Home of the science fiction, comedy, horror, and fantasy author Aaron Frale
Before I start, myself and plethora of authors are doing a book sale. My apologies for not getting it out sooner but my email broke, and it wasn’t able to post on the day. However, many of them are still on sale. I’m also doing a Sci Fi and Fantasy Giveaway too with other authors.
Book three of the Misfits of Carnt is coming 7/16/24 on Audible and Amazon. Would you like to see the cover? Just watch the trailer below:
Before I start, myself and plethora of authors are doing a book sale for today only! I’m also doing a Sci Fi and Fantasy Giveaway too with other authors.
Today, I have another silly survey for you. This is my first time running it on the new platform, so it’s more of an experiment. If it doesn’t work as a survey, it should at least be entertaining to read. As always, there is a button for anything you want to tell me, and if you ask a question, I may just answer it on a future positing.
Necromantic rituals, murderous ogres, battle-scarred rangers: not a typical Saturday detention for unsuspecting teaching assistant, Petra, and her delinquent teen charges.
The Beaverton High School Breakfast Club show up for what they thought would be cleaning the locker room with a toothbrush when the morning goes horribly wrong, and they fall victim to a deadly, dark spell.
Some jerkwad moon mage shoves the consciousness of Petra’s three-year-old into the body of a musclebound barbarian, and she is transformed into a halfling. The kids get stuck as a cleric, fire mage, and other stalwarts of your typical fantasy gaming party.
Now they must quest through a land of pissed-off warriors, angry giants, a pompous vampire, and a necromancer out to kill Petra and her child.
Despite being in a world where everything threatens to unalive her, the hardest part is convincing a hulked-out man that the battle axe is not a toy, the undead are not cuddly, and he should use the potty.
Available on Amazon and Audible.
We all know that school can be a snooze fest. Why not liven it up with some monsters, demons, and of course vampires?
1. History – Students falling asleep during that civil war reenactment History channel doco? Why not hire real civil war veterans? Meddling in powers you cannot possibly comprehend can be fun and educational using dark ritual magic to revive those civil war vets in unmarked graves that just happen to be buried under the school. Extra credit to all the students who notice that the zombies tearing the classmates limb from limb aren’t using civil war era tactics.
2. Math – When scrawling equations on the chalkboard that hasn’t been cleaned since 1972, and the students start pulling out their phones, it’s time to pull out that murderous ventriloquist dummy, whose head turns on its own, doesn’t need someone for it to speak and always is found in pools of missing students’ blood. They’ll think twice when your back is turned, and they go for their phone, when a dummy slowly turns its head and stares at them.
3. Swim – What’s more motivating than a swamp monster? Seriously, it’s how Michael Phelps got so good.
4. Spanish – Students not taking the class seriously and only wanting to learn curse words and foul language they can use in front of their English only parents? Hire a bruja to provide curses and hexes that when uttered allowed will curse the speaker with anywhere from intense itching to being maimed for life. Title the handout, “Top Ten Naughty Phrases in Spanish.” Then after most of the class has been cursed, say “And that’s the importance of learning another language.”
5. Computer Class – Students spending more time looking for ways to get past the firewall than actually learning fundamental computers skills? This one’s easy! Scan a demonic entity that was trapped in a book that would forever imprison them until someone read it to set it free. Ignoring the fact that a book titled “Never Read This Book EVER!” is only asking for someone to read it and the demon manipulating students into ritual murder, what does it matter because they are finally interested in computers? The demon will take care of itself. After a few days chatting with the sexual predators lurking the school servers, it will demand to get back into the book citing, “These people are crazy!”
6. Sex Ed – Werewolves. That’s all.
7. English – Students yawing when Mr. Darcy confesses his love? Hire the local sexy vampire with a British accent to read to the students. Not only will he be able to tell the students firsthand accounts about when he used to party with Jane Austen, but he will most likely turn that mean girl clique into creatures of the night. I mean, he can turn you anytime, but he hasn’t noticed even though you are wearing extra neck revealing clothing. Eventually, you’ll end up staking the mean girls, and tying the guy up in your basement demanding he turn you into a vampire. Just normal, healthy English teacher stuff.
8. Science – Smashing hot dogs frozen in liquid nitrogen no longer doing it for the students? Develop a formula that will help you become a super teacher using the high school chemistry supplies. Even though you now black out at night, and find human remains in your basement, just think about everything they are learning. Like detective skills and disposing of the monstrous form of their teacher’s body without alerting the local authorities that anything is happening at the local high school with a higher body count than most action movies.
9. PE Class – Students spending most of the class snapping towels at each other in the locker room, moping about their prom date, or need motivating speeches before they get back out on that field? Just let that specter that eviscerates the student inexplicably taking a shower at night off its leash. No one will be wasting time in the locker room when the light of day is the only thing that protects them from certain annihilation.
10. Assemblies – Unsuccessful stoking the school spirit to bored expressions and demotivated students? Turn into a giant snake. Works every time.
Orcs invading Portland, a warg in the janitor’s closet, black ooze dissolving the gym teacher: a typical day for the students of Beaverton High and their fearless teaching assistant.
Petra thought working for her old high school was the worst thing that could happen to her—until a magical disease infected her son.
Meanwhile, the Barbarians Breakfast Club faces creatures invading their high school and murdering their classmates and principal. Okay, so maybe the latter isn’t that bad.
The phenomena intensify, and soon, it is not just the high school that’s infested with murderous creatures. So, our hapless heroes must seek aid from old allies and enemies.
Find out if Portland can survive in the second Misfits of Carnt novel.
Necromantic rituals, murderous ogres, battle-scarred rangers: not a typical Saturday detention for unsuspecting teaching assistant Petra and her delinquent teen charges.
The Beaverton High School Breakfast Club show up for what they thought would be cleaning the locker room with a toothbrush when the morning goes horribly wrong, and they fall victim to a deadly, dark spell.
Some jerkwad moon mage shoves the consciousness of Petra’s three-year-old into the body of a musclebound barbarian, and she is transformed into a halfling.
The kids get stuck as a cleric, fire mage, and other stalwarts of your typical fantasy gaming party.
Now they must quest through a land of pissed-off warriors, angry giants, a pompous vampire, and a necromancer out to kill Petra and her child.
Despite being in a world where everything threatens to shuffle off her mortal coil, the hardest part is convincing a hulked-out man that the battle axe is not a toy, the undead are not cuddly, and he should use the potty.
Check that DEI box by offering ways your company can spread awareness issues facing fantasy races.
1. Murderous Humanoid Sensitivity Training – Saruman really delt a blow for all the humanoid races by hiring only the murderous orcs. Don’t be so quick to judge an orc Grak the Conquerer with a belt of human skulls and a giant cleaver. Those could be skulls that he uses when he teaches Anatomy and Physiology during his part time adjunct position at the local community college. The cleaver could be shaving equipment, and now he’s embarrassed by pointing out that excess of body hair.
2. Dwarf Alcoholism Awareness – Most people think that dwarves are binge drinking, tankard slamming, rowdy folks swimming in ale and ready to pick a fight. That’s pretty much right. This training involves teaching all the dwarves where the local taverns are located, what direction to run when the cops show up, and which places don’t really screen people at the door for booze on the breath and stop serving them after being visibly drunk.
3. The Pointy Ear Workshop – From the White guy who awkwardly gave you the Native American Workshop where he obviously put together a PowerPoint without consulting a single indigenous person and only using Wikipedia comes The Pointy Ear Workshop which aims to settle the question are they sexy Legolas types who bear a remarkable resemblance to Vulcans, which are both the low hanging fruit of Sci Fi/Fantasy (60s TV producer with a cigar in the mouth: What? You need a nonhuman, put some pointy ears on it. That’ll make it nonhuman), or are elves the festive Santa variety that really was Santa’s way of avoiding a child labor lawsuit (Santa: What? No… those aren’t children. Their elves. Can’t you see the pointy ears?)
4. Speak like Smeagol Lunch and Learn – You’ll learn how to call the fried chicken at the office potluck crunchable birdses. Imagine the good-natured barbs when you go into the board meeting and accuse them all of being tricky hobbitses. Especially when you scream at the CFO who was cooking the books and inflating the numbers, “Thieves! He stoles it from us!” You’ll also get to wear loin cloths as culturally appropriate work clothes.
5. Ancient Wise Wizard Relations – Nothing’s more timely than old White guys telling us how they think they should run things. You’ll learn tactics like pat on the head and saying things like “but grandpa hot dogs haven’t been that cheap in Chicago since 1972.” Or “Education costs a little more than you can reasonably pay while working at McDonald’s” Or “Immigrants aren’t amassing at the border to enforce sharia law at the pickle ball leagues.” But then as soon as you leave the room, the guy will crack their neck and reveal that they were Gandalf the whole time, and they had only faked being clueless because the true threat that’s facing the country is literacy and no one reading books anymore. And the Balrog hates literacy.
6. Hobbit Carrying Info Session – How can anyone forget Samwise’s epic moment when he proclaims, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.” On the off chance that you find yourself on the way to Mount Doom and your hobbit friend succumbs to the burden he is carrying, this training offers a way to safely carry a hobbit without straining your back because back injuries are no joking matter. They are the most common type of workplace accident, and even though carrying little fantasy races may seem like it’s offensive, trust me when I say that the Hobbit Carrying Info Session, Dwarf Tossing 101, and Gnome juggling are the most popular offerings.
7. Fae Folk Harassment Seminar – Nothing is more offensive to a Fae than being harassed, even though pixies and fairies prank with mischievous grins and wry smiles. Remember, it’s okay to ask the office pixy to coffee but if she says no or uses fairy dust, that means she’s not interested, and asking anymore times is harassment. Even if she catches you in compromising positions when you are under your desk looking for that power strip and flutters away with a light giggle. You really have to stop ogling her when she undoes your belt strap, and your pants fall down during that important presentation to the partners. Just stop thinking about it when she sends you photos she took of you when you were sleeping with red x’s over your wife. Don’t even think about talking about it over tea when you wake up tied up in a basement with her humming a Johnny Cash tune while wearing a wedding dress and caressing your cheek softly with a knife.
Considering that last one took a really dark turn, I thought I’d leave you with something more lighthearted. Please welcome the Starlight City Gnome Jugglers:
Several figures dressed in black body suits take the stage. They are juggling gnomes.
Juggler One: Hup. Hup. Ha!
He tosses a gnome across the stage to another juggler.
Gnome: Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Juggler Two: Hup. Hup. Ha!
Another gnome goes flying.
Gnome: Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Juggler Three: Hup. Hup. Ha!
Gnome: Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
If you enjoyed this email, please consider any of the books below:
Orcs invading Portland, a warg in the janitor’s closet, black ooze dissolving the gym teacher: a typical day for the students of Beaverton High and their fearless teaching assistant.
Petra thought working for her old high school was the worst thing that could happen to her—until a magical disease infected her son.
Meanwhile, the Barbarians Breakfast Club faces creatures invading their high school and murdering their classmates and principal. Okay, so maybe the latter isn’t that bad.
The phenomena intensify, and soon, it is not just the high school that’s infested with murderous creatures. So, our hapless heroes must seek aid from old allies and enemies.
Find out if Portland can survive in the second Misfits of Carnt novel.
Necromantic rituals, murderous ogres, battle-scarred rangers: not a typical Saturday detention for unsuspecting teaching assistant Petra and her delinquent teen charges.
The Beaverton High School Breakfast Club show up for what they thought would be cleaning the locker room with a toothbrush when the morning goes horribly wrong, and they fall victim to a deadly, dark spell.
Some jerkwad moon mage shoves the consciousness of Petra’s three-year-old into the body of a musclebound barbarian, and she is transformed into a halfling.
The kids get stuck as a cleric, fire mage, and other stalwarts of your typical fantasy gaming party.
Now they must quest through a land of pissed-off warriors, angry giants, a pompous vampire, and a necromancer out to kill Petra and her child.
Despite being in a world where everything threatens to shuffle off her mortal coil, the hardest part is convincing a hulked-out man that the battle axe is not a toy, the undead are not cuddly, and he should use the potty.
Orcs in Portland and Other Social Justice Issues is finally out on audible!
When it comes to Orcs in Portland and Other Social Justice Issues, it’s everything that first book did and more. While most of the story takes place in the Portland area, there is a fair amount that happens in Carnt. I don’t want to say much about the series, but I will say that it’s going in a direction where I don’t think you’ll anticipate.
My goal with the series is that as soon as you feel that you have a handle on what’s happening with the series, it changes direction again. The overall plot of the series stems from the way that television often resets the status quo by the end of the episode. While there have been more recent series that take the viewer on a journey that’s nowhere near where they started. There are still a large chunk of fiction that simply repeats the monster of the week phenomenon.
Since Orcs in Portland is most like Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its structure, I’ll use the show to illustrate the point. Despite the fact that some ancient evil threatens Sunnydale every season, the status quo returns to normal the next year (for the most part). Fans of the show will remind me about the secret government organization studying monsters explains the status quo, but it takes four seasons to get there, and still doesn’t quite explain why the property value of Sunnydale hasn’t plummeted, you know with all the dead bodies around.
With Orcs in Portland, I wanted to mess with that concept. I wanted a Buffy situation with a monster of the week invading the school, but by the end, it explodes in a way where the characters can’t hide the problems plaguing the school from the rest of the world. Which, the fallout of the secret coming bubbling to the surface happens in book three (that’s currently being edited by the talented Scott Searle who edits all my books).
Not only is it funny, but the series is heading in a direction that I conceived right as I wrote the first chapters of My Three-Year-Old many years ago. Luckily for those of you going on the journey, Rebecca is doing book 3 that is tentatively set for a release this summer. I plan to release the book at the same time as the audiobook, because honestly if there is a way to experience this series it’s via audiobook.
Thank you for being here, and I hope you enjoy the book.
Orcs invading Portland, a warg in the janitor’s closet, black ooze dissolving the gym teacher: a typical day for the students of Beaverton High and their fearless teaching assistant.
Petra thought working for her old high school was the worst thing that could happen to her—until a magical disease infected her son.
Meanwhile, the Barbarians Breakfast Club faces creatures invading their high school and murdering their classmates and principal. Okay, so maybe the latter isn’t that bad.
The phenomena intensify, and soon, it is not just the high school that’s infested with murderous creatures. So, our hapless heroes must seek aid from old allies and enemies.
Find out if Portland can survive in the second Misfits of Carnt novel.
Necromantic rituals, murderous ogres, battle-scarred rangers: not a typical Saturday detention for unsuspecting teaching assistant Petra and her delinquent teen charges.
The Beaverton High School Breakfast Club show up for what they thought would be cleaning the locker room with a toothbrush when the morning goes horribly wrong, and they fall victim to a deadly, dark spell.
Some jerkwad moon mage shoves the consciousness of Petra’s three-year-old into the body of a musclebound barbarian, and she is transformed into a halfling.
The kids get stuck as a cleric, fire mage, and other stalwarts of your typical fantasy gaming party.
Now they must quest through a land of pissed-off warriors, angry giants, a pompous vampire, and a necromancer out to kill Petra and her child.
Despite being in a world where everything threatens to shuffle off her mortal coil, the hardest part is convincing a hulked-out man that the battle axe is not a toy, the undead are not cuddly, and he should use the potty.
Time Burrito 