kate rothwell

Hooo boy. Some great marketing types put up a Make Your Own Ad at the GM site. Maybe GM doesn't mind the way people are using the Make Your Own to create little videos like this. and this. or this. and this. and for the romantic? It friggin loves you. Heck, thanks to lots of people emailing this around, GM's getting lots of traffic and that's what counts, right? See if you can do worse or better. Email me the results! updated to include one of the funniest ads ever. Nothing to do with GM though. Big Ad for beer.

Thirteen things I've taken from my dog's mouth 1. A penguin missing a face and flipper and foot. 2. The last bit of a kid sculpture. 3. Her leash. 4. A book 5. A dish towel 6 Doesn't look impressive untill you see that all of those gloves are left handed. The right handed ones are Gone. We have a corresponding bag of orphaned rights. No one wears matched gloves around here. 7. The remains of a plastic flower pot. 8. The top to my water bottle. I suspect the bottom is out back somewhere 9. A stick. She brought it inside so she could have company while she chews it to bits. 10. A stuffed toy. A donut, I believe. 11. Part of a sandcastle kit. It came with a shovel which is long gone into little bits. 12. A yogurt carton. I gave it to her, so I'm not sure it counts 13. A milk carton. I thought it would take a while to find 13 chewed things because most of her victims end up tossed in the garbage. Took me less than five minutes to gather these. Links to other Thursday Thi...

My mother was slipping, heading downhill fast mentally. She had some sort of scan done (I really can't remember if it was brain or vessels or what) and we went to talk to the specialist who'd done it. He was in his seventies and my mother loved the fact he wasn't young enough to be her son. She was sick of baby-faced doctors. He pulled out the report to read us the results. I could read the paper upside-down and saw that the name at the top of the paper was not Rothwell but something long and Germanic, I'll say Medizinischesverzögert. "That's not my mother's name." I pointed at the paper. "Here are the results I have for her," the guy said. "Medizinischesverzögert is not my name," my mother said. "Is it the scan doctor's name maybe?" I asked. The doctor wasn't paying attention to us; he was flipping through the notes. "The name of the doctor who did the scan?" I said again. He leafed back to the first pag...

Dear ________, I just sold a story to another publisher and the reason I'm letting you know is because you guys: a. Saved my tuchus by sending the story back to me when my computer blew up. b. Gave me great suggestions for changes. I was just going to let the subject drop, but I felt like I owed you some kind of heads-up. (If only so you'd know which author's portrait to make into this week's dart-board portrait). Thanks you again for your time, patience and everything else, Kate Rothwell/Summer Devon I didn't add that the reasons I'm going with pub#1 are strictly non-personality based--which is always lovely. Personality issues floating around this kind of decision make the process yuck-city. Here's why pub#1: 1. The book will eventually go to print and be in bookstores (oh, but it turns out pub#2's books do too. oh well) 2. They pay an advance (#2 doesn't). 3. I've already published with them. I think I've probably said good-bye to my chan...

basic summary of an email exchange just now Samhain editor: I have a strange question--did you submit a book to me? me: The one with the references to Bewitched? Kind of weird? SE: I'll buy it. me: Are you sure? Have you read it? SE: Sure I read it. I'll buy it. It's the shape-shifting rat book erotica--by Summer, naturally, since anything by Kate goes via the agent and is mainstream And makes big bucks**, dang it. Here's the Dear Abby situation though: I'd submitted it to another epublisher who pointed out all sorts of things that were wrong with it. I fixed a few of the problems (not all, because I wasn't sure what some of the comments meant). I appreciate epublisher two's time and useful suggestions. Do I tell them that um, never mind, I sold it to someone else? So dang many ebooks a week come out, chances are epub two won't notice the book and I bet it could slide through without notice. But I don't want to be slimy...well any slimier than I alr...

I'm sick of writing books publishers don't buy... It's been a while, so maybe it's time for a "Not Fooling Them Any More Day " So why bother posting, you ask? .... .... .... .... wait a bit, I'll find an answer. ... ... ... hmmmm. No. Not yet. .... ... ... Well, there is the question about pseudonyms. I mean people seem to resent them. I use one to keep my writing styles separate and so that my kids can pretend they don't know an erotica writer. But is it worth a whole post? Nope. A recipe instead. My favorite scones (mostly from Epicurious.com ) way, way rich, so don't make it when you're alone. (they freeze okay though--cooked, I mean) 400 degree oven. 2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup sugar plus 3 tablespoons additional if using fresh cranberries 1 tablespoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits 1 1/4 cups fresh cranberries, chopped coarse, or...

Maili discovered the best online toy for anyone interested in 19th century London . The best, ever, ever. Oh lordy, it's fun. I thought playing with regular addresses on google earth was a gas. Serious Saturday night excitement here, yessirreebob, but time to wind down. I have to go read Hank the Cowdog aloud which will mean I'll speak with a horrendous southern accent for the next few hours. Yeehaw lil dawgies.

I've been reading a bunch (well, four) of non-romance non-fantasy non-mass-market-land books lately. After a few years of a full diet of mass-market, I can no longer evaluate books that are not romance or mystery or have the clear plot pattern of, say, a fantasy. If something in the plot or characters seems off I think well, maybe the author meant us to think it's off --I don't automatically think this writer is an unclear doofus. I look for messages and symbolism just because I figure it has to be there. I think I'm going to go back to Mass-market-land soon. I'm tired of being overawed. Actually I want to read Doug's book, if I can find it on my computer. What I do like? Reading the Amazon reviews of one of those books wherein I discover everyone else knows the truth: What a pretentious dolt. I loved this book--it changed my life forever. It's a load of garbage. Best book of the decade. READ it NOW. Don't waste your money on this immature batch of s...

this yammering was on the home trip from school. I got the low-down on my high-flying neighbor's time in Austin ( this is the Emmy Award-winning neighbor ). He's pumped because a band he plays with was voted number one of 1,400 bands in Austin by the LA Times. Very cool. The neighbor mostly talked about how much he likes playing with Big Al Anderson. The best part of this current round of excitement isn't the admiration, the money and all that (at least when he was talking to me, the less wealthy neighbor. Dude's a diplomat). It's that the guy he's playing with/for/whatever has been his role model since he was twelve and that Al is a nice guy. The professional musician neighbor hates meeting a lot of the big names because so many of them are assholes. Not Big Al. That's cool--and so's the fact that the band isn't full of partying drinkers and they all have kids. It's a comfortable fit for a guy who saw 20 a while back. I keep trying to figure out...

first: Portia De Costa's new cover . Wow, eh? and then, some chocolate -- a review site . oh what the heck, in honor of Wendy, a chocolate recipe. I just made fudge sauce (I didn't want to, but boy 3 and mike insisted) Easy: 1 can condensed milk 2 oz unsweetened chocolate a few teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa some tablespoons of butter a couple of teaspoons of corn syrup. a few tablespoons of water. heat it (stirring constantly), eat it. Not sophisticated like pad thai but it works better on ice cream. I've eaten a teaspoon and will now pretend there is no chocolate in the house. Maybe I'll go for a run.

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Sheesh, only about 1,000 people at most showed up in Hartford today . Where were you guys? Some dude walking past said, "Now that's too bad, around here I'd expect 40,000 people." He didn't stop though. (It was pretty cold, windy and it snowed. Ahhh, New England in the springtime.) And I was expecting to see lots of people who didn't look white, middle class and badly dressed. . . kvetch, mumble, moan. I posted about the erring Uncle Joe in dailykos. Basic theme? You're not going to win hearts and minds of CT voters by calling them morons. I was called a moron by one of the readers. That's enough politics for the day. I don't want to drive off my very last reader. [waving at her: Yes, turn off the lights but please, don't slam the door on your way out.]

No, really. He wants your favorites and he wants them NOW. I haven't sent him any but I haven't looked through my impressive list o' smut. I think an 80s romance would do the trick. That's when universes shattered and euphemisms raged and metaphors soared. These days? Rioters call a blissful coming to climax an orgasm. Yawn. Do you suppose that cleaning scene in the Pine Sol commercial might count?

From 3/17/06 The Sun Herald Your assignment: to read the article and answer my questions: 1. Why aren't more people put out about this? (I wrote "why aren't more people angry", but I suppose no one was harmed. It just seems stupid--and unprofessional, too.) 2. Why isn't Fox News pissed off? They'd have reason. ** 3. Why did they bother misrepresenting themselves? 4. Eh? Has this sort of thing happened a lot and I've just missed it? I wish ferfe would weigh in . . . _______________ ** from the Sun-Herald article: Aly Colon, who deals with issues of ethics for the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fla., said such a scenario undermines the public's trust of the media. "I think when individuals who are not journalists pose as journalists, it creates, at the least, some confusion in the public's minds," Colon said. "The key to journalism is credibility. So what the public wants to be able to do is trust p...

I'm sure you all remember the eye-boggling, mind-warping Brawny man link I gave you? Pine Sol's caught on with a house-cleaning hunk video. Not interactive like the mortifying Brawn-Dude sequences, but one can't have everything. Update: I figured I owed it to my readers to watch the whole thing through. No, I've tried three times and I. . . Just. Can't. I get to the pant-stripping bit and am too embarrassed for them all. Prudish Porn Writer Kate curtsey to Sue Seeley

I always: 1. Underestimate how long it takes to print out 403 pages. 2. Want chocolate. 3. Waste time on trying to find the quote. No, can't do an approximation. I want the real thing. * * * * * I was over at the General's trying to recall the two 19th century Save Our Souls gents who remind me of Wildmon. Big Daddies who make sure our beautiful minds aren't besmirched. Ahhhh. Of course! Comstock and Parkhurst . I spent an hour messing around with book and web searches on those dudes. Apparently public ridicule helped to bring those guys down. See why history's worth studying? Parkhurst seemed more sincere and less self-aggrandizing (an earnest twit. really, the wiki thing on them both is more polite than the other sources I've found). Comstock? Hoooeeee. That power-hungry dude loved his fun, legislating morality. Here. I'll copy my own dull notes from the general's comment section: Wildmon discusses going into gay bathhouses to do his own investigations ...

Okay, I liked these stories of peculiar brushes with the rich and famous: Cora --"I once asked the German secretary of culture (who was not secretary of culture back then, just a local politico) to speak a little less loud in a restaurant, because no one else was interested in his political opinions." Suisan --"My father once asked Alan Dershowitz to leave our house because he had come close to insulting my mother during an ACLU meeting in the living room." Without providing details (tchah!) Suisan claims the story is off, so we'll add this for her credit: "My great-great-uncle signed the letter, printed in the official biography, which expelled Humphrey Bogart from prep school." I don't just want shaking-hands-with or going-to-school-with stories--well, they're all right, I guess. I really want to read about how you accidentally poured salad dressing on some politician's wife. The best I can offer is picking up Eleanor Mondale while she wa...

Four 4 jobs you have had in your life: bartender art model service manager in a Saab garage editor of a regional magazine 4 movies you would watch over and over: whether I want to or not... Princess Bride Pie-rats of the Carribean Philadelphia Story The Snowman 4 places you have lived: Washington, DC Boston Beloit, WI Frederick, MD 4 TV shows you [- love to] watch -- I don't control the remote ( because I don't particularly care): Good Eats Iron Chef Myth Busters that hideous dubbed thing...Extreme Elimination 4 places you have been on vacation: St Barts Moosejaw Saskatchewan Seattle Moscow 4 websites [blogs, duh] you visit daily: Jesus' General http://Ballsandwalnuts.com http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com pbw 4 of your favorite foods: Chocolate Sushi cheeses good bread 4 places you would rather be right now: anywhere warm by myself somewhere cleaner/neater than this place a place that smells like coffee and has quiet (live!) music playing 4 friends you are tagging tha...

I love that game of "Which Famous People Have You Seen/Met?" The six degrees of separation thing. The waitress who got yelled at by some movie star, the guy who hit some senator's dog. I knew this guy a gazillion years ago--we went to the same small high school. Of all my brushes with the famous or semi-famous, this guy's the coolest -- just because of what he said on March 1st to a Maryland State Senator: Senator Nancy Jacobs : Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that? Jamie Raskin : Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You didn't place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. [He's running for office in Maryland, by the way.]

boy3 : So how well are your books selling? me : Eh. boy3 : We need more money so you have to sell more books. You need more suspense, more action. That thing you said. "I'm not with you in body but I am with you in spirit" [I'd just yelled that to him when he got indignant because I'd disappeared to drag the empty garbage cans to the back while he stood on the porch yammering at me] Make that someone's dying words. Make the scene last a long time. That'll be good for the suspense. me : If he's obviously dying there's not a lot of suspense. I think suspense means you're not sure of the outcome. Or maybe it means-- boy3 : [ not paying attention ] he'll be lying in a pool of his own blood. His own life fluids. me: Not someone else's? Might add suspense if you had him lying in someone else's life fluids. boy3 : [ still caught up in his ideas .] Better stabbed than drowned, I think. You had someone drowned already. me: No, I didn'...

Bah. Doug is first on the subject. Romance? Erotica? He's got it covered so I'll just take a tangent and run. When I first discovered Romance (not that long ago) I'd flip through looking the books for the heat. Yowza, man, I liked that stuff and I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. Yup. Pant. Pant. But now that I'm writing erotica, I'm often tired of the physical heat. Sexual tension, blah blah blah. Followed by Sex=insert tab a (or b) into slot a (or b, or c or d) B-d exist because there needs to be more for those hungry readers. Push that envelope. Not that envelope! We need a new envelope. Bring on oral gratification! Bring on butt sex! Bring on the living dead blud suckers. I always thought that readers who professed to be bored by sex in books were just hiding their prudishness as ennui. Eh, maybe not. Never mind the knobs and slots, bring on the people. Lately I've been flipping through looking for other sorts of tension. Not the bickering stuff-- I hate ...

I'm going to give away a book through JERR, a newsletter. That meant I needed to post an excerpt from a book on my Summer webpage . Simple, eh? An hour later, I'd managed to wipe out the entire site from the internet. Six hours later, I got the thing rebuilt and back on, but there are ghostie copies of pages flitting and cluttering. Sometimes when you hit a link, you get somewhere. Often you get somewhere else, old and outdated. What I've learned today: Webpeople are not paid enough. Bec is rescuing my page from some of my mistakes. Maybe when she's done, she can change her becaverse thing at the bottom of this blog.

That's T. Jones the Pythoner. And yes, yes, yes, it's politics but it's British politics for a change... God: I've lost faith in Blair. A high-level leak has revealed that God is "furious" at Tony Blair's attempts to implicate him in the bombing of Iraq. Sources close to the archangel Gabriel report him as describing the Almighty as "hopping mad ... with sanctimonious yet unscrupulous politicians claiming He would condone their bestial activities when He has no way of going public Himself, owing to the MMW agreement" (a reference to the long-established Moving in Mysterious Ways concordat). click on the link above for the rest.

I blame the niece who's still here. She's doing one last load of laundry (it's traditional, isn't it? we are strong on family tradition!!) before getting on the bus to visit her sophisticated, cosmopolitan older sister in NYC. Hope she has a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan time there than she did here--our big event of the week was visiting a tiny little farm so she could draw a few chickens. I blame her for not getting my thirteen done, but it's my fault. I started out complex on my TT, writing those buzz phrases for novels. Damn. What are they called? High concept. That's it. "Gone with the Wind set in post-apocalyptic-earth Spaceports and Scarlett as a kickass** heroine." Heh. that kind of thing. Here's a cover of Summer's novella, a historical erotica (historotica! Summer's first!), coming out next month at Samhain. This is a story that mortifies me, which is always a good sign that people will like it. Seriously, that seems to be the...

Not politics, though I lifted this particular toy from a political site . Go make Einstein talk to you.

The bitches have invented a new word. Here's a new definition of Bill Napoli. God, yes. Napoli is a turkey beyond all turkeys. Idiot deluxe. When he dies, may he come back as a dirt-poor, extremely fertile woman with a normal sex drive, a tendency for pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes who marries to a series of husbands that tend to take off when the going gets rough. I read a pro-life complaint about how the federal government has no right to interfere with a state's right to decide what's best. Huh. Why didn't that person see the obvious? If you take that to the logical conclusion the question is what politician at any level has any right what to decide is best for any woman? Don't get me wrong--I don't think abortion is a black and white issue. I'm real queasy about it. But I'm completely certain it's not up to me to make such a personal decision for anyone else. There's the accepted medical position that the end of life comes when br...

DeLay, the guy who's in trouble because of his links to lobbyists--guess where he's spending this election night? (primary day in Texas) With a bunch of lobbyists. Unbelievable, but true. But unbelievable. UPDATE: and he won--yowza! I found this at Boozhy's place. His comment: Umm... I'm not a crack political strategist or anything, but it seems common sense that if you're at the forefront of a huge scandal involving your relationship with lobbyists, you'd ummm.... I dunno? Steer clear of lobbyists?

Monica Jackson got a lot of traffic in her blog** and went all polite again. She's STAYING polite this time. Did you know there have been studies concluding that holding back passionate beliefs will make the top of your head come off? Come on Monica....what can I do to stir you up and stop channeling the politician's wife? Get you to w atch this maybe? Actually it's worth listening to Graylan Hagler but I got annoyed by the video portion of it. (check out the Thanksgiving video a couple of posts below just because I love that thing.) P.S. Hi Uncle Andrew and Brian! ________ ** traffic's not a problem for me. my readership's going down, down, downnnnn.

just say no to dildoes! Tennessee must be a very funny place.

We're in the movies. Aya the niece is visiting. She did a music video of our Thanksgiving last year. College students, just past college age people and my guys, mostly. Don't forget to turn up the volume. Here's her website, too.

I [heart] my dentist. Yeah, he's good with the teeth and he's a Red Sox fan. . The icing on the cake is that he's a good guy too. The flipside of the story is that every time I see the line between the haves (raising my hand, that's me) and the have-nots (the refugees--except the young ones who'll learn enough English to get good jobs) I'm worried for my country. Heck the refugees are even plugged into a system. They actually have minimal of health insurance. The people without any sort of health insurance**......no, I would rather think about my dentist just now. Last Wednesday, Senija was in terrible pain. She's been in terrible pain before--and it's her tooth. Her dentist can't see her until April or May--she's on state aid and practically no one takes it. Senija could barely eat or talk she's in such pain. So I called my dentist. The receptionist apologized that they couldn't see her until the next day. Thursday we slid through the sn...

A M Riley doesn't avoid the blood and gore of vampires . . .and in her stories the supernatural sometimes fits our world like OJ's glove (and other times like a latex "glove"). Every now and then I buy some online books-- when I know I have to be stuck somewhere with only the computer. I started reading this (it's free! it's seriously just for grown-ups!). And then as soon as I could, bought that -- it's a little less grim. She's got lost souls down and hot m/m sex too, so if that seriously squicks you, avoid it. It turns out that m/m doesn't do a whole lot for me. But the writing and the characters turned me on. Lost boys, only far better than the other takes I've seen. Riley seems to have done her research about fairies and banshees**, too. I wouldn't know, because I haven't. I sometimes try to guess which ebook rioter will be The Next Big Thing (so far it's clear I shouldn't be an agent or publisher). Today's guess is ...

Thirteen Stupid things I've heard or said 1. My Washington, DC driver's license had "District of Columbia" on it. Three people (one in Wisconsin, two in Boston) asked to see my passport when I used that license for ID 2. When I was a bartender, the worst pickup line ever attempted with me: "Hey, you're kinda cute. Wanna fuck?" 3. When my baby sister (who's Eurasian) was tiny, her babysitter said she couldn't wait to find out what language the baby would speak. No, I am not kidding and she wasn't either. 4. Me, to the naked woman in the YWCA: "When's your baby due?" . . . You guessed it--she wasn't pregnant. I couldn't even use the "the dress tented funny" argument. 5. I was taking the baby sisters out for a walk. I was 12, they were 4 and 2. A lady asked if they were my children. 6. I said yes. 7. She told me I should be ashamed of myself. 6. My first two kids are 2.5 years apart. I have frequently been asked ...

A Shiva for a 15-year-old son of a rabbi. I don't know them well, but I know it's time to pay respects. Just now his mother is the person in the family who is strong. She tells us it was a virus, it took a week. She can describe what happened and what he said and did before he died. She can even thank us for stopping by, the cautious neighbors who studied the internet to make sure they don't make some sort of mistake in manners. (Don't speak until you are greeted. Don't knock, just walk in. Don't bring food.) I suppose the formal rules help, but one fact won't go away: There's nothing worse. That must be universal. When I got home, I hugged my 15-year-old son who squawked and struggled. Thank goodness. If he'd hugged me back I'd still be crying.

A few months back when the laptop went south, I lost a whole manuscript-- 380-something pages of a historical. I'd backed it up on a zip stick which turned out to be corrupt, so that puppy was gone. I tried to rewrite it but nah, I'd been there, done that and couldn't remember why I'd wanted to the first time out. So last night I dreamed a few of the characters came to visit, uninvited (I think they were secondary characters. I don't recall the heroine). They were belligerent, drunk, maybe, and they demanded to know what the hell I was doing ignoring them. I was out in the backyard picking tomatoes and they joined me--and took all the good tomatoes, the rat bastards. They also yelled so much the neighbors peered over their fences to see what was going on. By the time I woke up, I had a basket of mushy tomatoes and I was afraid to go outside and get those funny looks from the neighbors. Silly dream.