This year was our first year as published authors. So, we decided to do a quick recap (with hints of things to come for 2020).

Transcript for FraeLea TV Episode 21 – 2019 Publishing Recap

R: Your hat.

F: Oh, yeah. My hat. A fancy hat.

R: Yes, it is.

F: Ho, ho, ho. Did that sound more like the Jolly Green Giant? Did I sound like Santa? Or, do we just look like we’re members of the Communist Party, or something here.

R: Oh, my God.

F: This blazing red that’s going to burn out everybody’s retinas? Just a typical look. I kind of look like Elf on the Shelf, here. We’re off to a great start.

R: Cheers.

INTRO

F: Hello and welcome to another episode of FraeLea TV.  And, it’s not the Christmas Episode, despite how we look right now. But we’re going to be talking about end of year and plans for next year.

R: Yes.

F: So, 2019, which is the year this is right now as you’re watching it. We’re just going to do a really quick recap. And, quick for us is probably about a half-hour.

R: Yeah! Sorry!

F: Stay tuned as efficient as quick as we are. We’re just going to go over a couple of numbers and things like that. This was our first year publishing. We did write Fog Over Mandaree a couple of years ago. It’s crazy to think it’s been that long. And that one, I don’t know if we consider it published even though it’s a real novel that is out in the world. But we give it away for free on our website at frhurt.com. It’s not on Amazon and you can’t buy it and that type of thing. But, this year, being our first year publishing, we did how many books?

R: Six, for Ascending Mage Series.

F: That’s correct. Good job.

R: Again, it could be very much in the future.

F: Oh, true. Good point. We have ten books planned for that. Six are published, now.

R: Yes.

F: And we are going to talk about the plans for next year. Out of this year, we have approximately 11,000 copies sold. I haven’t updated the numbers for this month. Sales have slowed, which apparently is common for the Holiday Season.

R: A lot of the other authors that we speak to are saying the same.

F: A lot of traditional publishers kind of up the budget and people are buying gifts for other folks instead of themselves. Which, books are typically personal gifts. There’s that, and I’m looking at my notes that I have off camera that nobody can tell I’m looking at them – can you tell?

R: You’re such a ninja.

F: I am a ninja. Oh, the other thing, that I have three things on the notes and I couldn’t remember the third one. The audiobooks –

R: Oh, yes!

F: Which we started producing late summer and the process is taking a lot longer than we thought it would, not knowing what to expect. But, we hired a professional actress out of New York and professional sound engineer to do the … sound engineering?

R: The magic behind the scenes.

F: The first two audiobooks are done, and they will be available hopefully before the end of the year. We still need to go through a couple little processes to get on Audible and on I-books and all the other places, Apple Itunes. Whatever. But, they’re going to be everywhere, they’re not going to be exclusive to Amazon. The first two audiobooks are done, the third and fourth are currently in production. The third is being produced, the fourth is already recorded. And, we’re going to be doing a whole lot more with the audiobooks, every one of them. That’s 2019.

R: Yes.

F: I think we’re going a little longer than we intended.

R: Yes, so wrap it up.

F: In 2020, we’re planning on getting really aggressive. We published six books in 2019 and in 2020 –

R: So, we’re going to double it!!!

F: We’re going to double it! We’re going to write twelve novels in 2020.

R: You heard him.

F: We’ll see whether or not I have a nervous breakdown. Or develop a … I was going to say develop a drinking or enhance my drinking problem. Switch to harder liquor, maybe?

R: You think this is water in the cup.

F: It’s just bourbon. You know, gotta calm the nerves a little bit. That’s how I start every morning.

R: Or breakfast beer.

F: Breakfast beer is true, the alternative. We have referred to that before.

R: Yes.

F: And, we might or might not be joking about breakfast beer.

R: Shhhh. You’ll never know.

F: Alright, twelve books for next year. Audiobooks for all of them. And, that’s going to be wrapping up the Ascending Mage series. At this point, we’re planning on stopping at ten books for Ascending Mage, but, if sales go crazy, we might be convinced otherwise, but we’re pretty sure.

R: We’re so excited to be telling you what’s going to be next.

F: Our next series after that which we won’t announce yet, but it’s going to be a spinoff series based on some of the characters and the timeline, and all that is happening in Ascending Mage.

R: Are we also going to tell them about April in Minot?

F: I guess we could. That’ll be in another announcement, probably. But, we are going to attend our first convention, too. And, that one is going to be in Minot. It’s the iMagicon happening in late April. We’re kind of excited about that.

R: Yeah, it’s the setting for our books, our series.

F: It seems appropriate. That’ll be fun. We’ll definitely be detailing that and going crazy with video and all that. Probably nerding out. That’s something for you to look forward to. But I think we’ve gone plenty long, as usual.  So, ho ho ho. *laughs* I need to work on that. I sound kind of aggressive when I say that. Like angry. I’m angry Santa. Damn kids! You’re getting coal! Get off my lap! Yeah, anyway, hope you have a good Holiday Season and we will catch you next year.

R: Yeah, wow. That’s amazing.

F: Probably. Unless we do more videos before then. Then we catch you before next year. But, either way, have a good Christmas, Hanukkah or Festivus. Or, all the above. Until next time.

If you’ve read our Ascending Mage series, you’ll know that it’s set in the Magic City (Minot), North Dakota.

What you might not realize is that these are real places, even if we fictionalize the heck out of them.

Today, we bring you a quick tour of a few landmarks you’ll find in our stories.

Transcript for FraeLea TV Episode #20 – Field Trip to the Magic City

F: We’ll see if we can do this whole video without having a cat show up in it.

R: No promises.

F: We might get interrupted but that’s alright. That’s part of the charm, isn’t it?

R: Yeah.

INTRO

F: Hi, welcome to FraeLea TV. Today we’re going to be talking about a mini-road trip we did at Thanksgiving.

R: That we are. To Minot.

F: We went to Minot to visit her family. That’s where she harkens from. We went there for Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving morning we had enough time to go downtown and it was cold as hell.

R: Isn’t that an oxymoron?

F: Cold as hell? I don’t know, it probably depends on your definition of hell. I think for some people, ‘hell’ is cold.

R: Okay, that’ll work.

F: That’ll be like February in North Dakota.

R: No, it’s been November through February.

F: Exactly. We might get a little bit off topic here. Let’s right this ship.

R: So, road tripping.

F: Yeah, so we went to, we were tripping to Minot, is what you’re trying to say, which happens a lot. We visited a couple of the sights that appear in our series, the Ascending Mage series. Including St. Leo’s church, which we did, I think in this last book, Ascending Mage 6. I forgot the name of the book that’s coming out. Ascending Mage 6, Hold the Line.

R: Hold the Line.

F: It’s not like we’ve been living and breathing it for every waking minute for the last two weeks. We did that one. And this is obviously after the events of the story which in real life, when the story was taking place it was the 125^th anniversary of St. Leo’s church being constructed. They were doing massive remodeling and restorations. They were putting everything back to original. Anyway, that, if you read Ascending Mage 6, you’ll see some little hints of that. And, beautiful, beautiful church though. It’s amazing.

R: Yes, it is. I think the biggest building was The Parker.

F: Yes, it’s the biggest building in our book, too.

R: Yeah.

F: Unless we do the Capitol, someday. We have mentioned it, we just haven’t had the story take place there. But, The Parker Building, which is probably on your screen right now. Or, soon after. That one was kind of fun because again, it was very cold out. I was on the corner of 1^st and 1^st filming this and there was no traffic because it was Thanksgiving morning, so it was perfect time to do that. And, some guy came driving up and actually stopped and waited until I was done filming before he proceeded. Which was kind of cool. That only happens in Small Town North Dakota. I waved at him, he waved back. It was nice of them not to get into my shot there that I was filming. We might be getting our interruption here depending on how much he decides to join us.

R: Well, and I confess to be waiting inside the warmth of the pickup.

F: You kind of allowed me to do the videography and not go out in the cold.

R: I did.

F: That was nice of you.

R: I just stayed out of your way.

F: This is Euler. Just passing through. Don’t mind him. He’s just got to get his butt in the shot here. Just passing through. Don’t mind him. And then the third building we went to, actually, we went to four places. But, the third one that we filmed we went to the Old Moline Plow Factory that was the, where the apartment building and the Sweet and Flour, which, was a real-life establishment back at the time of the story. And, the apartment that Ember lived in that building. That’s a really neat, old building turn of the century type building. There are beautiful structures in Downtown Minot. I’d love to do a walking tour sometime and we’ll have to make sure we do that next summer. And, if we do, we’ll film it for you. And the last place, which is actually the first place we visited, was…

R: Off The Vine!

F: And, that’s a place that she actually liked going to when she lived in Minot.

R: Yes, yes!

F: We didn’t do any film there because it was open for business and there were customers there. But we did snap a few photos. I guess if I show them, I’ll have to blur out some faces or something, so people don’t end up like, ‘hey, what, what am I don’t in this?’.  Or, like the people who are watching this, ‘hey, what am I watching?’. That’s what they say every time they watch one of our …

R: These are professionals!

F: That’s why they’re watching this. Like, click off this really quickly. Anyway, you’ve seen those, and we’ve seen them and we’re going to do more of that. Probably in the summer so we can take the time to crawl around the sites and really show them off. We’re proud of our state and it’s kind of fun to show off that these are real buildings and we didn’t make up the location.

R: This is the first of the road trips that we’ve had on our list.

F: We’ve got a lot more to go. Thanks for joining us. We’ll be sure to let you know when we go on another one.