I assume, as of now, you have not read my first book, Illyadra. A compartmentalization story of fantastical category. One that has taken me fifteen years to conceive, daydream, write, edit, and publish. A piece that has commandeered my life.
Kairo, our main character, has followed me through many journeys. I’ve taken him through puberty, overseas, through relationships, and even deaths. He’s grown, too. When I first imagined his presence, he was a whinny eleven-year-old boy just like I was. For years we grew up in unison, acquiring age and experience together. Then, around twenty, we started to drift apart. He stopped getting older and wiser. His likes and dislikes became much more his own—heck, even his own fears and flaws. And by now, Kairo has his own type of thinking, totally foreign to my own.
When it came time to search for an agent (you need one of those for publishers to even look at your manuscript) I started feeling uneasy. Not a “what if they don’t like it” type. Rather a “what if they ruin it” type. And from there I began listing all the other future titles that I have in the daydream-inator (hopefully they don’t take fifteen years each).
Then God laid upon me an idea I hadn’t had before: just make your own publishing company.
Well, hold on now. That sounds like a lot of work. You listen here, God, I like to make up people—give them personalities and names and cultures and what not—and make them fight. You seem to be suggesting quite the amount of work in the world external to the one in my head.
But the more I thought about it, the more I began to see what He was dreaming.
Oh Father, Almighty Wonderer, Dreamer Infinite, All-Knowing Inquisitor, if you would wish me to ask even the smallest of your questions, I would imagine instances of cosmic consequences.
There are a lot of Christian books already. I wouldn’t say too many, but uhm, there’s a lot. From memoirs, to commentaries, to devotionals, to I-died-and-dreamed-heaven books. And, from my perspective, I feel there is a great absence of devote, practicing Christian authors that don’t write about God. People who just write entertaining pieces. I want more Jesus-followers who tell jokes that don’t make me sin for laughing.
I’ve got a great many more thoughts on God in the entertainment industry. But that’s one of them tangent things where the current conversation bleeds into a new one. I will eventually write a blog all about God and Entertainment to link into this here sentence, but for now I will spare you.
Adriel means “of God’s flock” in Hebrew. Adriel House Publishing isn’t just a company name, it’s a promise. It’s a promise that our work will be aligned to the system of values Biblically prescribed. If there’s greed or gore or other vices hopelessly entertaining, they would not be glorified, but a result of real imaginary characters doing really imaginative things. War isn’t some single-hour event to be consumed mindlessly and moved on from, but a result of things going sour on a continental scale.
Here, I’ll make another promise while I have you: There are sixty-six originating intersections on the bird of our logo. They’re dots. Without all of them, there would be no bird. And without one of them, the bird would have less detail. Like resolution on a TV screen, if there were many more dots, the bird could be picturesque. But there’s only sixty-six.
God gave us sixty-six canonical books of the Bible (at least in my neck of the woods, some of y'all are still reading Enoch). Each one is an art-student painting the assigned man in the middle of the room. They all have different perspectives—many of their authors have wildly opposite backgrounds, social classes, technological advancements, ecological diversifications, or roles within an emotional system with which their world views originate. Sixty-six different angles of the same God. Without any one of them, our resolution of God’s character would suffer significantly. We would have much less of an idea of what he ‘looks’ like.
Adriel House is a publication to imagine the relationship between God and creation through artistic production. It’s a promise. Or a dare. Hold me to it. And have grace where I fall short of His glory.
The question I get most frequently is this, “What’s your target market, then? Christians? Non-Christians?” And I get it. I’m starting a Christian publishing company, it would make sense that my audience’s beliefs would be aligned, rather intentionally, on my half, one way or another. Or, with Illyadra’s hidden biblical themes, it might make sense that my target market would be not Christian. A sort of influential sneak attack.
But to be frank, it’s not that deep. I will, in time, publish many more books of my own, each with their own set of topics and themes and target audiences. And I will publish other works by other authors, each still having their own ideal demographic. So you see then, the common denominator of books I’m willing to publish is not based upon a singular target market.
The job of a publisher is rarely chasing audiences—that’s the author’s job. And while in this case I’m both of these people, author me and publisher me don’t communicate too frequently.
You then. Blog Reader. If you find that you’re neither of these people, my target audience or a new author, that’s okay. You’ve done so much already. You’ve invested in me something far grander: your perspective. I hold it dear. Without it, I wouldn’t have stories worth telling—especially since some of y'all are crazy.
Love ya!
adriel.
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