I’ve been wanting–no, needing, really–a war horn of my own for years. I researched options and watched YouTube to learn the technique.

But, I couldn’t justify such a luxury.

So imagine my glee when RaeLea surprised me with pretty much the BEST GIFT EVER!

I’m sure she has no regrets.

Special shout-out to Kilts Wi Hae, which are the Scots who made this delightful horn.

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #17

F: *blows horn* Guess what I got!

R: *laughs* Hello, and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. That’s quite an opening.

F: I’m Frank, the horn blower, and this is RaeLea, the gift giver of awesome gifts. So, it’s almost Christmas, and I’ve been wanting a War Horn, because which red-blooded male has not wanted a war horn. I mean, come on, let’s be honest.

R: I think this will be under the category of ‘What have I done’.

F: Yes. So, I’ve been practicing with this.

R: A lot.

F: A lot. She loves it. I think it’s how I’m going to start waking her up in the morning.

R: He’s threatened.

F: It’s going to be awesome. This has very little to do with writing, but it’s so awesome, we had to make a video of it to show you guys.

R: Yeah.

F: We are going to be writing into the story, somehow, with one of the characters. That’s my excuse for needing something like this. This wasn’t a want it was a need.

R: Yes, yes. Well, maybe you’ll have to have some sort of contest on who is going to be the ‘horn blower’ in the book.

F: Maybe. Yeah. In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy it.

R: Oh, dear.

F: It’s an authentic ox horn from Scotland, hand made and everything. It’s just simply made out of horn. It’s bone and has a little rawhide strap. I found it on Amazon, did all kinds of research to find the ones that I liked. This one came up consistently. It takes a little practice to get use to using it properly. It’s not just blowing air, it’s almost like a trumpet.

R: I was just going to say, the horn blowers, trumpets, trombones, they’re going to have an advantage over others.

F: Yeah, someone who’s used to playing brass instruments. We were both percussionists when we were in school and this is a little bit different.

R: A lot of practicing.

F: I plan on using it the next foggy day we have. I’m going to go outside and just let loose. Probably like around three or four in the morning.

R: And, announcing our arrival at Christmas time.

F: That’s the other thing. Anytime, actually anywhere. It’s got this strap, so I can carry it around with, anytime we enter a room or a restaurant, something like that, I think that’s when it’ll be appropriate. Anyway-new war horn, if it shows up in a story eventually, you’ll know where this came from and you have RaeLea to thank for it. For being wife of the year! For getting a war horn for her husband!

R: Alright. Yeah, me!

F: I’ll play us out. Let’s see if I can get this right. Usually, it takes a couple tries. No editing here. *blows horn* That wasn’t too bad. One more, then we’ll go. Thanks again for watching. Where can they find us?

R: FRHurt.com

F: *blows horn* Not too bad, huh! Thanks, again. *blows horn*

We’ve never reviewed a product before, but the MyZone MZ-3 has impressed us so much, we had to share!

If you decide to get one for yourself, you can get $50 off your own MyZone MZ-3 by visiting https://FRhurt.com/myzone (we receive no commission from this link; it’s just a redirect that inputs a generic coupon code).

And be sure to let us know if you do, so we can add you to our monthly Iron Squirrel Challenge! 🙂

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #16

F: Hi, and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. We’re coming at you in our spare bedroom which doubles as our home gym. I’m sitting on my Fit-Desk, which is a bike-desk combination, we’ve got our assistant here who’s insisted on being a part of this. And, as soon as the camera rolls, of course, he’s out of here.

R: Bye, bye.

F: I don’t know about you, RaeLea, but—I do know about you, actually, that you hate working out about as much as I do.

R: I do! Surprise!

F: Yeah, but, we understand how important it is to be physically fit and to be a productive author and to live longer to bring stories to you. So, to that end, we came across a devise a couple months ago. It was in October, I think.

R: Pretty sure it was about three months ago. We kicked it around a little bit.

F: We are getting no kick-back from this, whatsoever.

R: Right.

F: Or anything like that. But, we’ve become such believers in it that we are going to tell you all about this device and, how it’s—Kind of, not to overstate it, but it’s kind of changed our lives and our view of working out.

R: It’s kind of made it more fun and I think for me, it’s helped push me to go that extra mile.

F: This device is called MyZone, MZ-3. She’s holding a box.

R: It comes in such a cool box.

F: It’s a bonus box. It’s $150, but if you watch until the end, we have a coupon code that you can save $50 off when you purchase one, if you decide. There’re other videos out there with people, if you just search for MyZone MZ3. There’s a ton of really good videos out there reviewing this and we’re not product reviewers. We’re just telling you about…

R: Our experience.

F: When you get it, if you want to show them.

R: It comes with, you’ve got the device itself, and it’ll clip onto your belt. A little bit challenging, sometimes, and on the back, there’s the two electrodes?

F: I don’t know what they’re called. But, basically, what it does is you wear it on your sternum. We’re both wearing ones right now.

R: Yeah!

F: It connects wirelessly, by Bluetooth, to your phone and it measures your heartrate. So, what’s the reason we like it? First of all, it’s the motivation. It motivates us to work out and try to work out every day. Because this is, on a very basic level, the MZ-3 is like a heartrate monitor. And, it’s 99.4% accurate to an EKG.

R: Pretty impressive.

F: Yeah, it is. So, it’s much more accurate than say, a Fitbit or any of those other, like Smart Watch type things. And, it’ll measure whether you’re sedentary or you’re working out aggressively. And, unlike those other devises, that are notorious for being less accurate the more you move around, ironically. You wear it, as a belt, right against your sternum.

R: You can adjust the width around, and it just clicks right in.

F: So, one size fits all.

R: And, it’s super easy.

F: We’ll go into, probably, more of the features of why we like it, rather than the device itself. But, just because it’s a lot of stuff out there about it and we’re trying not to get super long here. We wrote down some of the features so we don’t miss anything. First of all, it measures your heart rate. But, it takes your age into account. And, it measures your effort.

They call them MEPs, they’re MyZone Effort Points. At every 50%, you get one point per minute, 60% you get two points per minute, 70% is three points, then 80% and 90% are four points per minute. And, that’s based on effort, again. That’s kind of the beauty of this, that if you’re really out of shape, you’re getting a lot more points for doing a lot less.

R: I’m killing it!

F: The kind of the fun thing is that we tested it out the first day when we got it. We would do the exact same workout, the same amount of time, and she would earn two to three times the points that I would. On the surface, it seems like, “Well, that’s not fair.” But, it really is an equalizer, because someone who’s relatively fit can be a fair competitor to somebody who’s not as fit. We’ve got the full range of people. You could compete against an Olympic athlete and actually stand a chance of beating them in points. So, that’s one of the things. What’s another feature here.

We talked about the heart rate monitor. It’s water resistant.

R: But, not waterproof.

F: So, no swimming with it.

R: No showers.

F: One of the things we like about it is the real time feedback.

R: Right!

F: So, on your phone, it’ll show you what your heartrate is and what percentage that is against your maximum heartrate. That maximum heartrate, that 50, 60 percent rate we talked about earlier.

R: It really motivates you in pushing that – if you’re at 68%, you want to push that little extra to get yourself into the 70%. I’ve really found that to be a huge motivator for me to do a little bit more.

F: And, that gamification of knowing that you’re getting more points if you get up to the 80%. It’s hard to get up to 80% and stay there because 80% of your max heartrate, so it’s kind of fun too, because it forces you to, like, “Ah, come on, if I can do one more minute, I can get four more points.”

R: It also lets you know if you have 58 points and you want to push yourself that little extra to get …

F: Make a nice round number…

R: Right!

F: It’s always just pushing you, the real time feedback. And, you can set up challenges with friends. That’s what we’re hoping for with this, is that if this is something that you’re into, too, and you decide to get it, and at the end of the video we’ve got the coupon code, then email us and we’ll include you as part of our monthly challenges. We’re calling them the Iron Squirrel Challenges. And, right now, there’s just a handful of us, family and friends. As more people get on, let us know. It’s more fun when you have that social accountability.

This also has some built-in workouts to do. Which, we haven’t done too much with, but if you’re interested in high-intensity interval training or fitness tests, it has that built in where it has a timer and it tells you, “OK, now you’re supposed to be at 70%”. And, then you kick it up again and now drop it. It kind of does that.

There’s several pro’s that we’ve talked about. One of them was the social accountability, being able to have group challenges and a leader board to see how you are. For whatever amount of time. Which, we’re doing month to month, but you can do any span of time.

R: And, it’s updated throughout the day.

F: It’s fun to say, “Oh, no. I’m falling behind. I need to kick it up a notch.” There’s the challenge there. The real-time feedback, we’ve talked about and leveling the field as it measures effort. Not your fitness level, it measures your effort you’re putting in.

But, there are a few cons, not too many. In two months of using this, we’ve found that one little nagging thing that keeps coming up is that it tends to disconnect from time to time. It’s Bluetooth, so I don’t know if there’s interference, or whatever, that it’ll disconnect from your phone. It’s an easy solution, you just restart your app and it’ll load itself up again. If it does disconnect, it’s not that big of a deal, because the module actually stores the information for up to 13 – 16 hours, I think it says. So, as long as you connect once a day, or how ever long, to upload your data. It gets uploaded to your account, so you can measure, keep track of all that.

R: Which it does mean that you do have to check in periodically, throughout the day.

F: At least once a day, if you’re wearing it all day long, like we are. You don’t have to do that, we’re doing it as a challenge to ourselves to see how much activity we can do throughout the day.

R: I just wanted to see how sedentary I am throughout the course of the day.

F: And try not to be so sedentary.

R: Yes, exactly.

F: That’s one aspect of it. But, you don’t have to. I think the classic intention of it is for workouts. If you’re going to do a workout, you put it on before hand and take it off after. You could have weeks’ worth of data before you have to update it.

The app itself is not that intuitive. That’s another con that we’re not super thrilled with. You have to poke around before you figure out where everything’s at. And, the website’s not that much better, in that regard. But, once you figure it out, it works pretty well.

R: Right.

F: Overall, I’d say we’ve been, after two months of using the Myzone MZ-3…

R: Huge fan.

F: It’s made us more active. It’s forced us to get our heartrates up there. And, in two months’ time, we’ve noticed the difference, too. It’s like leveling up in a game where it becomes more difficult to hit those lower…

R: Higher levels…

F: The lower levels.

R: It’s more difficult to get into those lower levels that I’ve been at. I have to workout more to get into those…

F: That’s what I’m saying, yeah. It’s difficult to get into the higher levels. Not lower levels. What are you talking about, 60%?

R: Well, I guess. We’re saying the same thing, just not.

F: We’ll go to couple’s therapy to sort this out. So, she’s wrong, basically. Alright. Since we’re getting a little long, we’re going to summarize by saying that if you are interested in this, then you can go to FRhurt.com/myzone. And, you’ll get $50 off, it’s normally $150, you can get it for $100. And, that’s again, FRhurt.com/myzone. We get no kickback, whatsoever. It’s just the satisfaction of getting friends and family and our fans a little more interested in fitness. If you do, please contact us when yours comes in and you get it registered you can connect with us then join our Iron Squirrel Challenge. You, too, can be an Iron Squirrel.

R: Oh!

F: Everybody wants to be an Iron Squirrel.

R: Yes.

You already know us as storytellers, but did you know that we’re also amateur carpenters? Emphasis on the word “amateur.”

Join us for our first “field trip” video!

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #15

Frank: Alright. Six foot-four.

RaeLea: OK. Hi, I’m RaeLea and this is Frank, and welcome to This Old House.

Frank: Actually, I think that might be trademarked so we better not call it that.

RaeLea: You think so?

Frank: Yeah.

RaeLea: Ok, well how about welcome to FraeLea Conversations?

Frank: That’s better.

RaeLea: That’ll work.

Frank: That’s better. So where are we at? We are obviously on site somewhere.

RaeLea: Yea, yea, we are at RaeLea Massage Therapy.

Frank: Your massage therapy studio. So yeah we haven’t really practiced this. Can you tell how professional we are, as always. So, you haven’t really heard from us in about six weeks. As you can see we haven’t gotten any more professional at doing these videos in the time. Because, we have been spending our time doing what?

RaeLea: We have been constructing the massage studio for me.

Frank:  A lot of people don’t know that you in a previous life were a massage therapist. A licensed massage therapist, at that.

RaeLea: Yes, yes.

Frank: Not an illegal massage therapist.

RaeLea: Not a masseuse

Frank: Not a masseuse, nothing in a darkened alley, or anything like that.

RaeLea: No red lights

Frank: No red lights. Maybe purple lights, because that’s your favorite color.

RaeLea: True.

Frank: So we decided to—

RaeLea: Tell them why—

Frank: Ok I will tell them why. So, we have been for the last two years living off over savings as we make an effort to get our writing career off the ground and our savings has been dwindling has you might expect during that time. And we haven’t gotten to the point where we are ready to pull the trigger on publishing the Ascending Mage series that we’re working on.

RaeLea: It’s close.

Frank: It’s close we’re getting close. So it dawned on us this year that the math doesn’t quite work out. Our burn rate verses what we were getting accomplished.

RaeLea: We do burn a lot.

Frank: We burn a lot. We love to build projects and all of that. So the decision was made that you would get your massage therapy license renewed.

RaeLea: that’s right

Frank: In the state of North Dakota.

RaeLea: That’s righ,t using my credentials from Washington State, North Dakota was able to use that, and I am now a licensed massage therapist for North Dakota.

Frank: And that lead to, one thing lead to another where had to rent space and we decided to set up a full-fledged business for it.

RaeLea: Right, right

Frank: And so what you see here a very partial glimpse of massage room and reception room is on the back side, where you see my fancy miter saw sitting out there. I had to show case that a little bit.

RaeLea: Well, Yeah

Frank: I am proud of the tool.

RaeLea: He loves that toy. I mean machine.

Frank: It is not a toy—

RaeLea: Tool.

Frank: Yeah exactly, but we have been working for the last five weeks now—

RaeLea: We have—

Frank: Remodeling this commercial space, in downtown Dickinson. Great location.

RaeLea: Yeah, it is!

Frank: And we will show some overlay photos too, I think, as we talk here and hopefully we don’t ramble too much longer. I guess the bottom line is we wanted to inform you, our loyal fans what we have been doing over the last month.

RaeLea: And why you haven’t seen us.

Frank: Why you have seen much of us and when we get done with this and you are in business, and taking clients.

RaeLea: Right

Frank: We’re very project-oriented squirrels so when the project Is done we are shifting gears back to writing. So, the plan is—you want to explain the plan, kind of what we are planning on doing?

RaeLea: Well, the plan is I will be working here, Frank will be working at home and hopefully this will give us another few years of being able to get our stories out.

Frank: Having a little cash flow to stop the bleed. You know so our savings does drain completely. All though it is getting close to that.

RaeLea: Well it doesn’t help that you insist on making it all upper-end.

Frank: Well you know, this has been her dream for a long time and I was resistant because I love having her at home. I love working with her and collaborating on the stories. Admittedly, it is a bit of an ego thing too. I feel a little bit of the traditional attitude of, you know, my wife is going to work from home, with me and that type of thing. So, it’s taken a little bit to get to the point where I have to admit that, ok we do need to have some income coming in while we are doing this. So, we are going to be, I am not embarrassed to admit, relying on your income while these initials books hopefully find an audience, and we recognize that they might not find an audience. In that case, we will have to keep on working and reevaluate.

RaeLea: Right.

Frank: So that the plan, you are going to be working here in downtown Dickinson, about a mile and a half from where we live in Dickinson, North Dakota.

RaeLea: It is a whopping three-minute commute.

Frank: That’s a hell of a commute there. But, I will be working from home and in between clients we will be collaborating and checking in with one another. You know, kinda continuing on the process

R, Right, that the plan anyway.

Frank: We signed a three-year lease with the place and we sunk a ton of money into it. So, fingers crossed that it will actually be profitable.

RaeLea: Oh, it will be. It will be.

Frank: Yeah. So, should we wrap this up?

RaeLea: Lets

Frank: Alright, so it’s not, This Old House. It is Fraelea Conversations and our website is…

RaeLea: FRhurt.com

Frank: Good Job.

RaeLea: Thanks.

Frank:  Well, thanks again for joining us and we’ll catch you next time on whatever construction project that we’ll be doing.

RaeLea: No, no more construction projects.

Frank: Maybe next time this will be done. Alright, thanks again everyone.

RaeLea: Alright.

RaeLea and I write fantasy stories, specifically fantasy set in modern-day North Dakota.

How we define fantasy and the various subgenres therein is the subject of our latest FraeLea Conversations video.

 

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #14:

R: Hi, welcome to FraeLea Conversations. I’m RaeLea and this is Frank. In the previous episode, we were talking about our brand, Genuine Modern Fantasy, but what exactly is fantasy? It’s a question that we’re going to answer today. Right, Frank?

F: Yes, we are.

R: Will you tell us about it?

F: It didn’t sound like you were reading that, or anything.

R: Shit!

F: Sci-Fi and Fantasy often get lumped together. And, it’s interesting because they are both different genres, but they often get lumped together. When you do lump them together, they end up being the third biggest selling genre in the industry, behind romance and thrillers. So, that’s good and bad in that respect. The way I always think about it is that Sci-Fi ends up focusing more on technology. Like, why are things the way they are? How does it work? You know, how’s the technology behind it work. You know if it’s robots, AI, anything like that. Whereas Fantasy is magic. You know, fantasy kind of glosses over how things work, often times, and just the fact that it does. There is bleed over sometimes, like Star Wars has elements of both. They’re a great example of Space Fantasy, but everybody says, okay, it’s in space, so therefore it’s Sci-Fi. But, we’re not going to go into Sci-Fi so much right now, because we write Fantasy, and we’re going to talk about the sub-genres today.

R: Please.

F: I guess we’ll start with the biggest one, the one that we’re writing in, which is Urban Fantasy. Or, as we like to call it, Modern Fantasy, as our slogan says. And, Urban Fantasy, as it’s more popularly known, is basically Fantasy that happens in Modern Era, that generally tends to be in cities or modern settings. You have your wizards, or your vampires, or whatever it is that you have, in a modern setting. Everything is modern, except there’s magic in there. Because we write in North Dakota as our setting, that’s why we prefer to call it Modern Fantasy. Because, North Dakota is a pretty rural state, not an Urban State. So, that would be Urban Fantasy, or Modern Fantasy.

Probably the second biggest, or one of the next biggest ones, would be Epic Fantasy. The most popular ones would be Lord of the Rings. You know, J.R.R. Tolkin, The Hobbit. He’s kind of the Godfather of Epic Fantasy. And, he’s kind of the one you think of, he’s ubiquitous with it. Epic Fantasy is when they have an entire world created, a fictional world where the stories take place. And often, there’s definitely magic involved. There’s often more of a medieval flare to it with swords and that type of weapon. And Dragons are popular, obviously. I guess a more modern example would be George R. R. Martin with Game of Thrones. Or, his book series is called the Song of Ice and Fire. But, it’s more popular known as Game of Thrones. So, that’s an obvious one. That’s Epic Fantasy.

Another big one would be Paranormal Romance, which is kind of a hybrid between the most popular genre, which is romance, and fantasy. We don’t write that, but you do read a lot of that, too. That’s where you have vampires and werewolves and the other kinds of supernatural phenomena. But, with a romantic flare and a love story being kind of the central focus.

There are several other ones, but to touch briefly on Portal Fantasy, is another one. Probably a classic example of that would be Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.

R: Wizard of Oz.

F: Wizard of Oz is a fantastic example, too. There’s other examples like that, too, but it’s where you start out in kind of a modern, non-magical world, and you’re transported through a portal, if you will, into this magic world. And that’s where those are good examples, I guess, of Portal Fantasy. I kind of bring that up because we’re planning on writing some of that eventually. It’s going to be kind of a spinoff series to what we’re currently writing. But, that’s down the road.

There’s other ones like Historical Fantasy, which would be like Knights of the Round Table, King Arthur, that kind of thing. There’s a bunch of other ones. That’s kind of the big fantasy sub-genres. I guess that’s kind of an overview right there.

R: Well, that was a pretty good overview.

F: Thank you.

R: Thank you.

F: We know what we’re talking about. A little bit.

R: A little bit. Alright, so what is your favorite genre of Fiction? What do you like to read? And, why? We would love to hear from you at frhurt.com. Thanks for watching.