to help us. We can't make a sacrifice to the gods of capitalism and pray we become the next money grab, hot trend, or big business scheme. The only thing that helps authors, YouTubers, podcasters, graphic artists, and people who make independent video games, is for people out there to interact with what we make, and do what they can to spread the word about us.

That's it. That's the super secret formula to becoming successful as a creative professional. Period.

Good, Bad, It Doesn't Matter

This whole idea that only good books are successful, and only deserving authors get rich, flies in the face of facts. There are plenty of books, series, movies, etc. that are absolute drek, yet they still keep getting made, and they still keep making money. What matters is there are people who are willing to show up and buy copies, buy tickets, watch/listen to episodes, buy merch, etc. to help keep those endeavors going.

No one is coming to save us. There is no great, cosmic force waiting to reward creators out there. So if there's someone who is doing something you like, or making something you want to see more of, do what you can to support them. If you're just a regular person, you can still follow the creator on social media, interact with their posts, consume the content that's free, and buy their books and merch when you can afford it. Leave reviews, and tell your friends about their work. Be that person who helps build a community around this thing you like.

Some people reading this might be able to do more than that. You might be a YouTuber, a podcaster, or a blogger, which means you have a platform to talk about other creators' work. Maybe you can arrange interviews, or even get someone invited as a guest of honor to an event you host. Hell, if you're someone in the same field who already has a fan following, just telling your audience, "Hey, this other creator is doing some pretty great stuff. You should all go check their work out!" can make a colossal difference.

Haven't you wondered why every Clive Barker book has that quote from Stephen King on the cover that calls him the future of horror?

And before we sign off today, I wanted to leave a plug for The A.L.I.C.E. Files. This project has been nearly impossible to get eyes on thanks to social media signal throttling, and YouTube's terrible algorithm. So if readers who made it this far could take a moment to watch the trailer, leave a comment, and subscribe to the channel, it would be greatly appreciated!

Of course, the show is really starting to pick up steam, so you might want to set aside some time to binge the stories we have out already... because there's quite a few more where this came from!

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.

No One Thinks Of Themselves As The Bad Guys

2026-04-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

From the billionaire CEO, to the war-mongering politician, to the supervillain in power armor, or the tyrannical stepmother, fiction is chock full of villains. However, with a notable few exceptions that prove the rule, no one sits around in their doom fortress tapping their fingers together and practicing their diabolical laughter, pleased with how truly evil they are.

While someone might be the villain of the story, people generally don't think of themselves as the villains in their own lives. And one of the important keys to a memorable antagonist is for the audience to see that villain's perspective. Because that perspective is going to be key to understanding the villain's motivations, and showing how (from where they're standing, at least) their actions make sense.

No one cared who I was until I put on the mask...

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

How Does The Villain See Themselves?

Villainy is often a matter of where you're standing. So take a moment and consider where your antagonist is, and how things look from their end of the field. Most importantly, though, ask how it is they see themselves, and how they protect the idea that they are a good person (or, at least, how they justify the things they've done).

Take a character who's a billionaire CEO. This guy is out-of-touch, he engages in unsavory business practices, and he exploits people and the planet alike. However, that's from the outside looking in, and it's easy to see from where we're standing. But take a moment to ask what his perspective is, and what he believes. For example, does he view the law (and particularly tax law) as a game to be played and won instead of something that should inform one's morals? Because paying an additional $200,000 in fines every year for ignoring restrictions, but making an additional million dollars as a result, is just the cost of doing business. Alternatively, is he so completely isolated from the struggles of the people he employs that the very idea he isn't providing enough for them never crosses his mind? Especially when he's surrounded by people who are constantly spending time in their vacation homes and on their yachts, so he never sees anyone actually struggle?

You can extrapolate this to all sorts of villains. Does the cruel stepfather legitimately think he's toughening up his stepchildren with his punishments? Does the scarred commander of the imperial army truly believe that crushing smaller nations is a necessity for peace? Or does he believe that following orders and doing his duty is more important than the morality of those orders? Does the cop truly believe that he's protecting society and his community, even though he's ruined lives with his laundry list of prejudices about who the "real" criminals are in society?

He shouldn't have been carrying a pink squirt gun. Anybody would have done what I did.

That's one half of the coin; asking what motivates your villain, and how they see themselves and their actions. However, villains often take actions that they know are wrong, and which cross ethical boundaries. Some things aren't just a matter of perspective... so how does your villain justify those actions so they can sleep at night?

Is this villain blinded by their own grievance, or a need for vengeance, which allows them to ignore the way they're hurting other people if it's in service to their own pain? Have they dehumanized a certain group of people, allowing them to harm or victimize them without feeling bad about it because "they deserve it" or "they'd do the same to me if our positions were reversed"? Have they gaslit themselves into believing a situation was different than it was, convincing themselves of a false narrative that allows them to feel justified? Is the villain so consumed by greed that they can't be bothered to think about other people because their fortune is worth any cost? Are they driven by fear so deep and visceral that they'll commit atrocities just to make it go away?

If You Can't See Where They're Coming From, Look Harder

To be clear, while some villains should be misunderstood or redeemable, that is not always the case. Just because you can understand someone's reasoning and rationale doesn't mean you should identify with them. However, to make a character feel believable, we need to ask ourselves how they can look at themselves in the mirror, and then go to bed after the things they've done.

And maybe they do struggle. Maybe their conscience bothers them. Maybe there are cracks in the facade... and if that's the case, you should show the audience those things too!

For instance, does that billionaire give a lot of money to a certain charity because it helps assuage his guilt, and he feels like he's somehow squared the harm he's done? Does the serial killer go to church to light candles and pray for their victims, using the ritual and the belief that a higher power has forgiven him to face the world again? Is the cold-blooded mob hitman doing his best to be a good father to his kids, and to give them the opportunities he didn't have so that this life isn't even something they consider taking up?

Humans (and human-related characters) are capable of astonishing feats of mental gymnastics when it comes to explaining why they aren't bad people, and in some cases why they're actually the victim in a situation rather than the villain. And even if we never get a comprehensive psychological evaluation on the page, knowing these things about your villains can help you write them in a way that feels more genuine, organic, and believable, instead of just having them twirling their mustache as they deliver a monologue to the audience about why they hate colors and want to outlaw sharing.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

There Are Fewer Soap Boxes Than Ever For Authors

2026-04-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I wrote a post titled If A Tree Falls In A Forest (The Reason Authors Are Always Promoting Their Books) which was all about how authors' attempts at promotion can slip through the cracks, and about how so many folks will talk out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to authors trying to expand our audiences. And while all of that absolutely still stands, I wanted to talk about the fact that the changing landscape is making it more and more impossible for creators to reach an audience on our own.

There just aren't any soap boxes to stand on anymore.

Okay, so this was for AGGRESSIVE soap. My point still stands.

Nothing Works Anymore

I've been a professional author for something like 15 years now. If there's been a marketing gimmick that didn't require a huge budget, I've tried it. I've been on almost every social media platform, I've made half a dozen different kinds of content, and I've used all of the "smart" solutions to getting your work seen. And all of those things would have worked fine about 12 years ago. However, in the age of the Internet we find ourselves in, everything is broken, and nothing fucking works.

The short answer is because corporations broke everything. The longer answer is a little more complicated, but not by much.

Because most of this was deliberate.

The first major issue that we're dealing with is platform decay, which I talked about in my post The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone These Days (Not Just Creators). The short version is that social media sites used to offer good functionality, and there was a lot of cross-discovery. Your friends would see what you post on FB, and if you made a popular post on Twitter it could generate millions of views with tens of thousands of fresh audience members. These days the websites have been deliberately hamstrung so that there's no discoverability, and so that people rarely see anything on their feeds at all. And if you try to share a link to something that goes off that platform? That's a good way to have your signal buried, because the sites want to keep people on them as long as possible, and they want to hide any off-ramps someone might come across. You won't even show up to your friends and followers, and they have to go looking for you.

For some of my own numbers, in the past I'd share to FB and on a slow day I'd still get 400-500 views on something, with 1,000 or more on a busy/popular posting day. Now I share to more groups, and I have more followers, but I'm lucky if I get 20 views total. That's not an organic failure; that's a hand choking off air. And those numbers are the same with most other smaller creators I know not just on FB, but on all social media platforms they use.

The second major issue is the spread of websites these days. Think of it like streaming services. Once upon a time you had Netflix, and that was it, so you paid a little money and you got to stream whatever you wanted. Then Hulu wanted a piece. Then Disney. And with every company that yanked their copyrights and put them behind a separate paywall, you ended up with more services that were more scattered, diluting the audience and effect. The same thing happened with social media. Because it used to be you had Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, and maybe Reddit. Now you add in Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and apps like TikTok, and you have more platforms, but it's harder to be heard by a sizable audience on any one of them... especially if you work primarily in text.

And that's before we talk about the tsunami of AI slop, and how it's shut down websites like Digg because they refused to amplify that signal, but couldn't find a way to stop it from spreading. So that's even more legitimate options taken off the table.

All of that is bad enough... but on top of all those things, you also have so many platforms that are segregating advertisements and promotional posts. To be clear, not banning them. Segregating them.

Yeah, make your posts here. Folks will absolutely see them!

For added clarity, I am all about deciding in your group's rules that promotional posts are not allowed. Whether you're on Discord, Facebook, Reddit, or any other platform, if you don't want promotion happening in your group, that's your decision. But having a weekly thread where everyone links their promotional posts? Or having a subgroup where all the promotion happens away from the actual main page where people interact with stuff? Come on. We all know that no one is looking into those areas, or reviewing what came out that week. It's not happening. It's the equivalent of giving your younger sibling an unplugged controller while you're trying to play a video game so they feel like they're participating... and this has generally become the norm across most of the remaining social media landscape these days.

So if you post on social media it's very likely that your signal will be throttled if you share a link that leads off-site. If you try to get clever and share it in the comments, you'll have folks screaming at you for promoting in their groups. If you try to run a newsletter you'll have literally 1% of the people who subscribed to it click anything you shared (saw that when recently reviewing numbers). Convention numbers are down, and even the people who do attend aren't actually buying anything, or paying attention to authors and creators they don't already know.

What the fuck are we supposed to do? Well, the same thing I've been saying this whole time, because there is only one thing that seems to work anymore, and it's the one thing we, as creators, have zero control over.

Word Of Mouth Is All We Have

I've said it before, but I feel that I need to keep saying it because people don't seem to grasp how truly dire the situation is for creators. Because we literally cannot do anything to make the broken machinery all around us work. There is no magical keyword we can use to hoodwink the algorithm to make sure we get more views. There is no organic interaction we can perform that will magically cause our posts to be seen. There is no other social media site out there that's just waiting to give us views, reads, listens, and sales. Our hands have literally been tied, and unless we have hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to budget for ads on platforms, we can't really do much with the systems as they exist.

All we have is you. Our audience. People who want us to actually be seen, be heard, and to keep making more stuff. Because without your shoulders pushing the wheel right alongside us, we aren't going anywhere.

You are the wellspring from which we flow.

If there's a creator you care about, whether its me or someone else, make sure you do the following for them:

- Follow/Subscribe to Their Socials - Algorithms give preference to those with the most bodies behind them.

- Interact With Their Posts - Whether it's sharing, liking, and commenting on Facebook, upvoting on Reddit, or liking and commenting on YouTube, that interaction pushes creator's content up in the algorithm rankings

- Leave Ratings and Reviews - Positive reviews on books, on podcasts, etc. add up, and help creators get seen more

- Tell Your Friends and Family - We can talk until we're blue in the face, but no one is going to care. If you have friends or family you think would like what we make, tell them because we can't.

And after you've done all that, it helps to buy books, leave tips, become a Patreon patron, and all that... but even if you just lend your voice to helping make that wheel turn, that's still doing something that authors are unable to do for themselves these days. So until we figure out some other solution, I hate to say it, but you all really are our only hope!

As A Final Call To Action

In order to help focus the energy of your readers, you're supposed to give a call to action by giving them something specific to do. Well, if you've read this far, and you really want to help me get the word out about something, then head over to the YouTube channel The A.L.I.C.E. Files, subscribe, and give our episodes a watch! It's a sci fi reimagining of Alice in Wonderland with a couple of odd little twists and turns that I think most people who enjoy my stories will get a kick out of!

Most importantly, we need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours before YouTube lets us actually keep ad revenue... so please, help us get there!

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.

Don't Lock Into A Story Point That No Longer Serves Your Plot

2026-04-09T18:26:00.000-07:00

Too often authors think of themselves as slaves to their stories. They claim they aren't responsible for the actions of their characters, for the holes in their plots, or for the walls they're running into. And if you find yourself trapped in a situation where you feel like your plot is slithering away from you, or you can't figure out a way to get from where your characters are to where you want them to be... take a moment, and remember that you are in charge of things, and you can change them as needed.

It's a heavy responsibility, but you're the captain of this ship... whether you like it or not!

It really is all up to you.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

It's Your Story, And You Can Change Anything About It

Let's say you're writing an epic fantasy story. You've assembled a party of skilled and daring adventurers, and part of the plot for your story is that you want the former thief to betray their companions. But as the story goes on, and you get a better sense of that character, that face-heel turn just feels less and less authentic. However, you need the party to fall into the clutches of the enemy so they can be dragged in chains to the dark fortress where they meet a wizard that's been locked up in the dungeon. No matter how you turn things, though, it just feels like a sour note in the narrative.

So change it.

Gun to your head, you can do anything.

For example, do the characters get captured by a bounty hunter that you introduce as a new antagonist, and he hands them over to the villains? Do the characters find out where the wizard is and get themselves captured to enact a jailbreak? Or does the wizard manipulate things with minor magics to bring the characters to their side, allowing the plot to get back on track?

All of these are acceptable changes and shifts. Or you could do something even bigger if you want to! It's your book, and no one can stop you.

If there's a character you were going to kill off who'd be more useful alive, you can just have them not die. If there's a motivation that doesn't make sense, or which has been rendered moot by a direction the story has gone in, you can come up with a different one. If there is a character who feels too much like an exposition dump, you can remove them entirely and find a different way to get the information to your reader.

I've said it before, but think of your book like it's a road trip. You know where you're starting, and you know where you're going. Your outline is your preplanned route. And some of us can just follow that route, get where we're going, and that's a wrap! Sometimes, though, you find there's construction and you have to take a minor detour. Other times a bridge will be out, and you've got to take the scenic route. Sometimes there's a natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake, and you have to completely reimagine your route.

You are in control of where you go. And if a road you were planning on taking is no longer serving you or your story, take a different route. If the book hasn't been published yet, then nothing is set in stone, and you can do whatever the hell you want!

More importantly, no one is going to know if you don't tell them. So keep your initial drafts and outlines so you can share tales of what might-have-been on podcasts or during YouTube interviews, but remember that these are just ideas and plans... if you get to chapter 17 and the bridge you were going to drive over is out, you don't turn around and go home. You bust out your map, look for a detour, and ask what other way could you get to your final destination?

Because sometimes the road is rocky... but you'll get there in the end.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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 Stories Would You Like To See On "The A.L.I.C.E. Files"?

2026-04-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

As regular readers know, I recently launched a new audio drama YouTube channel in partnership with Alice Liddell called The A.L.I.C.E. Files! While the overarching story of this channel is about the mysterious Carroll Institute and the new "Alice" that's been hired as a witness cataloger, that overarching narrative is punctuated by the stories she finds in the files themselves. These stories come from my and Alice's previously published works, and we're also drawing on public domain books and collections, as well as writing a few fresh stories to add to the collection.

My question for you all this week is a simple one. What stories would you like to see turn up on Alice's desk in Workstation 17?

We have a lot of things to draw on, after all...

We're Taking Requests Now (Because They Take Time To Make)

When we sat down to start this channel, I had a handful of dramatized story videos already in the bag. I've been updating them with fresh intros and outros so they add to the channel's overarching story, but these were the seeds of the project that we've been steadily planting over the past month and change.

It started with my story Dead Man's Bluff, which came out of my short story collection The Rejects:

And then we moved on to an audio rendition of my 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, which was one of the most popular fiction posts in my Vocal.media archive:

And there are a handful of future episodes that we're recording fresh intros for. These include:

- 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Cthulhu Mythos Edition

- 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, SCP Edition

- 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories, Warhammer 40K Edition

- Suffer The Children (also from my collection The Rejects)

- An untitled story from the Exalted tabletop RPG

- A dramatization of my short story Devil's Night, from the Pathfinder adventure path Hell's Rebels

However, once we've finished with those episodes, we'll have a wide open field regarding what shows up on Alice's desk next. And that's why I wanted to take a moment to ask my readers what stories you'd like to see us tackle!

And I'm asking now because we still have some lead time. Because full audio dramas that last between 20 and 30 minutes aren't something we can just make in a single week. We have to check the scripts, corral the voice actors, edit, create the soundscape, create the video... it's a whole process! So we need to start slotting in our new audio dramas now to be sure they're ready in a month or two!

With that said, some of the options available include:

- More published short stories taken from books like The Rejects, or possibly from SNAFU: A Collection of Military Horror, and other anthologies Alice and myself have appeared in over the years.

- Samples of full books, like my novels Old Soldiers or Marked Territory, or some of Alice's books like the period vampire novel Succumb to Darkness or her mermaid fantasy novel Love of The Sea.

- Stories taken from public domain works, such as The King in Yellow, or the works of writers like Lovecraft, Poe, and other classic authors.

- Creepy pastas, such as the stairs in the woods, ritual games, and other instances that might come to the Institute's attention.

- Fresh stories that have never appeared anywhere else before, written just for the channel!

Whatever your vote is, please go to The A.L.I.C.E. Files Trailer, and in the comments leave your vote for the kinds of stories you'd like to see going forward! Please mention that this is in response to the Literary Mercenary post, so that we can keep track of how many folks are actually voting.

Also, if you want to help ensure that we have the momentum to make the episodes you're requesting, please subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files, watch the episodes that are already up (it's only about an hour and a half of stories so far, so it's easy to binge), leave comments, and tell your friends about us! We're still growing, and doing our best to get this thing monetized so we can keep the wheels turning, and telling stories for all of you to listen to!

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 (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

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.

Undercutting Death Can Undercut Your Story

2026-03-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

When I was very young I loved comic books. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy a good comic these days, but as a child they were my go-to thing I asked for from the store. I read so many of them that concerned adults would whisper to my mother that I should read real books. Fortunately she ignored them, which allowed me to grow up with the heroes (and antiheroes) of the grim and gritty 1990s.

However, there was something that I learned reading comics that I felt was a unique lesson more writers should take to heart. Generally speaking, death is the end. If you are planning on circumventing death (and especially if you're installing a revolving door in the afterlife) then you have to do a lot of work to keep your readers invested, as you just drastically altered the stakes of your conflicts in a manner that can make life-and-death struggles seem pretty trivial when all is said and done.

Welcome to hell... oh... getting resurrected? Nevermind, I guess.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

It's All About Cost and Consequences

If you've ever played the fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons (or any of the other games that pattern themselves after it), then you're likely familiar with the concept of resurrection spells. The general idea is that, once you reach a certain level of power in the game, you should be able to bring back a fallen comrade to continue the quest. The cost for such an action tends to be quite high (thousands of gold pieces in diamond dust, and either being or finding a spellcaster powerful enough to invoke the rite), but there will come a point where it's almost a joke to the players because their characters die and come back so often. Some players might even start a session with, "What happened last game? I was dead at the time."

This is one end of the Resurrection Scale, where death has been rendered relatively trivial (at least by a certain point in the story), and it's the opposite of the other end where death is permanent and irrevocable. And while stories and properties might move back and forth on this scale, it's important for you to ask why resurrection is happening in your storyline. It's also important for you to ask what the cost for such a resurrection is, because the cost (and the difficulty that comes with it) is what is going to maintain the threat and challenge in your story going forward.

Rise my son... today is not the day you die!

For example, let's say a character dies in your story. Tragic. You want to resurrect them, but you don't want it to feel cheap, or to undermine that emotional resonance you built with that death scene. The key here is to think about both how difficult resurrection is, how rare it is, and what it actually costs one to perform... or what it might cost to have it done to you.

Let's return to the fantasy gaming example. Making it essentially a financial and time cost makes reversing death functional as a game mechanic, but it can be pretty underwhelming as a story element. So how do you move the scale a little closer to the less trivial side of things? Well, perhaps a person can only be resurrected once, and if death comes again there is nothing that can bring them back. Alternatively, someone might have to make a deal with an outsider, giving up a part of their body, or a piece of their soul, to return (and if one does this often enough they might end up with the monstrous trope Came Back Wrong). It might even require performing some dire rite, and sacrificing something (or someone) in order to pay the cost; death for death, and life for life.

It's important to remember that cheating death (or just flat-out reversing it) should be its own element of drama and danger. And sometimes the reversing of death can be even more interesting than the death itself.

As a different example, consider The Widowmaker; a heinously corrupt six gun found in my recently-published supplement The Blade Itself for the game Hunter: The Vigil. A cursed weapon, the Widowmaker seeks to wipe the corrupt and the wicked from the face of the earth. However, it tends to be wielded by the desperate, and the mad. Why? Because if the one bound to the gun dies they spend 1 day in hell before being resurrected in the burned out ghost town where the gun was given to its first bearer. However, in exchange for this dark resurrection, the gun takes the life of someone close to the wielder; a mother, a brother, a lover, a friend... and only when they have lost everyone and everything can they truly die.

This is an example of a dear resurrection price... and it still has the stakes of death; it's just the death of others, rather than the character.

This Applies To Villains As Well

It's important to look at the other side of the coin, because resurrection for villains is extremely common as a tactic. Maybe it's that they made a deal with the devil to get out of hell, they were blessed by a dark god with a terrible form of immortality, or they have vat-grown clones of themselves that are updated to make sure they have all the memories and abilities of the last version of themselves that died a horrible death.

Villains get some latitude here, because their ability to cheat death increases the stakes when that is not a power that the protagonists have. However, your villains also have to have some kind of scale and cost for this power in order for it to not become eye-rolling and predictable.

In other words, make sure Palpatine doesn't just return for no reason.

Through the Mirror of Death Sight, all things are possible!

If your antagonists are resurrected there should either be a great cost to them (Darth Vader's cybernetic existence of pain and rage is a good example), or if it's treated as a power then that power needs to come with some kind of weakness (they must maintain the favor of a malevolent force, it requires a costly technology, etc.). Being able to endlessly respawn can lead to some short-term scares if you know that a foe cannot be permanently killed, but if that's the case then it needs to become part of their mythos.

Put another way, killing Jason Voorhees permanently may not be possible, but it's tense as hell as we wait to see whether the kids on the campground manage to get him under the waters of Crystal Lake. But when they take him into space, and that containment is no longer an option, things get ridiculous in a big, big hurry.

Final Thoughts: Match The Scale To Your Tone

The important thing to remember is that resurrection (or the lack thereof) is a mechanic in a story, and you can use it however you want. However, it's important to ask what it means for challenge, for the stakes, and for how interested your readers are going to be.

In a story like The Crow, where a character comes back from the dead as a nearly-unkillable revenant, the very invulnerability of their resurrection is a power fantasy that makes them akin to a slasher. In a story where people can die and resurrect over and over again, death may have become meaningless... but what takes its place if that's the case? And if someone knows they can die and return, but not how often they can do that, it leaves us wondering if this is going to be the death that really matters.

Your setup means a lot here... don't just bring characters back because you didn't want them to be dead for too long.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

A Single, Viral Success Can Make A Huge Difference For Creators

2026-03-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

A majority of writing advice when it comes to the business side of things is to remind authors that their career is a marathon, not a sprint. Generally speaking you get a lot more out of just putting one foot in front of the other, writing one story, and one book, after another so that you can build up your archive over time. Because the bigger your archive gets, the more your readers can consume, and the more people will have to enjoy when they discover you exist.

With that said, though, it's important to understand the effect that a single, big success can have for a writer... especially if they're depending on modern digital infrastructure and algorithms to work in their favor.

Because sometimes that single bump has long-reaching impacts.

Engaging The Machinery That Moves More Books

Authors have to worry about a lot of different numbers. So, I want to take a moment to talk about the kinds of numbers authors have to contend with, and the effects they can have on your career. And while a lot of these numbers are very small (especially in terms of the Internet), these goals can be hard as hell to actually reach. So if you have authors out there whose work you enjoy, keep some of these things in mind. And if you're an author who is looking for a call to action for your audience, consider trying to rope them into some of these options to see if it will give your career a bit of a boost!

Book Reviews

Book reviews are one of the most basic numbers authors are generally concerned with. After all, reviews mean that people are reading your books, and it provides a running commentary that might get new readers interested. However, consider that when a book receives at least 50 reviews on Amazon, this causes the algorithm to start advertising it to other users who are looking for similar books. And the more reviews someone gets, the higher up their book will show in searches, with the possibility of it being on the front page.

And while these numbers are for Amazon, remember that whatever digital platform you prefer, the more reviews a book has, the better off it is for you as the author.

Now consider the impact that receiving a few hundred reviews on your book might get. Perhaps you sold a bunch of books at a convention, or you had a Kindle Unlimited giveaway and readers chose to rate and review as a way of paying you back. This essentially kicks off the website's algorithm, which both gives you a permanently higher rating than books that don't have as many reviews as yours does, but it also provides you a jump in attention. Because when the site sees that your book is doing well, the machine registers that it is currently popular, and it starts pushing it to other people browsing the site, doing a bunch of free advertising for you.

Free advertising which could lead to you finding more readers, and making even more sales, than you otherwise would have without that boost from a big review number.

Social Media

Social media platforms are the lifeblood of all sorts of creators because they let us reach our audience... in theory, at least. And the algorithms that govern social media work very similarly to the ones that run the online bookstores. After all, these websites want to promote things that are popular, because that keeps people on the website and scrolling through their feed.

So what happens when you start acquiring big numbers on social media platforms as an author? Whether it's for your book, one of your other projects, or just sharing some of your thoughts on the issue of the day?

When you make a post that gets popular on a social media platform (particularly a big platform like Facebook or Reddit, but this also applies to Blue Sky and similar upstarts), the algorithm starts up and begins boosting your signal. For Facebook or Twitter, it's more likely to show up in the For You feeds for users who may not know you, since the algorithm is showing it around to people that are statistically likely to have a reaction to those posts. And on Reddit your post may show up on the front page of the site, meaning that anyone who shows up might see exactly what it is you were posting about. This exposes you to more people, and makes it very likely you're going to pick up a lot of fresh subscribers and followers.

And what does that do for you? I'm glad you asked!

Social media platforms favor people who have a large number of followers. So if you had 1,000 followers one day, and then after a successful post you found yourself with 10,000 followers, you'll find that your posts are now getting more distance, and being seen far more widely than they were before. The reason for that is the algorithm supports you in ways it didn't before, because one of the major priorities for the algorithm, and how it treats you, is the size of your audience. This, at least in part, determines your reach.

If you do very well you can even get paid by the platform, but I gave details on that in Can You Get Paid By Social Media Platforms As A Writer? Probably Not.

YouTube

Not every author is on YouTube, but there are a lot of us over there who are trying to court an audience by making book commercials, audio adaptations of our work, or just talking about the behind-the-scenes of being an author. Speaking of, shout out to Alice The Author, whose channel is packed with great writing advice and information!

However, a single viral (or even nearly viral) success on this platform also shows how a big splash can lead to permanent changes!

For those who haven't read my older entries on this platform, YouTube requires creators to have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watched content within a single 365 day span before the site shares ad revenue with you. That is both a tiny number in terms of the Internet, and an impossible number in terms of what most creators can accomplish. And this is something I have some experience with, because I was with Azukail Games for their journey.

Because while Azukail Games had subscribers aplenty, the channel just could not get the view hours. Videos kept going nowhere thanks to changes to the site's algorithm, and it kept losing ground because the channel was several years old... this meant with every passing day it was having hours taken off the total view count.

What put us over the top (netting us over 1,000 hours) was a single video, The Problem With Pentex. This video essay about a niche aspect of the RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse garnered a lot of interest (perhaps for the mention of the infamous copper merchant Ea Nasir), but more importantly the boost it provided to the channel's view hours (and to our subscriber count) permanently boosted the channel up to a new tier.

So while this one video didn't launch the channel into the stratosphere (it got 10,000 views, not a million), it put us on a whole other level that we have been climbing from ever since.

Your Numbers Make A Difference (Especially En Masse)

I've said this before, and I'm saying it again because more people need to know this. What determines the success of an author (or really a creator of any stripe) is how many people show up for them. It's your purchases of our books that determine whether or not we get royalty checks, it's your views and listens that determine whether we earn any ad revenue, and it's your likes, shares, and subscribes that determine whether social media websites are actively restraining our signals, or boosting them because the machine believes our posts will keep more people on the platform.

And while having an engaged and growing audience is great, those big jumps when something gets popular can be a serious hand-up.

Now, that doesn't mean that as an author you should bend all of your attention and will toward going viral, and that you should only make posts, write books, etc. that are geared toward said virality. Generally speaking, going viral isn't something you can really engineer (without a lot of money and effort, at least). However, a lot of folks don't realize that those kinds of successes have long-term effects, even if the initial event seems like nothing more than a flash in the pan at the time.

The Reason This Is All On My Mind Lately...

The reason this has all been on my mind of late is (shameless self-plug) that I've been hammering hard on a new ongoing audio drama channel over on YouTube called The A.L.I.C.E. Files. A dark sci-fi reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, the channel will feature an ongoing narrative about the events happening inside the mysterious Carroll Institute, as well as smaller, independent stories that act as stand-alones.

And those numbers I mentioned earlier, the 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours? That's proving EXTRA hard to manage.

Which is why I wanted to ask everyone who read this far to please do me a favor. If you could subscribe to the channel, and listen to the stories we've posted so far (but especially the most recent installment, 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories where we meet Dormouse), I would greatly appreciate the effort.

Because while we're doing our best to get as much great stuff out there as we can, we basically need something to go 10,000+ views viral to boost us up to the level we need to be at. And every click, view, and comment on the video gets us that much closer!

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 (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

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.

Follow The First Draft Sprint With An Editorial Amble

2026-03-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

There's an old phrase that most folks who write for a living (or just a passion) have heard before. That phrase is Write drunk, edit sober. And the spirit of that phrase is good, since I feel it's a smart thing to go in with all the gusto, enthusiasm, and creativity you can muster, and only once it's all out to go back in with an eye toward tightening things up, and making your writing smoother and slicker.

However, I wanted to look at a different facet of this sentiment this week. Because the first draft is a breakneck run as you cut the path and just try to get from point A to point B. Editing, though? Editing can't be rushed, or put off until later. Editing is all the detail work you didn't necessarily have time and energy for during that initial rough draft run.

You need to slow down during editorial... take your time. Because your readers will be taking time to stop and smell the roses, which is why you should make sure you fill in the sights, smells, and textures of every bouquet they pass along the way.

It's a lot, I'm not going to lie.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Editorial Has Different Goals

There are a few other well-thumbed pearls of writing advice floating around I want to rope in here. The first is The only thing a rough draft has to do is exist, and the other is You can't edit a blank page. The interaction of these sentiments embodies the necessary gear change that too many of us neglect to do when it comes to our writing, and our stories can suffer from it.

In short, the rough draft's goal is to get from the beginning to the end as fast as possible. It's the sketch layer of your drawing. There are some good vibes, sharp pieces of dialogue and fun action scenes, but you probably aren't stopping to detail every flower, scent, and sensation in every scene. There's also going to be quite a few things just left dangling, or not fully fleshed out. Some of them might even be, "Protagonist has snappy comeback here."

You run into difficulty, though, when you treat your editorial stages with the same attitude as your rough draft. Because once the draft is done, and you're going back over it, that's when attention to detail matters. That's where you're making placement corrections, shifting the colors, and smoothing out awkward flow in your plot. But if you approach your editing sweeps with the attitude of trying to get it done as fast as possible, you're going to wind up with a slapdash story that's going to need even more editing to fix it.

Getting all the layers is REALLY important, here.

Too often we think of writing as a one-and-done. You put the words on the page, you hit the end, and maybe you read it over for spelling mistakes, but then you're done. That is not, in fact, the way it works. Instead, it's better to think of writing a story as similar to painting. You generally lay down a sketch of the work to get the general thrust onto your canvas. Then once the sketch is done, you may add darker lines, creating a more hard-edged, final outline. At that point you start layering in paint. And it is that layering that gives you the final result as you build it one layer after another, until it creates the optical illusion that this is all just a single, seamless image.

That is what you're doing in editorial with your story. Yes, you got the rough sketch layer done. Maybe you were even efficient, and you go the dark edges done as well. But editorial is where you start adding in those color layers to really make the image pop, to draw the eye, and to do things that you simply could not have done earlier in the process. This is where you're really looking at building the finished product.

Some stories, like some paintings, are relatively simple. Maybe they only need a couple of layers (or just two coats and a sealant) before they're done and ready to hang. Others need a lot of attention to detail because there are complicated things going on here, and each layer adds into the next layer in a way that needs to be deliberate.

At the end of the day, though, you can do a little rushing on the rough draft. You can leave some blank spaces, and a few Fill This In Later sticky notes as long as it keeps the story flowing. But when editorial comes around you need to roll up your sleeves and get that part done instead of just spackling over it because you want to be done for realsies.

That, too, is part of the process.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

Can YouTube and Podcast Adaptations Expand Your Writing's Audience? (Results: Hazy)

2026-03-07T12:44:00.000-08:00

I've talked about this several times on this blog before, but one of the signs of someone who is new to the professional field is the idea that their only job is to write. Whether it's short stories, novels, novellas, etc., the idea is that they're the writer, so they put the words on the page, and once they seal it with the mystical incantation The End, their part is done.

Regular readers know that isn't the way the game is played, though. Authors who want to make a living doing this are constantly trying to find new ways to reach their target audience, new places to meet readers who haven't come across them before, and to figure out how to get eyes on their stories. The story will suck them in, but the reader needs to know your book exists in the first place if they're going to read it!

And one option that some of us have used is to make use of the audiences for YouTube stories, as well as for fiction podcasts. And while this indeed can work, there is an extra large asterisk at the end of that statement.

Because it will probably help you... but don't expect to become an overnight bestseller this way.

The "can" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

You Can Find An Audience (But There Isn't Always Overlap)

Before we begin, I want to add some clarity in case anyone skipped ahead. I'm not talking about being interviewed on a YouTube channel or a podcast. That is absolutely a step worth taking, and I highly recommend folks do it if they get an opportunity (also, shout out to the YouTube channel Joy on Paper Live! for folks who want to subscribe to a channel where authors big and small talk about their work with PatZi).

As the title suggests, we're talking about adaptations of your work, and whether that will lead to increased numbers of readers and sales on your end of things. And while I wish the answer was a simple yes, sadly, it isn't.

Consideration #1: Size of The Platform, Audience, and View Count

I listed this one first because it really is the biggest consideration. After all, if your work is being adapted by a place like Chilling Tales For Dark Nights or the Pseudopod podcast (wanted to give a shout out to both of them for the work they do) those command hundreds of thousands of listeners, reaching upwards of half a million people. And yes, in theory, that could put your story (and perhaps even more importantly your name) in front of a lot of potential readers!

However, I want to pump the brakes, because platform size alone doesn't guarantee more readers... even if a lot of people listened to your story, and even seem to like it.

For a personal example of what I'm talking about, consider this adaptation of my short story The Final Lamentation, which appeared over on the YouTube channel A Vox in The Void (which I also recommend folks subscribe to, as he does great work).

Some numbers. The channel has roughly 115k subscribers and change, making it a relatively sizable YouTube presence for the dark sci fi niche. The video adaptation has nearly 250,000 views at time of writing, over 8K upvotes, and almost 600 comments from viewers. So, by all metrics, those are some pretty sizable numbers to contend with, and it sounds great, right?

None of those numbers slid back my way, though. The short story in question didn't get a single view (not even from people who wanted to check the original text to see how something was spelled, or to follow along as they listened). During the time this came out I saw no increased traffic on any of my other work, no increases in book sales (even books like my novel Old Soldiers which fits right into the same niche), and no one came poking around my social media pages even though my name is clearly listed in the introduction and in the credits as the author.

With all of that said, though, I didn't get nothing out of this exchange. The popularity of this story did lead to increased name recognition for me, and there were several other creators who reached out to me because of this story. So keep in mind that even in situations where an adaptation doesn't lead to people reading more of your work or buying your books, it can still open doors and present opportunities.

Still, it should be stated that even when the numbers are good for an adaptation's audience, that probably won't sell you a lot of books.

Consideration #2: This is The Audience's Preferred Format

Generally speaking the purpose of an audio adaptation is to hook listeners in with a tale, and then try to lead them to the rest of your archive. However, if you're finding folks who like listening to audio stories on YouTube, or who take in their fiction on podcasts, those might not be people who are interested in buying physical (or even digital) books. Because while some people might enjoy mixing up their mediums, you are also likely to find folks who are audio-only readers.

Perhaps that's because they're a trucker or delivery driver who enjoys hearing stories on their routes, or they listen to their stories while they're in the gym or doing chores and their hands are full. Perhaps a member of your audience has a reading disability, or they have a sight impairment. They might just like audio stories more than holding a book and running their eyes over the page.

And in those cases, no matter how much they liked the adaptation, they aren't going to go and buy a physical book... which is why it's a good idea to make sure you have a back up plan.

As an example, consider the recent episode of The A.L.I.C.E. Files, which features my short story Dead Man's Bluff out of my collection The Rejects. On the one hand, yes, the audio adaptation is here in the hopes that folks will hear it, enjoy it, and that they'll buy a copy of the anthology. However, there isn't an audio book of those short stories that's currently available, nor do any of my existing novels have audio books attached to them. So it's entirely possible that folks who see the episode will just enjoy that one-off, and wander away.

Of course, if you're willing to dramatize your own work (as I did in this video), it has the potential to open up a secondary income stream for you beyond just acting as a hook to find readers for your physical books. Because if you can get viewers to like, subscribe, and keep tuning in then even if they don't buy your books (whatever format they're in), you can still get paid for their eyes and ears when they watch and listen. However, if you're planning on letting other folks adapt your work, consider making sure you have some audio books on-hand to be sure that folks who want to keep listening find something to listen to when they search your name.

Also, while we're here, consider listening and subscribing to The A.L.I.C.E. Files over on YouTube. The channel is fairly new, and every click helps!

It Might Help, But "Might" Is Doing Some Heavy Lifting

Nothing is certain when it comes to being a creative professional. However, you also miss 100% of the shots you don't take. At the end of the day, my recommendation to folks who are considering audio adaptations of their work is that if it isn't going to be a huge cost to you, then you should consider it. Before you invest any time, energy, or money into an adaptation, though, do so with the idea that it is not going to put money back in your pockets.

That way any sales, readers, or earnings are going to be a pleasant surprise!

However, as with any other promotional strategy for your work, it's important to remember that adaptations (and audio in general) follows the same rule as writing; it's a marathon, not a sprint. Just like how writing one novel isn't likely to catapult you to bestseller status, so making one audio book, or one adaptation, probably isn't going to make you a global phenomenon. But if you can keep putting out quality stories time after time, then people are going to start to notice you.

You need to be in it for the long haul. Keep that in mind before you get started.

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 (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

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.

Know What Your Ending Is Before You Start Writing

2026-02-25T15:33:00.000-08:00

For folks who didn't know, Pixar has a list of writing rules that people are expected to follow when crafting storylines for the company. Most of them are good things to keep in mind, but today I wanted to refer to writing rule #7, which (according to No Film School) reads:

Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously, endings are hard, get yours working up front.

This might not feel natural for a lot of writers, but trust me, botching the ending is a very real issue. Hell, if Stephen King can get lambasted for his endings falling on their faces often enough that it was a serious problem with his body of work, then the rest of us need to take time to make sure we don't suffer from the same problem.

Seriously... know where you're going before you start.

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

You Can't Plan A Road Trip If You Don't Know The Destination

If writing a book is a journey, then the ending of that book is your destination. And while general destinations can work (We're going to California!), the more specific your end point is, the easier it becomes to plot your trip (We're heading to the Holiday Inn in Pasadena).

Take two examples of this. You're writing a spy thriller, and you know that your secret agent's handler is actually a mole who has been manipulating things from the inside, and he's responsible for the game of cat and mouse going on throughout the book. A general ending is, "And then Agent Carter unmasks Gerald, and defeats him." Sure, that works, but it's still pretty vague as to what actually happens. What form does this unmasking take? What does defeated mean in this context? It's still a destination, but it's vague with the details, and that could become a problem for you as the writer.

A more specific ending would be something like, "Carter fakes his death, and then breaks into Gerald's safe house, knowing he'll be going there to meet his contact. He confronts him, recording the incident in question, and getting his confession. Gerald is shot dead by a sniper, and in the final report Carter gives, we find out that Gerald was selling out the agency to a far more dangerous terrorist organization that's set up as the villain in the sequel."

Sorry, Gerald, but you're no longer useful to us.

It's one thing to know you're going to a particular town, but it's another thing to know exactly where you're going to end your story because you can then work backwards from there to figure out the plot, important story beats, and so on. Writing a novel is hard enough, there's no reason to just wing it, throw as hard as you can, and hope you hit the target instead of launching your story so far out to sea there's no way to recover it.

Don't drive your plot endlessly around in circles just looking for a place to park. The story will suffer, and more than that, you're going to bore your audience. However, it's also important to remember that your ending isn't set in stone. If it turns out you think of a better ending along the way, or you need to make changes to your plan, you can still do that. However, it's a lot easier to change your destination when you actually know what it is, instead of just depending on instinct and intuition to tell you when it's time to start winding down your narrative.

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 (a channel full of short stories, many of which are mine)

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!

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!

Why Would You Want Creatives To Work A Day Job?

2026-02-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

"There's too much talent trapped by poverty."

- Anonymous

The economy has been doing barrel rolls in the middle of its swan dive over the past year, and as an elder millennial who was living on my own back during the crash that came after the housing bubble burst 15 or so years back, this feels like very familiar territory. People are losing jobs left and right, and it seems like every day I scroll social media and see Go Fund Me campaigns for people who are trying to keep their homes, trying to pay their medical bills, and just trying to keep food on the table.

That said, though, there is another phenomenon that I've seen rear its hideous head over the past year. It's been present, swimming just beneath the surface, but it's been in full-throated roar the past several months; it is people who, in response to the struggles or requests of artists, have responded with vitriol and mockery. And the most common refrain is, of course, that we should all go and get real jobs.

Leaving aside the stupidity of that statement for just a moment... why do you want to take someone who can write, sing, perform, paint, animate, or entertain, and force them to stand behind a cash register, stare at security cameras, or deliver pizza? Why don't you want people with skill, vision, and drive to make things that could entertain you, and add value to your life?

A question that is really worth pondering. Especially if it's uncomfortable for you.

Seriously, Though... Why?

If someone has a skill, and a desire to put that skill to use, the most logical thing is to let that person do the thing they're made to do. If someone likes to work on cars, we let them become a mechanic. If someone is satisfied hanging drywall, framing walls, etc., we get them onto construction crews. If someone can fix computers and set up networks, we get them into device repair or some form of IT. If someone is good at cooking, they work in a restaurant, if they're a good driver they might work in a cab or driving a bus route, and so on, and so forth.

Because, for some reason, we understand that in these examples you should pair a person's skillset with the job that best utilizes said skillset. However, when the person is a singer, a videographer, a writer, a painter, or really anything artistic, all of a sudden we start looking for reasons they shouldn't be able to make a living using those skills.

To be clear, all the naysayers will still encourage (and in some cases demand) that the creative folks keep making things. They just don't want said creative people to be paid for utilizing their skills.

Yeah... I don't get it either.

Here's a bottom line for folks. People who create, whatever form that takes, generally enjoy the act of creation. And yes, there are always going to be folks who are willing or able to just do things for the love of the game. But if you've ever wondered, "Why don't people make art like they used to anymore?" the answer is always money.

Because if you look at those classic sculptures, the amazing paintings, and so on that fill our museums? If you read books by a lot of classic authors? You're going to rapidly notice that a majority of them either came from money (and their family supported them so they could just be an art goblin without worrying about bills and food), or they had patrons (old-timey sugar daddies who threw money at their art goblins who wanted them to keep making great art instead of getting up to adult fun time when they were in town).

That's it. Period. End of story.

Money is necessary for artists to make art in the world we live in. Because it takes time to write novels. It takes energy to make audio dramas. It takes skill to paint, sculpt, and illustrate. And if someone is spending 8+ hours a day at a job that doesn't engage them (or worse, makes them want to chew their arm off to escape), they aren't going to have those necessary resources when they finally manage to get home.

This leads to the current issue. If you want creatives to be able to keep being creative and making art, they need to be able to focus their skills on doing that. However, if they don't come from a wealthy family, or have rich patrons backing them, how are they supposed to make it happen?

You. The answer is you, the person reading this right now.

We Literally Depend On You

I've said this before, but for anyone who hasn't been present for the sermon, creatives depend on our audiences to support us. And that audience is made up of individuals who are all doing their part to help raise the artist's profile, boost the signal, and to make sure that their pet creatives have the necessary resources they need to buy tacos and pay rent so they can spend their days producing more of the art that their audience wants to see.

And sure, maybe that means you just give an artist you like money. Whether it's as a tip on Ko-Fi, or you have a regular subscription through Patreon, just giving creators money is a great way to just grease the wheels so they can make more stuff. My Patreon and Ko-Fi are here, since we're on the topic.

If you don't want to just give an artist money, however, the next best thing you can do is buy their creations. Whether it's novels, paintings, prints, or just merch for their YouTube channel, this is the second best way to make sure their bills stay paid. After all, haven't you ever wondered why every concert you go to has a merch table at it? It's because the concert itself essentially makes no money once all the costs and ticket sales are tallied.

Seriously... bands make more money off your tee shirt than they do your ticket.

But what if you don't have any money? Well, you can actually make sure that your pet artist gets paid with nothing more than just your time and attention!

Do you like to watch YouTube videos? If you want to support that creator, then watching those videos without your ad block on means that you are actively making sure they get paid by advertisers, which allows them to keep making videos. And if you subscribe to the channel, and leave a comment of at least 7 words, you're also increasing their momentum in the algorithm, and helping more people find them! You can add a similar amount of weight for authors by following them on social media, leaving reviews for their books on places like Amazon and Goodreads, and actually requesting your library to buy copies of their books. This lets you read them for free, but the author still gets paid for the sale, in case you were curious. Hell, even leaving 5-star reviews on a podcast you like will make it more likely to show up in other people's searches and random mixes!

As I've said before, if you don't like a particular artist or a particular creator, you are under no obligation to support them in any way. However, if you do like a given artist, and you want to help them keep creating, then that burden is on you to help in whatever way you can. If you want them to make more art, then you (and everyone else in the potential audience) needs to help turn the crank to make sure they get their needs met.

Because the spark of creativity dies in the wet, grinding misery of being forced to spend all the resources you need to make art on scanning items, bagging groceries, or making phone calls when that isn't what you were called to do. And if you genuinely want your pet artist to keep making art, then do what you can to make sure they can nurture and grow that spark into many, many future projects!

Actually, Speaking of Future Projects (That Are Free)

The A.L.I.C.E. Files is a YouTube channel I launched in partnership with Alice Liddell, and it's an ongoing audio drama narrative that will also have other dramatized stories from both our bodies of work, as well as various other authors over time. So if you want to support a free project that takes just the click of a button, as well as your eyes and ears, then please watch this trailer, give it an upvote, leave a comment, and subscribe to the channel to help us out!

YouTube requires you to get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours before they share ad revenue with you... and we definitely need all the help we can get on this one.

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 (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

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.