As Eminem once said, in real life
there is no Mekhi Phifer. For me, in
self-publishing, as it turns out, there is also no Mekhi Phifer, and also no team
of editors and publishers. Personally, I
am still a bit conflicted as to how I really feel about that. It would be nice to have the backing of a
publisher, editor, and agent. I know my
work would probably come off more polished, maybe. Money and notoriety would be nice too,
without doubt. On the other hand though,
if my goal were to reach as many readers as possible and find a genuine
audience, then it wouldn’t matter if I had the backing of the industry big
dogs. My fan base would be there and
they would be all that I need. Yeah, I’d
be pretty happy with that.
As I’ve said before, my dream would
be to see LA Ninja as a movie. I think
it would be awesome! So that’s my dream,
everybody’s got one, right? I guess deep
inside, when it comes down to it, I just hope that people like LA Ninja, and
soon, Pumps. Now that I think about it,
I guess I’d just be happy if people didn’t think my work was just complete
shit. However, If people turned out to
think my stories were worth dogshit, then I guess I could deal with it. It would be heartbreaking, but I could deal
with it and move on. That reminds me, Rule
of Self: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
By the way, Pumps has so far turned
out to be my best work, in my opinion.
And I’m not trying to be arrogant or overconfident, I am just really
proud that I was able to turn a story like that out. It is totally different from LA Ninja, like
big time, but it’s cool. Not so sure the
same audience from LA Ninja is going to like it, but I’m trying to see how much
versatility there is inside me. I also
have some other projects in the works that will take me yet in another
direction, but I’m not even close to working those ones yet. I’ve started LA Ninja II: Rise of the Cartel,
so that one will be coming out next.
Anyways, after that divergence into
left field, the reason I’m writing this puff piece is not to bitch about not
being backed by publishers. Instead,
after taking such a big step back from LA Ninja to work on Pumps, I decided to
go back to it and give it a read, mostly so I could start LA Ninja II with the
first story fresh in my mind. What I
found was appalling. The beginning
chapters flowed slow like molasses.
There were tons of typos and grammatical errors, and lastly, the story
was missing one special ingredient that I have since added to my writing
repertoire. So, I got to work on a
revision right away. This is the pitfall
of not having an editor.
Not to dwell too long on the matter,
I revised LA Ninja and republished it to all e-book publishers. The final should get to most bookshelves in a
day or two. This, I promise, will be the
final. I’m apologize to my readers for
making any changes, which, trust me, the story is unchanged except for one
minor addition to the honeymoon scene.
The rest of the changes were done to speed the flow of the story in the
first few chapters, cut out some fluff, and fix the shitload of typos that I
found.
Interestingly, I was surprised to
see how far I have come and matured as a writer. I was embarrassed for the beginning of LA
Ninja. The writing seemed so, shall we
say, juvenile? I wonder if I will come
back yet again and find what I’m writing now to be juvenile too? Maybe.
I suppose that is how it goes though.
Anyhow, I’m trying to get the
artwork completed for Pumps. I think I
can have that book up and published by mid-August, which would be great. I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks of it. I have a few friends reviewing it now, and
they absolutely love it, so I’m pretty excited about it. In the meantime, LA Ninja II is progressing
well. Things in that story have become
super complicated, in a good way. I’m
pretty excited at the direction it’s moving in.
Maybe I can have the first draft done by Christmas.
It’s funny to think about where I’ve
gone with this whole writing thing. I
know when I started this blog, I really thought I would get further with the
publishing people. I thought, at least,
that I would get the chance to send in sample pages or a manuscript here or
there. Since, however, none of that ever
happened, I just kept moving forward by myself.
I didn’t think that I’d take it this far, not on my own. I think it’s pretty cool. I’m out here in the world now, aren’t I? (he smiles to himself) –signing off, Adrian
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