kate rothwell

Best tee-shirt of the day: Every time you see a rainbow, God is having gay sex.

I measure brain activity by rodent power, and yes, I know rabbits aren't rodents but some other family, I think. But close enough, okay? Gerbil brain --when your brain can't get off a subject and it runs on the wheel, thinking of nothing else. Rabbit brain --when your brain hippetty-hops from subject to subject and you bounce around the house or the internet not finishing projects or check your email every few minutes. Dormouse brain --see "Alice in Wonderland." Today = bunny brain and I can't write two sentences in a row. I went outside to rake leaves, thought of a sentence! came back inside, found a chewed up mess the dog made, cleaned up the mess, forgot why I'd come inside, made more coffee, checked the email, remembered I needed to go find the Halloween decorations in the basement and why don't I do a load of laundry while I'm there......blah blah blah, hop hop hop. What would be a useful and productive rodent? Maybe a hamster busy stuffing its ch...

I'm listening to a book on tape--an Ann Perry mystery. The book is driving me nuts. I sort of like the characters--they're occasionally predictable, but I don't mind that. I like the fact that, though they're not simplistic, these people are filled to the brim with integrity, strength, honesty yadda yadda. Nice change from the reality of ambiguous people in the real world. I don't even mind the POV errors I keep noticing. Or the obvious mistakes the characters make. EXCEPT I don't think I can listen to the whole thing because, even though the main characters are dandy, the author's driving me nuts. She has them all, every last one of them, closing their eyes and visiting the past when she needs to get in some backstory. They get so lost in their thoughts they are all startled when someone speaks and pulls them forward. Oops, just escaped to the vivid past which has more scent, sight, sound than this particular moment. Uh UH, girl friend. Once, twice okay, ...

Sometimes when I read other writers' blogs, I get sorta jealous at all the attention they get. I'm poison ivy green about this note Tod Goldberg got. That's some tasty hate mail. Not as good as Tod's response, but the crack about the middle school girl really hit home for me. Maybe someday I can get someone threatening me with a lawyer for no particular reason too. [found by way of Karen.]

But read this article anyway. I mean EDS is scary and I think the guy is right. Rush is insufferable a sufferer. [article found at corrente while I was looking for their smoked brisket recipe. ]

I've gotten four rejections this week.

me: No, I'm sorry. It's not winter. The heat's not going on yet. boy: Dang it, mom, look! I can see my breath--See? steam! me: Okay, put on a sweater. boy: I'm already wearing two shirts and a sweatshirt. me: Where's your coat? boy : The dog is shivering! Just turn on the heat, would you? me: Wait until your dad gets home. boy: Why?! me: He knows how and I'm too cold to go bang around in the basement. winner--boy dog : prancing by door. I need to go out! whine! me: opening door. dog: scratching at door. woof! WOOF me: opening door. Shut up. You're annoying the neighbors. Okay, come on in. [three minutes later] dog: prancing by door. out! again! whine! me: Listen you dumb mutt, I can't leave the back door open any more. It's too cold. And no, I don't have time to keep letting you in and out of the house. Pick a place and stay there for a few minutes. . . . What's wrong? dog: prancing by door It's a squirrel! I have to go o...

The rejecter seems to be acting up. I've got yet another recommended dkos diary. I don't get why this one went to the top of the page. It's just a cute little anecdote, not a major Truth (there we go with the Truth again, Doug.) Once it hit the big time, I did tag on a moral: JFDI. Make the calls for something you care about. Speaking of dkos, I'm tarred tarred tarred of self righteousness and anger. Sure, it's all bad but Shut UP all ready. I'm TARRED to the point that I wanna just flipping take DOWN the next person who Gets all SHRILL on my BUTT about REpugs. Sheet, yah, that's a way to win hearts and minds, ya moron, call them NAMES. heh. Joke, sorta.

The Rejecter! Motto: I don't hate you. I just hate your query letter. Hmmm. Good stuff. Slightly snarky, articulate...But no, she's not my editorial assistant niece. This Rejecter works for an agent as the first line of resistance. As one of those underlings said, my job is to find reasons to reject you.

Thank goodness Doug is making me do this so I don't have to think of a subject. FIVE THINGS I KNOW ARE TRUE. 1. The minute someone says "you are not allowed to drink anything for the next X hours," you will be thirsty and will remain thirsty for X hours. Even if every other day of your life you'd never touched a drop of liquid during that time period. 2. Blog hopping is more fun than most television. Don't bother to argue with me, because I know it's a Truth, and not just an Opinion. 3. Because I said so is a feeble reason but it does bring up the subject of stupid reasons you're always giving, mom, and that directs the topic away from the original argument ( you can't drink anything for X hours, for instance) 4. The fug in a teenage boy's room serves to remind us that we are merely animals. Take note, anyone who actually believes we're a species apart. 5. Pie is good. That's from the oldest boy but I'm using it because it is a fine ...

Two rejections, one an okay meh--the other, fairly brutal (the editor hated my hero "the hero in particular is extremely weak and comes across as timid and irresolute. While there may be good reasoning behind this characterization, there wasn’t enough information in the first few chapters to convince readers to be able to follow his story blindly." [hmmm. hope it's okay to quote her. I've gotten in trouble for posting letters from editors in the past. But I doubt this particular editor would read this blog-- or care, for that matter. It's an articulate bit of rejection. If I were the editor, I'd be proud of it.] ) I don't freak any more. I don't even feel like saying " yah? you and what army, girlie?" No reason to be offended because he's not her cup. Problem is, I bet he's probably very few people's idea of a good time and I can't seem to stop writing this sort of book. I might be dispatched to e-book land forever and ever....

The Nephew Tries to Get to Lubbock TX. You have to start at about midway down the page ("hour 20") and work your way up to get the full horror of 36 hours in Houston Airport.

is that I can't do things like go see Leslie. I wanted to see Leslie this weekend! I will again. I bet. I hope. Being neurotic or an invalid with vapors is so last year for creative types. And frankly, I think even back in the day they could only get away with it if they were a capital "A" Author. Lord Byron yes; Ann Radcliffe, no. (although she did eat raw meat to get that gothick edge)

woo boy. I was up way late reading all about Jul and Rachel. Short version: Jul and husband were separated, perhaps going to work things out . Husband, offstage (thank god someone is, eh?) takes up with Rachel. Rachel posts on one of Jul's friend's site. Hell breaks loose. The whole thing was fascinating, amusing until I remembered shit! these are real people. Then it seemed as if I were pushing to the front of a fatal accident scene to peer at the paramedics at work and listen to--and make--comments like Eeeww, blood. Oh, that woman really should have worn clean underwear when she left the house today. and the more we chatter about it, the more acceptable it becomes. Heh. Of course that's what happens when they light up the disaster scene with disco lights and/or a pretty blog skin. I feel sorry for Rachel, searching for acceptance and forgiveness in the wrong places. I get the impression she's young--she hasn't learned yet that children (and often spoiled kids ...

before I got published, I mean. later on: It occurs to me that the author of this piece is a chocolate-deprived PMSing female confronting some major plotting issues. This constitutes an emergency. I test the stomach. Can it do chocolate? Yes. Successful bitchmutha soothing occurs. . . . If I had another list, say, "13 things I love about being published" I'd replace this whinefest. I don't. It's late. eleven thirrty pee-emm and no one'll read it anyway. 1. Just because I get published once doesn't mean it'll happen again any time soon. 2. The people who are unpublished are generally hungrier and more optimistic than me. 3. The glow doesn't last as long as the fretting. (But it's pretty nice...don't get me wrong.) 4. Lovely helpful people on experienced author loops are truly lovely, but they might not be right. 5. The ones who are gloomy are often right. 6. The other pubbed are probably shaking their heads at the enthusiasm of the newly fi...

Got a couple, three million bucks lying around? You can have a portrait of Stephen Colbert. Genuine printed vinyl! It's currently going for the bargain price of $2.4 million (the money is going to charity). UPDATE: The price has dropped to 6K. details from the auction: The portrait, which depicts Stephen standing by his fireplace and in front of a previous portrait, will be replaced with a new portrait, which depicts Stephen standing by his fireplace, in front of a previous portrait, in front of a previous portrait. At least one critic has already heralded the Stephen Colbert Portrait Series as “the equivalent of the Genius Grant, the Fibonacci Sequence, and ‘The DaVinci Code’ combined.” What The Critic says: While certainly not the first work to champion metastasis, assymetry, topography, decay, multiplicity, and, crucially, mischief in the quadrolinear plane--and let's not resign the vanguard to mere chronology, for Clobbmann's "Auto-Clobb" did exemplify this al...

Or maybe just finds its niche. ** I was reading my pal's draft of a hot scene and she had a line something like this: Her heart rate shot through the roof as he pressed closer, rubbing his lightly furred chest against her ... and I immediately saw this: . . . . (a furry convention--click on the image to make it larger. I like the lanyons. ) ** "I feel pretty and witty and gay"

Okay, no more episodes of House . Or at least no more when the 9-year-old is in the room. I'm getting an MRI and when boy 3 heard me mention it, he flipped out. He just knows that I'm going to go into convulsions, my eyes are going to roll back and I will spew horrid substances and maybe need to get my heart restarted. He's seen House! So he knows what happens whenever people have MRIs, dammit. For some reason it didn't help when I pointed out that people on that show also have convulsions/eye rolling/icky spewing when they're just lying around in bed. "Are you going to go into a hospital?" he asked. When I said no, it was just an outpatient thing nowhere near a hospital, he got less worried. Forget guns and cops and volcanoes and monsters. This kid's terrified of hospitals.

When a friend was dying of cancer, he stopped reading mysteries and Tom Robbins and developed a taste for Jane Austen and Wodehouse. I read somewhere that people who are sick make up a huge audience for traditional Regencies. When searching for comfort reads, patients apparently want conversations and other small social interactions...no huge midnight dramas or death or large passion of any sort (perhaps a bit of inner trauma, but no one falling from cliffs). It turns out that I'm just like other people. My stomach has been awry lately--nothing horrendous--but I do have days where I feel invalidish. Today I went to straighten the cupboard in the bathroom where I store the reading material. I found Sense and Sensibility , a couple of Heyers, an Emsworth Collection and a Carla Kelly. To Say Nothing of The Dog is in there too. That's apparently action I can handle. I tend to reread when sick. Which is also what everyone else does too , it turns out. There's that scene in some...

I figured it was mostly political, so I put up a diary at dailykos about Fred. Silly spammer.

You love them, they're yours. They'll be on the next plane to Santa Cruz, so help me. Gawd.

1. Santa Claus thinks I should be whupping the boys more (well, not that he used those exact words but if I wanted to stop the dears, nothing short of violence would work). UPDATED: never mind. Righteous fury unnecessary. SC is a Fraud. 2. My emmy-winning neighbor had Ned Lamont over to do some kind of sound mix thing and I missed him. Not the neighbor--I see him a lot. Ned! I didn't get to see Ned! I forgot to wander by to borrow sugar at the right time. 3. My stomach. Bleh. 4. Every single tomato in the garden, even the green ones, have been nibbled by squirrels or woodchucks. I was gathering them in for the coming frost and ended up hurling them against the shed wall (a satisfying activity, actually). Can't toss them in the compost because then next year's garden will be filled with thousands of tomato volunteers. THOU-ZANDS of them. 5. Two out three boys require new winter coats and boots and (if I take pity on them) snow pants. See, Suisan? New England in the fall=spl...

step one: stand on either side me and take turns intoning in deep impressive television announcer voices boy 1: Kate Rothwell, her mother was a block of cheese boy 2: Kate Rothwell, she is terrified of mimes boy 1: Kate Rothwell, her left eye is a raisin painted to look like a right eye. boy 2: Kate Rothwell, she believes babies come from a mine in Albuquerque boy 1: Kate Rothwell, she is terrified of Albuquerque. boy 2: Kate Rothwell, she is about to beat her children senseless. boy 1: Kate Rothwell, she didn't know the carrot held a bomb. boy 2: Kate Rothwell, she ate nothing but mummified pencil shavings. me: Kate Rothwell, she's now going to hide in the bathroom. With the door locked. step two: move on to their next victim. Their father. step three: give it up only after they're threatened with no Friendly's Fenway Fudge ice cream if they don't shut the #(*@@# up.

This is a lovely time of year. Yup. The trees! The occasionally bright blue sky! However it is also my inner shut-down period. If I was part of an organized religion, no doubt I'd have a ritual. Yahrzeit. Put stones on graves, or even have graves to visit. Instead I slightly withdraw when life's not in my face, a la kids. They don't put up with this moping crap, not for a moment. Once you hit a certain age, there are bound to be ghosts. A lot of people I loved chose this time of year to die. This has become significant for some reason. I don't get it, but this is when I notice them most. Took me a while to figure this out. I thought, hmm, seasonal affective disorder? but no, because I'm just fine once the holidays are out of our hair. I'm haunted now and not later. (Heh, I bet I'm asking for trouble with that line.) Maybe if I could figure out a ritual for Day of the dead/Toter Tag/día de los muertos I'd do better--get it out of my system faster. My moth...

I like working alone with the dogs. They're good company and they don't interrupt--well, not with words anyway. Working alone is blissful. But now I need a kick in the pants because I'm faltering. I spent too much time yesterday playing with a dailykos post I wrote and today the weather is too nice. I emailed my agent hoping she'd have some influence. Nope. So I think I need to hire a boss. Someone who'll glare at me and at her watch when I spend too much time puttering in the kitchen. My boss will say things like "that's good, but I think you can do better/do a little more/take it more seriously." He'll have a lot of energy and expect me to keep up with his time-table. Heck, just having a time-table would be nice. Oh, and she'll hire a custodian to take care of the place.

Amazon is apparently now dumping any reviews on books that were NOT purchased at their site--or so I hear. (I checked and my reviews are still up.) Strikes me as a rotten idea because I suspect those reviews are why most people head over there. If this happens, then my guess is Barnesandnoble.com will suddenly become a lot more popular. Of course, I was sure the moment of champagne sharing with fans was going to be played over and over and over. . .So my abilities to forsee popular culture future are suspect, eh? UPDATED : A person who seems to know a lot about these things says you needn't have bought the particular book you review on Amazon, you just have to be an Amazon customer. What's worse is my digestion is driving me N U T S again. Ick! Yuck! bleh. No wonder Regency dyspeptic secondary characters are so gloomy and cross.

"Do they always do that?" I asked my husband and sons. "I don't think I've ever seen a ball team do that. It's sort of cool." We were watching the Detroit Tigers spray their fans with champagne. No one answered my question. I said, "God, that looks like Mumm. What a waste. Still, it's kind of charming that they're celebrating with their fans." One guy poured champagne on an abashed looking security guard. My sons loved that. I said, "Seriously, is this something baseball guys do? I know they spray each other in the face in the locker room. Bet it hurts." "Nope, haven't seen them do that with fans before," my husband said. "Well you know what this means," I said. "From now on, every winning team will have to do that. Isn't it football where they have to dump Gatorade on the coach? I bet the first time it happened was a spontaneous funny event." They didn't answer. "You know that t...

if you don't live in New England in the autumn.

that Bettie is so funny. update: I'd just read about a thousand real reviews. I think that's required first.

If I could remember how to mess with my webpage, I'd put these there. Bec? In the meantime? Here we go, a novella that came out a couple of months ago, but just live with it, y'all. From Fallen Angel Reviews--Jen H In Invisible Touch, Ms. Devon’s humor plus the sexual chemistry between Bonnie and Jared equaled laugh out loud fun. Following Bonnie as she eventually tries to enjoy a little naughty fun with her invisibility was a blast. It was also interesting to see how the whole paranormal event would play out, if it would have any affect on either’s outlook on their lives, and what kind of future this couple hoped to have together. And who can resist rooting against a sleazy villain? Invisible Touch is the first book in the Shrink Wrap series and if this story is any indication, I’ll look forward to reading the sequels. From The Romance Studio--Sarah W What a fun story! Everyone’s always imagined being invisible for a day, but in Bonnie’s case, being invisible is not all it’s c...

You're making me nervous. One person with strong opinions should not make you change your book. IF you think it works, give me the razzberry, the bronx cheer, the Boston driver's favorite finger. Because honestly? If the world of books paid attention to me: 4 LKH, that woman who writes mysteries and has three names all of which escape me at the moment**, Tom Clancy, and a truck load of other writers would not be best sellers. Maybe a couple of their books might sell okay. 4 No books would be written that contained any of the following: secret babies uber-alpha heroes vampires [with rare exceptions] Big Misunderstandings over-priced brand-name shoes recipes mixed with murder mysteries woodland elves that speak with fae Irish/Scottish accents Beautiful Evil Other Women Who Plot To Get the Hero Susan Silverman a hero who calls the heroine 'baby' heroines who dress up like men and manage to fool everyone evil guys who cackle all the damn time many pages of hateful argument...

these are from books that I like, some on this computer, some on my shelves and a couple on Amazon. Book titles and authors underneath. 1. So there I was, sitting under a colorful, multi-striped beach umbrella on my grandmother’s casket in the middle of a deserted backwoods highway in northern Minnesota. Oh, and I was smoking pot. I knew it was my responsibility to get Gran back into the borrowed hearse, but I weighed maybe a hundred-twenty soaking wet…and I was indeed soaked. Couldn’t dance, didn’t feel like singing, and already had the pot on me, so seemed like a good idea at the time to just sit and watch the family drama unfold. 2. The education bestowed upon Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, althletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague that occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living. 3. Discordant car...

First...I just realized something about the two books I've read recently. The part that drove me most nuts was the same in both. Things are going along nicely and suddenly something from the past rears its ugly head and the guy shoves the girl out his door with no explanation, no apologies. And really, she hasn't done anything rotten that she's aware of, at any rate. BOTH books. I don't recall ever reading that situation before...or at least if I have read it, I wasn't invested in the cast of characters so I didn't much care. With these people? I cared. I actually said something like "no!" or "Just stop it, you prick!" aloud as I read. I'm taking my reading seriously when I start yelling at books. Particularly when there are strangers in the room. There is a truth about romance that I've heard repeated over and over by readers, editors and writers: the males in the books are allowed to be flawed. In fact it makes them more interesting...

It's that waiting in an airport, waiting for something to happen baaaaalooooos. A How To Guide for Potential Jurors in CT Sit in a big room with lots of people who don't talk to each other. Watch Civic Duty one-oh-one movies with slo-mo flags and Appalachian Spring playing in the background. Sit in big room with lots of people who are talking to each other a bit more-- and wait Drink many cups of complementary coffee with powdered creamer-- and wait Take elevators and march through corridors to smaller rooms, following the clerk who walks too fast. Sit in smaller room and wait and listen to names of lawyers, lawyers' clients, etc. etc. etc.-- and wait and wait Repeat second verse, two times from 8:15 am-5 pm, emphasis on first two lines. Yah! They didn't want me! They said, "pfah, throw that Rothwell back into the pool" twice. Never even got to voir dire. Highlight of the day: Reading a fabulous novel that most of YOU can't read yet, neener neener. It...

1. Call doctor, see if I can get a note to get out of jury duty tomorrow (recurring undiagnosed stomach grunge. No, not same old thing, really.) 2. Call work to point out I can't come in--going to be going to jury duty tomorrow (dr's note might not work after all) 3. Arrange someone to pick up boy 3 in case I'll be on jury duty tomorrow. (thanks L) 4. Hide in room with computer on lap, thinking about work. 5. Read Dear Enemy for the umpteenth time instead. (an ultimate comfort book. Jean Webster rocks--astounding that she wrote those books in the early 1900s) * * * * * Hey, good review, lovelysalome. Looks like you actually read the book....Thanks! * * * * * * Updated: NO ESCAPE 1. The doctor only writes that sort of note for chemo patients. 2. The legal system's website says my jury number is a go. hmm. At least they'll give me free parking and free coffee. I just did this a couple of years ago. About a week after my 'you did your duty so you get out for a co...