Amazon has recently started offering everyone the opportunity to offer a giveaway. What’s interesting about this is that you can run one for pretty much any item in their inventory – ex…
Source: How To Set Up An Amazon Giveaway
Random
Awesome Book Dedications
I’m hard at work writing Cerulean Bound being on vacation and not accomplishing a darn thing, so I thought I’d brighten up your Monday a bit by sharing some excellent book dedications. These were collected on Imgur by PolarBlair924, so shout-out to him/her!
Thus, in no particular order, here are my favorites …
Musiville Needs Your Love: Free Download
Musiville, the second children’s book in the award-winning Niditales series created by Dimitris Fousekis and me, will be free between January 27th and 31st on Amazon. This is to to encourage …
#52 Open Call for the Arcane Arts Anthology
A reminder that you have a few days left to submit your Sci-Fi/Fantasy story to Kai Herbertz’s Arcane Arts Anthology project! Open call for stories ends on Jan 31. Check it out 🙂
Well met, my friends!
On Monday my Kickstarter campaign to create and publish a science fiction and fantasy short story collection was successfully funded thanks to the generosity of family, friends, and other awesome people.
In addition to the contributions by the featured indie authors, I am looking for story submissions. Here are the details of the open call:
Stories can be submitted in either American English or German until the 31st of January 2016. At least three of the eleven stories will be contributions of this open call.
The length of the stories should be around 5000 words, but anything in the range of 4000-7500 words is acceptable.
We are looking for whimsical, family friendly stories that could be shelved in the fantasy and science fiction section of a book store. The theme of the anthology is “Arcane Arts,” which should be reflected by the submitted stories.
If your…
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Story Bundle
Fellow author Misha Burnett has gotten one of his short stories into a published anthology! Check it out!
I’ve mentioned Jefferson Smith’s Immerse Or Die Report before.
The concept is brutal in its simplicity. Every morning he takes a self-published novel or story collection and gets on his treadmill for forty minutes. When he runs across something that breaks immersion–unclear syntax, wooden dialogue, boring exposition, pretty much anything that makes him look away from the page–the work gets one strike. Three strikes, and it’s out. The ones that make it past the forty minute mark without collecting three strikes are considered survivors.
EDITED TO ADD: I was reminded that Jefferson Smith is joined by David Higgins in the “test to destruction” review process. Dave’s no pushover, either.
It’s a tough standard–kind of a Gobi torture test for literature.
Of the two hundred and five novels that he put through the mill in 2015,he chose nine survivors to be included in the 2015 Immerse Or Die Story Bundle.
As…
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Categories: Random
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2016 New Year’s Resolutions
It’s not really until you take a step back and look at the past year that you get a true appreciation for how your life is going. And I have to say, my life is going pretty well. Not bragging or anything — just grateful. I may not be a best-selling author or a brilliant neurosurgeon or anything, but all in all I’m quite satisfied with where I’m at. And that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?
And now, the resolutions! In no particular order, this year I would like to:
- Write every day. It doesn’t have to be a lot, and it doesn’t have to be any good, but I definitely want to get back into the habit of daily writing. NaNoWriMo is a fantastic motivator, but I want to have that kind of motivation all the time. And I’m so tired of having all these amazing stories floating around in my head just waiting to be written down, but stuck eternally in limbo because I don’t have the mental discipline to sit down and actually write them. Currently I’m working on a few projects (including Cerulean Bound — banged out the first chapter yesterday!), and hopefully at least a few of them will actually get completed this year.
- Get down to 140 lbs. I won’t tell you where I’m at right now, but let’s just say it’s above where I should be. Not drastically so, but enough that my old pants don’t fit, which is both frustrating and inconvenient. I don’t have plans to become a bikini model or anything — I just want to fit in my pants, dammit! I’ve managed to drop about 12 lbs since I started counting calories back in September, so hopefully I can keep it up.
- Stop sweating the small stuff. I fully admit that I have some anger problems. Not in the sense that I randomly flip out at people — I just find little stuff irrationally irritating, and after silently fuming about it for a bit (or a while), I have to take a step back and be like, “Michelle, for the love of sandwiches calm down, it’s totally not a big deal.” So ideally I’d like to be able to go straight from “getting irritated” to “calming down”, and skip the “fuming about it” part entirely. Because, at the end of the day, all I really want is to …
- Be happy. Let’s be clear — I’m pretty darn happy already! I just want to continue being so. That means doing things I enjoy, spending time with people I enjoy, accomplishing the things I set out to accomplish, and generally feeling content with the life I’ve carved out for myself. Part of how I’m going to do that is every night I’m going to write down one thing I did that day that I’m proud of or that I enjoyed. And then, whenever I’m feeling down, I’ll flip open my little notebook and remind myself of all the reasons I have to be happy. And, hopefully, there’ll be a lot of them!
So those are my resolutions for 2016. What’s on your list?
Oh, and … HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Unrelated media of the day:
Book Review: Imminent Danger: And How to Fly Straight into It – Michelle Proulx
Hilarious review of Imminent Danger! Laughed so hard reading this. Awesome way to end the day 🙂
Title & Author: Imminent Danger: And How to Fly Straight into It by Michelle Proulx
Genre: Young Adult- Sci-Fi, Romance
Release Date: January 11, 2015
Series: Imminent Danger #1
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc
Source: Provided by Author
Description: High school junior Eris Miller thinks she’s having a bad day when her roommate’s boyfriend catches her stepping out of the shower wearing nothing but a towel. Then she gets abducted by scaly six-armed aliens with a strange fondness for the color blue, and her day suddenly gets a whole lot worse.
Trapped on a spaceship bound for the slave markets of Sirius B, Eris fears she’ll never see her home again. But then fate whisks her away from her reptilian captors and into the arms of Varrin, a fast-talking space pirate who promises to deliver her safely back to Earth. He claims to have her best interests at…
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Categories: Random
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10 Things Writers Need To Stop Doing
I’m going to be brief and to the point today. This is a message for every writer out there, myself included. You need to stop…
…Defining success by number of book sales.
…Pressuring yourself to always write well.
…Assuming no one wants to read your work.
…Writing what everyone else is writing just to feed the market.
…Doubting your own talent, skills, and dedication.
…Equating a missed quota or wordless day with failure.
…Getting pulled down by bad reviews or negative criticism.
…Paying attention to unwarranted opinions on what you should or shouldn’t write.
…Trying to write stories and characters that will please everyone.
…Finding excuses to not get back to work and finish that story.
You’re better than all of that. Keep calm and write on, friend.
Categories: Random
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It’s My Birthday!!!
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me …
That’s right, folks, today is the magical day when, 27 long years ago, I came into this world. I think it’s been a pretty good run so far. Here are some of my random life snippets, in no particular order:
- Met and now live with some of the best friends this life has to offer (and went to one of their concerts last night!)
- Developed an everlasting obsession with poodles thanks to my childhood pet Cocoa
- Earned a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Classical Studies (have not found a use for it yet, but am working on it!)
- Utilized a wandering group of fifth graders to save a tent from collapsing
- Moved to South Korea for a year and taught English / explored / had a blast / fell in love with KPOP
- Learned to play, with level of competence in descending order: piano, alto sax, handbells, recorder, trumpet
- Wrote and published two books, with a third on the way!
- Perfected the gooey and delicious pineapple upside-down cake recipe
If you have any fun and random life snippets, I’d love to hear them! And while you’re compiling your list, remember that Imminent Danger is free to download this weekend, and Chasing Nonconformity is on sale the 23rd to the 30th of December. Want to give me an awesome birthday gift? Read and review one of my books!
Stay awesome, my friends, and party on!
Unrelated media of the day:
Monday Writing Update
NaNoWriMo is officially over, and I have officially … lost.
Dammit.
Now, in my defense, I came pretty darn close. I started at 31,881 words and ended at 71,889 words, which means I wrote a grand total of 40k words. Not quite 50k, but still a great deal more than what I started with! So, I’m calling this one a moderate success.
Of course, my story is still in shambles. I’ve reached about the 1/3 point in the plot, and I’m 70k words in. So that means the book is on track to be 210k words long. Yikes. Excessive editing and cutting and rewriting will cut that down, but it’ll be a hassle for sure.
In other news, I’ve recently launched a proofreading service. This is partially because I’m good at proofreading and want to do more of it, and partially because my income is laughable at the moment and I need to pay rent. So, if you’re looking for someone to proofread your next book before it goes live, hit me up! The going rate is $0.0015 per word, which works out to $150 for a 100k word novel.
My final life update is something I mentioned before, but am still excited about–I’ve acquired a seasonal job at a local tea shop! The hours are whacky, and I’m having a devil of a time remembering the 150+ teas we sell (and by “devil of a time”, I mean it will never happen), but it’s still been quite enjoyable thus far. Money is always nice, not to mention it gives me a reason to leave the house and get a bit of exercise. I won’t be able to head back to Ontario for Christmas this year, but I’m planning an awesome road trip in January/February once the contract’s over so I can go see my folks. Huzzah!
I think that’s about it. What are you awesome people up to these days? Any fun holiday plans? What’s your favorite kind of tea? Let me know in the comments!
Unrelated media of the day:
Read me!
Sequel out now!
Michelle Proulx - Author 