Neal Litherland (And Improved Initiative) Need Your Help!

It's been one hell of a year on my end of the screen, folks. And while I've (so far) managed to weather the worst of it, I wanted to take this Monday's post to send out an S.O.S. I'm currently dealing with a rather unfortunate situation, and I could use a hand up before the root I'm holding onto gives way, and I go tumbling off of this cliff I'm currently dangling over.

Details are below, and there's a lot of a lot going on here.

Things are... sort of dire at the moment.

Before I get into the details, though, don't forget to sign up for my weekly 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! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Also, since it keeps getting lost in the shuffle, check out my Vocal archive for more articles about RPGs, character conversions, character concepts, weird history, nerdy topics, and more!

So... What All is Happening?

All right, this is going to be a string of depressing events that I've been dealing with the past year. Apologies in advance, but I feel it's important to explain the timeline to put things into perspective.

It's a lot.

Let's start with this time last year. My apartment building was under construction for the majority of 2022, which was frustrating in and of itself, but last summer I had to pull stakes and leave my apartment to stay in a hotel. What was supposed to be a week-long stay ballooned out into over a month where I was doing guerilla blogging and video recording, trying to keep up with deadlines while not actually being home. I didn't have to pay for the hotel itself, but the sheer stress levels of working under those conditions (along with all the other expenses you accrue while in that kind of situation) took a toll on me, and on my work.

Around that time Eric Flint died, as did his company Ring of Fire. This meant that not only did I not get a royalty check for any book sales I'd made from December to June in 2022, but it also meant 3 of my novels were now off the market. I had to scramble to try to find them new homes, while also dealing with not receiving a check that should have (based on the numbers I was seeing) paid for several fees I had to dig into my savings to cover.

I was back in my apartment by September. Just as I started getting back into the groove, my cat started showing a lot of distressing symptoms I couldn't explain. I took him to the vet in November, and paid several hundred dollars for a battery of tests. I then had to pay several hundred more dollars to have him put down, because his heart was just giving out after 16 years of being my companion. That was a huge blow to me both emotionally and financially, but I figured that if I could get on the other side of it that I could start rebuilding and moving forward.

At the beginning of 2023 we had all the fuckery (and no, I will not use a more family-friendly term for it) from Hasbro and Wizards of The Coast. This disrupted a majority of my income, forced last-minute readjustment, and caused a lot of issues with my Kickstarter for Army Men, which was first delayed, and then had to contend with the wave of people who'd sworn off of anything even tangentially connected to DND 5th Edition (which, when the game was first created, had been the dominant system in the RPG sphere for years).

I finally managed to get all of that mess straightened out, and the flow of my projects coming out again, when the electronic fuel injector gave out in my car. This basically meant that my car couldn't accelerate, leaving me going at an idle speed whenever I took my foot off the brake no matter how far down I pushed the gas. That was not a good situation, but I managed to get it into a local shop, and they made the necessary repairs. While I had some help at the time, this still set me back several hundred more dollars, on top of all the previous things I still hadn't recovered from.

Wait for it, friends, because this is where things get even worse.

Then there's the crescendo... because, you see, that fuel injector has been nothing but trouble since it gave out the first time. A few weeks back I was driving to my weekly game at a friend's house (it's about an hour or so from my apartment to their house, and a lot of it is interstate driving). I was on the interstate when all of a sudden that warning light came on, and I started losing speed. I managed to pull off without getting creamed by a semi (it was a bit of a near thing), and then I had to arrange for a tow truck to come get my car, and for a friend to pick up myself, and my two roommates to drive us back home. The shop covered all of the expenses, diagnosed the problem, and I was back on the road seemingly no worse for wear.

Then there was last Friday. I'd had no problems for a few weeks, and I was just starting to relax. I figured if I kept my head down and my nose to the grindstone that I would be able to come out on the other side of things, and start backfilling the holes that had been sinking my ship. I was on my way to my Friday game, and the only worry I had was getting the rest of my bills covered... then my injector went out again. This time it left me stranded in Gary, on the IUN campus where I graduated college. It was also around 5 o'clock, which is when all the auto shops close, and no one can do anything for you. It was a repeat of the whole previous kerfuffle, with a tow truck bringing my car back into town, friends coming to pick me up, etc.

The difference was that this time I'm the one who got stuck with the tow truck cost. Which was another $200 I hadn't planned on spending.

As of time of writing, I don't know if I'm going to end up paying a few hundred dollars more to get additional repairs done on my current vehicle, or if I'm going to need a few thousand in order to get a replacement car that will actually be safe for me to drive (something I sort of need to have if I'm going to go to cons and similar events to sell books, network, etc.).

And that is why I'm asking for your help today.

How You Can Help!

Because I could really use a hand up.

As most of my regular readers know, being a professional creative doesn't pay all that well outside of a handful of rockstars in any particular part of the industry. I'm not one of those folks, and according to my own tax documents I didn't even break $13K last year... and that's been my average for half a decade or more. Keep in mind that's before taxes... I have to pay all of those at the end of the year.

I wanted to front load that so readers know where I'm at, what I'm working with, and why I'm putting out an S.O.S. to help me deal with this unfolding situation.

#1: Direct Support (Donations and Patronage)

Direct support is always the most efficient.

The best way for folks who want to help me dig my way out of this hole (or at least throw me a line so I can start climbing) is direct support. If you want to throw me a quick one-time donation, go to The Literary Mercenary's Ko-Fi page. Alternatively, if you want to provide me some long-term support so that I can keep taking steps forward while paying my new bills, consider becoming a Patreon patron. This helps keep my two blogs going, and I try to give my patrons as much free stuff and extra content as I can.

I know times are tough all around, but I'm front-loading this option because it provides the best, most immediate support not just for me, but for any creator you want to help out.

#2: Buy An RPG Supplement

Like a copy of Sellswords of Sundara, for example...

As I pointed out in a recent article, I've got over 160 TTRPG supplements to my name right now, and a lot of them pay me royalties for every sale. So just click through that link, or take a look at my Pinterest board for my TTRPG supplement master list, and select something that catches your eye!

If that's too many options for you (decision paralysis is a real thing, after all) and you're looking for good value to you as well as to me, I'd recommend checking out the following bundles:

- Inn & Tavern Bundle: A great one for all fantasy games, this has some of my most popular splats in it!

- Sci-Fi Bar Bundle: Same as above, but for sci-fi games.

- 100 Kinfolk Bundle: This was my extra large Werewolf: The Apocalypse project. There's 15 supplements in here, and that's a total of 1,600 kinfolk NPCs for your Werewolf chronicle!

In the interest of transparency, this is my second option because it takes a lot of sales to add up to a meaningful number, and they take a little while to clear. Sales of a supplement like 100 Body Mods and Augmentations For a Sci Fi Game pays me about 30 cents or so, while a supplement like 10 Fantasy Villages pays me about 60 cents per copy sold. In either case it can take a month or two before DTRPG releases the funds, and I can cash them out. So if this is an option you want to take, please consider also leaving a rating and a review on any supplements you get, and sharing the links to them on your social media, discord server, etc., so I can reach a bigger audience, and put a few more coins in the jar.

#3: Buy A Book

I'm still so ridiculously pleased with this cover...

I mentioned that my old publisher shuttered its doors, but my books are starting to make their way back onto the market. My dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Solders presents my own take on the space marines in the form of the myrmidon, and Pollux has to outwit a conspiracy tracking him (and possibly the former members of his squad), with the intent of eliminating them... or is it all in his head, a product of intense paranoia left behind as a relic of his time in the Hyperion Conflict?

If that doesn't quite sound like your cup of tea, though, there's also my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, about a young man sent to go retrieve his missing cousin, and to bring him back to their home on the mountain... or, if his cousin is dead, to make sure he's got plenty of company on the reaper's cart. And if you're one of those rare folks who enjoys short fiction, my collection The Rejects is also on Amazon, and you can check out audio dramatizations of at least one short story, Suffer The Children, on my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary.

Then there's this book, too...

Lastly, for folks who didn't get in on the Kickstarter for it, Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic is currently on pre-order through Backerkit! We're currently handling layout, editing, art, etc., but this book is definitely going to happen, and throwing your support behind the project by pre-ordering your copy would definitely help ensure that it's profitable enough to both pay the folks involved, and maybe to underwrite sequels and supplements in the future!

This option is third on the list for two reasons. First, it takes time for sales of books to clear, and to come to me. A few months for my novels, and probably half a year or more for Army Men to really finish up, and for the profits to be divided among all the contributors. But if you want to help out by buying a product that isn't a TTRPG supplement (especially if you're one of the folks out there who enjoy my fiction, but might not be a gamer) these are good options to pursue.

#4: Engage With All of My Free Content!

Seriously... I have so MUCH of it!

I don't want to dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back, here, but I make a lot of content, and I do what I can to make sure that a lot of it is free so that people who don't have a big budget for extra stuff can still enjoy what I make, and have fun with some of my ideas.

If you're one of the folks out there who doesn't have any spare dosh lying around (or maybe you've pursued one of the above options and want to do a little more to help as a cherry on top), then please consider doing any or all of the following!

- Check Out My Vocal Archive: I have 283 articles on Vocal at present, and these cover my RPG character conversions, weird history, a decent amount of free fiction (including stories for both Pathfinder and Warhammer 40K), and more! Vocal pays me roughly $6 for every 1,000 reads my articles get, so I encourage folks to bookmark my author page, read an article or three a day, and please share the ones you like on social media to help boost their numbers!

- Subscribe to (and Watch) Videos on The Azukail Games YouTube Channel: I do a lot of work for Azukail Games, and I try to put one video onto the company's YouTube channel every week. At time of writing we have well over the 500 subscribers we need to get it monetized, but we only have about 1,000 of the 3,000 hours of watched content we need before YouTube shares any earnings with us. While this won't help me directly (it's not my channel, I just contribute), if it starts pulling in money, then it's likely I'll be able to do bigger, more involved projects, and to get an increase in my pay for making those videos in the first place. Again, interacting with those videos, and sharing the ones you like so more people can see them, would be a big help.

It would also let me justify my Windy City Shadows project, which I talked about recently in Discussions of Darkness Episode 11, for folks who missed it.

- Check Out My Rumble Channel: I've said it before, but I legally cannot be paid by YouTube, because Google AdSense banned me from their platform. I've been looking for some kind of alternative for a long time, and the closest functional thing I've found is Rumble. My archive there is small, and I'm adding to it as I can, but like everything else in the free section it takes a colossal amount of activity to make even a few nickels fall out of it. I'd probably need hundreds of thousands of watches on those videos before a C-note made its way into my hands, but I won't say no to views, shares, and folks who want to help me grow my audience this way, either.

This option is last on the list because it's the hardest to affect immediate change with. If I could get 1,000 people to all watch the full playlist for my Discussions of Darkness show in order to monetize the Azukail Games channel overnight, that would be awesome! If I could somehow get an article like Partners and Polycules: Polyamorous Designations Based Off Dungeons and Dragons Dice to go viral and get 1 million reads (which would be about $6,000 for me... which seems like a lot of work for not a lot of pay) that would solve a lot of my current problems.

For this one to work, a lot of people need to work in conjunction to overcome the algorithm, and to generate the huge numbers it takes to make free content actually pay me as the creator. The upside, though, is that this one is open to everyone! So if you have a few spare minutes to read and share an article, or you just want to put on a playlist in the background while you do chores or plan your campaign, it would be very much appreciated!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary!. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, my dystopian sci fi thriller Old Soldiers, or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!