kate rothwell

I bid on an auction for promo time with a particular blog. It's a great auction, the one run by Brenda Novak. It's a great prize. I won! Whoopee! So then I went over to look at my winning prize and..... She won't promo erotic material. Ohhhhhh. Well. I think maybe I'll deal with it here. Or maybe I'll give it away to Bobby Cole or someone. I guess I'll leave it up to the woman in charge. At least the cause is a good one.

I answered the phone and once again I had interrupt the flow so I could wedge in that damn question....The necessary one, Required for the conversation to make sense. "who the fuck is this?" leaving out the the fuck because I'm a polite biddy. You people with caller ID are getting into the habit of just talking and out of the habit of saying "hello this is _________." I don't know who the hell you are. Especially before 9 am.

I had my list thing pop up "blogging at romance lovers" It binged at me before 7--My computer is that on the ball. I didn't wake up much when I wrote my entry. I started to write about my dream, a recurring dream that involves an ex-boyfriend, and decided....mmmmaybe not. It is one of those blogs, but if I'm going for porn, I'll stick to fiction. Are dreams fiction? Sure, but.

1. Cilantro . I used to think it tasted like soap, now I love the stuff. Mmmm. Cilantro. 2. Olives . My sister loved them and I wanted to, too, because Nan was so cool. Eventually trying them over and over worked. I like them all now. Even the salty shriveled ones. Yum. 3. Gay marriage. First time I heard about it, I thought it was a joke. I don't recall being strongly opposed to it, I just didn't see why it was important. Now I do. I still see a joke in the topic--people who somehow think it'll destroy their straight marriages = Heh, funny. 4. Romances. I thought they were all trash. I no longer do that ranking thing with genres, ever ("literary books are Better than fantasy are Better than mysteries are Better than romances") because it's stoopid and pointless and leaves out too much good stuff. 5. Books with "a novel" written under the title. I boycotted them for a while just because. Now I think there are too many to ignore them. And anyway, ...

Did you miss this? I did but now I'm on it for you. Go over there, read it and laugh.

The sad thing is I had the time, just not the inclination to blog. Because ummmmmmmmm errrrrrr. Um. Yeah. I think it's the assemblies, the award ceremonies and the concerts. Especially that last. This is the endless concert time of year... Four big ones that go on for hours and hours and hours. Seriously, the one tonight will start at 7 and go past ten. Tomorrow night, 6:30-9:30. And they will feature violins. I like the little concerts and the plays. But the big ones mid-year and end-year that feature every group in a very large school or even the whole school system and that has tout ensemble playing the national anthem and God Bless America at least twice. .... Oh. Shit, No. I go all blank and hazy when we sit in those badly designed, hot and overcrowded auditoriums. And one by one, the music teachers tell us how special our kids are and how wonderful we are to give our kids the gift of music in this very special school system and now can I just get a round of applause for som...

Walking Score your house. It's a cool site. Aya's old house rated 94! (she's down to 74 now). We're a pathetic 62. Doug--and anyone else thinking of moving to a new area--might want to plug this sucker in. And now....go down two entries and read WHY you should say something on this blog, at least until Tuesday. You could win a book.

YES, DO enter the contest to win Lori Devoti's book, Unbound . Look at her entry below for details (there aren't many details, except about Hell-hounds. I do like that hell-hound list!) Anyone, especially those who must interact with teenaged boys, will appreciate Darth Vader Acting Like A Smart Ass . Plus? It's short.

"So Lori," I said to Ms. Devoti. "I want to bring back the authors on Thursdays. I like doing that, so how's about a TT about you? Hmmm? All about Lori Devoti?" I guess she decided she wasn't a particularly interesting subject. She sent along a TT featuring hellhounds, the shape-shifters she invented for her Nocturne books. She does some great world-building in those books and HEY, YOU READERS, heads up because I'm going to give away one of her books -- the first in the series--some time in the next few days. See note at end. I mean it, pay attention. THURSDAY [heh , Tor's day] THIRTEEN ABOUT HELL HOUNDS: 1. Hellhounds are the sexiest shapeshifters to walk the nine worlds. (You don’t believe me? Yeah, but would you say it to their face?) 2. Hellhounds like meat—not vegetables or frilly pastries. Meat, people. (ummm, are we talking people as meat?) 3. Hellhounds have issues with jewelry—especially the kind enchanted by evil witches to bind them to...

You have to wonder how, in an internet that contains blogs like PBW , and booksquare or even SBTB or Bam or Tumperkin or Mrs Giggles --oh, and not to mention a gazillion interesting agent/editor blogs--how my blog ended up a finalist in a literary/book blog category and they didn't**. I swear no money changed hands on this. Also you have to wonder " who are those other blogs ?" I've never heard of any of them and there's no way to go check out the other pages in the running. I suppose typing in the names might work, but that's so primitive. Except, hey, look! I'm a finalist! Yay! I love winning contests so yo, yo, yo! go on and vote for me so I can say I'm an award winning blogger! I wonder if the winner gets a lil virtual plaque graphic they can try to put on their page... but they eventually lose the graphic in the bowels of their computer. ________ ** maybe I'm in the "pitiful number of visitors a day" blog category? I should lo...

Sometimes when I listen to this I get all verklempt to the point of needing to go for a run. The sap is running way too high. I really like Zimerman** but don't watch, just listen. Or maybe you can but I can't--I've seen too many Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny concert renditions that makes it impossible to watch anything that involves a guy in tails sitting at a piano. and oh, okay, here's the barcarolle that margaret likes. When the time comes, she says, just push her out to sea and play this. I say you want passionate sentiment, skip Andrew Lloyd and go straight for Chopin. _____ ** he's so young here, too. Wow.

~Piles of returned school work should be put on the sideboard. Not the dining room table. That's reserved for junk mail that needs to be shredded (such as credit card offers) and sections of the newspaper that look too interesting to be recycled. ~Rejection letters should be kept in their own special pile. If you don't mind marks on your table, you could drive a wooden stake through those rejections. ~For a nice decorative touch, try mirror writing in the dust on the piano. Or, if you can't manage to be a Da Vinci, at least go for backwards. "em hsaw" Much more interesting than the standard "wash me" ~IF you get reversible rugs for the bathroom floor, turning them over makes for twice as much use and a pleasant surprise. The rug is white! not grey after all. ~The ratty teeshirts you don't throw out because you figure you could use them for dust rags will make their way back to the regular clothes pile surprisingly quickly unless you push them deep i...

Thirteen reasons you might not be getting any answers to your emails to individuals and/or yahoo loop questions. 1. your provider sux or maybe it's yahell's fault. 2. there's a nationwide ban on any email that begins yo dude! Those emails get dumped with no notice. Pffffff. Gone. 3 ditto those that start with the words So I was just wondering if you guys could help me with __________. 4 . There is yet another junkmail spot you don't know about. All the answers are gathered there but are only saved 30 days. 5. It could be the rumors started about you. No, no one alleges you did something particularly interesting. Sorry. No extramarital sex rumors, either. Probably you said something to someone who took offense and is out to ruin your good name .....not that anyone had heard of that good name anyway. My guess? They're saying you lied about something or were beyond rude to a reviewer. 6. Kiss of Death Promotions. No unpublished book you like makes it to the b...

I'm over at Total Ebound blogging about shape-shifters again.

I'm working on a blurb sheet for a Samhain book coming out in October and boy, do I suck at blurb sheets. Quick, fun, tagline about a title? Nope, can't manage that. How about a longer blurb to capture a reader? Ummmm. Well see, remember the mariel boat lift ? yeah, I only sort of do. But they were shoved out of their homes and prisons and. . .. How about if they're only half-people, but wait, they're of course the same species...Hey, why're you walking away? I think the hardest question, the one that I'm currently avoiding (by messing around here): List some titles that are similar in nature to this book. . . . . Not exactly the same, but lets the bookseller recommend this book to a reader who likes the type. I bet I'm not the only writer who goes slack-jawed whuh duh? on this one. I don't want to imitate other people so if I do, it's an accident. I'd be the last to see the resemblance. Actually, it's not just a matter of being too clos...

Lori has an article up about shapeshifters. Heck, she's a shape-shifting writer. She can write homespun/funny or tense/scary. Not a one trick pony. Notice the "pimping self" in the list of tags on this entry? because Lori's got Summer Devon in her article. Listen, it's okay if you don't like them, but don't whine or growl to me about shape shifters. The whole shifting thing is fun, dammit. Disbelief??? No, nope, pfah, I don't have a problem with that unless the characters don't reflect their various forms even a little bit. If you shape-shift into a cat, you ought to have a taste for fish when you come out of it. I like the glitches that cause characters to be more complex because of their shifting. My current favorite shape-shifter is the werewolf, Angua, from Pratchett. She thinks like a dog and can't quite abandon that--absently picking up a squeaky bone and playing with it, running straight to Carrot when he snaps his fingers. The grea...

My list from boy2. A traditional gift... and one that makes me wish blogger let you have a "continued below the cut" option. List of things less awesome than Mom: Hamsters Ninja Hamsters Ninja fireman hamsters Ninja fireman atomic mutant hamsters with laser eyes The Vikings Homework Hitler Spiders RADIOACTIVE spiders Spider man Spider woman ( and yes there is one look it up) (and she’s less awesome than you) Triskaidekaphobia The treadmill Heavy metal Umlauts The !Xu language Chuck Norris (maybe) Pencils Hamsters DAD (Shhh) By DAD we of course mean initials for the Danish rock band (look it up!) Laust Sonne, DAD drummer Cricket Sloat, Key handgrip IRON MAN DADADADADAA IRON MAN Super man Ant man (LOOK IT UP) Ace the wonder-dog who DOES EXIST HAHA Superwoman Wonder woman and her invisible PLANE THERE IS AN INVISIBLE PLANE HAHAHAHA Wikipedia even though it helped me prove the existence of the invisible plane. The invisible PLAN (no one can read it!) Frisbee Badmint...

I'm upstairs waiting for breakfast in bed on this, a High Holy Day. I can hear that brekkies involves something with an egg-beater, so I think it'll be standard Sunday pancakes. Unfortunately the radio alarm went off at 6:30--about an hour after Mike got up. A guy was telling us all about the scary things those crazy Muslims do. Not just the silly extremists calling themselves Muslim...According to that guy, whoever the hell he was, the whole religion was cock-eyed wacky. I lay here coming up with strange Christian practices I'd lob back if I could. And then I remembered: I could turn off the radio. Yay! Happy Mother's Day to me. Mmm I think I smell bacon. Mike's standard pancakes plus bacon sounds pretty damned good, but, speaking of strict religious practices, I wonder if it counts as an Official Mother's Day Breakfast in Bed if the kids don't prepare it.

kind of like most of our dinner conversations

Do collection agencies train people to be assholes or does the job attract assholes or does the work turn them into assholes? If there are more and more bills going to collection, does this mean that the general tone of telephone calls will grow less and less pleasant? The trouble is that aggressive horrendous assholiness does the trick--at least on people like me, who can actually pay. I haven't had a more hostile, nasty interaction in years and that was just the first call. The last one, too. The Transworld Services guy hung up on me (he hung up on me!) I called back, found an almost human person, and paid the damned bill. I can't imagine getting calls like that all the time and functioning as a happy, sane person. About the obvious question: No, we're not joining friends, neighbors and fellow-countrymen in the slide to an economic abyss . It was just a bill that I ignored because I didn't think it was real. I still don't. But now I'll take it up with Corners...

In a couple-three-four years, a new sub-genre of romance will rise to the top, beating the sales of even the menage and the hot m/m sexx. If I knew what it was, I'd be there, writing it like crazy**. Me and Florence Stonebraker, we go for bulk, Sam. So that prediction? My crystal ball shows nothing but murk. I only wish I knew. Format? Content? Graphic novels? Who knows? Someone will guess right and she's going to be rich. Here's what I do know. Whatever that wildly successful sub-genre is, it'll face sneering hordes of romance writers who say it's just not: 1. Romantic enough 2. Heartfelt enough 3. Interesting/heart-thumping/real enough to gain real romance readers, just the fringes. 4. Written in a style that requires true talent/artistry. Letters to RWR (RWA's magazine) and long angry blog posts will be written on why it's not a real form of romance or even--if we're really lucky--why it's depraved and should be banned in Texas. Passionate, snar...

Doug has one of her covers at his place and it's a beaut.... Love Hungry Doctor . Here's another and it appears way tamer than LHD . (I lifted it from vintage sleaze where you can buy it) I saw Florence and her work at Doug's and thought there she is! The mother of my trade! This woman wrote more books than most people read in a lifetime and most of her titles were either steam-city--or sold to some disappointed people. Just the titles are titillating: Love Life of a Hollywood Mistress, Bedroom Agent, The Fleshpots, The Whipping Room . And those covers make the standard torso-gleaming, bodice-heaving, hair-rippling Fabio-esque event look tame. I want to get my hands on a Florence Stonebraker. Mother's day is coming up. Maybe my family will buy me this one. It's so strange that someone can have written that many books and not show up on any radar I know of. As someone pointed out, a women studies major would have a field day with Florence Stonebraker. What a pseud...

and yes, if you stay through the credits, there's a glimpse of a tiny scene at the end. Oh, boy waiting for a teaser for a movie that's not made yet. Coming soon..... How many movies based on comic books will we have in the next year? Seven? Eight? Do movies based on graphic novels count? But to get to the tiny scene and the glimpse of Samuel Jackson, you wait and way and the credits do go on and on and on. There's 45 minutes of my life I'll never have back, although I wouldn't have seen the name "Cricket Sloat" otherwise. And I wouldn't have had the chance to threaten my kids. ( If there's nothing at the end of this, other than the words "the end," you'll owe me )

I like Alan and I like his video but golly, I'm tired of hearing it when I get to my page. Maybe I'll just write a lot of stuff to bounce it off the front page. Too bad I have nothing to say and actually realize that for a change. Oh but when did Hartford turn into a version of Seattle? We've got all the rain without the harbor and fun, lively culture. Speaking of High Culture. we saw Iron Man . Robert D Jr. was as good as everyone's saying, only better. The cheesy over-the-top character is only bearable because he plays it. In fact the guy is FUN because of RDJr. Also Jeff Bridges was totally unrecognizable and fantastic until he had to get all cartooony voiced. Meh. And why is it the whole "I hate teh violence! I've learned my lesson! no more blasting!" characters have just learned to go blast in a different way? Blast, kill, boom! Only yay, this time. Gwynneth Paltrow was good and she should get extra kudos for running in those fuck-me-pumps she wore t...

This whole Everyone Must Be Eighteen before doing the sexxx or marriage, which is all the rage.... is not true in the historical I'm reading. It includes: 1. a pregnant unmarried 15-year-old (bad girl, not a main character, but the object of pity). 2. a 35 year old and 25 yr old vying for a 16-year-old, one of the main characters . The older guy is the good guy and he wins. So? Know it? No, it's not Beatrice Small. Go on, guess.

Hey look at my friend Jackie.