Chp 6 : Progress?

Months pass by, in early August, Al and Mary went to the publishing house called The World Publishing Company the author such as Ruth Nanda, Robert Ludlum, Rex Stout, and many more published their book with this company and this company has just made their office in Los Angeles.

After some negotiation that handled easily by Mary, they made another fortune of $100,000 in cash and dividend of 15% of each book sold so that means, the if price of the book is $15 so he got $2.25 for each book sold, and of course because Al has made all of the character design and storyboard so the company only need to rearrange, coloring and print the books.

Not only that, if the book becomes a bestseller, they will make another peripheral such as coloring book and character biodata set as per Al's authorization and this deal exclude film and TV series adaptation, toys and games that was still held by Al's.

Normally, the adaptation works were held by the publishing house but luckily, Al got Mary. Al's contract only stated that he must at least made 2 more story sequels and the publisher must be World Publishing Company. And also the book can only be published in the short story column in the LA Times comes to an end.

The <Toy Story> come to an end and Al has been sent another story to the LA Times as he promised. The story he made was <Lion King> because the story length of <Up>, <Finding Nemo>, and <Ice Age> was too short, so he decided to make a collection book of it and wrote the <Lion King>.

Because of many similarities between the <Kimba the White Lion> and <Lion King>, he decided to change the character name a little bit and their appearance such as Simba became Leeu or Leo, Scar's name and looks were changed and making the story to become more alike to Hamlet African animal version to avoid stink eye from Japanese animator.

His popularity among kids and parents began to soar. Now many people knew the name of Alphonse Brandt or Al as a pen name but unfortunately, nobody knew how Al looked like. Is he an adult? An old man? A woman? Or a pedophile uncle? So nobody sure how parents will react to their children's favorite author.

When <Toy Story> book was released in September, It became a best seller with 1 million sales in a week. Not only that, peripheral such as a coloring book and biodata characters also sold out but not as much as the picture book.

Many toy companies and animation studios began to contact the publishing house but they can only leave with disappointment. The copyright holder is still in the hand of the author and has no intention to authorize it.

Al got another idea for the toys and peripheral gifts.

'I know that my story will be a success but not THIS success' Al just sigh thinking about that, and maybe even think that he got a protagonist halo..... Nah, that only appeared on the chuuni light novel.

Same as publishing house company, LA Times Sunday post is beginning to soar because there began many kids who urged their parents to buy the LA Times on Sunday morning. Children now would ask if they had read Al's story, if not they won't become your friends.

This left the board director and many company higher-ups regret it. They also own a publishing house but they have no children's book in their catalog. This made William scolded by the board director and call Mary to urged her to publish the book on their company.

But unfortunately for them, they have made a deal with other publishing companies. So Mary only promised him that Al will write more story for the LA times and he already approved it.

"They are our benefactor but just give them a bit or they will become greedy." Said Al

At present time, besides keep playing with kids, because he got money from the publishing house, Al donate $50.000 to the orphanage.

In this way, the orphanage won't get trouble with funding anymore, and also the extra money he got, he decided to buy gifts for his fellow orphans, and both of his caretaker. Mary also got a 10% commission, at first Mary is reject it but after always urged by Al every day, she learns to compromise.

Anyway, he bought some music equipment like a keyboard, guitar, and other musical instruments and build a studio in one of the empty rooms in the orphanage, it cost $10.000 for all of it.

In this month, Al learned all the skills that were necessary for the entertainment industry. Singing, Music, Acting, Filmmaking.

While music can be practiced at home, so he needs to learn about acting and filmography. He bought an 8mm camera, and start experimenting by taking a documentary shoot about daily activity in the orphanage. For acting, he just needed a perfect moment to do that.

Life goes on, celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and last is New Year. Al's life was full of learning and training, not only that he also writing a few short stories for LA Times, and just an early December ago, he publishes a book named <Jurassic Park>.

After the book was released, it created another storm of crazed reading by many of his fans and sci-fi reader.

Even the book critics praise this novel as one of the pioneering work of biology science fiction and also DNA scientist was interested in experimenting this and want to invite the author to a science fair.

'Fk, if they knew who write this book was 10-year-old kid, all of them must be feel ashamed because they believe in child's fantasies haha...' As of course as Mary kept Al's identity a secret, they reject them by telling them the author want to live a peaceful life.

The new year of 1981 has come, and the orphanage family celebrates it together, Al kept buying them a lot of gifts.

He even thinking about whether to hire an agent from a talent agency to enter Hollywood. After consulting with Mary, she also approved this and even suggested Al hiring a personal assistant or even manager.

Both Mary and Mrs. K know that Al's dream was to make movies, so they also knew that Al needed experience and the best way to start from the bottom was to become a child star first to gain some fame.

"Well I got some recommendation from my friends to contact this new agency, although they only established 5 years ago, they got some good connection in this industry." Said Mary

"Really? What this agency called?" Asked Al. "The Creative Artist Agency, it was built by Michael Ovitz, an ex-senior agent of William Morris Agency," Mary said.

'CAA?' Thought Al, what he knew from his past life was this agency is really strong in the 90s, not only they got half of the A-list Hollywood actors/actress, they really dominate the production of the film itself, and even he heard that one of the agents because his signed customer was failed at the audition, he came to one of the Hollywood big six studios and threatening their CEO.

This made CAA become more domineering and made all film studios wary, so all Hollywood production company agreed to put pressure on CAA, by rejecting some of their customer and their film project. So CAA began to yield and even more so, since the late 90s, the film production company most of them became media group or own by important people.

The most famous thing that CAA made was their packaging project, and it's successiveness change the gameplay of Hollywood's talent agency.

After much thinking, Al said," Okay, please call them then, but make sure that the contract is short and I don't want to follow any plan they design for me, I want to do things my own way, I heard that some talent agency forcing their customer to publicize their personal life."

"Don't worry Al, I'll make sure if the agency is forcing you, we will change immediately." Said Mary

To Be Continued.....