Michelle McLean's Blog, page 31

So You Want to Write a Book - by Jackson Pearce

I just love Jackson - she says it like it is LOL I want a copy of this video to show to anyone who tells me they want to write a book :) Check out her website :)

Picture Book Party!

Okay, I promised you a giveaway :) In A Magical World, Alex and his little sister Izzy spend a rainy week going on all sorts of adventures by using their imagination. So...to enter to win a copy of A Magical World and an adorable little tote bag, just leave a comment below. Winner will be announced on Friday.



If you could go anywhere, do anything, be anybody or anything - where would you go? And who, or what, would you be?

Friday Funnies - Birthday Time!

In honor of my baby's 6th birthday, I give you Birthday Funnies!! :D


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Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl :)

A Magical World is Live!!

I am very thrilled to announce that my picture book, A Magical World, has finally gone live on several sites. You can now purchase the e-version for the Nook at Barnes and Noble, for all Apple products at iBooks, the epub version for just about any ereader on Smashwords, and it will be available in the next week or so on Amazon, Borders, Sony, Diesel, and Scrollmotion. The print version is available at Lulu, and should be up everywhere else by the end of the summer.

I'll be doing a giveaway with a free copy of the book and an adorable tote bag next week, so stay tuned!!!

Stuff Like That Only Happens in Storybooks

I'm back from California, tanned, tired, sad to leave my family though I had a blast being with them, and amazed at the truly crazy (and sometimes horrific) things that continuously happen to my family :) I'm writing a book, seriously, because really stuff like this just doesn't happen anywhere else.

First off, I do want to point out that I had a great time out there. I LOVE seeing my family. My brother has a gorgeous pool that I spent tons of time in, a beautiful home that was awesome to hang out in, and there is nothing I love more than being around my family. I loved being there and I really can't wait to go again.

But...yeah, some stuff happened that I could have lived without LOL Here's a brief run-down of what this "vacation" looked like:

Day 1 - my niece was bitten by my grandmother's dog...in the face.

Day 2 - my nephew sort of broke his nose. No worries...it's slightly crooked but my doctor uncle said he can fix it, no problem.

Day 3 - (4th of July). We sort of misplaced my sweet grandfather for a few minutes. We found him up the street at a neighbor's house so it was all good. Then we went to the lake for an all day picnic and the firework show. My other nephew just about broke his foot getting out of the boat (he ended up with a hole in his foot and some major bruising...painful, but could have been worse). Then we lost Grandpa again. This time it was terrifying. We found him 3 miles away, 2 hours later. Luckily he doesn't remember being lost and he wasn't injured.

Day 4 - We got home around 1:30 am from the fireworks. At about 2:30, Grandma fell down the stairs. She cracked 3 ribs, reinjured (though thankfully did not rebreak) the arm she had broken 5 months previously, and had a compound break of both bones in her leg. This was a night I never want to relive.

Day 5 - Miracle! No injuries or misplaced people.

Day 6 - My son made up for Day 5 by cracking his head on the rock ledge by the pool and getting his finger stuck in a bike tire. He now has a goose egg on his noggin and is missing a chunk out of his middle finger...which he loves to show people...which, being the finger it is, is always interesting :D

Day 7 - Grandma gets transferred to the rehab center. My mother decided to sit on a rolling suitcase...and ended up flying head over heels and landing on the floor. By this time this week had been so crazy everyone was laughing too hard to get her off the ground...including my mom :D She is a bit bruised and sore, but luckily she didn't need the bed next to Grandma.

Day 8 - we made it home in one piece - though by this time I fully expected the plane to go down on the way there :)

I don't know what it is about my family, but stuff like this happens ALL the time. And really, except for the truly horrible situations, we've learned to laugh at a lot of our mishaps. :) If we didn't laugh, I think we'd all be certifiable by now (and we probably are) ;-) I've got a rough draft outline drawn up for the book...I'll let you know when I finish the first draft :D

How did everyone else's holiday go?

Friday Funnies

First of all, head on over to Operation Awesome today for another awesome Mystery Agent Contest!!! Enter your one line pitch for any of these genres:

YA and MG: southern gothic, historical fiction, magical realism, science fiction, supernatural/ paranormal, ghost stories, humor, fantasy, thriller/ suspense, edgy YA, friendship MG
Secondly, I will be off to California tomorrow to visit family, so I'm going to take an unplugged week. I hope you all have a fantastic Fourth of July!!! And now, for some funnies :D



I'll admit...I thought this was cute for about half a second. Then I realized what it was...now I can't even look at it LOL

Mystery Agent Contest TOMORROW!!!

Operation Awesome is hosting another Mystery Agent Contest tomorrow!! Head over there tomorrow morning for full details and to enter your one line pitch. Here is what our agent is looking for:

YA and MG: southern gothic, historical fiction, magical realism, science fiction, supernatural/ paranormal, ghost stories, humor, fantasy, thriller/ suspense, edgy YA, friendship MG

Point of View

I was talking to some friends recently about the inner workings of how writers craft stories, and one of the subjects we talked about was point of view. I wrote a post on this a few years ago for my other blog, so I thought I'd repost some of the finer points. Mainly, the different types of point of view out there. Until I started looking around while writing this post, I didn't really think about how many types of points of view there are.

In fiction, we tend to use first person or third person. But there are quite a few others. Here are the common choices:
First person - the narrator is generally the main character in the book and tells the story as "I" (I did this, I said, I felt)
First person plural - more rare, with the story told by "we" (we did this, we said that)
Second person - very rare - the reader is treated as a character and is referred to as "you." This type of POV works well for some non-fiction works. For example, if I was writing a How-to article, I could use this to say "First, you take the paint brush and apply paint. Then you do this and this and this." For fiction though, this POV isn't used often, though it is used in those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Third person limited - the narrator is outside the story but focuses on one character at a time. (He said, she said). While the POV may change between different characters, these changes would be separated by scene or chapter breaks. 
Third person omniscient - the narrator is outside the story but doesn't focus on one character. The narrator knows all, sees all, conveys all. Have you ever used a point of view other than first or third person? Do you like reading books in points of view different from the "norm"?

Blog Chain - Where Do You Go?

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Okay, so it's my turn to chose the topic for this round and I toooootally spaced (I was supposed to post yesterday).

So! Without further ado, here is my question:

There are so many things we have to include in our storyworlds...characters, world details, settings, etc. No matter what genre you write, your stories are full of tiny details that help create your storyworld. I know that for me, at least, finding or creating all these details can sometimes be a bit tough. 
Where do you go for help? And what types of things are you more likely to research/search for as opposed to making up on your own? Do you have any favorite resource sites? Share links if you have them!!
For instance, I had a rather lame name for my girls' boarding school in my book. I was using it as a filler and sort of never got around to giving it a more unique name. I wanted to remedy that but after a million edits (and as it was nearing midnight and I was a little fried) I just couldn't think of anything.

I started googling and found this site, Serendipity, which has several random name generators. I took a couple of the names it came up with, combined them, and now have a school name I absolutely love.

This article on K.M. Weiland's Author Culture blog has several good links for historical writers.

This site has a lot of great Old West info (I've spent a lot of time in their Western Slang section) :D

I've emailed horticultural societies for info on what types of flowers bloom in England in the winter, doctors to find out if 100 year old skeletons would still have hair, checked out a pirate lover site to find info on pistols, and googled the history of toilets :D

What sorts of things have you looked up? Do you have any great resource links?

Head over to Margie's to see what sorts of things she might be googling :)

Friday Funnies

You know you're a writer when...Your mom says, "Now I'm ironing the placket," and you're standing beside her thinking, Placket. Good word.



You know you're a writer when...You are weaning yourself off adverbs the way others wean themselves off chocolate.



You know you're a writer when...You took time off to write a novel and found so many ways to avoid the actual writing that now you know how to reglaze a window; cook a perfect French cassoulet; change the car's oil, belts, hoses, tires, and bulb; and fix pilot lights.

(Today's Friday Funnies from Adair Lara's You Know You're a Writer When... and LOLCats)

Stay tuned for a new Mystery Agent contest over at Operation Awesome on July 1st!!! Head over there for details! :)