Today is part one of two where we are talking to Ariana Hagen about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about her incredible journey of writing since she was a kid, starting to follow her dreams to show her kids it can be done, basing characters on people from life, overcoming writers block, and balancing writing, a farm, and family. 

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Ariana Hagen is the author of "Of Ghosts and Wolves", Book 1 in a series of fantasy books that takes place in a world not too different from ours. Ariana is a lover of all things fairytale, myth, lore, and legend and is currently putting together her own collection of original myths.

She loves reading, writing, playing with her goats and horses, and sleeping.

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Welcome to Freya's Fairy Tales, where we believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.

Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.

At the end of each episode, we will finish off with the fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author's version as possible.

I am your host, Freya Victoria.

I'm an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.

I'm also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.

We have included all of the links for today's author and our show in the show notes.

Today is part two of two, where we are talking to Ariana Hagen about her novels over the past two weeks.

You will have heard about her incredible journey of writing since she was a kid.

Starting to follow her dreams to show her kids that can be done.

Basing characters on people from life, overcoming rider's block and balancing writing a farm and family of ghosts and wolves.

Book one of the Wolf's Heart series by Ariana endless possibility, two souls, one choice.

Sage possesses the skill to see both human and animal spectres, a lifelong trait that has thus far proven to be both a blessing and a curse.

Existing in obscurity between a forest and mountain range, she hides her nature from the world, enjoying only the company of animals, alive and dead.

Her sanctuary, however, crumbles when out of the forest emerges a force too powerful for her to ignore.

A great black wolf appears, searching for answers and on the run.

One day, a man named Corrick arrives, a wanderer from distant lands.

And Sage, despite her selfimposed isolation, is drawn to him.

Conflicted by their budding friendship.

Terrified of forming a bond, she safeguards her secrets while exploring what it means to truly live.

Yet Coric is running from a past that may eventually come to haunt them both.

The fates may soon demand that they face their demons and shed light on their secrets together.

So you wrote in your story, it's fantasy world.

I know you said that you wanted it to be, you had kind of an idea for it or whatever, but how did you develop the world?

Did you draw out, like, a map.

Of I have played with a few maps.

I want to get a map for the book.

Is it like an add on?

But yeah, I kind of have a rough idea of how I want it to all be laid out and organized in the different continents and parts of the world.

It's there, it's just not concrete.

Yes, I told my husband he's writing a book as well.

His, like, takes place on kind of like a college campus.

And I'm like, you need to draw out your campus.

So you don't like, oh, they turned right today to get to that class, but then left tomorrow.

Yes, the magical campus.

You can even go, like, find some college campuses map and just use that as your blueprint.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think it definitely helps to have a layout.

Now your names aren't like giants feet, not crazy, but then the name of your world is a made up name.

How did you come up with that?

I wanted something that was easy to remember and just not like an everyday word.

So it was kind of set off in its own little category.

And I read a lot of fantasy books, and there's some of these names that are just they're like 32 letters long and I can't pronounce them.

And I didn't want to go that way.

Right.

Yes, exactly.

I've done a few fantasy ones.

Oh, no, I'm sure.

A lot to keep in mind.

I'm like, I have one coming up that he created his own language, and it has, like, elves and dwarves and stuff like that, but he's created their own name.

So as if the creatures are like, oh, gosh, dorf.

That's the world version of it.

That's not what we call ourselves.

Oh, my gosh, that's on Tik Tok.

I posted and was like, hey, if you want to see how a narrator does all these crazy made up words, like, get me to 1000 followers so we can live stream this, I want to hear it.

Now I'm going to have to check out your Tik Tok again.

I'm just not good at I'm not good at logging into Tik Tok everyday.

So did you ever consider because you self published, did you ever consider or have you tried to traditionally publish?

I considered it.

I looked into it, and I looked at the statistics of being accepted with a traditional publisher, and it's ridiculously low.

And then I was looking into all these accounts from other authors who had traditionally published, and they were like, now a lot of it becomes out of your control when you hand it over to the publisher.

And I just didn't want to deal with that.

I wanted it to be my own story.

And I'm not worried about being famous or making billions off of it.

I just wanted to introduce my story.

And share it with other people and not spend.

So you said you kept a budget.

What was your budget that you had set?

I had set like, 800 for everything as my budget.

So that included editing and coverage line and beta readers.

And what else does that cover?

That was formatting assistance with the paperback.

I was having issues getting it to format correctly when it was printed, so I hired somebody to just help me finish putting that together.

And that was like $20.

But otherwise it was just the editor beta readers cover.

That was really it.

Okay.

And then you bought a couple of copies because I know you sent me a copy.

I did get that on Friday.

I checked.

I got ten copies for myself, and I've just been kind of passing them out to people and signed a few for some people.

And I'm going to try and approach our local library to see if they don't mind carrying my book too.

That would be cool.

Yeah, that would be fun.

I don't know if you guys have a Barnes and Noble, but supposedly Barnes and Nobles will carry your books if you're local.

Oh, I don't know how local.

There might be other bookstores, though, that might do that.

Yeah, we do have a bookstore not far from here I'm going to have to go over to and I think it's independently owned too, so they may be all about local authors.

Like, hey, I'll come in and sign them for you.

Yeah, I might have to look into that.

Because your book released in April.

The end of February.

Was it that long ago?

Gosh, okay.

It's gone by fast.

And so what have you done, just so other people know, what have you done to promote your book?

And has that worked how you expected or not so well, maybe avoided?

Yeah, I did do one of those five or promotions like you had talked about, like, hey, we're going to promote your stuff.

That didn't work.

I don't recommend that one.

But I did run a couple of Facebook ads, I think just like a total of two weeks altogether.

And I just started one up for the audio book, and my goal for that is just to get visibility and traffic.

And then I've joined some groups on Facebook for self published authors, and we do like, book swaps where we all buy each other's books.

And that's basically what I've done so far.

I figure once I have booked two out, I can kind of push harder with advertising, but with the way to book, one kind of leaves on a cliffhanger.

Not like a hard cliff hanger, but a little one.

I didn't want to disappoint people for weight.

For the podcast.

Obviously, I promote I talk about it on social media.

But I do like well, I have three podcasts total, but I only run two of them.

I run on the same social media account.

So I only run, like, one set of ads for those guys.

Right.

And then one set for this one, obviously.

But I'm like $5 a day.

I'm like a day.

$5?

Yeah, it is a day.

So $5 a day is, like, all that I'll do for advertising.

It's like, I just want visibility.

Like, the one that's been around since October is just now starting to I'm now getting all these random people starting to follow it, and all of my accounts are growing faster than they did.

And then this one is like, slowly picking up steam because I just started this one in April, right?

Yeah, it's like an avalanche fact that kind of starts slow and then as it picks up.

Well, I think I remember seeing when I started or before I started researching just to have an idea like how long does it take to kind of pick up steam?

Because I want to know if I get six years down the line and have five people listening to each episode, is that good or bad?

Yeah, most people.

And it's the same with YouTube.

It's like one to two years of consistently right now.

The statistic is also that most podcasts don't make it past ten episodes.

Oh wow, you made it past ten.

You're already ahead.

Good.

Yeah.

Well, another recommendation is if you pick a topic and you can't plan at the beginning, you can't come up with ten episodes of content.

You need to pick a new thing because you got to be able to talk about it.

This one's a little bit different because one, there's a bajillion fairy tales and short stories that you can do, but then each author like I've literally gotten different advice from every single author that I've talked to.

Everyone's different and everybody's process is going to resonate with different people differently.

Absolutely.

Everybody's on the same journey, but they get to the end different ways.

So you're promoting on Facebook and trying social media?

Yeah, I think I'm okay with Instagram.

I post on there pretty regularly.

TikTok I'm going to have to really just start working on.

Have you experienced like, writer's block or any issues with writing yet?

Yes, I do get writer's block.

When I'm working on one story and not deviating from that, a lot of times I start to feel a little bit of a burnout and I usually just go off and write a couple of short stories of something else and it just seems to kick my imagination back into gear.

Like cleansing your palate.

Yeah.

Get this other thing out.

Yeah, get something else out.

Think differently from the way I've been thinking for the last few weeks or days or however long.

Experience a different story for a little bit and some different emotions.

And then once I've got that all out, I can go back to what I was working on.

So how do you balance riding with all the critters and the family?

When do you find time to ride?

That is the hard part, and a lot of it is hard because my kids are young, so they're very much in the mommy, mommy, mommy, I need you stage.

And that kind of pulls me out of the writing.

But I do most of my writing in the evening when it's quiet.

The kids are supposed to be in bed and most of the animals have settled down for the evening.

So that's when I usually sit down.

And sometimes I only get like 200 words out.

I just type up a few sentences, but there's some evenings where I'll get like 8000 words, and I usually call it good 8000 words.

Gosh.

I think the most I did in a day was like 6500.

And that was like over an entire day.

Yeah, sometimes it's hard to get them all out, but then sometimes I just find myself on a roll.

I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to keep going.

See, that day I had gone back and read through the entire thing and then it just kept coming and coming.

Because I can only really write on the research right now, but on the weekends, because during the week, I'm like narrating other people's books and reading through whatever the next book I need to read through.

And so, like, on the weekend, sometimes I have to read more than people that write every day would typically have to go back and reread.

So I did like 6500 books one day and then the next weekend was when the other book was not wanting to leave my head.

And so I got like 1000 words over the course of the weekend.

And that next week is when I was like, we're putting this one on Pod so we can go to this other one, which I, like know is going to be a series just like, from what I want to do.

How many books we will see?

More than one journey.

We'll stop when we stop.

All right.

Do you have any tips for anyone that's wanting to write or has thought about writing?

Just do it.

And I'm one of those people who I'll have an idea, but I'll let the story guide me so I don't plot out everything ahead of time.

I just kind of write as I do.

And I think it's okay to do that.

Even if you think it is a bad story that's coming out.

Just get out whatever is in your head and follow that path.

And even if you end up not using it, you can still take the pieces of it and put it into something else if you want.

Because my writing produces good work in some way or another, right?

Even if it's just the stepping stone to get you to the next.

Exactly.

My first book was when I was a kid and it was about guinea pigs.

I was homeschooled and my mom bound it and everything.

So it's in this nice cover with like we had guinea pigs, so it's got like pictures of the guinea pigs.

And like, it's this whole story about the guinea pigs.

So that was my first not published for the public book.

That's really cute.

So these days I'm like, I plan to self publish because like you, I don't want to give up that control of everything.

But unlike you, I'm going to narrate my own book.

So I'll go a little bit wider with the distribution.

I don't blame you at all.

Now, from what I've researched and found.

Like, obviously Amazon accounts for a large in audiobooks.

It's like 40% of audiobook sales come through them.

So I'm like when I'm pitching people on.

And I pitched one recently.

Right now I still want to do a fairy tale retelling.

I don't care what the retelling is.

I'm like, I want to narrate a fairy tale retelling.

I just want to and so I keep stumbling across people that write those kind of books.

And I'm like, please let me narrate your book.

I don't like the royalty share.

I want to be able to pay up front.

But she went and listened to my TikToks and stuff.

And it's like, I like your voice, but I want to be able to pay up front.

Which I'm like, shoot, I'll always take money up front.

Yeah.

This is no to money.

Right?

But I'm like, I feel like I probably take on more royalty share than most narrators because I'm like, if I want to read the story, ideally it makes money down the road.

Yeah, definitely.

What did I do before I narrated?

Sat on the couch and read books all day long or watch Netflix all day long.

So we're being more productive.

At least we have a chance of making money.

And I think all of them so far have at least sold one copy.

So I haven't had a single book not sell anything.

Right, good.

Well, I know that myself.

And I'm sure other authors appreciate you doing the royalty share because it makes it accessible to us.

Otherwise, a lot of us wouldn't be able to do it.

Now, I did recently.

See, I feel like it was a very controversial tik tok video.

But an author had an author friend of hers say she needed her five book series narrated.

And they quoted her like $10,000 to narrate these five books.

And I'm like, but nowhere does she mention the word count, like how many words it was.

And nowhere does she ever mention what narrator she reached out to.

Because I'm like, if you're going to like the best of the best, you're going to pay that.

Yeah.

Also, are these epic fantasy lengths or are these like.

Books between just a regular, like, 70,000 word fiction and then those, like 300,000 word epic fantasies, scifis and stuff?

That's a big difference.

Well, I always appreciate I deal with both authors and publishers.

I feel like authors are more understanding of it's going to take time to get the book done.

So, like, you gave me it was a pretty decent amount of time to get the book done.

And I never had any issues hitting that deadline.

But then I've had, like, other ones be like, oh, a nine hour book that'll take you 9 hours, right?

I'm like, oh, honey, I feel like faster than average.

But I also do all of my own editing.

Yeah.

So I'm like, I can get an hour and a half a day on most days.

Right.

And so at this point, I just actually chopped the manuscript up into day one, day two, day three, like, how many pages I got to get through just to make it easier on myself.

So it's like once you get to the end of this section of pages.

You'Re done, you can give up for the day.

That's not how I always did it.

And the reason that I do it that way now is because around Christmas time, I had a lot of nonfiction projects and I wasn't really keeping track of how many pages I had done.

And so it would be like, oh, it's due on Monday.

And I'm like, oh, crap, I get to Monday, and I've still got like 70 pages to go.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, but I have to get done so it's on time.

I don't want to do that again.

Yeah.

And yours was in the midst of me taking a lot of loyalty share and not paying attention to how long it's going to take me to record them.

So now I actually like, I have a special section on my calendar for like, here's your recording schedule.

Monday through Friday, you're going to do like, this many pages of this book and then move on to the I get Saturdays.

Last Saturday I had slacked off on the editing during the week, and so last Saturday I spent most of Saturday editing.

So this weekend I did not do that.

You need a break sometimes.

Yeah.

I'm like, you're going to edit the way you're supposed to, but I'm working on like a 13 hours audio book right now, so that takes a long one.

That takes a bit, yeah, and I typically don't audition for less than 4 hours right now just because I feel like shorter books are going to want them faster than longer books will want them or shorter books are going to be less okay with waiting is what I should say in my thinking.

That's what I think.

So far, any authors I've repeated have been cool with like, hey, when's your availability now that I've got this next book up?

Well, I mean, narrating is an art form, and at least I want you to go ahead and take your time and do good.

Not feel rushed.

Yeah, rushing through it.

I want you to feel good about it.

Well, I'm like, I don't feel good about it already.

So I'm like, I was talking to another author the same day that I messaged you about trying to incorporate breaths.

So it sounds a little not that I don't breathe, but I edit out a lot of them.

And so I'm like working on this.

With normal jobs or tasks that you do, you get better, you get faster.

With narrating, you can't get faster at talking.

Right.

I'm like, I talk too fast already.

You need like, Gilmore Girls out there like, oh, my gosh.

I know.

They definitely talk fast in that show.

Yeah.

I think listening to your narration of my story, like, the way the pace at which you spoke is perfect.

So at least when you can slow it down.

I have one author that's actually the publisher that hired me, but they want you to have the author listened to, make sure that they approve of it.

And she was like, you talk a little fast, but it might be okay for other people.

And I'm like, well, on the Audible app, you can, like, slow and I imagine other listening apps are the same, but you can slow down the pace if you don't want to listen to it at one time.

You can do like three quarters or whatever.

That's pretty nifty.

I didn't even know that.

Yeah, I haven't used that function before, but I know it's there.

Yeah, same with I think on podcasts you can also do that if you want it.

Yes, I think I've seen that on podcasts.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Yeah, all kinds of things.

All right, well, I think we are about wrapped up.

So do you have any final tips or tricks or anything for anybody that might be listening?

I feel like I'm the worst person to give tips and tricks because I kind of just weigh everything.

So definitely be sure to talk aloud, which I did not do when I added things.

After the first editing, I added extra mistakes, which I should have caught by reading it aloud, but I did it and then I don't know, just write it out.

It doesn't have to be a complete story or a complete thought.

Just write it down because you never know when you're going to use it.

In the future and if someone else is stuck in there.

Two months of convincing themselves.

What finally convinced you to do it?

Actually reading two things.

One was reading the witcher books and realizing that he didn't become famous for like 30 years oh, gosh, after he wrote those books.

Something ridiculous like that.

And thinking in 30 years from now, I could be sitting here on this manuscript that I never did anything with, or I could have it out there possibly becoming worldwide known.

What am I going to do?

I'm just going to sit here and do nothing with it.

Well, I have to say, as someone who gets royalties for seven years, I would like you to make it big in the spot.

I'm hoping that I become big before I retire.

Well, I started doing on Fridays, I will cycle through so I have the five minute promo or whatever it's called, the sample that we put up on Audible.

I make like a video with that.

And then on Fridays I kind of cycle through my book.

So I'm constantly every Friday, it's a hashtag that was already there, but flashback Friday is what the hashtag is, and so then I'll post one audiobook or whatever, so I'm like, man, at very least, I mean, seven years is a long time, but I'm like, at very least I'm cycling through, which of course, that list will get longer as I keep going.

But I can always go out of order if, like, one has if one of them were to make, like, a TV show or a movie.

Oh, gosh, that actually brings up something.

I talked to a family friend who read my book recently, and she used to work in the TV show industry, and she used to be a book hunter for TV shows, and she was like, if you finish book two and book three, she's like, I'll go back to my old boss and I'll pitch.

Oh, my god, that would be so cool.

Now I really need you to get these books out.

The first author that I talked to on here, she was like, I would do anything.

My books made it something cool.

That'd be fun.

Why not?

You know, you find out that your story made it to TV or something.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing, but we'll see.

I'm just feeling the pressure now.

All right, well, you keep writing and getting books done, and now that you actually have a book out there, you might be able to find beta readers a little easier, maybe you got to get the tik tok thing going, because.

There'S to do that, there's a lot.

Of beta readers and stuff on TikTok that you're just like, hey, I need beta readers, and I didn't even know that.

I need to delve into that whole world.

Technology is not my best thing, but I need to get on top of it.

All right, well, thank you so much for talking to me today, and I cannot wait to read book two whenever it is ready and start prepping all of that.

Yes, I can't wait, and we'll see.

Where book one takes us.

And hopefully it keeps going because it's I hope so.

I don't know that I've had books sell that many copies that quickly, yet I feel like all books are going to roll down the hill and pick up speed as it goes.

I hope so.

Yeah, it's going.

There's some progress, so any progress is great with me.

I'm happy about that.

Well, thank you so much for being on here.

Thank you.

And I hope you have a good rest of your sunday, and I will talk to you soon.

All right, I can't wait.

Bye.

Ariana loves fairy tales with magic and animals, ASOP was a Greek fabulous and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as aesop's fables.

Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day.

Many of the tales associated with him are characterized by anthropomorphic animal characters.

Today we will be reading The Rat and the Elephant by ASOP.

Don't forget we are also continuing the original story of Beauty and the Beast on our patreon.

The Rat and the Elephant a rat was traveling along the King's highway.

He was a very proud rat, considering his small size and the bad reputation all rats have.

As Mr.

Rat walked along, he kept mostly to the ditch.

He noticed a great commotion up the road and soon a grand procession came in view.

It was the King and his retinue.

The King rode on a huge elephant adorned with the most gorgeous trappings.

With the King and his luxurious hauda where the royal dog and cat, a great crowd of people followed the procession.

They were so taken up with admiration of the elephant that the rat was not noticed his pride was hurt.

What fools.

He cried.

Look at me and you will soon forget that clumsy elephant.

Is it his great size that makes your eyes pop out?

Or is it his wrinkled hide?

Why, I have eyes and ears and as many lakes as he.

I am of just as much importance.

But just then the royal cat spied him.

And the next instant the rat knew he was not quite so important as an elephant.

A resemblance to the great in some things does not make us great.

Thank you for joining Freya's Fairy Tales.

Be sure to come back next week to hear Anne's Journey holding her own fairy tale in her hands.