Our slogan is “Genuine Modern Fantasy” — but what the heck does that mean?

That just so happens to be the question we answer in today’s episode!

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #13:

R: Hi, and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. I’m RaeLea and this is Frank. Well, today we’re going to talk a little bit about our logo. I know I’m biased but I have to admit I love the logo you designed for us. I know it’s weathered, a little distressed. Well, it’s gritty, a little bit like our writing.

F: Well said.

R: Well, our brand says ‘Genuine Modern Fantasy’, would you mind explaining a little bit about what that means?

F: Okay, sure. Genuine Modern Fantasy is our slogan, as you said, I guess I would break that down to its constituent parts. First of all, it’s Genuine. We talk about that we put a lot of emphasis into authenticity. The way I look at it is that we either experience it, or we’ve talked to somebody that experienced events, the places, the people that we meet. We usually rename things, kind of protect the innocent. Or, the guilty, that might be. Everything we write, we write what we know. So, we placed things in North Dakota, and we talk about the blue-collar background that we both came from. The types of people that we meet. That type of thing. So that’s where the genuine comes in.

And, Modern, we set our story in modern North Dakota. All of our stories that we’re writing are in modern North Dakota.

And, then Fantasy. I’d say that Fantasy is what we’re writing. Kind of magic, again, we talked about Modern Fantasy. And, the fact that our characters are Mages, which are another word for wizards. And Changelings, which are kind of Shape Shifters, that are humans that shift into animal form. So, that’s where the magic comes in. The Fantasy. We’re going to be talking about that in the future. I guess that’s how I would describe our Genuine Modern Fantasy.

R: Well, alright. Well said. In our next episode, we’re going to talk about our sub-genre of Fantasy. Thanks for watching and you can find us at frhurt.com.

F: Thanks!

I’m not a mystical sort of person, but sometimes there are experiences like this one which make a person wonder.

But you know what? I’ll take good advice, however it chooses to present itself!

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #12:

R: Hi, and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. I’m RaeLea and this is Frank. So, Frank, you recently had a story-telling obstacle and you found the solution in an unusual place. Tell us a little bit about that.

F: Okay, well, dreams are usually something that are only interesting to the people who dreamt them. I think in this case, this was one that you kind of insisted that our readers would find interesting. And, maybe you’re right.

R: I did.

F: A little tiny bit of background. I’m a lucid dreamer. And lucid dreaming just means that you’re aware that you’re dreaming, while you’re dreaming. And in my case, kind of I can manipulate the dream a little bit and other times, I’m just aware of it. Almost kind of like an observer in the dream. I was working on Ascending Mage 3, Buried Truth, and I had written the first few chapters. I ended up going to bed and had this dream. In the dream, I was a movie director and I was directing the opening scene. Ember Wright, our protagonist, and Barnaby Harrison, her …

R: Her mentor.

F: Her ghostly mentor, he was in it as well. We went through the scene, they read their lines. And in the middle of it, Ember turned to me and she broke character. I know this sounds mystical, but this happened. She turned to me and she said, ‘You know what, Frank, this isn’t working.’ And I was kind of like, ‘Cut!’ Like, what are you talking about? Why isn’t this working? She said, ‘you know, this isn’t strong enough. It’s too weak of an opening that you’re going to lose your readers and they’re not going to want to see anymore on it. And, we need to do something stronger’. And, I said, ‘well, what should I do differently?’ And, she turned to me and said, ‘I don’t know. You’re the writer! Figure it out!’.  I woke up, and it was, I don’t know, three in the morning, I woke up and I thought, ‘Wow! Ember’s right.’ So, I went to the office, fired up the computer and pounded out a several hundred-word outline to redo the opening for Ascending Mage 3. And Ember was right. It was a much stronger opening. I’m kind of excited to show our readers what Ember came up with. Or at her insistence.

R: A little needling.

F: I’m not a mystical person, but sometimes there are experiences like that that kind of makes a person wonder.

R: Yeah, yeah, that it does. So, I have to admit, I am a little jealous. I’ve never experienced a lucid dream, but I’m checking to see if anybody else has strange, lucid dreams. And, have you ever found your answer to a problem in your life due to a lucid dream?  If you have, please leave a comment at the bottom at frhurt.com. Thank you.

F: Thanks for watching.

It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge and a little more serious than we tend to get in our videos.

In today’s episode of FraeLea Conversations, we talk about our unscheduled hiatus from writing, and the importance of persistence.

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #11:

R: Hi, welcome to FraeLea Conversations. I’m RaeLea and this is Frank. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us. At this time, we’re going to offer a little explanation. Frank, our last FraeLea Conversation was three months ago. Can you explain a little bit about where we’ve been in the last few months?

F: Sure. It’s a little bit of a difficult topic, in a way, because I think as a writer, as any creator, any creative, you’re kind of creating in a semi-public atmosphere. And, it’s kind of challenging when you drop the ball because everybody sees you dropping it. So, we’re plugging along, it’s April, we’re writing Ascending Mage 3, Buried Truth, and some of the chapters were flowing really well. And, other ones were a little bit challenging. Our Alpha Team was giving us very positive feedback. So, we were generally on the right course.

R: And, Ember was talking to you.

F: And, Ember was talking to me. Which, that will be in an episode later that we’re going to be showing you. So, a little foreshadowing for you. We’d gotten to Chapter 8 when I knew it wasn’t very good. I had rewritten it and it still wasn’t very good. And, as part of our collaborative process, it kind of gets filtered through you before we pass it onto our Alpha Team. They then give their input.

F: I had passed it on to you and I think your words were something along the extent where you were like, ‘Frank, this is not up to your usual standards.’  And, I knew that, but hearing you articulate it – It was a little bit of a gut punch.

R: Well, it was painful to say, too.

F: It’s true though. That’s the thing, it wasn’t, you weren’t saying it to hurt my feelings. It was true. And, I always tell you too, that I would rather we discover the flaws in the story now versus when it’s out in the wild. Out in the public. Which is why we have this process that we go through, multiple stages of rewrites. That was in April, and this last winter was a particularly long and brutal winter in North Dakota. I think it lasted six months.

R: Yes, it did.

F: And, it wasn’t ending. The winter that never ends. I think there was a little bit of, I don’t know, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or whatever. I’m self-diagnosing myself a little bit there. But, it was a little bit like, alright, we’re sick of this being cooped up in the house because it’s cold outside. So, when it did start getting nice out, and that combined with the fact that I was a little discouraged. It was really easy to latch onto the distraction of the nice weather. To get outside.

F: We did a ton of camping. We were spending a bunch of time outdoors. I think we’re physically healthier for it. And, we’re a little bit tanned, too. Might be hard to tell, but, we’re normally much more pale.  It’s hard to believe we’re even more pale than we are now. I think all of those things had an accumulative effect.

F: I hate to use the word ‘depression’ because I’ve experienced depression at least mild depression, years and years ago. A decade ago. And, we know people who have been depressed, or are depressed. So, I don’t like to use that term, depression, very casually, but I’d say it was kind of close to that spectrum where I was so discouraged that…Imposter syndrome, I guess is another way of calling it. Where you feel like you’re just not deserving of it or capable of it. So, that is kind of where I was at. It’s kind of like a multi-month break, which is kind of unfortunate because this is our fourth novel and we’re waiting to release Ascending Mage One and Two and Three. To release them all in quick succession. Rapid release. So, this has been kind of delaying that considerably.

R: I think that one of the best things, though, is that we persist. You need to persist in your passion and you are passionate about writing.

F: Well, definitely, you’re right. The stories are in there. Most of them are pretty good stories, I think.

R: Yeah.

F: It’s kind of recognizing that it’s okay to stumble and you pick yourself back up and you get back in the fight. It’s like a gladiator, you know everyone’s watching, and there’s a lot of pressure. But, it’s also so damn rewarding. And when you do, and I’m speaking in third person, but really, when I see something that you and I wrote and people actually like it, there’s nothing more satisfying than that.

R: It’s quite a thrill.

F: That’s a big thing. I really want to thank you, the readers, you’ve been encouraging. You’ve been like, kind of cracking the whip, saying when’s the next book coming out? We’ve had a lot of people say that. And, that’s really inspiring to us. It lets us know you actually want to read it so that makes us actually want to write it. And, I really want to thank you in this public setting here for being so supportive. Because, it would be easy to get discouraged and say alright, you don’t want this badly enough. But, I think you live with me. You see what I go through. You realize that the struggle is real, but the desire is real, too. Thank you for that.

R: Thank you. And thank you for watching. You can find us on frhurt.com and you’ll find our updates there.

F: Thanks, again.

R: Thank you.