Michelle Proulx's Blog, page 16

Cover Reveal: The Sun’s Rival (Danielle E. Shipley)

Cover reveal time for Danielle E. Shipley’s new book in The Wilderhark Tales — The Sun’s Rival! Head over to her website for more info.

Day 1 of My Halifax Road Trip!

Early morning. Birds chirp, garbage trucks squeal as they labor to lift huge metal bins and disgorge the smelly contents into their innermost parts. A knock at the door. Father has arrived.

“Hello, Michelle. We only have 3 hours to move your brother out and he hasn’t finished packing. You’ll help us, right?”

Guilt and conflicting emotions swirl within. Do I help, or do I shower and head out on the road? My friends are waiting for me at the Port Hope service station, ready to begin our epic trek to Halifax. Should I stay or should I go? Should I accidentally quote The Clash? The answer is clear.

“Okay, Dad. Just a few boxes, then I have to go.”

One hour later, a few boxes are packed. Dishes are unexpectedly heavy, and my plastic mat under my desk chair keeps sticking me with its pointy bits. A tiny little hummingbird is trapped in my head, and keeps smacking my skull as it tries to escape. I wait until Dad and Jesse are down at the moving truck and then make a break for the shower.

Clean and significantly more alive, I emerge. One more hour later, I have wrestled all my belongings into my car. Tetris masters have nothing on me. There’s even room for two boxes of alcohol, courtesy of my new roommate — fun times will be had when we reach the coast.

Off I go down the road, sniffling and wiping away a few errant tears. I’ll miss my family, especially my brother. He may wake up at 4pm every day and lecture me on military history, but he’s awesome and I love him. He’s not much for emotional displays, so it’s a good thing the tears hit me once I’m in my car.

A few traffic jams and muttered curses later, I’m on the highway. It’s moving swiftly, and I turn on the radio and try not to swerve wildly off the road as I consume my breakfast sandwich. Brief stop at Cambridge for gas. Then I hit Toronto. Traffic, traffic, traffic, and not the good kind. The troll kind, where you’re stop and go for half an hour, then up to 100, finally think Hermes has blessed you with boots of flight to get you out of the quagmire, and then back to stop and go when you realize it’s all a cruel lie.

Finally, I reach the Port Hope service station. My travelling companions are finished lunch and about to continue onward. I was late, and the caravan waits for no one. Don’t worry, they say. I can catch up easily — just look for the UHaul truck lumbering along in the slow lane. I scarf down a slice of pepperoni and hurry after them. For two hours I speed along, eyes peeled for a glimpse of the elusive truck. It’s gone.

Panic sets in. What service station are we stopping at next, again? Port Mallory? No, that was Port Hope. But Mallory something … or was it Melissa? Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no town called Melissa. Mallory … ville? Mallorytown? Yes! I see the sign, coming up on my right.

But I also see the blinking fuel gauge light — I’m almost out. 38 kilometers left. Will I make it? The needle sinks lower … and lower … and then the turn off! Sweet relief! The tank greedily gobbles up gas, and I force my shoulders to un-tense.

Finally our caravan is in the same spot at the same time. After a brief bathroom break, we’re away. I’m the rear guard, cruising along behind the UHaul truck while my friend leads in her car. I feel a curious sense of unity — like I’m part of something greater, something with a purpose. Is this what it feels like to join a religion? I may be thinking too much into this. I focus on driving, and on ignoring the cars tailgating me.

We reach Quebec. It looks exactly like Ontario, except all the signs are in French. This is awkward, as we do not speak French. It is surprising to me that a province of the English-speaking Canada would not at the very least have bilingual signs. I’m torn between irritation and resignation. 

Onward into Montreal. As we hit the off ramp, an eighteen-wheeler swerves wildly toward us, then hauls itself back onto the highway at the last second. Not sure if it’s just lost, or was trying to play an extremely ineffective game of chicken.

A few more turns, and my mother’s home appears on the left. We stumble out of our cars, guide the truck into the driveway, and then let out a hoarse cheer — we’ve successfully survived day 1 of our three day trek. Mother furnishes us with smoked meat and coleslaw, red wine and chocolate. We are satiated, and ready for Day 2.

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/Kt1EE

I just found the stupidest 1 star review …

I know I said I was busy packing and moving to Halifax, but I just stumbled across this one star review of Hush Hush and I had to share it because it’s so stupid. Here it is:

This book was for my daughter’s summer reading. She is still not done with it but hates reading. I’m sure the book is a good book but just not something that I’m interested in. I really didn’t rate it farely since I haven’t read it.

Who the hell leaves a one star review for a book they admittedly haven’t read and have no intention of reading? She says at the end that she didn’t rate it fairly, which is at least an attempt at sanity, but why on earth would she leave a review at all? Grrrrrrr.

Just needed to share this insanity. That is all.

 

Unrelated media of the day:

I’m currently in love with this song …

I’m Moving to Nova Scotia!

In a shocking turn of events, I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be moving to Nova Scotia at the end of the month! Prior to that, I’m a bridesmaid at my best friend’s wedding, so I’ve got a busy next few weeks incoming. Apologies in advance for the lack of posts. (Not that they’re exactly overflowing at the moment, lol.)

During my mini vacation I will be editing Chasing Nonconformity – hopefully to finally get the next draft finished and ready for some beta reading. No promises, though. Still, that’s the plan.

So I wish everyone a happy end of August, and I’ll check back in once I’m safely on the East Coast!

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/7Empt

Writing Tip: Dialogue Tag DOs and DON’Ts

Today we’re talking about dialogue tags! I already rambled about them in a previous post, but I’m going to ramble some more about them now, so prepare yourself.

 

What is a dialogue tag?

It’s the short phrase you stick after a line of dialogue — i.e., “he said”, “she said”, etc.

 

Simple dialogue tag

Observe the following sentence:

“I love your socks,” he said.

That’s a simple dialogue tag — sentence of dialogue, followed by a dialogue tag. Here are some more:

“Your face is on fire!” she said.

“Are you sure?” he said.

Note:

You have to use a punctuation mark at the end of the sentence of dialogue that’s not a period — i.e., comma (most common), question mark (for questions), exclamation mark (for excitement!) — Using a period is effectively ending the sentence, so if you put a period after “I love your socks”, you’re ending the sentence, and then the “he said” is just randomly floating there with no attachment to anything
The “he said” or “she said” needs to be decapitalized. If you write something like this — “I love your socks,” He said. — you’re indicating by capitalizing the “he” that either A) God is talking, or B) you’re starting a new sentence and don’t know how to punctuate your sentence of dialogue properly.

 

Dialogue tag before dialogue

Observe:

Staring at her beautiful face, he said, “I’d like to lick your nose.”

So here we’re reversing the order of dialogue and dialogue tag. Note:

You need to end the dialogue tag (and thus lead into the dialogue) with a comma or a colon — not a period, question mark, or exclamation mark. Using one of those would indicate the sentence is ending after the word “said”, which means you have a sentence reading: “Staring at her beautiful face, he said.”, which makes no sense at all

 

Dialogue tag in between two pieces of dialogue

Observe:

“How are you doing?” he asked. “Isn’t the weather grand?”

“I wish I could agree with you,” she said, “but I have a ferret up my nose.”

Here we have two variations of “dialogue tag between two pieces of dialogue”. In the first example, we’ve got dialogue with a complete sentence (How are you doing?), and then a second complete sentence of dialogue (Isn’t the weather grand?). Since these are both complete sentences, we put a period after “he asked”. In the second example, the second bit of dialogue is continuing the first bit of dialogue, thus we stick a comma after “she said” to indicate the sentence is still on-going.

 

Using a descriptive sentence instead of a dialogue tag

Observe:

Tracy cleared her throat. “Excuse me, can I please have one albatross-egg omelette, shaken not stirred?”

So here we know that Tracy is speaking, since the first sentence implies fairly heavily that she’s the one talking. It’s not a dialogue tag, because it’s not describing how she’s talking — you can “say”, or “exclaim”, or even “screech” out a sentence, but you certainly can’t “clear your throat” a sentence.

You can also stick the descriptive sentence after the dialogue:

“Where are you going?” Mary pouted at Roger, hoping he would come back and stay with her forever.

Again, “Mary pouted” isn’t a dialogue tag, because you can’t “pout” a sentence. It’s a sentence unrelated to the dialogue, although it still indicates she’s the one talking.

Third example, putting a descriptive sentence between two dialogues:

“My name is Jim.” I’m lying through my teeth, but she doesn’t need to know that. “What’s your name?”

Note:

First rule here is that you can’t punctuate dialogue tags and descriptive sentences the same way. If it’s a dialogue tag, it’s attached to the dialogue. If it’s a descriptive sentence, it’s a different sentence entirely from the dialogue. This means you can’t do something like this:

“Hey Bob,” I shake his hand, “what’s cooking?”

This is wrong on so many levels. Can you spot them? A) “I shake his hand” isn’t a dialogue tag, so “Hey Bob” should be ending in a period/exclamation mark to indicate the sentence is over ; B) “I shake his hand” needs to end in a period, since it’s a sentence, and sentences don’t end in commas! ; and C) “what’s cooking?” should have “what” capitalized, since it’s the start of a sentence

 

In conclusion …

Dialogue can be really confusing to punctuate!

 

Semi-related media of the day:

In this case, the “problem” referred to in the song is “punctuation rules for dialogue and dialogue tags”.

Short Story Review: The Coin Collector

Michelle Proulx:

New review for my short story “The Coin Collector”!

Originally posted on A Zombie for the Holidays:

In this humorous short story, Mr. Quimbly sets out on his first-ever field assignment for the Tax and Revenue Agency to investigate the mysterious Mr. Green on a charge of coin hoarding. He finds both the illegal coin collection and Mr. Green at a dilapidated warehouse down by the docks … and also discovers that he’s bitten off a bit more than he can chew.

I read this quirky little short story last night.  I was tired and the room was full of people, but it still grabbed me and caught my attention.  It reads quick and fast even though it looks a bit dense when you see the story on the page.  Don’t be fooled by that.  Michelle keeps your attention the whole way.  Read it if you get a chance.  Well worth your time.  I now look forward to “eventually” reading her first novel.

 The opening to the…

View original 124 more words

On name changes and accidental racism

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Today I’m here to talk about one of the characters from my book. He is a Frimbian alien, meaning he is toad-like, slimy, has spawn, loves to eat moss and assorted bugs, etc. He shows up in one scene, and is referred to later on in the book — his purpose is partially to move the plot forward, but mostly just there to make the reader laugh and go, “Ew, slimy alien! Gross!”

His name is Minister Gook.

Now, I chose the name because I thought it sounded amusing. Any word with an “oo” sound is fun, so I stuck some consonants on either end and called it a day. And everything was fine, until a friend bought my book, read it, and noted that the word “gook” is actually a derogatory term toward people of Korean descent.

Well, crud.

Obviously, I hadn’t intended my little toad-alien’s name to be a racist slur. It was just a silly-sounding word I’d put together, because apparently I’m really not up on my racist terminology. Yay me? Anyway, a couple of people have mentioned it since the book was published, but no one gave me a hard time about it — it was more of an FYI, as in hey, did you know you were accidentally racist?

Now, I’m planning on re-releasing Imminent Danger in a few months with a shiny new cover. I’ll also be going through the book and making a few minor text edits — adding/deleting commas and such. One thing I’m thinking of doing is changing Minister Gook’s name, because I really don’t want to offend anyone. But then I thought: is it actually offensive? After all, if you Google the word, another definition comes up as well: any sticky, greasy, or slimy substance.

So the questions I put to you are:

Should I change Minister Gook’s name when I re-release my book?
If you’ve read the book, did his name strike you as rude/inappropriate, or was it just an amusing-sounding name?

Thanks in advance for any and all input!

 

Unrelated media of the day:

Source: http://9gag.com/gag/a8WQ0R1?ref=fsidebar

 

Want Imminent Danger Swag? Email Me!

Have you ever dreamed of owning your very own Imminent Danger bookmark? Well, dream no more, my friends! I have a boatload of bookmarks and stickers that are getting dusty on my shelves, and I just bought a shiny new 50-pack of envelopes, so I’m putting out a call to all my adoring fans:

If you want Imminent Danger swag, email me with your address and I’ll send you some!

Before anyone gets overly excited, we’re talking bookmarks and stickers here, people — not, like, a pony with my book cover shaved into its side. That’s animal cruelty, which is very bad. Shame on you.

So if you want some ID swag, email me (michellishelli@gmail.com) your address, and I’ll do my best to make it happen. Obviously if I get 500 emails (unlikely, but I’m allowed to dream too, dammit!), I won’t be able to send out swag envelopes to everyone, so we’ll say this is a first come, first serve offer.

Now fire up that inbox and send me all your juicy personal information!

Unrelated media of the day:

Correct usage of quotation marks is a must for the savvy writer …

Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/L8Zcdsm

Writing Tip: Dashes vs. Hyphens

In today’s Writing Tip, we’re going to talk about dashes (—) and hyphens (-). This is a pretty intense topic, so buckle up and prepare yourself for some extreme learning.

Dashes

These cute little guys come in two varieties: em dashes (—) and en dashes (–). Can’t tell the difference? Em dashes are slightly longer. I know it doesn’t look like it, but trust me! I’m a professional. (God help us all.)

So these are the ones you use in lieu of brackets and commas to separate out phrases in a sentence (presumably there are other uses as well). I’ve seen em and en dashes used interchangeably (apparently en dashes are often used in date ranges, i.e. 1994–1998), but I favor em dashes, mostly because I like how they look. Anyway, here’s an example of dashes in action:

The awesome thing about dashes—and here I’m going to get technical, so watch out—is that they look like little snakes. I know, I know, it’s crazy. I’ll say, “Yo yo, Humphrey, H-skillet, this here dash dun look like a tiny little snake dude—” And Humphrey gets so irritated with my inability to correctly formulate English sentences that he interrupts me by pulling out an actual, live snake and throwing it at my face. But the fact remains that dashes—or any straight line, for that matter—are eerily reminiscent of our slithery brethren.

Dashes!

 

Hyphens

These are also called “short dashes” by very silly people, including myself. Sometimes I’ll even call dashes “long hyphens”, because I’m depressingly inconsistent in my terminology. Regardless, hyphens are the ones you use to connect words together, like “twenty-one” or “American-owned” or, when referring to the Dark Lord, “Good-old-What’s-his-face”.

Here is an example of hyphens in action:

In nineteen-eighty-one, I met a seventy-two-year-old man whose name was Johnathon Preposterously-Long-Surname. Mr. Preposterously-Long-Surname was the child of Mary-Anne Preposterously and Billy-Bob Long-Surname. Billy-Bob himself was the child of hyphenated parents, Gracia Long and Eustace Surname, who combined their names to create the aforementioned “Long-Surname” moniker.

 

So, to wrap up, dashes and hyphens are different. They’re not interchangeable. And they’re really confusing when used too much in a single paragraph, as can be seen above. They are also part of very violent punctuation gangs who roam the streets at night correcting grammatically incorrect graffiti and getting into fist-fights (correct use of hyphen, incorrect use of spelling!). So be aware, and stay safe out there, my blogging compatriots!

 

Unrelated media of the day:

New music video by Marianas Trench making fun of pop songs …

New blog/website layout! Check it out :)

Hi all! For anyone who saw my last post, I was very perplexed about the best way to host my website. After sorting through some excellent advice and doing some research, I ended up mapping my domain name over to this very site (WordPress). So now my blog is also my website! Huzzah!

I changed the theme and added a bunch of pages and stuff — feel free to wander around the site and check it out. I clearly know nothing about web design, so if you see anything you don’t like, or think should be done differently, by all means drop me a comment and let me know.

In writing news, I’m still editing Chasing Nonconformity — I went through and did all the major structural edits, so now I’m going through and doing line-by-line stuff. Once I’m done that, it’ll be another round of beta readers, another round of edits … and then, hopefully, time for publication! Fingers crossed we get this puppy out by the end of 2014 — although at the rate I’m accomplishing writing-related tasks this year, we may be looking more at an early 2015 date. Alas.

 

Unrelated media of the day

These are taken from 29 Times Tumblr Raised Serious Questions About Harry Potter — click the link if you want to see more.