This Is My Rifle: Living a Writer’s Life (The “This Is My Rifle” Book is Here!) Posted by Jason James on 01/09/13 | Filed under This Is My Rifle, Opinion

Ah yes, 2013. We made it. We beat the Mayans. Or should I say, we beat the dummies that misread the Mayan long count calendar. Take that, archaeologists.

I was gonna start this article off by wishing you all a happy new year but I thought about it and I’ve concluded that the phrase “Happy New Year” is stupid. Basically, in saying “Happy New Year” I’m wishing you a great 12-month period only renewable should I choose to wish it upon you again in 2014. Fuck that shit. I wish you health, happiness and success from 2013 onwards if you don’t have it already. No expiration date. Boom. Done.

Next, I wanna say that I’m about as tired of writing about myself as you are reading it. So in 2013 I will do my best to shift the focus away from my silly little music career and onto issues that really matter to all of us. But today I’m gonna make the exception and talk about myself just one last time because my “This Is My Rifle” eBook is finally available for free download.

Last summer as we were wrapping up “Pyramids In Stereo” I began thinking about non-conventional ways I could promote the album and stray away from the usual route 99.9% of the artists out there take. Every time I do something in regards to my creative interests I try to do it in a way that is fresh and alternative to what’s already happening. In terms of our music, Rodney and I are definitely left of the generic mainstream sound so anything we do behind it will be different but I still try to think of ideas that are fresh and new. I always look at promotional tools through my own eyes as a fan of music and make note of tactics that had an impact on me and pulled me towards an album or artist. For the most part the promotional strategies employed by most artists and their management or PR firms are ineffective and rely on the involvement of an established fan base or the fan base of a closely related artist. But every now and then an artist does something that grabs my attention and holds it long enough for me to actually search out their music on my own. And 9 times out of 10 that artist has put a personal touch on the particular promotional strategy that drew me in.

So as I racked my brain thinking of original ideas, I immediately reverted back to a thought that had been floating through my mind for the past year. Since I started writing for RefinedHype I had planned to eventually turn “This Is My Rifle” into a book but I had zero experience in the publishing field. I didn’t even know how to compress MS Word documents into one big PDF file let alone successfully release an eBook. But like everything else I do, I became obsessed with the idea and decided that “Pyramids In Stereo” was the perfect opportunity to tie both my musical and literary interests together and release them as a complete package. I had no clue how I was gonna do it, but a few weeks after I committed to the book and brought my homie Joe M.A.S.A.R.O. Gianoglio on board to do the artwork, I opened my big mouth and announced to the RefinedHype Nation that the eBook would be available for download along with the album.

To be perfectly honest, if it wasn’t for Joe this book would’ve never happened at all. The amount of technical knowledge that was needed to put the eBook together was far beyond my comprehension and I was not capable of presenting it in a way that resembled anything valuable to anybody, so Joe took on this project and did the lion’s share of the work. After the first month of brainstorming my involvement in this book boiled down to just providing the articles and handwritten lyrics. Everything else was completely Joe’s doing (check out more of Joe's artwork here).

As the release day for the album came and went this project took on a new meaning to me. In the beginning stages of the book I had perceived it as an extra- a cool little addition to the album. Something that people could flip through while they listened and randomly read on occasion. But as I read through the articles and corrected spelling and grammatical errors I watched myself slowly mature throughout my writing as the months rolled by.

In the first half of the book I found that I was fairly extreme- using words like “corporatist” and “capitalist” over and over again. This was a reflection of where I was at that time- a man in his 20’s coming out of a slumber and applying theories that he had read about in the years leading up to his entry into the literary world. Prior to my debut at RefinedHype, I was free to read books and articles without really having to decide whether or not I agreed with them. I could absorb information and stash it away in my brain for later use, never once having to pick a side or confirm their relevance to me as a person. Now I was forced to examine these concepts and attach them to my own ideas. It was for this reason that I think I wrote from an absolute perspective.

In the second half of the book I found that I was a lot more comfortable in my skin as a writer. I no longer wrote every article as if it was the definitive guidebook to a specific subject, however, I was reporting on pieces of ideas that were constantly growing inside of my mind. In short, I was maturing and discovering fragments of life along the way. While I cringed as I edited my articles from 2010, I found that in 2011 I was learning how to better convey my message without sensationalizing the issues.

Now in 2013 I think I’m about to take my next step as a writer. I don’t know exactly what that step will be but I do believe that I’ve grown and am ready to explore the world around me even further with a less conspiratorial eye. Of course, I’ll always be a skeptic when it comes to corporations and the governments they control, but I think it’s time I loosened up the tinfoil hat a little bit.

Wish me luck and in the meantime, enjoy the free book.

**Sidenote: "Pyramids In Stereo" stickers are also now available. If you would like some free stickers, email your mailing address to [email protected] and I will send some at no cost to you whatsoever. Location is not an issue. Wherever you are on planet Earth I will make they reach you.**


Click here to preview/download Jason James' "This Is My Rifle" eBook

(Jason James is an artist, freelance columnist and writer for RefinedHype.com. You can listen/download his last two albums, "Marvelous World Of Color" and "Pyramids in Stereo" and you can contact him here and here.)

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