FraeLea TV - a video journal

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.

As we re-launch our video series, we thought it might be a good time to change the name of our show.

We’re calling it: FraeLea TV

Though it bears a new name and (slightly) more professional intro and outro sequences, you can be assured we won’t be getting more polished with our banter. Why start now, right?

Transcript for FraeLea TV #19

Transcript coming soon!

Perfect for coffee (or breakfast beer), in this latest video we’re proud to show off our book covers in ceramic mug form.

We also draw the name of a lucky reader who’ll be getting one of these sexy mugs!

Transcript for FraeLea TV Episode #18

R – Well, that’s a nice looking mug.

F – Why, thank you.

R – Ah, no, no, no. I mean that one.

F – Oh, but I’m pretty too, right?

R – You’re very pretty.

F – Ok. You’re talking about this coffee mug?

R – I am!

F – That is pretty sexy. But you’ve got a pretty nice looking one as well.

R – I love it!

F – Well, we’ve got plenty of options, because these are the covers from our books. And, we’re going to show you them today.

INTRO

F – So, we recently decided to get a collection of coffee mugs with our book covers on them.

R – We have.

F – An entire set.

R – And they are amazing.

F – We might be a little biased. But, not too much, though.

R – Yes. Yes.

F – So I’m actually hold holding the Fog over Mandaree cover, which is our prequal.

R – And, I have have AM6.

F – Which is being worked on right now.

R – Yes, it is. I love it.

F – And, we’ve got, I guess, seven total that we’ve got the designs for.

R – Right.

F – And, we’ll be adding more as we get more books out. More book covers. Because some people like the swag. Whether or not –

R – I love swag. I love giving away swag!

F – That’s true too. But whether you read or not, everybody drinks coffee or breakfast beer. Or, whatever it is that you prefer. These work equally well for breakfast beer or coffee.

R – They will.

F – I can attest to both.

R – He can.

F – Thank you. And, in fact, we’ll probably have on the screen right about now, the collection so you can ooh and aww over them. And, we actually have them on our site, too, at frhurt.com/shop, I think that’s where we have it at.

R – Yes, we do.

F – Mmmm, we should have practiced this, maybe. But, they’re on our website, anyway, for anybody who actually is curious about them. We’re possibly going to add other things, eventually. Like, I don’t know what, like ah, mittens.

R – Mittens?

F – Or bibs. I’m just thinking things that are appropriate for –

R – Well, you’re really just thinking North Dakota, though.

F – Well, yeah, with winter coming. Winter is coming. I think maybe that was used with another series. Winter is coming.

R – Yeah.

F – So we probably won’t say that. We’ll probably add other things, other than mugs and whatnot. So.

R – Well, did you want to play Vanna?

F – Oh, I do want to play Vanna! So, what she’s talking about, I don’t know which mug we put them in here, even. We’ve got –

R – I believe this is where – yes.

F – When we announced this to our newsletter list and if you didn’t hear that about this, then you probably should subscribe to our newsletter, our ‘Memo’. Or, at least get it out of your spam folder if you are subscribed. But we offered anybody who wanted to get in the drawing for a free mug of one of these. So, we went and set that up.

R – I think this is our first swag giveaway.

F – I think it is, actually.

R – Yeah.

F – Yes.

R – So, this is fun.

F – So, should I draw?

R – I think you’ll draw.

F – Alright! I feel like we should have a drumroll here.

R – But, you’ll insert one.

F – Yah, right.

R – I like how you’re actually looking away.

F – I’ll insert one right here. Yeah, I’m looking away! And, the lucky winner is….Shawna Auster. Congratulations, Shawna! You win a very sexy coffee mug that you can use for…

R – Breakfast beer!

F – Breakfast beer or serving to your best guests. Like if you ever have Royalty come visit.

R – Oh, yeah. Because we have a lot of that.

F – Definitely. Well, we don’t know Shawna. Maybe she is friends with the queen, or something. And, if the queen ever comes and visits, you’re going to want one of these mugs. So, you’re going to let us know which one you want and we will send that to you. So, congratulations. And, for the rest of you who didn’t win, I’m not going to say that you’re a loser….

R – But, it’s implied.

F – I just insulted every single reader, other than Shawna. You could get one if you want, if not, you can wait until we do another give away.

R – And where?

F – At frhurt.com, our website.

R – Shop.

F – Well, frhurt.com/shop.

R – Perfect.

F – Oh, we’re professionals.

R – We are!

F – Don’t you miss us? Aren’t you glad we’re back in video form? We’ll get better at this.

R – With your pretty mug.

F – With my pretty mug, yeah. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time. And, who knows what sexy mugs we’ll have then.

R – And what other kind of giveaways.

F – And, how much more professional we’ll get to be.

R – I don’t think that’s going to happen.

F – Probably not. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

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*