Michelle Proulx's Blog, page 23
November 7, 2013
Quick NaNo update …
Avast, me hearties!
Sad news — my NaNo attempts have, once again, failed epicly. I was doing really well the first couple of days … and then it was Monday and there was work to be done, and … long story short, my NaNo dreams are rapidly dissolving. I’ll still tap out some words whenever I get the chance, but 50k seems tragically out of reach at the moment. Noooooooes!
That’s all for now. Back to work. Write on!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/PGT0r
November 2, 2013
VLOG #11 – Argyle Arts Festival + Writing Update!
Remember how I lost my flip cam and therefore couldn’t do any more vlogs? Well, I found it! It was hiding under Tibbers, my enormous teddy bear.
Thus, without further ado, my new vlog!
October 28, 2013
Book Review: Cannibal Hearts (by Misha Burnett)
Important note: The book being reviewed below is the sequel to Catskinner’s Book.
The Book
Cannibal Hearts
The Genre
Sci-fi / Mystery
The Author
Misha Burnett has been writing poetry and fiction for around forty years. During this time he has supported himself and his family with a variety of jobs, including locksmith, cab driver, and building maintenance.
The Plot
A year ago James Ozryck was a loner, forced to keep the world at bay by the alien entity he calls Catskinner who shares his body. Now he has found a community of others whose lives have been changed by the Outsiders.
Along with Godiva, his half-human lover, James runs a property management company that serves as a front company for Outsider activities.
When the pair’s mysterious boss, Agony Delapour suddenly shows up in town with a new project, however, things gets dangerous fast as events unfold that threaten the life that they have made.
The Review
Despite its admittedly dark and gritty nature, I had a lot of fun reading this book. It’s a great sequel to Burnett’s first novel, Catskinner’s Book, and I especially liked that all the characters I enjoyed in the first book made their way into the second book. One of my personal favorites is the red vixen, Miss Agony Delapour, who played a minor and terrifying role in the first book, but happily gets much more screen time in the sequel.
One theme I really like that runs through the series is that we’re never quite sure what’s going on with everything. We’ve got our protagonist and his associates, who are actually more bad than good, some of whom try to actively do good things and fail, while others are clearly bad but just happen to be working with good people for their own nefarious purposes. And we’ve got our antagonist, who’s the dictionary definition of “mysterious” – we don’t know who he is or what he’s planning, beside the fact that he’s apparently trying to kill off the protagonist. And the fate of the antagonist is just brilliant. You’ll have to read to find out what it is!
All in all, a thrilling read! I recommend you check this out if you’re a fan of sci-fi, thrillers, or mysteries.
The Rating
Five out of five blood-encrusted stars.
Check out Cannibal Hearts here!
Unrelated media of the day:
This is a really cool game my brother showed me the other day. It’s really off the wall and bizarre, so check it out if you have a few spare moments and want a nice escape from reality!
http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/
October 23, 2013
Opinion time! What should I put on the Imminent Danger bumper sticker?
That’s right, my friends. It’s time. Time to make an Imminent Danger bumper sticker. Please, contain your excitement. Falling off your chair and collapsing on the floor in a quivering wreck is undignified. And what are we without our dignity, I ask you? WELL?
Moving on. I want to make an Imminent Danger bumper sticker, mostly because I want one to stick on my car. That’s right, I have a car now! Technically it’s my mother’s, but she bought a new one and gifted me her old one — virtual high five for awesome mothers! The car’s a bit rusty, but it’s now mine, and I want to decorate it. So let’s talk bumper stickers!
I’m thinking text is probably the best option, since bumper stickers are small and I’m not sure intricate artwork would really come across well. I was originally thinking of just putting the book title on the sticker, but that doesn’t really do much to promote my book — and ideally, the sticker would both say “Yay! Imminent Danger!” and “Buy this book!”.
Any thoughts? I’m considering including my website on the sticker, but I’m worried that’s going to put too much text to read clearly from a distance. Hmmm.
My brother suggested just having one big word — “SHWOOP”. That is, of course, the sound my spaceships make when they leap across great distances. Very appropriate for a vehicle. But no one would get the reference, not to mention it wouldn’t advertise my book at all. Then again, having a SHWOOP sticker would be pretty cool. If a couple of people got them, we could be like a secret SHWOOP club.
What do you guys think?
Take Our Poll
Unrelated media of the day:
I may have shared this already, but whatever, it’s funny.
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/poxZL
October 22, 2013
Cool marketing concept: Book blind dates
Human creativity never ceases to amaze me — as opposed to dolphin creativity, which is frankly old hat and I don’t know why they even bother anymore.
Hehehe. All kidding aside, my friend Audra (or am I supposed to keep your identity secret? TOO LATE!!!) linked me to a very cool article about a new book marketing concept they’re trying in Australia (and possibly elsewhere). The idea is that … well, I’ll borrow the image from the article to give you an idea:
Source: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/05/go-on-a-blind-date-with-a-book/
Basically, they wrap up books in brown paper, write vague details of what the book is about, and add a price tag. It’s a book blind date! Instead of being swayed by author name or book cover or whatever, you judge the book entirely based on the five keywords.
Now, obviously this could allow for you to pick up a lot of duds, especially if you’re a picky reader. But I think it sounds kind of fantastic. I can only imagine how many really amazing books I’ve missed out on because I didn’t like the covers (and I’m very much a judge-the-book-by-it’s-cover kind of person).
I’m not sure this concept can really be applied to self-published ebook authors, but … still a neat concept, don’t you think? And if anyone does come up with a way to exploit this idea in the ebook scene, feel free to let me in on the secret!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/rS6X0
October 20, 2013
Writing: From notebook to computer
Today’s post is a rumination on that fickle mistress, Typing. Specifically, the typing that occurs when you spend days and days slaving away writing out a scene by hand in your notebook, and then begin copying said scene onto your computer.
Intellectually, this should be the easiest thing in the world. Take what’s written, copy it word for word into the Word doc, save the file, and call it a day. But like many writers, I am a perfectionist. As I type each word, I think to myself, “Is this the best word? Surely there’s a more eloquent way to communicate Bob the Elephant’s intense hatred for fancy cheese trays.” And then the re-writing begins.
A simple task that should have taken a mere fifteen minutes now develops into three arduous hours of typing, deleting, typing, deleting, flipping through notebook pages to make sure I didn’t say something similar later in the scene, more typing, more deleting … MADNESS! UTTER MADNESS!
Of course, the net result is that the scene turns out far superior to how I had it written down in my notebook. But it makes me wonder … if I had skipped the notebook step and gone straight to computer, how differently would the scene have turned out? Would it have ended differently, had I not used my first, hand-written run at the scene to work out the kinks? Would it be worse? Better? Exactly the same?
These musings were brought to you by my cold cup of peppermint tea, which languished in winter’s icy chill due to the fact that I forgot about it and left it sitting on the counter for thirty minutes.
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/YN85rHp
October 18, 2013
Gearing up for NaNoWriMo!
Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your hats, because I’m about to drop a bombshell that specializes in blowing hats off people’s heads. And that bombshell, my friends, is that …
NaNoWriMo starts in two weeks!
Everyone still hatted? Excellent.
I don’t remember much about last year’s NaNo, a fact which leads me to assume that I failed spectacularly at creating the necessary 50k words to achieve ULTIMATE VICTORY!
This year, however, will be different. I came up with a kicka** idea yesterday in the shower, and I’m getting pretty psyched about writing it. It’s going to involve college, superheroes, and (potentially) evil twins. I’m thinking it’s going to end up being some sort of sci-fi thriller mystery combo, which will be fun, as I’ve never attempted such a genre before. It’s also going to be quite dark, which I’ve dabbled with in the past and had quite a lot of fun with, despite it not being my usual cheery style.
The tentative title I’m going with is “The Nemesis Contract”, which I think sounds suitably menacing. There’s a mini-series of comics that share that name, but as far as I know, titles can’t be copyrighted. Is that correct?
So I will officially be participating in NaNo this year. I can’t promise I’ll succeed, or even get past the first few days, but I’ll definitely give it a shot. I’ve gotten woefully behind on my writing these days, and I figure NaNo’s a good way to get back on the literary horse (whom I have named “Diction-neigh-ry”).
All aboard the NaNo train!!! Who’s with me?
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/4LlH8JR
October 16, 2013
New Imminent Danger fan art from Celeste DeWolfe!
I’m psyched to announce that the lovely and talented Celeste DeWolfe has created a new piece of fan art for Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It. Huzzah! This piece is called “Complicated Relationship”, and it nicely captures the … well, the complicated relationship between the novel’s two main characters.
Note: The blue glowy things around Eris’s hands in the second panel are alien handcuffs. This will make more sense if you’ve read the book!
October 13, 2013
Why everyone should read Battle Royale
Warning: This post isn’t quite as chipper as some of my previous posts. You’ve been warned!
If you’ve never heard of Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale, think Hunger Games set in a futuristic, dystopian Japan, on steroids (this is obviously a huge oversimplification, but just go with it). There’s been a lot of controversy recently about whether or not Suzanne Collins ripped off Battle Royale, but that’s not the point of this post. In this post, I’m going to explain why I think everyone should read Battle Royale at least once, because despite it not being the best-written book in the world, it has some really important ideas that I think more people should be exposed to.
Reason #1: It makes you take a hard look at yourself
When we read books, we usually end up putting ourselves in the shoes of one of the characters. It’s hard to connect to a story if you don’t do that. But in Battle Royale, the characters are average junior high students trapped on an island, given random weapons, and informed that they have to kill each other or else the collars locked around their necks will explode. Not quite as fun slipping into those shoes, is it?
Battle Royale forces you to put yourself in the position of these teenagers and ask yourself: What would I do in this situation? And it’s such a hard question to answer, because there is no easy answer. My initial response when I started reading the book was that I would hide, try to avoid confrontation, and only shoot to kill in self-defense. Okay, great. Now skip ahead 24 hours, and it’s only you and your best friend alive. One of you has to kill the other, or you both die. What do you do now? Do you trust your best friend not to turn on you? Are you willing to die to let them live? Are you willing to live with the knowledge that you killed them?
It’s a really morbid story, and very depressing to think about. But self-reflection is never a bad thing — how else do we learn about ourselves and try to improve?
Reason #2: It drives home how senseless and tragic violence is
Battle Royale is a heart-wrenching book, and not just because 40 teenagers die for no good reason. The worst part isn’t that they die, but how they die. Two young lovers throw themselves off a cliff because they’re unwilling to even consider harming their classmates. One boy spends the entire game trying to find his best friend and the girl he likes, only to have one die in his arms, and the other panic and shoot him. Another boy comes up with a brilliant plan to tear apart the game and get them all free, but is killed right before he can set his plan in motion.
When you read Battle Royale, there’s a certain part of you that cheers for the two crazy killers who go around riddling their fellow students with machine gun rounds — survival of the fittest and all that. But the rest of you comes away feeling profoundly sad and disillusioned with the glory that the media places on violence and killing, and I think that’s something that everyone needs to feel.
I have many more reasons, but those are the main two. The one I didn’t mention is that Battle Royale is just a really, really good story in general. Again, not terribly well written, but it’s pretty much impossible to put down. So, go forth, read, weep, and enjoy!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/gbbmLV3
My World And Welcome To It
Today and tomorrow (Saturday 12Oct13 and Sunday 13Oct13) my two Book Of Lost Doors novels are free for Kindle e-book download.
Although I have been writing about James & Catskinner and his world for about two years now, I still have difficulty explaining exactly what sort of books they are. I have them listed under a couple of the Fantasy…
As I mentioned a few days ago, Misha Burnett's books are free for download today! If you're a sci-fi/mystery fan, check them out :)
