Aaron Frale's Blog, page 9

A New Fantasy Novel

I know. I know. I’m supposed to be telling you right now that the third and final Atmospheric Pressure novel is coming out, and it will. I’m finished. I’m delaying the release because I want it done right. I have some really awesome cover art, and haven’t even sent it to the editor yet. Mainly because I’m waiting for royalties to come in order to pay those folks.

You can contribute to paying my editor and cover artist by signing up for Patreon. Each time I release a book, you get a really cool special edition. In the meantime, check out the Tuners audiobook. My narrator, Sean Winkless-Hall, is really good. It’s just cool to listen too.

And finally, why the spooky picture of Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon? Well, my next book is a Fantasy novel, about some teenagers from the Portland area who get sucked into an adventure by and evil overlord who lives with his highly critical mother. Yep, if you haven’t guessed, I’m a writing a Time Burrito style fantasy novel.

It will have Orcs, Goblins, Elves, Dwarfs, wizards, spells, sword fights, and captains who decapitate their underlings. What’s a good fantasy novel without bullying some underlings? It’s nothing like I’ve written before, and I’ve already release tidbits on Twitter. Look for my posts labeled Sneak Preview.

If Time Burrito made you laugh, I’m hoping this one will make you poop yourself (except not really because I don’t want to be sued over soiled undergarments). Pay attention to this space. More will come.

$1 Burritos

Amazon is going to include Time Burrito for 99 cents in its Kindle Daily Deal section on Friday, 1/29/21. For those of you not in the publishing industry, that’s pretty big news for me. It means that I will access a whole bunch of new readers, who normally wouldn’t see the book among the millions of titles Amazon has for sale.

While it’s not the kind of news that allows me to quit my day job, pop the Champaign, and write full time. It’s definitely a good step in that direction. So, if you like what I write, and would like to see me dedicate more hours of my day writing it, it’s a good time to leave a review or tell a friend, every little bit helps.

I’m also going to put The Bison Agenda up for sale for 99 cents on that day too. I would have done the third book, but Amazon lets you discount your books only so many times in a given period. Also, my apologies to my international friends. I don’t know if it will be on sale elsewhere, but would love to hear reports, so I know what to expect in the future.

As far as Atmospheric Pressure 3 is concerned, I am almost done with the first draft. Then I go to the dreaded editing phase. That’s where I have the least fun with writing, but probably the most important step. After that it’s off to my editor for grammar checking, and my cover artist, Phil Hughes, who has done all three novels, will be busy working at the cover art as well.

Finally, I want to share with you this article I read recently about climate change. While I personally have a more optimistic view on life, and believe people can and will solve the problems, (there is also good evidence to support that belief). I also value being aware of the dangers we face. 

That’s part of the reason, why I wrote the Atmospheric Pressure series to begin with. Science Fiction can act as a canary in the coal mine. The dramatic stories of doom, death, and destruction are the wake up call. Rather than throw our hands up in the air and say, “there’s nothing I can do about that,” why not shift our mentality to is there something I can do?

While Dystopian narratives might leave us with the feeling that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, I wanted to end mine with a message of hope and empowerment. So, the third atmospheric pressure book will have an experimental ending for it’s genre. I’ll be curious to see what you all think about it.

While you are waiting for Atmospheric Pressure 3, why not check out an author friend of mine’s book:

A naturally immune girl. A genetically modified boy. A search for a cure that may cost them everything…

Fifteen-year-old Jema Walker would do anything to protect her sibling. But she never imagined they’d be facing another global flu pandemic. Sent to a remote desert location for safety, Jema is horrified when her sister contracts the deadly virus.

Caught in a conflict of impossible choices, Jema teams up with a specially bred eighteen-year-old boy to find a remedy. But when they’re forced to go rogue and abandon their community, she fears the ruling adults only want them for their uniquely protected DNA.

Can the duo hunt down an antidote before they fall victim to ruthless experiments?

Lovelock Ones is the first book in the action-packed Lovelock YA dystopian science fiction series. If you like bold heroines, strong heroes, and post-apocalyptic settings, then you’ll love Tricia Copeland’s thrilling fight for survival.

Thank you for reading!

Some thoughts on the end of the world.

In case, you missed it. Time Burrito is free once again until this Saturday. Now that I got that out of the way, I’d like to share with you some thoughts:

I realized that part of why I write science fiction is because I’m fascinated with technology, and not in the gadget sort of way. Sure, my Christmas tree this year can be lit by saying, “Alexa, turn on the Christmas tree” and my 3-yr-old son will often say, “Alexa, play Street Cleaner.” But tech doesn’t inspire me to write novels. One of the things that gets me writing is fundamental questions about the survival of our species and how technology for better or worse is a part of that equation.

Even though I love and write dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, I don’t stay up at night wondering about when Skynet will awaken to take us all down. While there is a reason for concern, AI taking over the world seems like one of many possibilities. I can easily see a hyper intelligent AI deciding humans are pretty boring and building itself spaceship to go explore the stars, or a nurturing AI that thinks, “Silly humans, if you only knew what’s good for you,” and all the world’s problems being solved.

What if the first hyper intelligent AI after crunching through all of human knowledge decides to take up cross stitching? Seems just as likely as the AI bent on destroying the world. The point is that when it comes to AI and technology, while the fun-to-read narratives are the ones that focus on scary things like Missiles of DOOM!, I think there are far more threating stuff in the world, and I try to have my stories reflect that idea.

That’s why I wrote the Atmospheric Pressure series. The big dystopian threat to the world in those stories was climate change. In the first book, I introduced a place where people were forced to live inside what used to be downtown Minneapolis. I picked that location because I used to work in downtown in what was then the McGladery building (which changed names after I published the first book). Since Minnesotans know how to deal with cold weather and you could theoretically live in the 11 square miles of skyway connected city without ever going outside, it was perfect.

I remember weaving through the buildings on my lunch break, and thinking in terms of three buildings down, past the Starbucks and take the tunnel on the right. I literally could get anywhere through what felt like a maze to me the first time I was there. In fact, I gave my wife a tour of downtown, and she was lost. The funny part was that I was also lost when I went outside the buildings. While I probably could still walk to the Taco John’s from the IDS center today, I couldn’t tell you what street it was on, only what the corridors connecting to it look like.

This was a perfect setting for an idea I had about bacteria changing our atmosphere that was based on an historical event. Deep in Earth’s past, there was a climate catastrophe and a mass extinction. A new critter emerged called cyanobacteria, and they released a byproduct that was poisonous to things living on the planet at the time. That byproduct was oxygen, and hello world we have today.

Which of course if it happened once? Could it happen again? Which got my wheels turning about permafrost melting and releasing bacteria into the environment, and now there’s a recipe for a climate change apocalypse with the same threat level as Missiles of DOOM!

The reality of climate change is that it’s a slow process. The stability of the economy and the health of the world will erode as the hurricanes get worse, the heatwaves last for longer, the droughts are relentless, and the wildfires burn more and more. It won’t be something fun and cataclysmic like a narrative like Skynet. It will be more like heart disease, the system gets withered down until one day it finds itself in the hospital unaware that it was the triple cheese burgers all along!

Hopefully, the Atmospheric Pressure series can be one of the many canaries in the coal mine as people attempt to steer the largest boat in history in a new direction. I’d much rather be sitting in my floating green construction castle (or whatever writers are living in forty years from now), and have someone find a beat up copy of my book in their Dad’s basement and say, “Well, that didn’t happen” then “Holy crap, Aaron predicted the end of the world!”

So it is with great pleasure that I announce, the third and final Atmospheric Pressure book is in progress. You will have an ending. Promise! It’s never too early to reserve your Patreon special edition of Atmospheric Pressure 3.

Black Friday Sucks! Read a Book Instead.

It’s that special time of year where shoppers trample each other for a deal. Of course with COVID19, knife fighting for that last laptop in a Walmart parking lot should be at an all-time low this year. Either way, why risk being shanked for the latest iPhone when you can enjoy reading from your kindle at home? So let’s celebrate capitalism with completely free books! A dozen free books to be exact. My writing is perfect for folks looking for feel good action/adventure novels to avoid the grim realities of 2020. Here’s the list and scroll down for the descriptions.

The Boy King of Carradine
Tuners
Xmas Elf: Secret Agent
The Robin Hood of Couches
ORION
Othello and Zombies
Atmospheric Pressure
Kal’s Fall
Kal’s Truth
Hayden’s Mistake
Cowboys & Drones
Playlist of the Ancient Dead

Psst. share this post on social media! The deals are good till 12/1/20.

The Holy Church of Dave has mocked Zeb all his life for the silly notion that the almighty Dave was once a man. Determined to prove them wrong, he finds the DNA of the savior. The resurrection of his lord turns out to be Pete, and the apostles are the time-traveling pals Clara, Misako and Unk.

Now, Zeb and the outta time gang are caught in a holy war between the Davist and Davidite factions. If the papacy leaders, the Holiest of Holies Chappelle and Schwimmer, don’t see eye to eye about the true meaning of their messiah, they’ll destroy the entire world in the endless, bloody conflict.

Packed full of David references and Boreanaz-style action, don’t miss The Boy King of Carradine, the next novel in the Time Burrito series that’s sure to get you excommunicated in stitches. Get The Boy King of Carradine for free.

As one of Santa’s Elite Fixers, Jing spends most of his time waterboarding greedy toy manufacturers or responding to terrorists holding Rudolph for ransom. While not on the job, he relaxes in the North Pole, a paradise where he can forget all the killing and bloodshed and curl up to some Christmas music and hot cocoa.

Until a rogue group of elves betrays Santa and threatens what should have been a pleasant Christmas.

Every time a bell rings, an elf gets his Glock. Get Xmas Elf for free.

Orion is dead again. Whether death comes from a stab wound, a bullet to the brain, or just plain dumb luck, he always comes back. He is glad to have the second chances because there is a princess in each life who seems to be in trouble. Whether she’s a nurse in the Vietnam war or medieval English royalty, Orion is determined to win her over. Get ORION for free.

Kal has always been considered too “fragile” to participate in the village activities. Her lithe stature links her to her father and distances her from everyone else. He left the village to fight in the Teristaque Wars and never returned. She meets Sarge, a strange star species of the human race who seems to know the secret of the patch from her father’s uniform. Kal has always known she is different than her fellow villagers, and finally she may be closer to finding out why. Get the story for free here.

After the slaughter of her village, Kal is imprisoned for aiding the criminal who betrayed her to the Teristaques. A military insignia from her father’s uniform is all that remains of her family, and of the father who left before her birth. She meets Hayden, an attractive young human inmate who appears to have information about her father’s platoon. An insane prison doctor has made test subjects of the general population, and finds Kal’s physiology intriguing. She is forced to forge an alliance to strike out before she becomes another failed experiment. Get Kal’s Truth for free.

Hayden made planet fall as the newest member of his squad. Nigramoto was a world known for its beauty and danger. After screwing up an easy task in the city, Hayden landed his troop an assignment in the dangerous frontier. Desperate to gain the trust of his fellow soldiers back, Hayden finds himself assisting a racist police state. Hayden doesn’t know if he can remain silent about the conduct of his unit much longer and wouldn’t know who to trust. Get Hayden’s Mistake for free.

[image error] Tuners is free until 12/1/20

Being too close to the truth got Jon Xiong’s mother killed. While searching for answers, a murderous cult shows up at his door.

A secretive organization called the Tuners comes to his aide and teaches him about his rare ability to travel between worlds called tuning.

He grapples with his new superpower and is stuck between those who would maintain order in the multiverse and those who would destroy it. Jon must avoid the same gruesome fate as his mom and figure out what happened to his family. Read Tuners for free now.

Reese investigates corporate fraud and discovers some joker has been giving away free couches to the needy, because when a person can no longer afford the subscription service fees, all their furniture disappears. The bearer of sofas ends up in a ditch when blunt force trauma snuffs out the poor’s best chance of not living in an empty room their whole life. Reese rolls up his sleeves. Time to get to work. Read The Robin Hood of Couches for free now.

Shakespeare’s classic tale of hubris, paranoia, and betrayal is reimagined against the darkly comedic backdrop of the post-apocalypse. … And zombies.

I ate thy brains ere I killed thee… Read Othello and Zombies for free now.

Olson lives in a city that has been sealed from the outside world. He’s an Eleven Year and close to citizenship. His life is upended when one of the few adults who cares about him commits suicide – or so it appears at first. While investigating, Olson meets a girl named Natalie snooping around his school. He soon learns that one of her friends died under similarly mysterious circumstances. Together, they start looking for answers, and end up discovering the city’s darkest secrets. Read Atmospheric Pressure for free now.

Cowboys and Drones is a collection of short stories including:

The Entire Sperm Donor for a Cosmic Paradox Series:

Jed finds out some disturbing news after a DNA test. He is his own great great grandfather. However, Jed’s daily struggles involve video games and crippling self doubt. He’s not the time traveling pioneer type. He may as well try to get to the bottom of the mystery. It’s at least a reason to get off his couch.

Anna is the time traveling type and Jed’s ex-girlfriend. She finds herself in the Old West in a town terrorized by a man called the Gold Piece Bandit. Jed better get off his butt and help her. Although Anna has never been the type to let the men do all the shooting. Read Cowboys and Drones for free now.

Caroline, a post-graduate student, waits for her grand adventure in life. While she’s waiting, she walks the dog down the same path every day, avoids her dippy ex-boyfriend, and ponders her mundane march towards middle age. Her dream comes true when a magical doorway appears before her in a drab brick building. There is something on the other side of the door, and it beckons her inside. Read Playlist of the Ancient Dead for free now.

If you want to be on a mailing list for news of future freebies and releases. Sign up here.

If you want to support books like these, get exclusive editions or be mentioned in the back of the book, consider supporting me on Patreon.

The Boy King of Carradine

It’s finally here! If you have the monetary means to support my writing, consider purchasing it or reading it through Kindle Unlimited. If not, it will be free on Kindle during Black Friday. 

The Boy King of Carradine is truly the strangest, most off beat, and weirdest thing I’ve written. If you think Time Burrito went off the hook, Playlist of the Ancient Dead was unique, or The Robin Hood of Couches is wacky. This one far surpasses the weirdness meter even for me.

This story was so singular, that I almost wrote it as a standalone novel rather than a Time Burrito sequel. When I first had the idea, a person named Dave being cloned in the future and misconstrued as their messiah, I knew the comedy would write itself if the guy was a dimwitted, well-intended, but ultimately making things worse than better type of protagonist.

That’s when I realized that Pete fit that description as a character. Even better, by putting this story in the Time Burritoverse, Clara could be the voice of reason. The further I had gotten into it with the Time Burrito characters. The more I knew this was meant to be a Time Burrito novel.

Is it the last Time Burrito novel? Most certainly not! I already have some preliminary ideas for the fourth one, but I want to wrap up the Atmospheric Pressure trilogy first. I also plan to write a prequel to Tuners, so we can see Hector and the parents of our Tuners generation in action. There are a lot of writing projects, and I do this part time.

Thank you all again for your support of my work. If you want special editions of future works or just want to kick in some money to me directly, consider becoming a Patreon member. 

Here is the book description:

The Holy Church of Dave has mocked Zeb all his life for the silly notion that the almighty Dave was once a man. Determined to prove them wrong, he finds the DNA of the savior. The resurrection of his lord turns out to be Pete, and the apostles are the time-traveling pals Clara, Misako, and Unk.

Now, Zeb and the outta time gang are caught in a holy war between the Davist and Davidite factions. If the papacy leaders, the Holiest of Holies Chappelle and Schwimmer, don’t see eye to eye about the true meaning of their messiah, they’ll destroy the entire world in the endless, bloody conflict.

Packed full of David references and Boreanaz-style action, don’t miss The Boy King of Carradine, the next novel in the Time Burrito series that’s sure to get you excommunicated in stitches. Pick up your copy today over here.

Thank you again and watch for my Black Friday post. It’s seriously going to be like nothing I’ve ever done.

A Thank You and More

I couldn’t ask for a better group of readers. The Bison Agenda has gotten a lot of love from all of you, and your support is why I continue writing. If you want to continue to support it, leave a review here. Because you all are awesome, I’m going to give you the next book in the Time Burrito series, The Boy King of Carradine, for free as well. 

However, it’s still in the final editing stages, so you’ll have to wait until the I Hate Black Friday sale. That’s a sale I do every year when I give away a bunch of my books for free on kindle. If financial support is in the cards for you, consider pre-ordering The Boy King of Carradine. You’ll get it before Black Friday, and more importantly, you’ll be helping me grow the capacity to write more books!

I think you are going to love the The Boy King of Carradine. It’s my most researched book to date. I have packed more cultural references into this novel than in any comedy writing that I ever have done. I went down the rabbit hole of why Dave Navarro was booted from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to reading plot synopsizes of the TV show Arrow to name a few.

Sometimes, I would be doing all this research simply for the crafting of a one line joke! The third time Burrito novel is the equivalent of artisan craft beer of novel writing. It’s completely packed with notes that one could swish around in their brain and still might have to resort to wikipedia to find them all. (For the record, I do not and never will write wikipedia entries about myself. It will be one of the signs that I’ve made it as an author. I have a wikipedia page!).

It’s also a different sort of pop culture reference novel. A book like Ready Player One (which you should read if you haven’t. It’s quite good) relies on the audience being aware of most of the pop culture references at play. I decided to make my book more of a scavenger hunt. I’ve tried to put a reference to just about every Dave or David, out there. Believe me, I know there are plenty that I missed because I really couldn’t pack them all in without it reading like an encyclopedia of Daves.

It’s also a big risk for me, because I satirize religion. There are going to be folks out there that don’t like it because I’m examining faith. However, I do attempt to humanize the need for a belief in something bigger than oneself while scrutinizing the institutions of religion. A lot of comedy writers will attack the believer and the organization, whereas I hope to approach it as not ridiculing the need for faith, but rather the refusal to adapt ones beliefs when for example, the Earth is plainly older than six thousand years. One would assume that belief in something greater than oneself would also mean that whatever it is that is ‘greater’ is also beyond the institutions of humanity.

What I’m hoping for this book is that it’s something that promotes discussion. Whether it’s recounting things that made someone laugh, finding all those Dave references, or a deeper discussion about the need for faith and how people organize around it. 

In the meantime, I’m going to give a shout out to a couple of author friends who have helped support me, and now I want to support them.

The first is W Bradford Swift who is doing a project were kids can join a zoom meeting with their parents to read an eco-adventure book. The first book is free. More information about the meetings and the copy can be nabbed on his website here.

The second is Catherine Greenall, who has got a whole new cover and is doing a price drop of her book, A Quirk of Destiny. The price is dropped only for a limited time. It also has environmental themes. Here’s a quick description: When a terrible disease spreads throughout the world, a principled environmentalist must find out if it can be stopped. If he fails, humanity is doomed.

Thank you all. Don’t forget to leave a review of The Bison Agenda.

The Bison Agenda Is Out and it’s Free!

That’s right! The second Time Burrito novel is free to download! Grab yourself a copy here. But don’t wait. The promotion ends 10/26/20. 

Why am I giving it away for free? There’s a smattering of political humor baked into the book. It’s election season here in the States, and I wanted to add a little levity to an otherwise grim battle for America’s future.

So if you want to give your friends some topical giggles this election season, let them know about The Bison Agenda, and in case they haven’t read the first one, Time Burrito is free till the 26th too!

Trust me, you aren’t going to want to miss this one.

Remember to vote November 3rd!  

Sneak Preview

The Bison Agenda

Here is the unedited chapter 1 of the Bison Agenda. There is still time to sign up for a exclusive edition by supporting me on Patreon.

The world would soon weep at the name Barry Bison. The bullies who photoshopped his face onto various bovine would know that Barry was destined for greatness. He wasn’t sure what irritated him more, that people his whole life never saw his potential or that the images used to taunt him in school were not always the same species of animal. They put his face on a cow once. A cow!

Now, all the fools in college who ignored him and the teacher who told him that he might want to consider another degree pathway would sweat when they encountered his influence upon the world. Tears would roll down their face, and Barry would cackle with glee at his creation. They would sob and truly understand they had misjudged him their whole life for Barry had made the perfect Buffalo wing.

It was the perfect combination of spice, tang, crisp crust, and tender, mouthwatering chicken. Blue cheese or ranch dressing had nothing on his wing. He envisioned a restaurant packed full of sweating people, devouring his wings, and plates returning with untouched celery and dipping sauce because they were so good, people wouldn’t even consider eating anything else but the meat.

The single wing on his plate with one bite taken out brought a tear to his eye. It wasn’t the spice, but the fact that he had done it. He looked up at his crappy studio apartment on Montgomery. The engine backfires of the late-night cruisers could be heard outside his paper-thin walls. He wouldn’t be here much longer. The Village Inn uniform that hung from the hook on his front door would soon be a relic of his past and not his primary source of income.

The half-sized two-burner cooktop with accompanying miniaturized oven will be nothing but a story he tells to the Albuquerque Journal reporter who sits down with him years later to hear the origin stories of how he went from small family restaurant to a national brand. The trash that smelled day in and day out with all his failed attempts to make a better chicken wing would no longer be a part of his life. He would have employees who would do that for him.

He picked up his culinary certificate from Central New Mexico Community College off the wall and threw it away. The teacher who had suggested another career pathway didn’t deserve any credit for all of his hard work. Barry was the one who persevered through it all, and his name would be on the sign: Barry Bison Wings.

Barry collapsed on his futon. It was a tangle of sheets and always smelled of grease because he was too tired to shower after work. A tear welled up in his eye. It was almost perfect. The dream was near complete. Through an inconvenient fact of his birth, he was named Bison and not the more popular word Buffalo. However, he couldn’t call his creation Barry Buffalo Wings even if it happened to be more accurate. He would be dishonoring all the Bison’s who came before him.

His late father and mother were already etched in stone in a little graveyard near Yale by the university. His parents had even bought him a plot years ago as part of a package deal. He would not be buried with the name Buffalo, and there had to be a solution to his dilemma. Perhaps he could move to Buffalo, New York, and start a campaign to rename the town Bison. It would be fitting to release his innovation of an American favorite in the same city where they were invented.

He knew the idea wasn’t a viable solution. The chicken wing treat was already named Buffalo, and like it or not, the name stuck. The only path forward would be to somehow convince the world that bison was a better word than buffalo. Barry smiled. He was on to something. Bison was indeed the official name of the animal of his namesake. Maybe he could start a society dedicated to championing the word bison. There might even already be a bison enthusiast society he could leverage. Perhaps he could use them to squash the word buffalo from the English language.

He pulled out an iPad so ancient the software wouldn’t even update anymore, and half apps wouldn’t work because they were out of date. He pounded in his code and pulled up the University of New Mexico’s website. If there was a group with esoteric interests, they probably would operate out of UNM.

Before finding the Biology Department’s home page, he saw a little box that said, “UNM LIVE!” There were links to several streaming videos, including one of the duck pond. Barry almost dismissed them as a frivolous waste of time when he saw one labeled, Time Travel with the Professor.

Time travel would do the trick. He could go back to when people first started using the word buffalo and convince them to use bison. Then Buffalo, New York would be Bison, New York. His problem was solved. It was an intriguing thought, but changing the past was firmly in the realm of science fiction. Still, if there was even a remote possibility, it would undoubtedly be more straightforward than getting some bison nerds to lobby congress on his behalf.

He clicked on the live stream, and there was a man with greying hair and crow’s feet wearing a lab coat. He had a petite assistant with brown hair and glasses. She spoke with a mild English accent, “Honestly, professor, I don’t see why you are live streaming this. Nobody watches it.”
The man’s eyes darted downward and said, “We have one viewer. If that’s you, Theo, this will not count for extra credit. You still need to turn in your assignment.”

The assistant laughed and said, “He’s still there, at least Theo’s watching. Shall we get on with it?”

The professor stood up and said, “Right, Clara, go ahead and program the machine for thirty seconds into the future. Don’t want to inadvertently alter our timeline.”

“That’s exactly what I want to do,” Barry muttered.

Clara tapped the keys on a laptop. The professor pulled out a sealed test tube with a clear liquid. “Inside is a radioactive material that we will be able to measure down to the Becquerel.”

“In English, professor, you may chase off your one viewer,” Clara laughed.

“Theo should know this, don’t you, Theo? The point is if this did travel thirty seconds into the future, we will know by measuring how much the material inside has decayed. Clara, if you’d be so kind as to flip the switch.”

She pressed a button, and a blue vortex with crackling white energy appeared on a long black table. The professor tied a string to the test tube. He tossed it into the portal, and it crackled grew brighter. He waited for a few seconds and then pulled the line back. The severed string fell limp.
Clara shut the machine down and said, “Shame, maybe it will appear in thirty seconds.”

“It might not be in the same reference frame as us anymore. Remember, the Earth is spinning and revolving around the sun as we speak. We don’t know if time travel accounts for that.”
“Suppose it is still bound by gravity. Won’t the portal just open and plop the tube on the other side of it?”

“Sure, but we don’t know what it’s going to do. It could be 900 kilometers out in space for all we know!”

“So, we wait.”

“Maybe I need something stronger than string… a chain perhaps?”

They waited for the test tube to reappear. Clara closed down the controls of the machine while the professor fiddled with equations on a smartboard. Thirty seconds came and went. There was still no test tube. Barry wasn’t quite sure why he continued watching. Maybe it was the small hope that for once in his life, a solution would just present itself.

Barry had to struggle for everything he owned. The perfect Buffalo—no, bison wing was years in the making. He didn’t even know the difference between an oven and a stove when he first started. His parents microwaved everything they ate. It wasn’t until he was eighteen out of the oppressive small town of Crownpoint, New Mexico, and thrown into the deep end of the big city when he first discovered the power of food.

He had walked to the Frontier when a person from Math 0970 course at CNM had suggested it as a place to eat. He expected a small little greasy spoon and got a jaw-dropping display of the power of food. Room after room, stuffed with southwest décor and John Wayne paintings, were people of every ethnic background eating their lunch. It wasn’t like his school at all, which was mostly natives and a few white people.

The place was a well-oiled machine with people flooding toward the counter and red numbers displaying the ready orders. He was too overwhelmed to order at first, and people had pushed passed him. The polite ones would ask him if he was in line to which he could only mutter, and they would step ahead of him, avoiding eye contact.

The reason he had freaked out was that the closest thing to a restaurant he ever saw was Wendy’s in Gallup, and that was a rare treat only when his family would make their monthly trip to Walmart. It wasn’t that his family was poor, it was just that they were so remote. His dad was a white doctor who decided to practice in Crownpoint to help pay off his student loans. His mom was a native woman he had met during his tenure, and they had decided to stay near his mom’s family.

It wasn’t till Barry had decided to go as far away as he could for school when they decided to skip town as well. His dad had retired, they bought a townhouse in the neighborhood where all the professors lived and even got an extra room for Barry. His dad was so damned thrifty that they made Barry live in it. They even decided that Barry would attend CNM and transfer the credits to UNM after a major was selected.

Barry had figured out a profound truth about himself that day at the Frontier. There was something about the cluster of people. The sizzling of the meat in the back. The tortilla machine that resembled a Rube Goldberg device pumping out perfectly round and delicious tortillas. He had found where he was meant to be.

Barry had filled out his application and was rejected the very next day when the interviewer told him to “get more experience” and come back and see them. Much to his dad’s dismay, Barry had decided that a culinary certificate from CNM would suit him just fine. He had no idea how quickly he’d need that degree.

The Bisons had died in an aquatic accident a few months after his introduction to the Frontier. His father and mom wanted to see the world in their retirement and got more than they had bargained for when the shark diving cage malfunctioned. His mom ended up in the digestive tract of a great white. His dad’s wealth was sucked away by the expensive emergency room care treatment, and the days his dad stayed in a foreign hospital before passing on. Even the cost to get what was left of their bodies back to the United States wiped out their life savings.

Barry inherited enough to finish his degree, a plot of land in a graveyard, and a mortgage on a townhouse that went quickly into foreclosure. Unable to secure a job at the hallowed halls of the Frontier, he got one working at the Village Inn near the airport and been stuck there ever since. Until tonight, he finally created something of value in this world, and his late mom and dad would forever be a buffalo if he couldn’t do something about it.

Then it happened. The professor, who seemed to be unaware the live feed was still rolling, asked his assistant for a nightcap. She declined and packed it in for the night. The man turned back to the table, and maybe five minutes after she had left the room, the vortex appeared. A test tube attached to a string came out and fell to the ground, shattering. The radioactive liquid inside spilled to the floor.

The man shouted in triumph and ran into the hall. Clara must have been gone because a few seconds later, he trotted to his equations and inspected the numbers. He yelled, “Of course, the quantum tunnel would experience a time dilation effect.”

He jiggled around the numbers on the smartboard and said, “Yes, yes. That would make the time equivalency more accurate.”

The man typed in a new configuration into the laptop and fired up the time machine. He tossed a penny inside and powered it down. He looked at his watch and counted. The vortex appeared thirty seconds later, and the penny landed on the table.

“Oh my god! It works. Clara, it works!” He glanced at her empty desk. A frown crept onto his face.
He turned toward the computer that had been streaming the event. Barry jumped out of the window and closed down his iPad. He dropped onto his bed and said. “Bison. Barry Bison Wings.”

Clara has it all, a swanky new job, a hot robot babe, and even a time machine. Paradise all comes crashing down when she realizes her ticket to the future was stolen.

She wakes up in a world that has been reshaped by the whim of a time traveler with a strange obsession with Bison and chicken wings. Now she has to fix the timeline, or everyone she knows and loves will be wiped from existence.

There’s also a lot of flightless birds.

Find out how it all fits together in The Bison Agenda, the not anticipated sequel of Time Burrito.

Get an exclusive Patreon only edition by pledging now.

Time Burrito 3: The Boy King of Carradine

While writing Time Burrito 2, I had an idea for a story. A lot of the time, those ideas get written down in a text file and stored on my hard drive and maybe never go beyond that. This one was different. I kept thinking about it, talking to my wife about it, even sometimes having dreams about it. This story had to be written.

I literally stopped writing Time Burrito 2 because I was so obsessed with the idea. It all came from a comment I made to my wife over breakfast, “wouldn’t it be funny if people fought holy wars over whether or not the messiah was named David or Dave?”

Surprisingly, she didn’t roll her eyes and change the subject, as she often does when I talk about stuff that I think is hilarious but the rest of the world may raise their eyes at best. We came up with this scenario where there was a nuclear war, and some stuff from various Davids survived like a David Bowie record, or David Duchovny’s autobiography. Then what if thousands of years in the future, the people created a world religion out of our David stuff.

Then what if they find DNA on the Statue of David that just happens to be a random tourist named David, and decided to clone it? We pictured this rush of clergy, mobbing their messiah fresh from the cloning vat, and asked him the question that has plagued their society for years, “It’s it Dave or David?”

That’s when it hit me, what if that person was not David but Pete? That’s when I knew this story had to be a Time Burrito story, which is good news for you. Not only are you going to get the Bison Agenda very soon here because I finished it after pounding out Time Burrito 3. But you’re also going to get The Boy King of Carradine! That’s two Time Burrito novels! Coming out very soon.

You can get yourself a collector’s edition of all three with your support on Patreon, but don’t wait! You need to pledge by 10/25/2020!

Take a look at the cover art for Book 3:

[image error]The Boy King of Carradine, A Time Burrito Interlude

A Terror Dictator’s Guide to Mindfulness

I’m experimenting with doing something new. I’ve always wanted to write a comedy self-help book. Here’s is the introduction and the first chapter. If you want to see this project happen, consider supporting me on patreon.

Introduction

As totalitarianism and authoritarian leadership have become increasingly mainstream, more and more people are actively seeking resources for total domination of segments of the population under their thumb. Managers, CEOs, and even Presidents can use these practices to terrorize their subjects into compliance. Whether you are seeking to put your kid brother in his rightful place or require swaths of people to quake at your very presence, this guide is intended for anyone who needs a little more terror in their life.

There are a lot of books out there that claim to have all the answers for all the up incoming terror dictators of the world, but they lack depth and the experience of a ruler of his own regime. I’m Kim Jong-Hannity, (no relation to the dictator or American TV personality), and I’ve been lord of my own country for eight years. Back in 2012, I played one of my compatriots, Kim Jong-un, in a game of high stakes poker. I won complete control over one of the provinces of North Korea. It’s been my own country ever since.

When I took control of the province and renamed it Hannityville, it was in poor shape. People were whispering rebellious thoughts, black markets extoling capitalist pigdog virtues were everywhere, and worst of all, they were watching South Korean media. I couldn’t walk anywhere without hearing Gangnam Style, so I had anyone caught watching the video dragged out to the street and shot, along with people listening to Friday, the Hampster Dance, Yatta, What Does the Fox Say, and other viral sensations.

Needless to say, citizens got in line pretty quickly, and now I want to share all my secrets to a successful totalitarian dictatorship that you can incorporate into your lives. I was recently giving a FRED talk (Firearms, Radical Extermination, Design) about the power of positive thinking while torturing political prisoners, and a big American CEO came up to me and said. “That’s a great speech Kim, but we can no longer water board in the US anymore.”

And I said, “Who has to know about it?”

He then responded about his board of directors, to which I chided him for not firebombing at least one board of director’s house per year, so they know who is really in charge. Americans have gotten really weak. Stupid American President sits down at this desk all day tweeting threatening messages. Whereas, I don’t make threats. I take swift, decisive action and teach my citizens the value of strong rule. He talks a big game, but they still listen to Baby Shark in America.

The idea for this book started years ago when I went to Osama bin Laden Summer Camp as a teenager. My mom was one of the few Asian Islamic extremists, and my dad was the only surviving member of the Jim Jones cult (he bought a Hawaiian Punch in town and didn’t realize it was a suicide party until too late). I grew up in Equatorial Guinea where I learned a hard day’s work and human rights abuses was all you needed to keep the population in control. Because of my diverse background studying totalitarianism with dictators throughout the world, I realize that crushing your enemies and drinking their blood isn’t just for Vikings, it’s for everyone.

Now for the first time, I’ve collected different terror dictator tactics in one handy to use guidebook that anyone can understand. It helps if you have tanks, missiles, biological and nuclear weaponry, and a playlist of earworms. Trust me when I said that I am the only one in Hannityville who can play Baby Shark, usually through a loudspeaker, during a siege of political dissidents.

Even if you don’t have your own secret police, you can get something out of this book. My deepest intention is to make these practices accessible to anyone even people in a wheelchair. They can run over someone’s foot, and do it again until they shape behavior of the person into who they want them to be. People are too busy finding themselves, when you can make them who you want them to be.

All the terror dictators, fascist leaders, cult head priests, presidents for life, terrorists organizations, and even boy band managers have given me their secrets to success over the years. After that ill-fated poker day, North Korea’s loss became my gain, and I got to put all those practices into use. My hope is you can use this book as your own blueprint, and you can take total-control over your life, as well as all the people around you.

With a little direction, we all have the potential to become a totalitarian dictator. Even if you never get to play Kim Jong-un for a chance at another one of his provinces, I hope you can incorporate this into your daily practices to live a richer, fuller life. Though if you do get a chance to play Kim Jong-un at poker, he is not as good at bluffing as you think he’d be.

Totalitarianism 101

When I was fourteen years-old, my father gave me a used playboy with the pages stuck together. He told me that it should occupy me until I could go to college because there wasn’t much dating opportunity in Equatorial Guinea. At the time I was struggling with depression and realized that I felt better when I pulled the wings off of flies or swung rodents around in sacks. I even used the rolled up magazine on the family dog.

I had realized that words were powerful but didn’t really understand the full power of them until I had witness my first North Korean march. My parents were globe trotters when I was young. We went to Iran, North Korea, Columbia, Libya and all sorts of wonderful places with great food. All of them had one thing in common, their propaganda machines were in full production.

It was evident in that trip to North Korea. All the marching armies, gigantic missiles, and color coordinated dancers were all praising their great leader. The movies in theaters and even songs they sang to their children were in service of the great regime. There were even Kim Jong-il approved ice cream flavors.

I took it one step further. All Happy Meals served in Hannityville have action figures in likeness of me. I star in every film. You guessed it, I even sing in my own rock-country band that appeals to the working class man and still regales me as the supreme leader. I didn’t just approve the ice creams. I am the ice cream flavors. My favorite is triple-choco-Hannity explosion, but don’t worry other flavors still exist too, you must give the people some sense of choice in life even if it is a sham.

Here are the Nine Aspects of Successful Terror Dictators you can start using now if an employee has the audacity to ask you for a raise. Remember party loyalty is the reward in itself. They should be happy you don’t handcuff them to a pipe in the company basement for the weekend because of the insubordination.

BE FULLY PRESENT. This takes a lifetime to master, but you can take control and be mindful of your surroundings in small subtle ways. For example, if you are about to eat a Snickers bar, make your top general take a bite instead because someone could be trying to poison you. You will fall right into the trap if you willy-nilly stuff chocolate into your gullet. You are smarter that your would-be usurper. If the general says that he is allergic to peanuts, you force the candy bar into his mouth with a gun to his head. While he tearfully begs for mercy for his family, you remind him that there are camps for people like that. You watch the life drain from his eyes only confirming your suspicion about the chocolate bar. Only later you realize that it may have just been anaphylactic shock because of the time the general got sick from a Reese’s and ask Alexa to put more Snickers bars on your shopping list.



RECOGNIZE YOUR EMOTIONS. Stupid American President doesn’t understand this one and gets butt sore every time someone calls him a bad name. One day my hairdresser was making fun of me, and I put her head on a pike in front of the capitol building (I learned that from boy genius Joffrey). She had the audacity to say that pompadours weren’t very dignified haircuts. I said, “Are you kidding me! Elvis had all these screaming girls under his sway.” Then I had my new general do her in. Get it? I spun on words. Do her in. Like hairdo.



Don’t Be Judgmental. This one is pretty hard to learn. I am part of #BACHELORNATION (remember rule #3 and my bioweapons research program). Sometimes I would see the Bachelorette falling for the wrong guy, and I would scream at the TV, “No, he is only there for his music career! You should cut a finger off for each time he lied to you!” But, then they see through the lies and turn out to be a strong women worthy of a terror dictator partner in life. I have not heard back about the assassins I have sent after Clare Crawley’s suitors.

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CHANGE IT UP. This one is hard, especially for a good friend of mine cartel hitman Juan Pablo “Dedos” Fring. Dedos got his name because he would take a finger as a trophy from all of his victims, but that’s boring to do the same thing every day. You think American CIA would have more tricks than waterboarding. Come on guys, you are the most powerful country in the world. I am proud to say that Hannityville’s gulag, not only has the classics like sleep deprivation, waterboarding, and music torture, but I also get all my generals together for these idea sessions where we have had several novel breakthroughs. We put into action all sorts of exciting new ideas including electric eels, psychotic clowns, reenactments of every single way a Game of Thrones character has died, several bond villain contraptions that the stupid British MI6 agent escapes every time, and a kitten room (mostly for members of the minority party allergic to cats).



Make Sure You Have You Time. Godlike leaders of the world don’t carve out enough time for themselves. Whether you are punishing people for their thought crimes or singing with the adoring public who are sentenced with death if they don’t sing the bah, bah, bah part of Sweet Caroline with you at the ball game, being an important figure takes a lot out of you and that doesn’t even include the time we found real unicorn bones, unlike ahem, North Korea, who made it all up. I had to spend all day at a press conference. Sometimes, I have to tell myself. It’s okay to have a glass of wine and watch the Great British Baking show on Netflix.



View the World Through the Eyes of a Child. Children view the world like everything is new. They haven’t had the great disappointments in life like finding out Hannibal Lecter isn’t real or that Noriega was setup by the CIA. Or even when their father leaves them to join that stupid Heaven’s Gate cult. He also survived that one too because he bought a pudding cup at the gas station before they committed mass suicide to ascend to the UFO spaceship overhead. He didn’t even return my calls after that. On second thought, don’t see the world through the eyes of a child. Being a child sucks.



Propaganda, Propaganda, Propaganda. Every supreme leader for life needs a robust media engine. I personally use TikTok, but I know stupid American President uses Twitter. That’s a big mistake, who even had time to read anymore (except my book because you’ll make yourself better)? Make sure you choose a good theme song for your event. I personally use Bon Jovi’s Living on Prayer for state functions. Unless it’s a Death to AmericaTM event then I used The Final Countdown by Europe. Most of my TikTok videos are Shakira.



Find beauty in simplicity. Sometimes after burning a small village to the ground, you go through a crisis of faith. You wonder, am I really a supreme being on Earth meant to lead a glorious empire? What if there are no more small farming communities that are obviously plotting rebellion? This can’t be all there is to life. But then you find the sweet round faces of the village children staring up at you from under the floor boards of the elder’s house, and you realize that their delicate little fingers can polish the inside of ammo casings in your munitions factory. Life is beautiful. You just have to look in the places you’d least expect. Like the floor boards.



Your Mind is Your Friend. You ever hear the phrase, “you’re your own worst enemy.” That’s completely flat out wrong, let me assure you. Your worst enemy is the crooked media outlets that depict Hannityville as anything but the paradise on Earth that it is. I even invited stupid New York Times reporter to my country, and she didn’t want to go on the official tour. I had paid good money to hire the country’s most talented actors to pretend like they are mothers out with their babies and a group of teenagers playing football (the one you play with your foot stupid American). But no, she wanted to see the internment camps. I was like, “Dude, you are totally going to miss this part coming up where a bus full of nuns crashes, teetering on the edge of a cliff, and I save them.”

Now that we’ve laid the ground work for a successful dictatorship. Further chapters will explain secrets that will change your life. Mine is certainly better now that I’ve incorporated the practices in this book. A lot of my fellow despots have trouble sleeping at night because they are afraid of assassins, the CIA overthrowing their government, and even people talking bad about them on Twitter. I sleep soundly, especially after I started taking these chewy melatonin from Costco. They put me out.

The point is that my country is running smoothly, and I don’t even have to complain about the liberal media because I control all the media in my country. Stupid American media is a different story. I hate those guys. The point is that it doesn’t keep me up at night because I practice the steps in this book.

The keyword there is practice. Populations aren’t going to terrorize themselves. You only get the rewards if you put in the effort, and perhaps take them from people with less power than you. Keep in mind that it’s a work in progress. I am still learning, even today. I was going to execute this man because he spilled mustard on his shirt that has a likeness of me on it (I’m silhouetted like Che Guevara. It’s very cool). But then I realized, he was wearing a t-shirt with my face on it. He was honoring me, so I told him to take it off before I shot him.

If you want to be like me, and have total control over your life (and all the people around you), then you’re going to need to really practice all the lessons in the book. Maybe consider setting up a studio where you can buckle down and really dive into it. Or better yet, maybe seize a yoga studio. Be careful that they don’t have swords rolled up in those mats. I heard that yogi masters are pretty much like Warrior Nun on Netflix. That’s such an amazing series. I’m going to have to start my own religion, so I can have my own warrior nuns.