Posts Tagged With: iuniverse

Oh snap! I’m in a Blog Tour!

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

So fellow author and blogger Tania L Ramos has cordially invited me to participate in her upcoming blog tour. Woot!

The blog tour is to promote her recently self-published novel Be Still, which you can find out more about via her website. Here’s the lovely image of her cover:

I read it, and despite it being the polar opposite of the genres I usually read, I really enjoyed it. It’s a modern, romantic adult drama about a man slowly dying who wants to join his wife and daughter in the afterlife, but can’t die peacefully until he’s resolved his issues with his living son.

For people who don’t know, a blog tour is basically the internet version of a book tour. Instead of flying all around the country doing interviews and promoting their book, the author does it online instead. So at each of the stops along the blog tour, Tania will be doing an interview, or the blog’s author will post their review of the book (which is what I will likely be doing), or there might be an “interview” with one of the book’s characters, etc. Sounds cool, right?

Oh, and did I mention there will be a free giveaway of the book at each stop on the blog tour? Now you’re interested! Mwahaha. Seriously though, it’s worth stopping by just to enter into the contest. Who doesn’t love a free book? Nobody, that’s who.

Anyway, here’s the schedule for the blog tour:

July 19 – http://katherinenader.tumblr.com

July 20 – http://nerdybookreviews.wordpresscom

July 21 – http://freebies4myfamily.blogspot.com/

July 22 – http://davidmcgowanauthor.com/

July 23 – https://michelleproulx.wordpress.com/ ((ME!))

July 24 – http://www.youtube.com/user/tramossnvvc/videos ((video blog))

Tania is also holding a sweepstakes right now, which can be viewed on her Facebook page. Basically, for every 100 books she sells by August 30th, she will donate a copy of her book to a high school of the winner’s choice. It only works for U.S. schools (something about foreign policy), and she promises to donate a book even if she doesn’t hit the 100 books sold mark. And if you’re poor like me and don’t want to buy a copy, you can still go to the Sweepstakes tab on the Facebook page and enter anyway.

Here’s some cute to get you through Monday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-CkMBr4Ga0

Categories: Blog-related | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

8 Things I Learned from my Proofreaders

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

Me at the Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, South Korea. Note my whimsical attire.

I don’t know if you remember, but a few weeks back I wrote a post about my super awesome book editing kick-off party. Three weeks later (also known as yesterday), we had the book editing wrap-up party. Merriment was had, alcohol was consumed, and many suggestions were made about how to make my book the best it can possibly be. A lot of them were very specific to my book, but I thought I’d share some of the more general wisdom here with you.

1. For a traumatic event to be believable, the character’s reaction has to fit the situation. Obviously ever character will react differently to a traumatic event, but never underestimate the impact of a good emotional breakdown. Or several.

2. Use the 5 stages of grief. To remind you, those stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The 5 stages of grief are used in everything from high-brow literary fiction to bad TV sitcoms, and there’s a very good reason for that.

3. Blue-raspberry jello tastes delicious with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

4. Check your facts. Otherwise you run into the embarrassing situation of a reader telling you that something you wrote was totally, unbelievably wrong.

5. Your characters can’t take everything for granted. Having your character encounter an enigmatic person or a ridiculous situation and grow accustomed to the oddity is fine, but make sure they are appropriately incredulous at first. Even if it’s something as simple as them asking, “Wait, why are you helping me?”. They don’t even need to receive a response – it’s just human instinct to question what we don’t know or understand. Unless you’re writing about something non-human, in which case you can do whatever the heck you like.

6. Be careful when you write about religion. People get really worked up over religion, and you don’t want to mess with that unless you have a very good reason for doing so.

7.  Too much or too little description of the love interest is bad. You want to give just enough description to let the reader form a picture in their mind of the character, but not enough that there’s no room for them to let their imagination run free. That’s a problem that book-to-movie adaptations run into all the time. A character is way over-described in a book, like: “6 foot 3, short blonde hair, emerald green eyes, straight nosed, full lips, broad forehead, square jaw, muscular, faint scar on the shoulder blade, etc.”, and then fans get all riled up when a hipster brunette is cast in the role.

8. Don’t let conflicting opinions weigh you down. People disagree all the time, and I guarantee that they will find things to disagree about when reading your book. The best advice I can give is to listen carefully to all sides of the argument, then make an informed decision on how to proceed based on your own opinions. This might annoy the people you’re disagreeing with, but ultimately it’s your book, and you get veto power.

Once I get all my proofread copies of the manuscript back, I’ll sit down for the FINAL EDITING ROUND, because I’ve been working on this book for six years now and it’s quite about time that I get it published and move on with my literary life. If anyone has any editing advice for me before I start the FINAL EDITING ROUND, or wants to weigh in on the post, or on my whimsical outfit, I’d love to hear from you!

Around the Interwebs:

Categories: Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Self-Publishing a Free eBook + Party Rock Cantina

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

Today’s topic is a very subjective one, as everyone I’ve met seems to have different opinions on releasing free eBooks. The concept of free-publishing (as I call it) is to get your name out there as an author in a format that everyone loves – free! On the flip side, as authors publishing our intellectual property that we have slaved over for years, we rankle at the idea of giving away our babies without any form of monetary compensation. Thus the debate: is it a good idea to publish a free eBook?

Why it’s a good idea:

People like free stuff. Online piracy is through the roof, with no indication that it’s going down any time soon. Odds are that if you publish a book, a good percentage of your readership will have downloaded it for free anyway. So why not take matters into your own hands and deliver it free of charge from the very start?

No one will buy a book from an unknown author. I’m not talking about indie authors, I mean authors that nobody knows about. So, logically, you need to become a known author before you publish a book. But how do you get known as an author of awesome books if you haven’t published anything? Catch 22, baby. Unless you publish free eBooks. Then you can spread your literary wings and get your name out there. People are far more likely to download something that’s free because, as I’ve already stated, people like free stuff. You don’t even have to write original fiction – several fanfiction authors I know of have had moderate success publishing original fiction using their fanfiction fanbase as a jump off point. So it’s really all about exposure, exposure, exposure.

It’s a great way to hook an audience onto a series. My mother’s rather rich, rather market-savvy friend, suggested that I release the first book in my Imminent Danger series for free. I didn’t listen to her, although perhaps I should have. Her reasoning was that if I can get lots of people to read the first one for free, they’ll be more likely to shell out a few bucks when the sequel drops. If you look at current best-sellers, the vast majority of them are part of a series. Fifty Shades of Grey, Twilight, Harry Potter, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc. You lose money at the start, but theoretically you’ll make it up in the long run.

Why it’s a bad idea:

You run the risk of being seen as just another free-eBook author. I don’t know about you, but when I see something offered for free, one of the first things that pops into my head is “What kind of quality can something given away for free really have?” It could be the greatest book in the world, but many people might have a hard time overcoming those sorts of thoughts. And the thought isn’t at all unfounded. Go to a site like Wattpad, where hundreds of thousands of authors post their books for free, and you get a sense of what I’m saying. There are a few real gems hidden there, no doubt, but the vast majority isn’t the greatest literature I’ve ever seen.

You don’t make any money. That sounds kind of haughty, but it’s true. When I was struggling over whether to self-publish with iUniverse or release the book for free, this was one of the main factors in my decision. Here’s my reasoning. Your book is your intellectual property, something you’ve poured your heart and soul into, and you deserve to market and sell it just like any other product. Sell it at a discounted price, because it’s a new book from a new author? Sure. Give free copies as part of giveaways or contests? Absolutely. That’s basic marketing strategy. But give it away for free? This is the same problem that you get when you discuss whether selling an eBook for 99 cents is too cheap. Your book is valuable. It is worth something.

There are other ways to gain fans. You don’t have to give away your book for free to get fans. What about contests and giveaways? What about social media and word of mouth? There are other ways to market yourself.

It ruins your chance for traditional publishing. I don’t know for sure about this one, but logic dictates that it’s true. Self-published authors get taken on by traditional publishers all the time. But what’s the point of a traditional publisher spending all that money releasing your book if you’ve already given it away to the entire world?

Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference.

Both publishing methods have their pros and cons. I myself am considering free-publishing a book I wrote a few years ago. It’s in a completely different universe from my soon-to-be-published Imminent Danger book, and while it’s a light, fun read, I don’t know if it has the staying potential to become a best-seller. It’s tempting to give it a good proof read and release it to the world, but as should be obvious from this post, I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea.

What do you think? Is free-publishing a viable option for self-published authors? Are the pros of free-publishing worth the cons? Have you ever free-published, and if so, was it a good experience? Did it gain you followers and friends that you wouldn’t have reached otherwise?

LMFAO goes Star Wars:

Image cred: http://www.fantasybooksandmovies.com/best-fantasy-books.html

Categories: Self Publishing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

10 Things I’ve Learned About Editing

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Michelle Proulx
  1. Spell check is not optional. You can read over your manuscript three dozen times, and you still won’t catch all the typos. Guaranteed.
  2. Dialogue rocks. So does describing the setting. If you forget where your characters are, don’t go back and check to remind yourself. Add more setting description. If you forget, so will your readers.
  3. Commas are useful, but often not necessary. If you have more than three commas in a sentence that does not include a list, they’re not necessary.
  4. Sci-fi and fantasy allow you to break the laws of physics. But when you break the laws, everything still has to make sense and be consistent. If it doesn’t, you’re compromising the integrity of your world.
  5. Don’t capitalize unless you absolutely have to. The most annoying thing in the world is to read a sentence like this: “Then Antiloch, Son of the Desert Guru, rode forth on his mighty Andalarian Prancer to aide the Chandoran Sages in their Abolition of the Tyrant King Zandif of Kardovak.”
  6. Tightening your phrasing is good. Cutting out a great sentence for the sake of tightening your manuscript is not. Be careful with what you cut and what you keep.
  7. You’re the writer, no matter what your editor thinks. If you like something, then keep it in the manuscript. But figure out why your editor wants you to cut it first, just in case they’re right.
  8. When you read something and think, “This sounds a bit weird, but I don’t really want to change it”, change it. It will sound weird to your reader too, and they will enjoy the book less because of it.
  9. If your editor asks you why a character does something and you don’t know, figure it out.
  10. Editing is work, but it also has to be fun. If you want to bash your head against the desk, stop editing! Unless you have a deadline. Then you should probably keep going.
Categories: Writing | Tags: , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Book Editing Bash + Reality Show on Mars?

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Michelle Proulx


So I haven’t posted in a while because I am, once again, editing my novel Imminent Danger and How to Fly Straight into It. I had to drop everything for pretty much the entirety of last week in order to slog through the 120k words of the story. My deadline? Sunday, 4pm, because it was at that time that the first annual Book Editing Bash was set to commence. I know what you’re thinking — “Oh god, did she make it? Did she finish editing in time? The horror!” Stop panicking. I made it. You can relax.

My good friend Kaleigh printed off nine spiral-bound copies of the book for me, and I then had a handful of friends over to my apartment for the Book Editing Bash. What, you might ask, is the Book Editing Bash? Basically, I’m going to send my manuscript in to iUniverse very soon, and I wanted to make sure that all grammatical mistakes, logical flaws, spelling inconsistency, etc. were purged from the document before submission. So I thought, how can I entice people into proof reading my book? Hence the Book Editing Bash.

It was incredibly fun. I whipped up a bunch of alien-themed snacks and beverages for my guests to munch on while they lounged on the sofas/armchairs and edited my book. Some of my favorite snacks included the Rice Ssrisk-y Balls, Jsgarn Eggs, and the five-decker sandwich whimsically entitled “The Approach to Alpha Centauri Prime”. For drinks we had Saluzan Sunrises and Black Eye Whiskey. The whiskey was actually just Dr. Pepper, so several of my guests added rum to make it more whiskey-like. Less editing was done once the alcohol started flowing.

As you can see in the picture, red pens were provided with each copy of the manuscript, as were sticker sheets with sparkly smiley faces. I told my friends to stick one of the smiley faces whenever they got to a part that made them laugh out loud. Most people loved the idea, and others, like my brother, scoffed and said that he would stick to red pen. Fine, Jesse, but don’t come crying to me when your manuscript is the least sparkly of the lot.

All in all, the Book Editing Bash was a great way to get people together and excite them about reading/editing my book. It cost perhaps $250 overall — that would be for food and printing costs — but it was well worth it. Within the next two weeks I should have nine marked-up manuscripts in my hands, and be well on my way to producing a final, fully edited, marketable book. Huzzah!

Reality Show on Mars?

Okay, when I first saw this pop up on my Facebook news feed, I thought I was crazy. But it’s true. Basically, a Dutch company has a plan to put a permanent settlement on Mars by 2023. Even crazier, they are going to make the settlement into a reality TV show. As in, these people will not only be living in tiny little pods on MARS, they will have every second of their lives recorded on camera and broadcast to the entire world via a live, 24/7 internet stream.

They will start auditions in 2013, where they will choose four men and women to be on the first flight to Mars. They will then go into the desert and train for ten years, and then blast off in 2023. After that, the company (called Mars One) will send up four colonists a year until 2033. That makes 40 people living on Mars within the next 20 years! And like I said, this is a permanent settlement — as in, no going back once you’re there. Has anyone ever read the book Legacy of Herot? This reminds me a lot of that book. I just hope the Mars colonists have better than the Herot colonists.

Read more about Mars One here and here.

What do you think?

If you were offered the chance to go live on Mars for the rest of your life, would you take it? I can’t even imagine living permanently in what basically amounts to a windy, cold desert… but then, this is MARS we’re talking about. Maybe it would be worth it. Although if you got into trouble, help would be a long, long way away.


Categories: My Works | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Shelf Space for your Self-Published Book + SpaceX

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Michelle Proulx

Publishing an eBook is awesome, no doubt about it. But for me, the ultimate goal of a self-published author is getting your book onto a bookshelf in an actual brick and mortar book store. Imagine walking into your favourite book store and watching as a complete stranger picks your book off the shelf. Heaven!

I’d love to just walk into my local Chapters (Canadian book store) and ask the manager to put my books on their shelves, but tragically it’s more complicated than that. Big book stores don’t want to deal with random little indie authors – they have international best sellers to push. So where can we get our shelf space fix?

Good news for Wichita, Denver, Louisville, and Chico!

First of all, check out this article. Basically, there are a handful of indie book stores in the USA that have started programs that enable local self-published authors to sell their books in the stores. These stores operate mainly on “consignment” – meaning that you give the book store copies of your book for free, and if the books sell, the book store pays you back an agreed-upon price. So, if I were to bring in my made-up-on-the-spot book, Tuna on a Cloudy Day, that retails at $20, the book store would give me a set consignment rate (let’s say 50/50). My book would then go on the shelf for a limited time, and whenever a book is sold, I would get $10.

Some of the book stores listed in the article also have programs where you can do book signings, or they will help you create promotional materials for your book campaign, etc. My personal favourite is Lyon Books in Chico, California, which holds an annual Local Author Holiday Open House. They run ads in the newspaper featuring thumbnails of the local authors’ books and short blurbs, then get all the local authors together in the store for a huge book-signing event. How amazing does that sound?

Unfortunately, I don’t live in Wichita, Denver, Louisville, or Chico. This somewhat limits my options. I’ve tried the obvious Google search for book stores near my house that offer such a program for local authors, but all I got was an eHow article on How to Get a Self-Published Book Into Bookstores. Not very helpful, internet.

My “solution”, such as it is.

There is a self-publishing company called iUniverse. I signed with them and sent them a boatload of money back in April. Now, I don’t want to recommend them to anyone just yet, because I haven’t even gotten as far as the submitting my manuscript stage. More updates on that as the publishing process progresses. Anyway, they have this really neat program called the Indigo Chapters Publishing Package that is only available in Canada. It’s your basic self-publishing service – they edit your book, design the cover, format the interior, create print and eBook versions, and distribute them on all the major book-selling sites. However, there is the added bonus that they will put 8 copies of your book into a Chapters book store of your choice for 8 weeks. The best part is that, if the books sell, Chapters is obligated to re-stock the book so long as the 8 week period is in effect. This means that if you can generate enough interest in your book, Chapters will keep re-ordering even past the end of the 8 week period. Exciting stuff! I’ll let you know if it works XD

Know any good indie book stores?

Obviously my “solution” only works if you live in Canada and have $2,999 to spare. Okay, I didn’t exactly have it to “spare”, but you get the point. Does anyone know of any local/indie book stores that offer programs like the ones I mentioned for self-published authors? It doesn’t have to be only for Canada – I’d love to know about any/all of them!

Also, does anyone know anything or have tips about getting your book into a physical book store? I’m sure at least one person in the big, wide world of WordPress has accomplished this feat!

And now for a change of pace – SpaceX!

Not technically on the topic of writing, but still noteworthy – SpaceX has successfully launched their first commercial spaceship. It’s unmanned, and is currently in orbit around Earth and preparing to dock with the International Space Station (ISS). Read about it here. Why am I so excited about this? Because NASA shut down the spaceshuttle program, and have been relying on Russian rockets (not the most reliable form of transportation) to get up to the ISS. SpaceX is the first private company in the world to launch their own rocket successfully. And they aren’t the only company doing it, either. I envision a future (hopefully within the next few decades), where space tourism will be a real thing. How awesome would it be to go up into space for a few hours and float around in zero G? If SpaceX succeeds, this could very well happen, hence my enthusiasm.

And for those of you who don’t want to read the article, here is my personal favourite tidbit from the very bottom:

“The rocket also blasted into orbit around the Earth the ashes of more than 300 people, including Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on Star Trek. The ashes were in a section of the rocket that was jettisoned during the climb into space.”

That’s right, you can now send your ashes up into space to orbit the Earth for eternity, in the company of astronauts and Star Trek actors. Anyone else intrigued by this concept?

Categories: Self Publishing | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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