Yo'oh!

That's right this Matt Xell thing can in fact blog. Used to have one before this actually, yeah back in Web 1.0,  took it down coz I was a self-conscious git at the time. I had like three followers ... wonder what happened to them.

Anyways, welcome to this new one .The Matt Xell Blog, is that catchy? I dunno, time'll tell ... definitely, if I get I big as my imagination tells me I'll be.

So, just so you know, I'll be syndicating this one on Good reads and my Amazon pages and talking about, well everything Matt Xell, mostly Ves actually but, yeah I might say a word or two about me ... and maybe even my evil bro, The Red Plus. Oh, yeah, didn't even introduce myself to the new people, the ones I really need in my life right now ... the readers or potential readers and followers of this Matt Xell and more especially The Narrow Escapes of Ves Asirin series of books and all things franchise. Notice I didn't dare say 'fans', peh -- I abhor that word ... we are all producers and consumers in the age of the Internet and Web 2.0, we are all equals.  So, welcome friends ... welcome all and thanks for coming to my blog and reading this here post.

First off, I, hereby, apologise in advance for everything that I might say to offend you because God knows, I will. Whether it be my use of language (formal, informal, incorrect use of grammar, show don't tell -- BAKA, offensive, incoherent, meaningless slung, references to anime, books, movies and video games we haven't played), or my ideas (pointless, ignorant, nonsense, crazy), or my opinions (biased, unbiased, prejudiced, racial, political, STFU you don't know anything) or my suggestions (meh...) or my style of writing (annoying, drab, plot-less, amatuer, unedited) , or that I'm self-published (the nerve of these Generation Y kids thinking they can make it on their own), or that I'm black (I thought the writer of Ves Asirin was white like me, why isn't the main character black as well?), or that I'm African (why does he write western stories then, why doesn't he write about Africa?), or that I'm Zambian (Zambia? What's is that?) or the countless typos. I humbly, down on my knees, apologise for it all ... I'm sorry if I'm not normal or sane for daring to dream that I could hold your attention for longer than one post, one paragraph, one sentence, one word ... I'm sorry because I don't believe I'll ever be anything more than human ... just like you.

But I hope I haven't offended, you my real friends, the open minded ... to you I would like to briefly introduce myself properly ...

My real name is Kabengele Kapepula (Heh -- true story), what I like to call the double-dose of ethnic African surnames . I am a self-taught  YA spec-fiction  writer and wannabe artist/mangaka. I was born on February 6th, 1988, in Lusaka, Zambia which is where I live right now ... but not for long, I think. At a very young age I fell in love with the visual arts and literature. In primary school (middle or elementary school for my American friends), I met Muleya Chepa, a boy with an amazing art talent for his age. He and I became best friends and it was he that introduced me to me to comic books, video games and superhero movies. From him I learned to recreate, by pencil and paper, some of my favorite comic book and cartoon characters: Spider-Man, Superman, Batman and The X-men.

In 2003, at only age 15, Muleya died from the deadly HIV/AIDS virus after a life-long battle with the disease. For a long time I could not believe nor accept this news. But when the reality of it all finally hit me, I decided that I would live the rest of my life for the two of us, that I would become a world renowned author, artist, movie and video-game producer no matter what, that I would not stop nor give up until my dream was achieved. No matter how crazy it sounded, coming from a kid born and raised in hardly known third-world African country (Oh, so, that's what a Zambia is), I would make it and give the world a reason to remember my name (Heh - stupid kid, like that's goin to happen right?).

I created this Matt Xell character almost 10 years ago now while in a crappy computer lessons course that I took back in junior high. I was in this little room upstairs in the school library, playing with the MS Word on these ancient IBM PCs and I was penning down some of my comic book plots and one of them stuck in my head more than the rest; it would be my first series of books/novellas a few years later. It was about a teenage boy with the ability to manipulate matter and energy, a rip-off of my favorite X-Men character; Nate Grey. I named my character Matthew XL.

After I flunked ninth grade (Why, yes, I did), my self-esteem and much of the ego and personality attached to it at the time took a massive dip and so too did my love for expressing myself using art -- I absolutely loathed having my artwork criticised.


I heard a joke once; 'if you want to hide something from a Zambian, put it in a book' (it's a really bad and cynical joke, isn't it - Heh). That's what I did ... It worked, not many people were interested in my written comic book plots so no one criticize them like my art. I turned to writing more and more as the years went by, my handwriting became more and more minuscule so I could better hide my work, so small that even I can't read my earlier works ( when writing assessments at the day-job I use all caps so the trainers can read them - heh, not so funny though, its painful as hell).


I continued to write about the boy with the ability to control matter and energy and his world of altered beings throughout my high-school years (several hard covered 180-page note books -- heh). The main character took on a new name and became the lazy but latently (not a real word, but it should be) powerful and cool Ryan Thompson, and I took his former name as my pseudonym; Matt Xell.

A year after flunking high-school (that one was planned for, tho I won't go into details as it might piss off some people) I would go out on the worst date ever with this one girl, fall into a bout of depression for a bit and have nightmare that would change my life as I knew it. I would escape the burning 'Tower of the Great Few' and wake up to write about it.

Five years later, my recollection and re-imagining of that nightmare would be the first published volume of the epic fantasy/religious fiction opus that is The Narrow Escapes of Ves Asirin.

Well ... that's all I'll be telling you about my origin for now, but Kakashi - sensei, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke (characters from one of my favourite manga/japanese comics of all time) we'll be doing a little Q&A for ya in the next post.

Thanks and cheers again for stopping by! Later, then ...