FraeLea Conversations - a video journal

In our previous FraeLea Conversations video, we talked about our writing experiment: to write and edit a full novel in one month.

Fast forward, and Spark of Justice is finished! That’s a full-length novel of 81,000 words written and edited in about 30 days. This experiment was an absolute success.

Some discoveries (some were expected, most were pleasant surprises):

• Being held accountable made ALL the difference for motivation. Knowing we had a small group of people waiting to read a new chapter each morning lit a fire under our butts.
• A much shorter feedback loop meant more agile corrections. Normally, authors write an entire novel, only then passing it along to their beta readers to receive critique. With this experiment, we were getting near real-time proofreading and story insights from our Alpha Team. As such, we’re confident that Spark of Justice and the characters within will resonate with the public.
• Each day got progressively easier. At the start of the month, it took 11 painful hours to write and edit a full chapter. By the end of the month, we were able complete three chapters in about six hours.
• Quality improved with quantity. Not only did the words-per-hour improve each week, but the story came together more readily as a “flow state” was achieved most days.
• Obsession was the key ingredient. We lived and breathed this story every hour of every day. We talked about it when we weren’t writing, dreamed about it when we weren’t awake. I’m convinced that this obsessiveness helped make the writing time more productive.

Prior to this experiment, we were averaging just one chapter per month (that’s pitiful, really). During our experiment, we were cranking out an average of one chapter per day, with bursts up to three chapters in a 24-hour period. We’re talking about edited chapters (averaging 2,350 words) requiring only minor proofreading corrections.

We’re still pinching ourselves to have accomplished so much in such a concentrated span of time. We are continuing this experiment and will be refining the process with each new novel.

Above all, we couldn’t have done this without our treasured Alpha Team. As our protagonist Ember might say, “Cheers, volunteers!”

Oh, and look for Spark of Justice (Magic City Chronicles #1) to be published by February 2018!

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #7:

RaeLea: Hi and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. I’m RaeLea and this is Frank. About six weeks ago we started a writing experiment and I think we’re going to update you on how that went.

Frank: That’s right. It was a little more than a month and a half ago. And, for our second novel, as we announced in our last episode, we had a writing experiment where we had volunteers, called our Alpha Team. We emailed, every morning, a new chapter, sometimes two chapters. I guess, in a nutshell, it went fantastically. We had great feedback.

RaeLea: I think the number one thing was the accountability. That was perfect.

Frank: Right. We went from, basically, taking a month per chapter, to write, which is not a good speed.

RaeLea: Not sustainable.

Frank: To a chapter a day, sometimes two. At the end, we had three chapters in a day. It was fantastic and we can’t thank our Alpha Team members enough. As a way of thanking them, in fact, we renamed a lot of characters after some of our Alpha Team members. So, you’ll see some of that. We also had these awesome Spark of Justice mugs made. They’re fifteen-ounce coffee mugs that we gave to our more active Alpha Team members. Not to all of them, but to the ones who gave us a lot of feedback and a lot of useful insight.

RaeLea: Thank you very much.

Frank: This sexy little coffee mug.

RaeLea: (laughs)

Frank: Yeah, I think it’s pretty sexy. But, it features the artwork that’s going to be on the book cover for Spark of Justice. Which, is ready to be published, now at this point, and will be published in the first quarter of 2018. Along with its next successors after that.

RaeLea: Right.

Frank: So, we’re going to be continuing our experiment with our next novel, Investigator’s Creed, which is starting, like pretty much now.

RaeLea: Yes, so expect emails soon.

Frank: Yes, for our Alpha Team members. And, if you didn’t get a chance to be a part of the Alpha Team and you would like to help, or you’d like to read what we’ve written, we are going to be looking for advanced review readers. Basically, you’re going to be getting a copy of the e-book in exchange for writing a review on Amazon, or wherever when it gets published. Send us an email if you’re interested in that. A big shout out to our Alpha Team members, and thanks so much for all the help.

RaeLea: And, again, find us on frhurt.com.

We are taking too long to get our next novel edited. We think we’ve figured out a solution, but we need your help!

If you are interested and are willing to indulge us with this experiment for the next 34 days, you’ll be formally credited in the published book, and you might even have a character named after you. Above all, you will have our gratitude and that’s pretty priceless, right?

Watch this video for details, and contact us if you’d like to help.

Click here to read the Chapter 1 preview mentioned in the video.

Click here to read the preview mentioned in the video for Chapter 1 of Spark of Justice.

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #6:

RaeLea: Hi, and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. I’m RaeLea and this is Frank. Today, Frank and I are going to be discussing an experiment.

Frank: An experiment. Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. So, it’s been a year since we’ve started writing full time. And, I use air quotes on that because we haven’t really been working nine to five on writing. Part of that shows because in March of 2017, we published our first novel, Fog over Mandaree. To much critical acclaim. Well, not really, acclaim, but we had good feedback. And, now it has been a year, since we left our day job and we’re living off savings as we write. We’re not writing as quickly as we need to be writing. We’ll take full credit on that.

RaeLea: Yes, that’s totally on us.

Frank: We’ve got plenty of excuses. We’re managing a property. We’ve got summertime chores. And, there’s plenty of distractions.

RaeLea: Everybody knows about summertime chores.

Frank: But, bottom line, we’re not getting our writing done as quickly as we need to be. And our readers, you guys, have been very patient with us. We’ve had many people ask us, ‘hey, when’s the next book coming out.’ We do have the rough draft for the next three novels written. We’ve got an outline for two more novels after that. And, we’ve got a story idea for another series after that.

RaeLea: Plus, all the covers. The illustrations are done.

Frank: We haven’t released the covers because we wanted the novels to be done first. So, we’ve got plenty of ideas and work on our table and the bottom line is that we are not living up to our deadlines. We had a really good conversation the other day where we were saying, ‘why is it that we’re not doing so?’. The previous job we had was very high stress. Very demanding. We put out a report twice a day, at 4:00 a.m. and 1:00 or 2:00 p.m., and we were never late. We rarely had any mistakes, maybe a typo here or there. And, it didn’t matter what was going on.

RaeLea: Internet issues or blizzards; it was out.

Frank: Technology issues. We knew we had stakeholders and investors and clients that were waiting for this report. So, we were never late with that.

RaeLea: So, I think accountability is…

Frank: So, it was accountability. We knew we had people waiting for it. The deadlines were not ambiguous. They weren’t arbitrary like our current ones are. So, this experiment, long story short, is to try to recreate that. With your help, we’re running an experiment. We’re going to be releasing a chapter, one a day. We’re going to be asking for volunteers. You, if you’re willing to. To receive a chapter, one chapter per day, and you can comment on it. Give us feedback. And, hopefully, hold us accountable, too, if we miss a day or anything like that. What it will be basically doing is, we’ll be asking if you’re interested in doing this. If you can commit to reading a chapter a day and comment on it, if you like.

RaeLea: And, it’s going to be approximately thirty some chapters.

Frank: Thirty-four chapters, actually, is what this next book is. We’re releasing the first chapter today, in conjunction with this video. You can read it without signing up to any list to see if this the type of story you’d be interested in. If you’d be willing to help us out. And, you really would be helping us out if you do this, because you’ll be holding us accountable. Hopefully, creating some excitement, too, for us. We know we’ve got some people that are waiting for this. It’s going to be kind of an intense month of getting these chapters out. But, we kind of feel that that pressure is exactly what we need because we thrive under pressure. And, this is a positive type of pressure where we have people excited, hopefully. And, there will be other benefits, for you too! You’ll get to see the chapters way before they get published. Even after we’re done with all this, we’ll still have some final edits and whatnot that we’ll be doing before we’re publishing it. So, it’s probably going to be another six months, maybe, before we publish the first of these books. You’ll be able to see the whole story before then. You can opt out at any time, if you do decide to help us out. And, you’ll also be able to provide us feedback. If you decide the story doesn’t quite work for me, or…

RaeLea: Or, if something isn’t quite clear…

Frank: Right. If something isn’t clear, that’s a very good point. We’re kind of hoping, from our perspective, to close that feedback loop. Instead of writing an entire novel, sending it out into the world, and then finding out if it works or not. We love this story. It’s called Spark of Justice. It’s a Modern Fantasy, set in North Dakota…

RaeLea: In Minot!

Frank: … primarily in Minot, North Dakota. It follows the journey of this magic wielding young woman that is new to North Dakota and unraveling a conspiracy. So, again, the first chapter will be released. You can read it now. Let us know what you think and if you’re interested in helping us out. Either reply to the email newsletter or send us a comment on our contact form. You can send us an email that way and we’ll sign you on there. Again, you can opt out at any time if you decide it’s not for you or it’s too much work. But, we really would appreciate the help.

RaeLea: Do we want to tell them the name of the team that we’re putting together?

Frank: Yeah! We did decide to call it Alpha Team. You’ll be part of the Alpha Team. Which, is a pretty bad ass name, let’s face it. Our Alpha Team is basically our swat team to light a fire under our butts and keep us going. Hopefully, encourage us and get us to get this next novel out.

RaeLea: We just need that accountability. That knowing we need to get that chapter out a day.

Frank:  We’re going to be keeping this a small group. It’s going to be first come, first serve. But, this first one, if we can get a few dozen people that would be willing to help us out, that would be awesome. If you’re a fan of Modern Fantasy, if you liked Fog Over Mandaree, that would be exactly in your wheelhouse. If you could help us out, we’d appreciate it. We’ll pay you back in various different ways. We might name a character after you, or send you autographed copies of the novel when it is published. Or posters or what have you. We have all kinds of ideas. But, trust us when we say, if you’re willing to help us out, we’ll make it worth your while. I think that about sums it up.

RaeLea: Yeah.

Frank: If you’d like to be a member of our Alpha Team, let us know. Thanks again for listening to us.

After publishing our first novel a little over a week ago, we thought you might enjoy seeing the cover art concepts for Fog Over Mandaree.

Also: one of us may have accidentally unveiled a squirrelish surprise.

Also #2: Euleycat decides to weigh in on the cover art discussion. Apparently we were taking too long with this episode, and he was overdue for cuddles.

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations #5 – Cover Art for Our First Novel

Frank: Hello, and welcome to this episode of FraeLea Conversations. As promised on the last one, we are talking this week, about our book cover for Fog Over Mandaree. We’re going to go over the design process a little bit. Show you some of the iterations you didn’t get to see before. And, how we arrived at the final design. We’ll be showing you the versions, too, as we’re looking on our little tablet.

So, the first one, our artist, Benjamin Roque, he came up with this concept. And we had given him a description and we described the Gurgurran. Which is the monster that appears in the book. No big spoiler there, I think.

RaeLea: Not by now, anyway.

F: Hopefully, you’ve read it, if not, we’re not going to give any spoilers beyond that, but it’s called a Gurgurran, anyway and no, we’re not going to give any spoilers. And, so this first version, we had fog, is obviously a big component. We had the rig, that could provide some various photos that he could use for illustration. And, then kind of a description of Nick and Katrina, the two main characters of the story. And, so, he penciled this out. He had the fog, it was a little too green on this first version.

R: Both of our immediate response was whether it was too green. Too marshy of a fog.

F: Yeah, it looked like swamp fog.

R: Right, right.

F: Instead of winter fog, which is what it should have been.

R: But, I think both of our response when we saw the Gurgurran was wow.

F: Yeah, he has done a great job with that.

R: Definitely. The most unique one of them all, too.

F: We gave good description, I think, of how we wanted it. The head was a little bit off, as you’ll see in the next versions, but he gave a good starting point, anyway. The Gurgurran, in particular, has got really small eyes. He’s supposed to look like something that’s just tough. And, just a rough, mountain type creature. And, so, that was the first version we had. You could see the pencil outline of Nick and Katrina that he had on there. And gave him some feedback on that one, which the next version he started implementing. We wanted them to be running away from the monster, but we still wanted to see their faces. And to show them kind of looking back at it. He also, on this version, made it more winter scape.

R: Right, he cleaned up the green.

F: Yeah, that kind of the colors, that slate gray.

R: Yeah.

F: It’s still a little too bright here, but it fit kind of a winter fog type a little better. One thing I didn’t like about this one was the snow that he had on over the monster. It looked a little too fake, I guess. But, that’s fine, it was something that he was going to take care of on the next version. Which, the next version we had still had.

R: And that one had kind of a great story where he had opened up this version and he gasped.

F: He, as in me.

R: Frank, yes.

F: So, Ben had emailed us this version of it and we obviously wanted more detail on the human faces and this was the first variant of that that he painted. And, it’s digital painting, but it is actual painting. You’re actually painting these. This is not stock photography or anything like that. So, it’s all the more impressive that it looks so realistic. Even zooming in on it, it’s still, you know you can see the texture of it. And, one of the things that we were really trying to impress upon Ben was that we were going to be using this for marketing collateral. So, the bookmarks which we showed you in last week’s episode, but also the posters that we’re planning on making. And, eventually, print covers for a paperback. We’ve had a lot of folks ask about paperback and we are planning to eventually, but not yet.

R: So, we knew that there had to be excellent quality, especially with our protagonists, Nick and Katrina. And, their faces are just gorgeous.

F: Yep. So, when you look at that, you can actually see their expressions a little bit. With that, we wanted Katrina to have a little bit more fear in her eyes, a little bit more expression there. And, Nick had to have a scar. He has a scar in the book and that was something distinct about him that comes up in future books. So, we wanted to make sure that it was present. On the next one, he actually did add that and this is pretty darn close to the final version ended up being. He really nailed it on this. And, I think that there were only a couple lighting changes and positioning, we changed the positioning a little bit. The beauty of doing digital painting is that you can actually move elements around a little bit, more easily that obviously traditional painting. You are obviously kind of stuck with where things are at, so that’s kind of a beauty there. And, that’s basically what the final version was. He had changed the head of the Gurgurran, a little bit, too. The shape was a little bit. It was supposed to kind of have an anvil shaped head and that has significance, which won’t show up for several books. But, there is a reason for the shape of his head. So, the final version here, with the text and our author logo. I think it ended up turning out pretty decently. We’re very happy with it.

R: Yes.

F: Some good feedback.

R: Should we tell them about the little bonus?

F: No!

R: Okay.

F: Now that she said that, I, well, okay. I wasn’t planning to, but…I was planning on waiting until we have the series out and then we were going to have a kind of a “Where’s Waldo” clue hunt on our covers. But, now that somebody spilled the beans here. And, I don’t want to rerecord all this.

R: Oh, no!

F: That’s alright. But, in every one of our covers, we have a squirrel. Somewhere. We won’t tell you where, but there is a squirrel on every one of our covers. And this is only the first cover. The second one is being designed by Ben right now. But, there is a squirrel on it and you know, maybe we’ll do a contest on it someday. Now that the squirrel’s out of the bag. We probably won’t do that. Thanks for ruining Christmas. But, there is squirrels…are significant to us. We’re kind of a couple of squirrels anyway ourselves. So, we’re including that element in every one of our books.

R: I think it’s charming.

F: So, anyway. If you look closely enough, you may find it. It’s very subtle on this first one. A little less subtle on the next one. But, it’s in every one of our covers. And, just in time, speaking of squirrels, we’ve got our Euler. He has to make his cameo, here so, thanks for joining in here. We almost made an entire episode without a cat making an appearance. We’re professionals here.

R: We do professional.

F: We obviously, yeah, we’re pretty good. We know what we’re doing here. He probably wants to play his games on the tablet now. We’ll probably have to relinquish that. But, that will probably be enough for this episode. We’re going to be pinned down here.

R: Thanks for joining us.

F: I’ll see you, probably in a week, when he actually lets me up. We’ve got a twenty-pound cat here, holding me down.

R: So, again, visit us on FRhurt.com

F: And, we’ll see you next time.

 

Following the launch of our first novel, Fog Over Mandaree, we printed up bookmarks to promote our free book. Ten THOUSAND bookmarks, to be specific!

Go big or go home, right?

If you would be willing to help spread the word, please let us know and we’ll be glad to mail you some, while supplies last (we only have 10,000 of these things, after all!)

Transcript for FraeLea Conversations Episode 4 – Unboxing Bookmarks

RaeLea: Hi, welcome to FraeLea Conversations. Today’s conversation is Bookmarks!

Frank: Specifically, unboxing bookmarks. We had our book released, our book launched, last week. And, our book cover was really well received. I think it was doing its job of actually getting people to look at the book and open it up.

R: The illustrator did a fantastic job.

F: And, we are going to have a future episode where we talk about the book cover in a little bit more detail and the design process. So, that will be coming up. But today, we’re going to be talking about bookmarks.

R: Bookmarks.

F: So, we got bookmarks. We’ve got ten thousand of them that we printed up.

R: That’s the most they would allow.

F: Yeah! Ten thousand. So, we got a good bulk price as a result. But, these bookmarks, and I’ll have a closeup here that you can look at, too. It has the cover of it (the book) on one side, our version of the cover, because, we had to kind of resize and adjust for width and all that. And, on the backside, we’ve got the description. The little book blurb, as we call it. And, a QR code, so you can scan it in on your phone. And, the web address, so people can get the book from there. So, we’re giving away our first book, our first novel, for free. Which, we’ve already talked about with our last video. If you’ve watched that.

R: Right.

F: So, this is just kind of our way of getting the word out. So, for any of our fans out there, if you would like bookmarks to help spread the word, we would love you and would appreciate that. Just email us your mailing address and we’ll send you a couple hundred or so, if you are willing.

R: Or, a whole box, three hundred.

F: Yes, three hundred in a box. And, like I said, we have ten thousand of these to give out. Our goal is to get enough subscribers so that when we start launching our series we’re working on, that will have enough people to build some inertia for the initial sales and reviews of the books. Because, that is so important on Amazon and for book selling.

R: And, they are reusable, so when you have downloaded your book, please pass it along to a friend.

F: Unless you actually want to use the bookmark on a physical book. If so, have fun with it. So that is our announcement for unboxing the bookmarks. If you’d like one, drop us a line, and thanks again for watching. You can reach us at FRhurt.com. Thanks for reading our books.

R: Thank you.

We’re excited to announce the launch date of our first novel, Fog Over Mandaree!

RaeLea even reminds Frank to let readers know how they can get their copy (minor thing to forget, right?).

Watch this episode of FraeLea Conversations to learn more:

Click Here to reserve your copy of Fog Over Mandaree!

Transcript for Episode 3

RaeLea: Hi, and welcome to FraeLea Conversations. Meet our guest, Euler.

Frank: Our catboy son here. He insisted he be part of this special announcement that we have today. We’ll see how much he participates, before he gets bored. Well, that didn’t take long, huh.  So, we have an announcement to make today.

R: Yes, we do!

F: Yesterday, we revealed the book cover for our first novel, Fog Over Mandaree. And, it’s going to appear here, right about now.

R: Magic.

F: We do write fantasy, so, that’s our magic, right there. The magic of post-production. So, yesterday, we unveiled our cover, Fog Over Mandaree and you guys liked it, or even some of you loved it. And, we love it. We’re excited about that. We teased you a little bit, by saying that today, we would announce the book launch date.

R: Yes!

F: So, we’ve held you in suspense long enough. Fog Over Mandaree is going to be launched and available on March 30^th, that’s next Thursday. Depending on when you’re watching, of course. March 30, 2017. So, it’s in the past, if you’re watching it in the future.

R: Do you want to tell them the significance of the date?

F: I think I would like to tell them that.

R: Ok.

F: Our birthdays are coming up. Hers is the 26^th, mine’s the 30^th. Which is when we’re launching it. We’re trying to time it between both, but we decided a Thursday was a better date to launch. So, March 30^th. It’s our birthday present to you.

R: I thought you were going to put in our years.

F: Oh, haha.

R: Not necessary!

F: That’s a teaser for later, there, what year it was. But, we’re going to be giving it away. So, we’re going to be selling Fog Over Mandaree for the low, low price of zero dollars. Maybe we’ll have that pop up too, on here. Depending on the magic. She’ll do the special effects, there. Thank you for that.

R: Yes, yes.

F: The animations, jazz hands. Why are we doing that? Do you want to tell them why we’re giving it away?

R: It’s our gift to everybody and our thank you for supporting us. I think that is our way of saying that we’ve been blessed and we just want to show that. And, how better than to give away a free book.

F: And, it’s altruistic, but we do have an ulterior motive. In order to get the book, you are going to be signing up on our mailing list. Our email list. So that we can spam the heck out of you.

R: Oh, no. No.

F: Okay, we won’t spam you. In order to get the ebook, and it’s going to be an ebook for starters, maybe eventually do a paperback, too, if there’s demand. Or enough demand. But, basically, it’ll be an ebook, it’ll be available on Kindle, or Nook, or PDF, if you want to read it on your computer. However you want to consume the novel. It is a full-length novel and it is going to be free on March 30^th. And, it’s going to be our Birthday Gift to you, our friends and family, who have been so supportive. And this is just the beginning.

R: So, Happy Birthday to us, for you!

F: Happy Birthday to us! And, getting on this mailing list is how you’re going to be notified of the series that we are writing. That is coming up. We’ll announce all that when the time comes. We’re working on the book covers for that. That’s going to be pretty exciting, too. But, for now, Fog Over Mandaree. March 30^th. And, I hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks so much for the feedback so far.

R: Thanks so much. And, tell them where they can go.

F: Oh, good idea. Maybe we should tell you how to get the book. That’ll be helpful. Go to our website FRhurt.com. Which, maybe that will appear here? I don’t know. Somewhere? Maybe over our faces? Go to FRhurt.com. “F” “R”, like Frank and RaeLea Hurt.

R: We’re so clever.

F: We are very clever that way. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible. FRhurt.com. You can sign up now, you don’t have to wait until March 30^th. You’ll be getting the book, regardless. And, you’ll be able to download the book. It’ll have instructions on how you can do that, when the time comes.

R: Perfect.

F: Thank you for watching. I hope you are going to go ahead and download the book. And, we hope you enjoy it.