kate rothwell

I'm supposed to hide easter baskets and stuff. My kids are old--my baby is 16. When I say, "shouldn't we not do this any more?" They howl. And then they say, "well, okay, Mom, if you're tired of it, it's fine. We don't have to." And then I howl. But this might be the last year. Who knows? Mike got eggs, boiled them and now someone ought to dye those things. No one is jumping up and down and volunteering, however. I used to love doing that stuff. Now? Eh. I lost a huge chunk of motivation lately when it comes to the details of living and no one's pushing me to "fake it until it's real" so I don't. Little kids push and push and push. No one really counts on me anymore, which is a mixed blessing. The word "blessing" isn't entirely wrong, not at all.

Make a graph

What is this trend of setting up a mystery in the first chapter and then not solving it by the end of the book? Stay tuned for book two? No. No. no. NO. That is not how it works. I do not mind series. I love those puppies in fact. But when you have a murdered person at the start of the book, you solve the mystery. Or maybe, maybe, fine, all right if you must....you can set up another mystery and solve that one, leaving the first one to linger.  But something must be solved by the end of a book. Period. You can keep some threads open, sure. You can grab the readers' attention and make sure they don't let go and want more more more. BUT YOU SOLVE AT LEAST ONE GODDAMN MYSTERY. Kim Harrison gets away with not telling us who killed Kisten, Rachel's lover, for a couple of books because she had other mysteries/issues/plot arcs she DID solve. I'm looking at you, Shelly Shepherd Gray. I do not get how the book Missing has so many five star reviews. Seriously. I do not. ...

Every time I go to this page, it goes to ads. Does that happen to you? Because it's a real pain in the arse, Blogger. Don't make me shake my fist at you or whine.

The book Bonnie and I have coming out in July is up for preorder---and it is at 48K at Amazon. Wow. For most of you regular people, this means nothing because you don't haunt Amazon--no, you have lives. To me this says....holy shit. July. Our book is out in 4 months and a few people have already bought it? Already? Wow. I saw that and knew what I had to do. I better get a screen shot. I better post at facebook and twitter and on my blog and . . . maybe write to various groups. Writers' groups are full of Hey, hey, hey look at this review! Look at my cover! Look I'm on the best seller list!  I bet facebook won't give us grief about this cover. notes and this certainly qualifies as that sort of message. Then I remember that's part of why I'm on digest on so many of those groups. (Yo, I'm not entirely curmugeonly, I do like reading that kind of news from friends except when I'm really feeling asshole-y. And I always like seeing covers.) I...