Aaron Frale's Blog, page 20

I Need Your Help

On sale for $1 for a limited time only!

Now that you have Playlist of the Ancient Dead, I need your help one last time. Could you leave a review on Amazon of Playlist? My goal is to get at least twenty reviews. All the research on internet marketing says that most people won’t purchase a book unless it has at least twenty reviews. There are also a couple ezines and review blogs that won’t even consider my book for review until it has twenty reviews.

For a book to get going, it needs reviews. You don’t have to go in depth. A couple of sentences will suffice. A few seconds of your time will help me immensely. Thank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy the book. You can post your reviews here.

Playlist of the Ancient Dead Free Download

Click here for a free download

Even though Amazon didn’t select my book for publication, everyone who supported me should still get a free copy. I do have one more favor to ask of you. If you enjoyed the book, please review it on Amazon. Reviews help independent authors get out there. People are more likely to purchase a book if it has reviews. Even a review of a couple sentences would suffice. Please help me out one more time with a review and enjoy your free copy. You can download the copy here.

 

Final Few Days to Nominate!

I’m very pleased to say that my book has been on the “hot and trending” list almost the entire time it has been in the Amazon Kindle Scout competition. While you can only nominate once, I ask that anyone who would like to get their free copy, please ask a couple of friends to nominate this weekend. They’ll get a free copy too! A big final push would really help. Thank you everyone! Here’s the link:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/13MS0QT3I7YVE

Cowboys and Drones

On sale for a limited time only!

I’m going to switch gears today. Playlist of the Ancient Dead is still on the “hot and trending” list. It’s also been mentioned on Matt Molgaard’s Horror Novel Reviews and Essa on Everything. So keep letting your friends know about the book and thank you again for the support. Today, I wanted to announce my short story collection Cowboys and Drones. It’s almost all the short stories I’ve written in the past year in one collection. For Spiral fans wanting to read all the stories associated with the songs from Our Final Days on Bellicus Prime, the collection will include each story from the album and one called Rumspringa that will pair with a song from our new album. The collection also includes the entire Sperm Donor for a Cosmic Paradox collection. The cover art features Anna facing off with the Gold Piece Bandit from the Sperm Donor series and was made by the talented Albuquerque artist Rudy Lovato.

And an added bonus, the kindle edition will be on sale today for only $1. Enjoy. You can find the book here.

Halfway There!

Be sure to share on your social network!

The Kindle Scout campaign for Playlist of the Ancient Dead is at the halfway mark. I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of support from every one of you and would like to thank you all. In addition, I’ve also been interviewed about the book. You can check out the interview here. The book is still “hot and trending” and I’d like to keep it there. If you haven’t shared the link, please share it. If you know anyone who may like the book, send them an email. After all, they’ll get a free copy. Here’s the link in easy to cut and paste form:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/13MS0QT3I7YVE

In other news, I’ve let promoting my short story collection, Cowboys and Drones, slip to the way side but I don’t want it forgotten.  For those of you who have been with me since the day I decided to write a story about the government shutdown during the government shutdown, the collection doesn’t have anything new. However, for those of you new to my work, it’s a fantastic way to get all the short stories in one collection. I’m even going to make it a better deal. Close to the release date of Feb. 12th, I’m going to put it on sale for 99 cents for a kindle copy! But it will be for a limited time, so be on the lookout. Also check out the cover art! It looks fantastic, and it was created by New Mexico artist Rudy Lovato. You can get the collection here.

A Book That Might Change The World (Or at Least One Guy’s Life) – An Interview With Aaron Frale

aaronfrale:

Check out an interview for my novel being considered on Kindle Scout. Don’t forget to vote!

Originally posted on Essa On Everything:

I arrive back from lunch at my publishing house, Twilight Fan Fiction Whores, Inc. for my meeting with Aaron Frale. Aaron is a young, former indie author (my most hated kind. I hate indies. Don’t they understand that the public needs to be TOLD what they like?).

Aaron is waiting in my office when I arrive, despite the fact that I’m 45 minutes late.  That could be because he’s a laid back kind of guy, sort of a handsomer version of Seth Rogan. Or it could be because I’ve just gotten back from a 14 martini lunch and I’m blitzed out of my mind.

Publishing is a rough business.

Which is why I have one goal in mind; turn his book, regardless of what it is, into Twilight Fan Fiction. As I watch him study my posters from 50 Shades of Grey with disdain, I can only assume it’s going…

View original 833 more words

Amazon Publishing Deal Update

Click here to support this book.

It’s been a week since I’ve posted Playlist of the Ancient Dead, and I’m happy to say that I’ve been in the “hot & trending” list the entire week! But the campaign is not over. I still have three more weeks ahead, and I’ll need all the support I can get. Please share this link with your friends and family. Encourage them to share it with their friends and family. Remember, anyone who votes gets a free kindle edition if I get published. I thank you all for your support.

I also want to let you know about my upcoming story collection called Cowboys & Drones. It’s a collection of all the stories I’ve written in the past year or so. The cover art was done by Rudy Lovato, the same artist who did Desert during Day of the Dead, and it looks fantastic. You should check it out.

Help me Land an Amazon Publishing Deal

Nominate my book by clicking here.

I need your help. Amazon is offering a publishing deal to new authors if enough users vote for the books they would like to see published. I’m asking you today to nominate my new book. Putting in a good word for my book is a pretty simple task of clicking here, signing in to your Amazon account, and clicking on the nominate button. The best part is that if I do get picked for publishing, you’ll get a free copy of the book well in advance of the rest of the world.

Thank you for your support in this endeavor and please share the link to my book with your friends. The more people who nominate, the better chance I’ll have of landing that deal. If you need further evidence that this book is worth supporting. I feel it is my most accomplished yet. It blends humor, horror, science fiction, and music. It’s about a bored post-grad who encounters a doorway that didn’t exist the last time she walked by the building. For my friends in Albuquerque, there will be humor just for New Mexicans. You can read an excerpt here.

2015 – New Goals and New Directions

Don’t be the only one of your friends who hasn’t read Kal’s Fall. It’s only $1.

For those of you who have been following this blog, I made a switch from comedy blogger to science fiction writer in 2014. I decided to kick off my science fiction writing career with a challenge to myself, a challenge that I didn’t announce because of the off chance that I would fail. I decided to publish something every month for 2014.

I’m happy to announce that my personal challenge has been successful. There has been something new published on amazon every single month for 2014. I plan to release all of those stories in a collection called Cowboys & Drones. It will be available for purchase soon. However, I can’t give you a release date yet because I’m waiting for a response on my first novel.

Back in October, I was contacted by a major science fiction publisher to tell me that my book was taken from the slush pile for “closer examination”. Now “closer examination” could mean many things. They could have run out of toilet paper in the men’s room, and needed my novel to fill that important if not stinky duty. “Closer examination” could also mean that they are deciding exactly how to write my Hugo Award nomination. Regardless of their answer, I must push off all self-publishing efforts for the novel until they’ve decided.

What that means for you, my reader, is that I’m going to wait till I hear back from the publishing company before I put the first novel on Amazon. If they decide to publish me, it will be about a year before my novel sees the light of day and hopefully bookstores across the country. If they pass on my novel, I’ll have it up in a couple of weeks. However I don’t want to release Cowboys & Drones at the same time as the novel, so one or the other will be coming soon.

In other news, Kal’s Fall has sold better than I have expected and is still selling well as of writing this post. The dedication of publishing a new work every month has paid off. I also thank everyone of you who paid the dollar, or borrowed it through Amazon’s unlimited service. Your support makes writing future stories possible. And on the note of the future, I will not be writing one short story a month in 2015. I want to focus more on longer works, and most importantly, some follow-ups for Kal’s Fall (I’ve already banged out the first page).

Last but not least, for my friends and fans with nooks and other ereaders, if I continue to write in the self-published realm, it may be a couple years before my stories make it to the nook and other ereader sites. While I believe that books should be available on every ereader, Amazon takes away access to marketing tools if I publish elsewhere. Since my entire writing career at this moment is from the use of those tools, I can’t afford to publish elsewhere. Once my use of those tools have run their course, I’ll work on publishing elsewhere. So stay tuned, and if you can’t wait, kindle does have an app. For anyone who is interested, here is my annual blogging report. My old humor posts seem to still have some life left in them:

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

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Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 47 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Kal’s Fall

Discover the secret of Kal’s father.

“Why do I look different mother?” Kal’Da’Hak often asked her mother, and her mom would smile and tell Kal that she was blessed by Earth Mother. Kal never felt very blessed by the Earth Mother. Her bones had the strength of twigs compared to her Earth brother and sisters. She was a good length shorter and her torso was thin. When the village built a new home for the Te’Cek family after the river swallowed their home, Kal wove rope for the roof rather than lifted stone and wood. The young always did the heavy lifting, and Kal was believed to be too fragile so she wove with the elders. The worst part was that her skin was the lightest green ever to have been born. Most of her Earth brothers and sisters had vibrant green skin and with blue, orange, or silver hair. Her skin was light green and her hair was black. Kal looked like she was sick even though she felt fine. The oddest part was her eyes. They were deep blue like a clear lake. None of her people had blue eyes.

In the woods, Kal would lift stone and logs. While she could not lift as much as her Earth brothers and sisters, she still could lift without breaking her bones. The myth of her fragile bones came from various accidents in her youth. The children would use stone balls during sport. While the stone ball would bounce off her Earth brother and sisters with little bruising, the ball would shatter Kal’s ribs. Her fragile nature made her feel like an outsider of the village as she would always be stuck watching the activities or be given duties usually only reserved for the elders.

Her village and Earth brothers and sisters always treated her with respect. In fact she never felt unwelcome, or unwanted even though she felt alone. Everyone in the village looked out for one another, and Kal felt that she could never look out for them. A cart smashed the leg of one of her brethren, Wek’Ri’Ket, and Kal could not lift it. By the time she found a villager to lift the cart, Wek had lost a lot of blood and joined the ancestors with the Sky Father. No one blamed Kal or doubted her sincerity to help. Accidents were the will of the gods and not the blame of Kal’s birth. Despite the comforts from her fellow villagers, Kal felt guilty. Her “birth-blessing” was more of a curse. She would always be the weakest one of the village.

Kal also knew she was different beyond the constraints of her earthly form. Most of her Earth brother and sisters had fathers. She did not have a father. Her mom always told her that father had died in the Teristaque invasion. Kal’s father left the tribe to fight in the war while Kal grew in her mom’s belly. The Teristaques won the war, but left Kal’s village alone because they wanted Mother Earth’s metal, and Kal’s village had none. Despite never meeting a Teristaque, Kal imagined her father dying in a great battle and fighting to the last breath. She didn’t tell her family about her visions of war. Violence was abhorred by the tribe, and was only a last resort.

Aside from Kal’s fantasies, all that was left of her father was an insignia. It was a patch from his uniform. The patch featured a fierce bird swooping in an attack pose and strange lettering in a language no one in the tribe knew. Because the Teristaque’s were feared and hated by all, legend said that other tribes who lived in the stars followed the Teristaque fleet to Kal’s world and helped fight the invading force.

It wasn’t until her sixteenth season and her first real encounter with a star species that she would come closer to finding out the fate of her father.

_______

Kal pushed against a giant felled tree. Most of her Earth brothers and sisters would have easily pushed the tree without much effort. Kal pushed with all of her might, and the log barely budged. She wanted to push the log down a hill. There was a pile of logs and rocks at the bottom of the hill that she had collected from the woods. Kal planned to build a cabin by herself. She collected a fair amount of building supplies and even snuck a few tools from the tool common.

Kal liked her trips into the woods, and no one seemed to notice she was missing. She was free to do what she wanted, and never was asked to perform the tasks of the elderly. Kal thought about never returning many times even though she started building the cabin as way to display her strength to the tribe. However, the cabin would never be finished if she couldn’t push the log down the hill. She had dragged the heavy log from a long distance only to get it stuck in a rut near the top of the hill.

She pushed, pulled, yanked, and even tried to dig the log out of the rut, but it was too heavy. The rollers she used to pull the log long distances would not work in the rut. For heavy objects, the tribe would put rollers on the ground then would push or pull the objects to their destination. For several people, the task was steady and always flowing. A few of the young would pull. An elderly or Kal would dart back and forth taking a roller from the back and put it in the front. For a single person, Kal would push the log, move the rollers, and push the log some more. It was slow, but Kal was determined. And now she was thwarted by a rut.

“You know, that’s easier with two people,” A voice said from behind.

Kal nearly jumped out of her skin. She had been alone in the forest every afternoon for almost three weeks and never saw a soul. Behind her was a star species! The being was strange looking. It had thin twiggy arms, and a small chest to match. It had tan skin and brown hair. Kal was a good six inches taller than it. The being was definitely one of the star species. Kal couldn’t help herself. She reached out to touch the thing to make sure that it was real.

“Ok, ok,” the star being laughed. “I get it. You’ve never seen a human before.”

“HU-MAN?”  The clunky word did not roll of her tongue. “You mean star species?”

“Right,” The HU-MAN looked down at a device on his arm, “The translator doesn’t have human. Call me Oliver.”

“All-LIV-ER?” Kal had trouble making the words.

“Ah hell, just Sarge. The folks in the service days used to call me Sarge.”

“Sarge,” Kal pointed to him and then pointed to herself, “Kal.”

“Thank god for small favors, a local who has half a brain. You couldn’t spare some of that jerky would ya? I’m mighty hungry, and I don’t know what’s good to eat or what will kill me on this planet.”

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