Posts Tagged With: cruise

Stealth Giveaway + Vacation Photos

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Michelle Proulx

About a month ago, I did a free giveaway weekend for Imminent Danger. For that giveaway, I went all out, leveraging all my social media sites to promote the free giveaway as much as possible. The grand total was 2800+ downloads.

Last Sunday, I did a 1-day stealth giveaway. No social media mentions, no promoting the book anywhere. I didn’t even tell my own mother about it. The grand total was 118 downloads.

What does this tell us?

Telling people about your giveaway is a good idea (duh)
Two day giveaways are (probably) better than one day
People will still stumble across and download your book by random chance

That’s pretty much all I’ve got to report. Stay warm, everyone!

Unrelated media of the day:

As you may know, I recently went on vacation with my mother and brother, and I thought I’d share a couple of pictures. View and enjoy!

Jesse and I at the gates to the new Fantasyland addition in the Magic Kingdom. I believe I’m supposed to be flapping my arms like wings, although with us, it’s hard to be sure.

Mom and Jesse inside the Beast’s castle. Note Jesse’s “Family Reunion” badge.

Mother tries the “grey stuff”. It’s delicious.

Mother attempts to stop the hose from unraveling while Jesse fills up the tires of our rental car.

Jesse contemplates tire filling.

Myself on the cruise ship, attempting to schedule our days so we hit every single trivia game. Eating and sleeping be damned!

Mom and Jesse on their way to snorkeling off the coast of Cozumel.

A fisherman in Nassau showing us his catch of the day.

Selfie in Nassau!

Categories: Self Publishing | Tags: amazon, cruise, disney, giveaway, self-publish, vacation | 7 Comments

Tweets from the Worst Cruise Line Ever

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Michelle Proulx

I dug up an old thumb drive and was going through some old files when I discovered a document called “YOLO Cruise”. It appears to consist of a series of “tweets” that I created, written by the world’s worst cruise line. Some of them were pretty funny, so I thought I’d share. I’ll also post them on my Twitter page (@michellishelli), because why the heck not?

Without further ado, I present to you: Tweets from the Worst Cruise Line Ever!

Captain completely plastered. If you can still walk in a straight line, report to command deck ASAP. #captainforaday #yolocruise

All lifeboats now replaced with bottles of rum. In case of ship evacuation, drink rum and use bottle as flotation device. #yohoho #yolocruise

Lost the first mate. Our stay in Barbados now extended until we find him, or until we run out of power, whichever comes first. #marcopolo #yolocruise

Random shore excursion day! Pick a bus and hope the fates are with you. #eeniemeenie #yolocruise

Our tech guys screwed up. From now on, there will be roving wireless hotspots. Grab your laptop and get moving, because the hotspots never stay in one place for long. #battleroyale #yolocruise

Chefs went on strike, so we tossed them overboard. Anyone with cooking experience (fast food counts), report to Deck 9. All volunteer cooks will get a chance to loot the chefs’ cabins. #omnomnom #yolocruise

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://clayyount.com/

Categories: Random | Tags: cruise, funny, hashtag, tweet, twitter, writing, yolo | 14 Comments

Vacation = Great Success!

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

I live!!!

My Caribbean cruise getaway was a great success. There was much beach lounging and Mayan ruins visiting and buffet gorging to be had. And I got lots of writing done, which was fantastic. I also got verbally lambasted by my mother for my current WIP having such a slow start that she was bored to tears. So I guess it’s back to the drawing board on that one. Ah well. Can’t win ’em all!

I have a gazillion things to catch up on, so today’s post will be short. I just wanted to say hi to everyone, let you know I’m back, and that I’ll be digging through the last week of your blog posts just as soon as I get my life back in order.

Oh yes, and Blackbird LSD, an indie publicity company based out of California, was kind enough to host an author interview with me over on their site. Check it out here.

Here’s their logo, which is just adorable with the little birdies and whatnot:

Pictures from the vacation will be uploaded whenever my mother gets around to loading them on her computer. So … anywhere from two hours to two months. Stay tuned!

Unrelated media of the day:

There is an entire website devoted to Justin Timberlake doing things — http://justintimberlakedoingthings.tumblr.com/. And just when I thought the internet couldn’t get more awesome.

One of my personal favourites:

Source: http://justintimberlakedoingthings.tumblr.com/

Categories: Blog-related, Random | Tags: author, books, caribbean, cruise, imminent danger, interview, justin timberlake, vacation, WIP, writing | 38 Comments

Book prep for my upcoming Caribbean Cruise!

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Michelle Proulx

Book prep for a cruise, you ask? What exactly am I prepping? Am I booking something, or am I prepping a book? Ahhhh!

Okay. First of all, calm down. You really need to stop panicking every time you read a blog post.

Secondly, I am, of course, talking about prepping a book to bring along on my Super Special Awesome Caribbean Cruise. I’m going with my mother and brother, starting in New Orleans, headed down the coast of Mexico to Cozumel, Belize City, etc. It’s going to be epic. But I digress.

When we booked the cruise back in January, my master plan was to have the sequel to Imminent Danger — whimsically entitled Chasing Nonconformity — finished and printed for mother to peruse at her leisure on our relaxing jaunt around the Caribbean. As of today, I still have the second half of the story to re-write. So that’s not going to work.

So instead I said to myself: “Michelle,” I said, “Why not print out another book you’ve written and make your mother read that instead? Surely she has nothing better to do on her vacation than read your latest questionable attempt at literature.”

Und hence, I present to you photographs of the printed-out version of The Elemental Guard, the YA fantasy novel (think Harry Potter meets Avatar the Last Airbender) I wrote a year or two ago. You will notice that the manuscript is stupidly thick. This is because I checked the single-sided box instead of the double-sided box on the Staples website, and they obliged me accordingly. Observe:

Front view of the massive manuscript, complete with inscription to my mother. I dread getting the manuscript back. I hate editing. Sigh.

Side view of the manuscript. It’s about 2 inches thick. Yikes.

Jedi Armen guards / sits on the manuscript. Rawr!

In unrelated news …

I will be hosting an author interview with Kathi Schwengel tomorrow (Valentine’s Day!), as part of her blog hop for her new book, First of Her Kind. Stay tuned for that!

And then I’m gone on my cruise until next Sunday, so that’s why you won’t be hearing from me. Frantic calls to the police regarding my disappearance from the blogosphere are therefore appreciated, but unnecessary.

Unrelated video of the day:

Hugh Grant’s finest moment in film history: