March 17, 2024 • 28 mins
On Episode 195 of Stranger Connections Podcast:
Author Aaron Frale's book "My Three Year Old is a Barbarian - and other parenting problems" caught my attention. Frale is a Montana resident whose wi fi happened to work while we recorded this episode.
Learn about writing, laugh along with us, and hear about the prank that made the news, as well as almost banning him from an online service!
Topics we sort through:
What it means to 'stop when it's getting good'
Writing with your spouse (and sometimes the kid)
Authoring fantasy genre, and adding moments of humor
Is Frale's three year old actually a Barbarian
Why he wrote Time Burrito
What does it mean to pair food with your book
We need to be open to our stupid ideas
Writing the dumbest book you can think of
Grab a free book at Aaron's website, join the newsletter, too. He says he makes it funny.
We will be the judge of that.
www.aaronfrale.com
Author Aaron Frale's book "My Three Year Old is a Barbarian - and other parenting problems" caught my attention. Frale is a Montana resident whose wi fi happened to work while we recorded this episode.
Learn about writing, laugh along with us, and hear about the prank that made the news, as well as almost banning him from an online service!
Topics we sort through:
What it means to 'stop when it's getting good'
Writing with your spouse (and sometimes the kid)
Authoring fantasy genre, and adding moments of humor
Is Frale's three year old actually a Barbarian
Why he wrote Time Burrito
What does it mean to pair food with your book
We need to be open to our stupid ideas
Writing the dumbest book you can think of
Grab a free book at Aaron's website, join the newsletter, too. He says he makes it funny.
We will be the judge of that.
www.aaronfrale.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The way to get past that momentwhere you're like, I don't know if
I could continue, I don't knowwhere to go from here, or I
don't know if this is good enoughor whatever is. Just think of ten
ideas that will allow you to continueand let your mind open up to the
most stupid ideas possible. Stranger Connectionsis the embodiment of Lisa david Olsen's perspective
of we're all just friends who justsimply haven't met yet. It's an exploration
(00:24):
of the weirdly wonderful side of lifeand a look at the single commonality we
have with each other, our differences. Slip off your shoes, pour a
cup of your favorite and let's meetthis week's barrel of quirks. Welcome to
Stranger Connections, where I celebrate wonderfullyweird people and quirky stories. I'm your
(00:45):
curious beast and host, Lisa davidOlson, the practically world famous business humorist,
interactive speaker, and speaker trainer.Bring me to your event if you
want to help reignite your team todayStranger Connections. I am excited to talk
to a fellow author, so let'ssee what it's like to speak with someone
(01:07):
who wrote a book called I ThinkIt's a Series, My three year old
is a Barbarian and other parenting problems. So please welcome to the show.
I just lost your name. It'sokay, I could introduce myself. It's
(01:27):
Aaron Frail being here. I putthe strange and stranger connections my notes.
Okay, it is so fun tomeet you. And I was looking at
some of your feeds on social mediaand I see that this is not your
(01:48):
first rodeo as far as books go, So tell me about your path.
Okay, Well, I got itmfaan dramatic writing, which basically means I
got a master's degree and not havinga job, which means I had to
get another master's degree in HR formy day job. But that's another story.
(02:09):
Two master's degrees. Two's, yeah, the fun one and the employable
one. There you go. Sobut yeah, so I in my MFA
and dramatic writing, I did alot of playwriting, and I did some
independent movies and was part of thefilm and theater scene and Albuquerque, New
Mexico, and it was a lotof fun. But in order to make
(02:32):
movies happen, you got to knowa lot of good, talented, amazing
people, because you know, ifyou have a good movie and bad actors,
it doesn't work. If you havea you know, a bad script,
it doesn't work. Like there's alot of moving parts to a movie.
So I decided to fiction wise,Yeah, the networking wise, it's
a whole click. It is.Yeah, you got to really just like
(02:54):
be a part of it and gowith the flow to make that happen.
So I decided to pivot into writingbooks. And that was something that I
could do all on my own.You know, the success and failure of
the project relies on me. SoI went ahead and moved into writing books.
And I just did my first oneby writing one page every day until
(03:15):
it was done. And then afterthat I just kept going. And now
I think I haven't kept a goodcount. But over twenty I'm guessing so
people all need double masters to writea book, is what I'm hearing.
No, you just got to writeone page day until it's done. So
(03:36):
I've never heard of that process.I've certainly heard of the process of I'm
going to choose to get up fifteenminutes earlier, or I will dedicate this
hour of my day to writing butI've never heard the page a day.
That is a really interesting concept.Yeah, it's a forgot who I heard
the concept from originally, so it'snot mine, but it was somebody that
said, like, you, uh, whatever you can today and then stop
(04:01):
when it's getting good. And thereason why you stop it's getting good,
it's because it's you motivated to writethe next day. So if you write
everything and you you know, getthrough what you're really excited to write the
next day, you won't be asexcited. So you always keep that excitement.
Ah, that is so interesting becauseI would be afraid to lose the
(04:25):
mojo or the flow and what youknow. I don't want to miss that
thought. But that is a reallygood thought too. Were there days you
did write more than one page?Uh? Yeah, I mean now there
is. Now I have a goal. You know, now that I've been
doing it a while, it's athousand words a day. So that's a
little more than one page. Butnow that I'm on that goal, I
(04:49):
you know, on days where i'mreally I guess cooking, it's up to
maybe three thousand. And you know, on days where I could barely get
it out, it's like one thousyou know, the idea is like the
first part of everyone's book after theywrite their first draft is going to be
trash anyways, and you're probably gonnaget rid of it all. And so
what stops people is like they're atthat first part of the book and they're
(05:13):
like, oh, it doesn't work, I got to go back and rewrite
it. And it's like, no, get to the end. Then you
could go back and rewrite that firstpart, you know, And that's usually
what I do. I usually bythe time I get to the end,
I'm like, I know exactly howto fix the first part. So you
know, I could go back andyou know, annihilate anything that I wasn't
liking when I was first starting withthe project. So well. And I
(05:36):
know your stories incorporate a lot ofhumor, like one of your Isn't There
an Agent book? And I wasreading parts of reviews and they were saying
that there's so much humor interlaced withsarcasm, one liners, all that kind
of stuff, as well as theplot was going on. Yeah. Yeah,
I just released my first thriller book, so non science fiction, and
(06:01):
it was called The Theft, andthe premise of that one was the main
character, obviously it was a thief, but he was a thief with this
really rare condition and I forget thename of it offhand, but there's this
condition where people experience pain as ifit was pleasure. And I thought,
what a wonderful story for a mafiacrime novel. Like if you know that
(06:24):
you have that classic scene where theguy's sitting on the chair and someone's like,
you know, punching him or somethinglike that, and it would be
funny if he just started laughing.Yeah, that's in there. Yeah,
the main character has that condition,so he's always you know, laughing at
his situation and has a very highlysarcastic sense of humor. And also another
(06:48):
part of me, because I reallylike music, which you know in the
fantasy novel that shows true because inmy three year Olds of Barbary and the
way people cast spells is through music. Have to be able to sing to
cast spells, and the main characterin the Theft thinks of the most inappropriate
song for the situation. So there'sone time where he's fighting a bloody battle
(07:13):
with tons of henchmen and he's thinkingof dancing Queen while he's doing it.
So only seventeen. Yeah, exactlyexactly, you know, And when I
originally wrote it, I actually hadthe lyrics of that song interlaced with the
battle. But the problem is withcopyright infringement is the music industry is ruthless
(07:40):
and brutal and we'll get you yeahexactly. So you could only use the
song title and the the only songtitle and name of artist. That's it.
Like, you are not allowed touse anything else, not even a
line from the song. So whenI found that out, I rewrote the
theft to just include the titles andyou know, the song. But I
(08:03):
rewrote that scene with like, youknow, litter disco ball, you know,
like wherever the lyrics were I madeit. I described a disco scene,
tight pants that flare at ankle,yes exactly exactly, yes, And
that's what I had to do withthe yeah, because otherwise you're getting sued
(08:24):
and you lose a house, butyou have a book that's yeah, well
right. The audio version of thatis fantastic. Rebecca Woods has a fabulous
voice. I love that you gotyeah, Oh my god, I got.
I'm so lucked out with her,Like she is amazing, Like she's
doing these accents and changing characters thatis gold. Yeah, yeah, she
(08:46):
was so yeah, I you know, and it's funny too because that just
kind of fell into my lap,Like the company that produced the book just
kind of reach out to me andwanted to buy the rights to my book.
Never sold the rights to anything before, so it was kind of a
huge I'm I'm waiting, I know, I know, wow, Yeah,
(09:07):
they just found me and yeah,so and then when they they, you
know, they gave me like threenarrators to listen to for auditions, and
Rebecca Woods just was like a shiningstar, like she was just so good
for you with your voices, like, yeah, comic timing, you can't,
you can't you know. Yeah.Do you think they reached out to
(09:31):
you because of all your fantastic foodpairing videos. Yeah. So when I
was releasing my three year olds ofBarbarian, uh I and and you know,
so I'm part of this comedy groupcalled Funny Business. Uh you know,
we're We're just a bunch of comediansand different like walks of life,
(09:54):
Like there's musicians and writers and uhyou know, comic strip comic strip artists
and you know, actors, andwe kind of meet online everything you know,
so often. And as part ofthat group, we had an August
video challenge and I'm like, oh, I'm releasing a book in August.
That's convenience. And it was achallenge to like make one video a day
(10:16):
for the entire month of August.And I was like, okay, I've
ever done this before. And soI was debating with my wife about like
what to do, and she watchesa lot of those like food videos,
you know, where somebody's like reallyfast making food, and I'm like,
well, what's the dumbest thing youcan make, you know, in that
context, and we're like ramen.So I made a series of cooking videos
(10:37):
about making ramen. You had saidin one of your videos, like what
pairs with the book, and thenyou said ramen. And then you set
out the styrofoam bowl of cup ofnoodles, whatever it was, and I
just cringe thinking about styrofoam in themicrowave. But that was hilarious. Yes,
I knew you were being funny.That was awesome. One of the
(11:00):
book is described as the hardest partis convincing a hulked out man that the
battle axe is not a toy.The undead or not cuddly and he should
use the potty. Yeah, thatwas my you know. So there's a
lot of Lord of the Rings inthe book, you know, Like I
(11:20):
I was just thinking that it wouldbe really funny to have a three year
old in the body of a barbarian, you know, like like think Arnold
Swartzmaker and Conan, and that's yourthree year old character. And then the
mom, who she's a teaching assistantat the local high school, is going
(11:43):
to be in the body of thehalfling. And that's sort of where I
came up with the premise of thebook because as as a parent myself,
the one thing you have, youknow, a size advantage, and especially
between like two and three, theyseem to be ready to just like off
themselves at any moment, you know, Like like, my friend has this
wonderful story. So I'm gonna takea friend's story for a second here where
(12:05):
he was at Arches National Park inUtah and he's there on top of the
arch and he sets his daughter down, thinking this is going to be an
amazing thing, and she just startsrunning towards the edge, you know,
and he like has to grab herup before she can like run off the
edge. And I remember so manytimes like that. Like in Portland where
my in laws live, there wasthis fountain where we would take him to
(12:26):
go play in, and right nextto the fountain there's like basically these really
like long stairs down to a pitwith the water in it, you know,
like a nice cliff you could falloff, and every like we couldn't
sit down. We had to likekept getting up and making sure he doesn't
run off the stairs and that archa stair. He just you know,
(12:46):
like when a kid's about to hurtthemselves, you can scoop them up when
they're that age, right, youcan pull them away from danger. And
it's you know, and and rightexactly exactly sugar right right. So a
halfling, how is how is shegonna you know, save her kid when
(13:11):
she can't even you know, lifthim right? Oh my gosh. So
this is anything based on it's it'sall out of your brain. But is
anything based on your own family?You you having a son, Because the
subtitle says and other parenting problems,it is I mean loosely based on on
(13:33):
my own experience as a as afamily. None of it is my actual
family members because uh, you know, the main character her parents are not
the best parents and don't set greatexamples for her son. And she also
doesn't say, you know, setthe greatest example for her son because in
(13:54):
the beginning, she's selling weed toteenagers to uh A four to get out
of her mom's house. You know, it's hard to afford Starbucks every morning,
it is, so that's that's justentrepreneurs. You know, they're just
gonna figure out the way to makethe dollar right seew other people who people
(14:16):
who have a story in their head, you know, what kind of things
did you get past to actually startit and do it? You know,
I think my advice for everyone whomight have a story in their head is
just right, you know, justjust get past anything that you you know,
(14:41):
the way to get past that momentwhere you're like, I don't know
if I could continue, I don'tknow where to go from here, or
I don't know if this is goodenough or whatever is just think of ten
ideas that will allow you to continueand let your mind open up to the
most stupid ideas possible. You know, like if you're writing a love story,
you know, you could say,Spider Man comes in and I don't
(15:05):
know, saves everyone and now theyget together or something like that. You
know, the silly idea, you'rea spider man coming in. Does that
mean they met on the web?Ah? I love it. I wish
I had a rim shot to adrum. Carol night, folks. I
(15:26):
like that you say, think ofthe most stupid, which stupid is one
of my favorite words. That meansfunny, like, oh that was stupid.
But you're saying, embrace the absurdand let your mind put two unlikely
ideas together. That's what creativity is, and that's what you embrace. We
should go there. Why be normal? Yeah? No, my, You
(15:48):
know, I got really lucky whenI was in school. I talked about
being in school. I got solucky that there was a teacher I had
there. His name is Digbie Wolf, and he was he created the show.
So he was one of the old, like school Hollywood writers that just
decided to retire in New Mexico andteach comedy writing classes. And so I
actually got to like take comedy writingwith like an amazing teacher. And he
(16:15):
always said, like, comedy's prettyeasy. You just take two things normally
separate in a way that temporarily combinesthem and I was just like, oh,
just that that That statement always stuckwith me because it was just so
amazing and profound. You know,yes, that's how you get to your
(16:36):
book reveal paired with Ramen. Whynot? And I remember that right,
right, right, and a goodway right. I think that is one
of the best things that we cantry. And I do have a journal
that I wrote, and it's allabout creativity. I'm an improvisation specialist,
(16:56):
and that's what you do. Youtake the two unlikely am I example is
generally somebody put peanut butter and chocolatetogether, and thank god they did,
but that's unlikely. Somebody put pineappleon a pizza, like it or not.
That was creative, you know somethingwearing shorts and long sleeves, why
not. My favorite Family Guy jokeever is the peanut butter and chocolate joke.
(17:22):
It was just a cutaway on FamilyGuy where there's these two people in
a brutal accident and they have oneguy has a has chocolate, the other
guy has peanut butter. They're bothlike sticking out of their cars at awkward
angles and the guy's like, youput peanut butter in my chocolate. The
other one like you put chocolate inyour peanut butter. And then this police
(17:44):
officer comes up and it's like,I'm officer Reese's no, I didn't.
That is based on the old commercial. Do you remember that I'm older than
you? I guess two people comingaround the corner right right? Yeah,
I do remember that also, Ithink, yeah, not really remember,
(18:04):
but more like I think I sawit later. You know. That is
so funny. That is so yeah. I used to teach like critical thinking
classes and I used to use oldcommercials for critical thinking skills because you know,
you have like commercials from the fiftieswhere it's like what Brandon cigarette?
Do you prefer? Doctor? Youknow? And I show that like like
(18:30):
do you think people have a reasonto lie to you? You know,
like when you when you there's thisold magazine commercial women love when men blow
Carlton smoke in their face like you'reyou know, because there's a podcast,
people are not gonna be able tosee in that moment. But I almost
(18:52):
spit up my water. Oh Igot the video too. Well, there
we go, Okay, people aregoing to see that moment. I could
just auld drink of water. Right, Carlton, women love can you picture
that? Yeah, we love thatjust as much as getting a vacuum for
our birthday, right, fellas?Right? Oh, so what's next on
(19:17):
your agenda? Then you've got doyou have the whole series written for this
Barbarians? Uh? Yeah, No, it's a so I got orcs in
Portland and other social justice issues.That's the sequel. It's out on book
now, and then March nineteenth iswhen the audiobook for that one comes out.
They get stuck in the fantasy worldfor the first series, and then
(19:41):
the fantasy world comes to our worldfor the second one in the series,
and I have a whole I'm notgoing to reveal too much, but I
have a whole plot line of whereit's going. And you know, you
know, I thought of this ideaa long time ago that there's always a
lot of these fantasy books that arelike, it's our world in the future,
you know, like like you haveour our our world, but it's
(20:07):
described in the way where people arelike, like you see the Golden gate
Bridge, but they call it thegold Bridge or something like that, and
then later on suddenly the reader understandsthat, oh no, it's been Earth
all along, and so I kindof wanted to do that, but I
kind of I wanted to do thatkind of story, but I wanted to
say, go back to the momentwhen it happened. You know, when
(20:32):
when when you know, because yousee a lot of fantasy worlds that used
to be our world, and I'mlike, wait, there's this cool event
that happened in the past to makethat happen, So why don't we tell
that story. So that's sort ofthe overall plot of the story. So
you know, the third book's written, it's being edited at the moment,
(20:52):
and maybe seven eight. I don'tknow. How does your love support your
sci fi sarcasmic brain? A lotof times when I think of something,
it's because, like I wrote abook called Time Brito, which if you
haven't had a chance to look atthe cover, it's probably favorite book cover.
(21:15):
It's a cat on a flying spacebrido. But when I thought of
the premise of that one, Ijust said, you know what, I'm
gonna write the dumbest thing I couldthink of, And it was about a
guy time traveling to make a perfect, perfect breakfast burrito. That was how
I started. And there's four booksin the series, and there's probably more
(21:38):
planned. So start off with thatsilly premise, but then it just sort
of went from there. You know. Then there is just and Taco Bell
hasn't reached out yet to sponsor you, not yet, I'm hoping. Yeah,
hang in thea for that deal.That's right. Oh my gosh,
Cat's not included. Hey, we'lldo a whole I'll do a whole book
(22:04):
of him going for the perfect cheloupaif Taco Bell sponsored me. So we're
talking bob blast on the side,right exactly. That's fantastic. So your
wife just knows there's going to betimes you're going to be hold up right
in your pages and bouncing ideas offof her? Or does she find out
when everybody else does? Finds outwhat everyone else does. But she's a
(22:27):
writer too, actually, so ohyeah, he doesn't have anything published at
this at this moment. But shefinished her first romance novel. Oh it's
it's not necessarily a comedy, butthere are funny, funny parts. But
yeah, it's a a and it'smore literary because the characters are academics,
(22:51):
and so she has her first novel, so it actually kind of works out
because we sit down and say,are we going to get our thousand words
today? You know, and Ilove that support each other out. So
your accountability buddy is on your mortgage. I mean that's luck because that's my
husband and I. We do comedytogether, and having that accountability buddy and
(23:11):
that bounce ideas off of person thatclose is really helpful. I don't always
take my jokes to him, though, I do know who to go to
with my jokes. I bounce itoff my besties and my adult sons,
and they'll let me know if that'sworking or not sometimes shows. But I
(23:32):
know that's fantastic. So it's onlya matter of time till your son starts
writing. Yeah, no, heuh, he's already started. He he
loves to just pull up a computerand just start typing because he sees us
typing, and so he just typesrandom characters. And he also one time
(23:52):
wrote a page story called Radio Towerwhere he just told us what to write.
We actually hand wrote it for him. But one day we get to
look back at that. I loveit. What is it about it?
Yeah, it's about a guy witha radio tower, and eventually they decided
to build an obstacle course, veryrelevant stuff for a kid his age.
(24:12):
You know. Wow, Okay,that's your kid. He's getting all technical
and imaginative. I dig that.I hope that never goes away for him.
We're going to keep his life fullof curiosity and absolutely exciting things.
So yeah, that's the best.Oh, I'm so happy this, this
is really cool. I need toknow before I let you go erin if
(24:34):
you have a dare or a prankstory, one that you've done or had
done to you, I need toknow. So I would say this is
more of a prank, and itwas a prank that got out of control.
Uh So, my friends when Iwas back in college, we were
just hanging out and we, youknow, one of my friends sold stuff
(24:56):
on eBay, you know, likehe basic would refurbished keyboards and like the
musical instruments and resell them. Andyou know, we decided to sell our
roommate on eBay. So we putthis whole posting saying that you could go
buy buy him, and he willcome to your house and basically do whatever
(25:17):
you want that's legal in your country, and eat all your food and eat
all your food. All you haveto do is pay is airfare, give
him place to live, give himsome food, and he'll clean and cook.
And we put all these pictures ofhim, like like we had one
picture where he had like, youknow, a vacuum, another where he
was fixing a computer, a thirdwhere he had like an American flag and
a gun. And you know,like so the roommate knew you were doing
(25:42):
this. Obviously, yes, hewas in on it. So anyways,
the news contact, the local newsstation contacted us, and we got on
like the late night news for tryingto sell our roommates on eBay. I
actually appeared in the preview commercial,but I was cut from the story.
(26:06):
But my roommate got onto the story, the one we were trying to sell,
uh. And and after I gotin the news, the auction went
from like you know, some viewsfrom our friends because we thought it was
funny, to like suddenly thousands ofviews, like it was just going exploding.
And then like later that day,eBay sent me a letter saying human
(26:27):
trafficking was illegal and I cannot dothat. We're going to get him back.
This was alone not forever, right, right, This is not this
is not permanent. This is likea weekend we're talking here, like,
look at all of his talents.We're not giving him up. We just
want to make a little dough wewant right, right right? Yeah,
(26:48):
So I guess my auction got canceledon eBay for human trafficking. They can't
cancel my account. I don't knowwhat that says. Yeah, we like
you mostly, just don't be sellingpeople. Please still stop selling people an
eBay. You stop selling it.You could continue to sell an eBay.
(27:10):
Yes, we'll still take your golfshoes, but leave Frank out of it.
I know, fantastic. Oh that'sso great. Well, I will
add links to your books and allthe things. Is there any thing else
you want to tell people how tofind you or your books? Go ahead
and tell us. Yeah, soAaronfrail dot com. In there on Aaronfrail
(27:36):
dot com there's a free book linkwhere you could download Time Burrito for free
if you'd like it. Puts youon my newsletter if you download it and
my newsletter has funny things, thenmy three year old's a Barbarian and other
parenting problems is going to be onaudible, so they could check out that
as well. And Rebecca Woods isamazing, so just to hear her generation.
(27:57):
I think it's worth it, soit absolutely is. I am honored
to have chatted with you, AaronFrail. I appreciate you and remember that
we can only be strangers once,and I invite you to stay weird.
Can you do it? Yes?I can. I get it. Thank
you, Thank you. I cando it. I will be weird and
(28:18):
it's good to meet you too.Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it. I appreciateit. Bye bye. This has been
Stranger Connections with Lisa David Olson
The way to get past that momentwhere you're like, I don't know if
I could continue, I don't knowwhere to go from here, or I
don't know if this is good enoughor whatever is. Just think of ten
ideas that will allow you to continueand let your mind open up to the
most stupid ideas possible. Stranger Connectionsis the embodiment of Lisa david Olsen's perspective
of we're all just friends who justsimply haven't met yet. It's an exploration
(00:24):
of the weirdly wonderful side of lifeand a look at the single commonality we
have with each other, our differences. Slip off your shoes, pour a
cup of your favorite and let's meetthis week's barrel of quirks. Welcome to
Stranger Connections, where I celebrate wonderfullyweird people and quirky stories. I'm your
(00:45):
curious beast and host, Lisa davidOlson, the practically world famous business humorist,
interactive speaker, and speaker trainer.Bring me to your event if you
want to help reignite your team todayStranger Connections. I am excited to talk
to a fellow author, so let'ssee what it's like to speak with someone
(01:07):
who wrote a book called I ThinkIt's a Series, My three year old
is a Barbarian and other parenting problems. So please welcome to the show.
I just lost your name. It'sokay, I could introduce myself. It's
(01:27):
Aaron Frail being here. I putthe strange and stranger connections my notes.
Okay, it is so fun tomeet you. And I was looking at
some of your feeds on social mediaand I see that this is not your
(01:48):
first rodeo as far as books go, So tell me about your path.
Okay, Well, I got itmfaan dramatic writing, which basically means I
got a master's degree and not havinga job, which means I had to
get another master's degree in HR formy day job. But that's another story.
(02:09):
Two master's degrees. Two's, yeah, the fun one and the employable
one. There you go. Sobut yeah, so I in my MFA
and dramatic writing, I did alot of playwriting, and I did some
independent movies and was part of thefilm and theater scene and Albuquerque, New
Mexico, and it was a lotof fun. But in order to make
(02:32):
movies happen, you got to knowa lot of good, talented, amazing
people, because you know, ifyou have a good movie and bad actors,
it doesn't work. If you havea you know, a bad script,
it doesn't work. Like there's alot of moving parts to a movie.
So I decided to fiction wise,Yeah, the networking wise, it's
a whole click. It is.Yeah, you got to really just like
(02:54):
be a part of it and gowith the flow to make that happen.
So I decided to pivot into writingbooks. And that was something that I
could do all on my own.You know, the success and failure of
the project relies on me. SoI went ahead and moved into writing books.
And I just did my first oneby writing one page every day until
(03:15):
it was done. And then afterthat I just kept going. And now
I think I haven't kept a goodcount. But over twenty I'm guessing so
people all need double masters to writea book, is what I'm hearing.
No, you just got to writeone page day until it's done. So
(03:36):
I've never heard of that process.I've certainly heard of the process of I'm
going to choose to get up fifteenminutes earlier, or I will dedicate this
hour of my day to writing butI've never heard the page a day.
That is a really interesting concept.Yeah, it's a forgot who I heard
the concept from originally, so it'snot mine, but it was somebody that
said, like, you, uh, whatever you can today and then stop
(04:01):
when it's getting good. And thereason why you stop it's getting good,
it's because it's you motivated to writethe next day. So if you write
everything and you you know, getthrough what you're really excited to write the
next day, you won't be asexcited. So you always keep that excitement.
Ah, that is so interesting becauseI would be afraid to lose the
(04:25):
mojo or the flow and what youknow. I don't want to miss that
thought. But that is a reallygood thought too. Were there days you
did write more than one page?Uh? Yeah, I mean now there
is. Now I have a goal. You know, now that I've been
doing it a while, it's athousand words a day. So that's a
little more than one page. Butnow that I'm on that goal, I
(04:49):
you know, on days where i'mreally I guess cooking, it's up to
maybe three thousand. And you know, on days where I could barely get
it out, it's like one thousyou know, the idea is like the
first part of everyone's book after theywrite their first draft is going to be
trash anyways, and you're probably gonnaget rid of it all. And so
what stops people is like they're atthat first part of the book and they're
(05:13):
like, oh, it doesn't work, I got to go back and rewrite
it. And it's like, no, get to the end. Then you
could go back and rewrite that firstpart, you know, And that's usually
what I do. I usually bythe time I get to the end,
I'm like, I know exactly howto fix the first part. So you
know, I could go back andyou know, annihilate anything that I wasn't
liking when I was first starting withthe project. So well. And I
(05:36):
know your stories incorporate a lot ofhumor, like one of your Isn't There
an Agent book? And I wasreading parts of reviews and they were saying
that there's so much humor interlaced withsarcasm, one liners, all that kind
of stuff, as well as theplot was going on. Yeah. Yeah,
I just released my first thriller book, so non science fiction, and
(06:01):
it was called The Theft, andthe premise of that one was the main
character, obviously it was a thief, but he was a thief with this
really rare condition and I forget thename of it offhand, but there's this
condition where people experience pain as ifit was pleasure. And I thought,
what a wonderful story for a mafiacrime novel. Like if you know that
(06:24):
you have that classic scene where theguy's sitting on the chair and someone's like,
you know, punching him or somethinglike that, and it would be
funny if he just started laughing.Yeah, that's in there. Yeah,
the main character has that condition,so he's always you know, laughing at
his situation and has a very highlysarcastic sense of humor. And also another
(06:48):
part of me, because I reallylike music, which you know in the
fantasy novel that shows true because inmy three year Olds of Barbary and the
way people cast spells is through music. Have to be able to sing to
cast spells, and the main characterin the Theft thinks of the most inappropriate
song for the situation. So there'sone time where he's fighting a bloody battle
(07:13):
with tons of henchmen and he's thinkingof dancing Queen while he's doing it.
So only seventeen. Yeah, exactlyexactly, you know, And when I
originally wrote it, I actually hadthe lyrics of that song interlaced with the
battle. But the problem is withcopyright infringement is the music industry is ruthless
(07:40):
and brutal and we'll get you yeahexactly. So you could only use the
song title and the the only songtitle and name of artist. That's it.
Like, you are not allowed touse anything else, not even a
line from the song. So whenI found that out, I rewrote the
theft to just include the titles andyou know, the song. But I
(08:03):
rewrote that scene with like, youknow, litter disco ball, you know,
like wherever the lyrics were I madeit. I described a disco scene,
tight pants that flare at ankle,yes exactly exactly, yes, And
that's what I had to do withthe yeah, because otherwise you're getting sued
(08:24):
and you lose a house, butyou have a book that's yeah, well
right. The audio version of thatis fantastic. Rebecca Woods has a fabulous
voice. I love that you gotyeah, Oh my god, I got.
I'm so lucked out with her,Like she is amazing, Like she's
doing these accents and changing characters thatis gold. Yeah, yeah, she
(08:46):
was so yeah, I you know, and it's funny too because that just
kind of fell into my lap,Like the company that produced the book just
kind of reach out to me andwanted to buy the rights to my book.
Never sold the rights to anything before, so it was kind of a
huge I'm I'm waiting, I know, I know, wow, Yeah,
(09:07):
they just found me and yeah,so and then when they they, you
know, they gave me like threenarrators to listen to for auditions, and
Rebecca Woods just was like a shiningstar, like she was just so good
for you with your voices, like, yeah, comic timing, you can't,
you can't you know. Yeah.Do you think they reached out to
(09:31):
you because of all your fantastic foodpairing videos. Yeah. So when I
was releasing my three year olds ofBarbarian, uh I and and you know,
so I'm part of this comedy groupcalled Funny Business. Uh you know,
we're We're just a bunch of comediansand different like walks of life,
(09:54):
Like there's musicians and writers and uhyou know, comic strip comic strip artists
and you know, actors, andwe kind of meet online everything you know,
so often. And as part ofthat group, we had an August
video challenge and I'm like, oh, I'm releasing a book in August.
That's convenience. And it was achallenge to like make one video a day
(10:16):
for the entire month of August.And I was like, okay, I've
ever done this before. And soI was debating with my wife about like
what to do, and she watchesa lot of those like food videos,
you know, where somebody's like reallyfast making food, and I'm like,
well, what's the dumbest thing youcan make, you know, in that
context, and we're like ramen.So I made a series of cooking videos
(10:37):
about making ramen. You had saidin one of your videos, like what
pairs with the book, and thenyou said ramen. And then you set
out the styrofoam bowl of cup ofnoodles, whatever it was, and I
just cringe thinking about styrofoam in themicrowave. But that was hilarious. Yes,
I knew you were being funny.That was awesome. One of the
(11:00):
book is described as the hardest partis convincing a hulked out man that the
battle axe is not a toy.The undead or not cuddly and he should
use the potty. Yeah, thatwas my you know. So there's a
lot of Lord of the Rings inthe book, you know, Like I
(11:20):
I was just thinking that it wouldbe really funny to have a three year
old in the body of a barbarian, you know, like like think Arnold
Swartzmaker and Conan, and that's yourthree year old character. And then the
mom, who she's a teaching assistantat the local high school, is going
(11:43):
to be in the body of thehalfling. And that's sort of where I
came up with the premise of thebook because as as a parent myself,
the one thing you have, youknow, a size advantage, and especially
between like two and three, theyseem to be ready to just like off
themselves at any moment, you know, Like like, my friend has this
wonderful story. So I'm gonna takea friend's story for a second here where
(12:05):
he was at Arches National Park inUtah and he's there on top of the
arch and he sets his daughter down, thinking this is going to be an
amazing thing, and she just startsrunning towards the edge, you know,
and he like has to grab herup before she can like run off the
edge. And I remember so manytimes like that. Like in Portland where
my in laws live, there wasthis fountain where we would take him to
(12:26):
go play in, and right nextto the fountain there's like basically these really
like long stairs down to a pitwith the water in it, you know,
like a nice cliff you could falloff, and every like we couldn't
sit down. We had to likekept getting up and making sure he doesn't
run off the stairs and that archa stair. He just you know,
(12:46):
like when a kid's about to hurtthemselves, you can scoop them up when
they're that age, right, youcan pull them away from danger. And
it's you know, and and rightexactly exactly sugar right right. So a
halfling, how is how is shegonna you know, save her kid when
(13:11):
she can't even you know, lifthim right? Oh my gosh. So
this is anything based on it's it'sall out of your brain. But is
anything based on your own family?You you having a son, Because the
subtitle says and other parenting problems,it is I mean loosely based on on
(13:33):
my own experience as a as afamily. None of it is my actual
family members because uh, you know, the main character her parents are not
the best parents and don't set greatexamples for her son. And she also
doesn't say, you know, setthe greatest example for her son because in
(13:54):
the beginning, she's selling weed toteenagers to uh A four to get out
of her mom's house. You know, it's hard to afford Starbucks every morning,
it is, so that's that's justentrepreneurs. You know, they're just
gonna figure out the way to makethe dollar right seew other people who people
(14:16):
who have a story in their head, you know, what kind of things
did you get past to actually startit and do it? You know,
I think my advice for everyone whomight have a story in their head is
just right, you know, justjust get past anything that you you know,
(14:41):
the way to get past that momentwhere you're like, I don't know
if I could continue, I don'tknow where to go from here, or
I don't know if this is goodenough or whatever is just think of ten
ideas that will allow you to continueand let your mind open up to the
most stupid ideas possible. You know, like if you're writing a love story,
you know, you could say,Spider Man comes in and I don't
(15:05):
know, saves everyone and now theyget together or something like that. You
know, the silly idea, you'rea spider man coming in. Does that
mean they met on the web?Ah? I love it. I wish
I had a rim shot to adrum. Carol night, folks. I
(15:26):
like that you say, think ofthe most stupid, which stupid is one
of my favorite words. That meansfunny, like, oh that was stupid.
But you're saying, embrace the absurdand let your mind put two unlikely
ideas together. That's what creativity is, and that's what you embrace. We
should go there. Why be normal? Yeah? No, my, You
(15:48):
know, I got really lucky whenI was in school. I talked about
being in school. I got solucky that there was a teacher I had
there. His name is Digbie Wolf, and he was he created the show.
So he was one of the old, like school Hollywood writers that just
decided to retire in New Mexico andteach comedy writing classes. And so I
actually got to like take comedy writingwith like an amazing teacher. And he
(16:15):
always said, like, comedy's prettyeasy. You just take two things normally
separate in a way that temporarily combinesthem and I was just like, oh,
just that that That statement always stuckwith me because it was just so
amazing and profound. You know,yes, that's how you get to your
(16:36):
book reveal paired with Ramen. Whynot? And I remember that right,
right, right, and a goodway right. I think that is one
of the best things that we cantry. And I do have a journal
that I wrote, and it's allabout creativity. I'm an improvisation specialist,
(16:56):
and that's what you do. Youtake the two unlikely am I example is
generally somebody put peanut butter and chocolatetogether, and thank god they did,
but that's unlikely. Somebody put pineappleon a pizza, like it or not.
That was creative, you know somethingwearing shorts and long sleeves, why
not. My favorite Family Guy jokeever is the peanut butter and chocolate joke.
(17:22):
It was just a cutaway on FamilyGuy where there's these two people in
a brutal accident and they have oneguy has a has chocolate, the other
guy has peanut butter. They're bothlike sticking out of their cars at awkward
angles and the guy's like, youput peanut butter in my chocolate. The
other one like you put chocolate inyour peanut butter. And then this police
(17:44):
officer comes up and it's like,I'm officer Reese's no, I didn't.
That is based on the old commercial. Do you remember that I'm older than
you? I guess two people comingaround the corner right right? Yeah,
I do remember that also, Ithink, yeah, not really remember,
(18:04):
but more like I think I sawit later. You know. That is
so funny. That is so yeah. I used to teach like critical thinking
classes and I used to use oldcommercials for critical thinking skills because you know,
you have like commercials from the fiftieswhere it's like what Brandon cigarette?
Do you prefer? Doctor? Youknow? And I show that like like
(18:30):
do you think people have a reasonto lie to you? You know,
like when you when you there's thisold magazine commercial women love when men blow
Carlton smoke in their face like you'reyou know, because there's a podcast,
people are not gonna be able tosee in that moment. But I almost
(18:52):
spit up my water. Oh Igot the video too. Well, there
we go, Okay, people aregoing to see that moment. I could
just auld drink of water. Right, Carlton, women love can you picture
that? Yeah, we love thatjust as much as getting a vacuum for
our birthday, right, fellas?Right? Oh, so what's next on
(19:17):
your agenda? Then you've got doyou have the whole series written for this
Barbarians? Uh? Yeah, No, it's a so I got orcs in
Portland and other social justice issues.That's the sequel. It's out on book
now, and then March nineteenth iswhen the audiobook for that one comes out.
They get stuck in the fantasy worldfor the first series, and then
(19:41):
the fantasy world comes to our worldfor the second one in the series,
and I have a whole I'm notgoing to reveal too much, but I
have a whole plot line of whereit's going. And you know, you
know, I thought of this ideaa long time ago that there's always a
lot of these fantasy books that arelike, it's our world in the future,
you know, like like you haveour our our world, but it's
(20:07):
described in the way where people arelike, like you see the Golden gate
Bridge, but they call it thegold Bridge or something like that, and
then later on suddenly the reader understandsthat, oh no, it's been Earth
all along, and so I kindof wanted to do that, but I
kind of I wanted to do thatkind of story, but I wanted to
say, go back to the momentwhen it happened. You know, when
(20:32):
when when you know, because yousee a lot of fantasy worlds that used
to be our world, and I'mlike, wait, there's this cool event
that happened in the past to makethat happen, So why don't we tell
that story. So that's sort ofthe overall plot of the story. So
you know, the third book's written, it's being edited at the moment,
(20:52):
and maybe seven eight. I don'tknow. How does your love support your
sci fi sarcasmic brain? A lotof times when I think of something,
it's because, like I wrote abook called Time Brito, which if you
haven't had a chance to look atthe cover, it's probably favorite book cover.
(21:15):
It's a cat on a flying spacebrido. But when I thought of
the premise of that one, Ijust said, you know what, I'm
gonna write the dumbest thing I couldthink of, And it was about a
guy time traveling to make a perfect, perfect breakfast burrito. That was how
I started. And there's four booksin the series, and there's probably more
(21:38):
planned. So start off with thatsilly premise, but then it just sort
of went from there. You know. Then there is just and Taco Bell
hasn't reached out yet to sponsor you, not yet, I'm hoping. Yeah,
hang in thea for that deal.That's right. Oh my gosh,
Cat's not included. Hey, we'lldo a whole I'll do a whole book
(22:04):
of him going for the perfect cheloupaif Taco Bell sponsored me. So we're
talking bob blast on the side,right exactly. That's fantastic. So your
wife just knows there's going to betimes you're going to be hold up right
in your pages and bouncing ideas offof her? Or does she find out
when everybody else does? Finds outwhat everyone else does. But she's a
(22:27):
writer too, actually, so ohyeah, he doesn't have anything published at
this at this moment. But shefinished her first romance novel. Oh it's
it's not necessarily a comedy, butthere are funny, funny parts. But
yeah, it's a a and it'smore literary because the characters are academics,
(22:51):
and so she has her first novel, so it actually kind of works out
because we sit down and say,are we going to get our thousand words
today? You know, and Ilove that support each other out. So
your accountability buddy is on your mortgage. I mean that's luck because that's my
husband and I. We do comedytogether, and having that accountability buddy and
(23:11):
that bounce ideas off of person thatclose is really helpful. I don't always
take my jokes to him, though, I do know who to go to
with my jokes. I bounce itoff my besties and my adult sons,
and they'll let me know if that'sworking or not sometimes shows. But I
(23:32):
know that's fantastic. So it's onlya matter of time till your son starts
writing. Yeah, no, heuh, he's already started. He he
loves to just pull up a computerand just start typing because he sees us
typing, and so he just typesrandom characters. And he also one time
(23:52):
wrote a page story called Radio Towerwhere he just told us what to write.
We actually hand wrote it for him. But one day we get to
look back at that. I loveit. What is it about it?
Yeah, it's about a guy witha radio tower, and eventually they decided
to build an obstacle course, veryrelevant stuff for a kid his age.
(24:12):
You know. Wow, Okay,that's your kid. He's getting all technical
and imaginative. I dig that.I hope that never goes away for him.
We're going to keep his life fullof curiosity and absolutely exciting things.
So yeah, that's the best.Oh, I'm so happy this, this
is really cool. I need toknow before I let you go erin if
(24:34):
you have a dare or a prankstory, one that you've done or had
done to you, I need toknow. So I would say this is
more of a prank, and itwas a prank that got out of control.
Uh So, my friends when Iwas back in college, we were
just hanging out and we, youknow, one of my friends sold stuff
(24:56):
on eBay, you know, likehe basic would refurbished keyboards and like the
musical instruments and resell them. Andyou know, we decided to sell our
roommate on eBay. So we putthis whole posting saying that you could go
buy buy him, and he willcome to your house and basically do whatever
(25:17):
you want that's legal in your country, and eat all your food and eat
all your food. All you haveto do is pay is airfare, give
him place to live, give himsome food, and he'll clean and cook.
And we put all these pictures ofhim, like like we had one
picture where he had like, youknow, a vacuum, another where he
was fixing a computer, a thirdwhere he had like an American flag and
a gun. And you know,like so the roommate knew you were doing
(25:42):
this. Obviously, yes, hewas in on it. So anyways,
the news contact, the local newsstation contacted us, and we got on
like the late night news for tryingto sell our roommates on eBay. I
actually appeared in the preview commercial,but I was cut from the story.
(26:06):
But my roommate got onto the story, the one we were trying to sell,
uh. And and after I gotin the news, the auction went
from like you know, some viewsfrom our friends because we thought it was
funny, to like suddenly thousands ofviews, like it was just going exploding.
And then like later that day,eBay sent me a letter saying human
(26:27):
trafficking was illegal and I cannot dothat. We're going to get him back.
This was alone not forever, right, right, This is not this
is not permanent. This is likea weekend we're talking here, like,
look at all of his talents.We're not giving him up. We just
want to make a little dough wewant right, right right? Yeah,
(26:48):
So I guess my auction got canceledon eBay for human trafficking. They can't
cancel my account. I don't knowwhat that says. Yeah, we like
you mostly, just don't be sellingpeople. Please still stop selling people an
eBay. You stop selling it.You could continue to sell an eBay.
(27:10):
Yes, we'll still take your golfshoes, but leave Frank out of it.
I know, fantastic. Oh that'sso great. Well, I will
add links to your books and allthe things. Is there any thing else
you want to tell people how tofind you or your books? Go ahead
and tell us. Yeah, soAaronfrail dot com. In there on Aaronfrail
(27:36):
dot com there's a free book linkwhere you could download Time Burrito for free
if you'd like it. Puts youon my newsletter if you download it and
my newsletter has funny things, thenmy three year old's a Barbarian and other
parenting problems is going to be onaudible, so they could check out that
as well. And Rebecca Woods isamazing, so just to hear her generation.
(27:57):
I think it's worth it, soit absolutely is. I am honored
to have chatted with you, AaronFrail. I appreciate you and remember that
we can only be strangers once,and I invite you to stay weird.
Can you do it? Yes?I can. I get it. Thank
you, Thank you. I cando it. I will be weird and
(28:18):
it's good to meet you too.Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it. I appreciateit. Bye bye. This has been
Stranger Connections with Lisa David Olson
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